I've just realized several things. I'm in Los Angeles, surrounded by rather obscene wealth. Somehow, this has made me realize even more that nothing is the same as it is in Britain - the Scotch pies I used to like from Fisher and Donaldson are unknown (in fact someone had to ask me what "pie 'n' chips" were the other week - I was unable to begin explaining it to someone who had no idea of the concept). Nobody here understands what cricket is, and I've no idea about the rules of most American sports - American football in particular seems like a large-scale violent version of Backgammon. And I'm constantly lamenting how rubbish American television is compared to what I miss in Britain, particularly now the writer's strike is set to eliminate all the virtually identical police dramas that fight off all the virtually identical vote-off-by-week reality programmes.

In other words, I've become the Sherrif of Huddersfield.