I apologise for my absence from The Post for so long, but I have been away from my cave — but more of that later.

Whenever I've been online and on h2g2 I have been lurking around Peer Review and writing for the Edited Guide, so have not seen much of what is going on in the community. There have been a lot of changes for me to catch up on.

We've got a new president, which surprised me. It mainly surprised me because they moved the voting forward a few months so that it took place while I was offline. I'm not sure what the UN would have had to say about that!

Trekking round people's pages, I see that familiar names have decided that h2g2 is not the place for them anymore although I haven't really seen the arguments and the apparent bitchiness that lead to it. I really hope this isn't the start of a trend. Although I may never talk to many people on the site and have not managed to get to a meet yet, I still think of this as the best place on the web and keep encouraging people to come here.

And, closer to home, we have a change of editor. May I say that I'm glad that Shazz has recovered, and well done to Reefgirl for her editorship. I wish EMR the best of luck in the steering The Post into the future and I hope that there will be many more Mancy Blueses to come.

So, why have I not been online that much? Well, after being turfed out of work and finding that jobs for patent analysts were thin on the ground, and that working in an office for nearly four years doesn't mean that I have six months of office experience, I had a change of scenery.

I packed up my stuff into the Bluesmobile and headed south to Essex, stayed there for a night and jetted off to the eastern shore of Virginia for a couple of months, where I was promised some web design work. Needless to say, the current downward trend of my finances had continued and work hasn't turned up, so I have spent the best part of two months free and easy, doing little while painfully aware of the huge financial disaster awaiting me when I return to England in December.

The eastern shore of Virginia is a kind of political freak. It is a 70-mile-long strip of land stuck onto the bottom of Maryland, facing into the Atlantic. It has no land connection to Virginia itself and aside from a 17-mile-long complex of bridges and tunnels, is cut off from the rest of the state.

I was living four miles away from the centre of Manchester; I used to live ten miles from the centre of Essex. So coming to terms with how out-of-the-way it is over here is not easy. I am staying on an island called Chincotegue. It is 10 miles to the main road and there is a supermarket there. To get to the set of proper shops, it's another 10 miles. It is another 30 on top of that to get to Salisbury, Maryland where anything like a proper town is to be found.

Heading south, it is 60 miles till the bridge/tunnel that connects the islands to the main part of Virginia, the cities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. From my apartment to Richmond, the state capital, it is at least a 400-mile round trip.

I found out that blues legend Buddy Guy was playing in Virginia, in a city called Roanoke. Look on a map: it's 300 miles away. These kinds of distances are rather more than I am used to. Especially if forced to drive (well, it's hardly like the railways have been invested in) on the interstates. I have a sneaking suspicion that more people over here are strong believers in Christianity and an afterlife, because without a faith that there is something to move onto, they would not regularly drive on interstates. 15 miles on a weekend was enough to scare me silly, and I had my eyes closed.

I can't play my open mics here, partly because although I can play country, and there is little call for anything else around here, its not exactly what I am known for — but mostly because the nearest open mic venue is in northern Delaware, about 150 miles away.

However, if you ignore the vast distances, there are many good things about living here. Everything is laid-back (mostly because if you have to do anything, you would have to travel hundreds of miles to get there), and the weather is pretty good. Aside from hurricane Wilma brushing past, it's been hot and sunny. It makes such a change from Manchester — over there at this time, I'd be de-mothing the long coat ready for winter. Today I'm writing this with the air conditioning on cause it was in the mid-20s again!

I got to witness a state governor election, which amused me. The Republican (posters: white text on a blue background with red detailing) was attacking the Democrat for being liberal, while the Democrat (blue background with white text and red detailing) had to convince the voters he is a conservative. The Democrat won.

However some things remain the same. After promising to keep taxes low, there have been tax raises to repair the roads. After promising to enforce the death penalty even though he doesn't believe in it, the new governor has cancelled the execution of the first guy up for it.

I think the thing I am most noticing here is how cut off I am from everything. It is difficult to get news from outside America (and personally, I find it difficult to watch Fox News or some of the CNN presenters without feeling ill). This place seems so cut off from the rest of the US. Even though in terms of the US, it is near to where it is all happening — 300 miles from New York, 200 miles from Philadelphia, and Washington is just over the bay (admittedly about 200 miles drive) — this area of villages and fishing ports is a world away from the United States that comes though the television screens.

Until next time

Peace, Love and Blues

tjm

Mancunian Blues Archive

the_jon_m

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