Def Leppard! Greyhound buses! USA! Yaay!
Many years ago, before Joan Collins was born and Status Quo first went on the road, an 18 year old Spreddum was taking Greyhound buses all over the US visiting and generally enjoying lots of things Yankee.

My uniform, such as it was back then, consisted of jeans, and one of those union jack sleeveless t-shirts that Joe whatsisname lead singer of Def Leppard was wearing a lot. (I know. It was 1984 you know....) My reasoning was that proclaiming my Britishness might endear me to the local American ladeez and so it proved to be.

On one long leg from Atlanta up to Detroit, 3 very attractive sisters and their tasty mate all got on board and were sat near me. First question? "Are you in Def Leppard?"

Now being mostly ugly, I figured I could not get away with claiming to be in the band, so claimed instead to be road crew, and was taking some holiday to visit friends, or something along those lines.

This led to me being surrounded by the girls, and interrogated at some length which was basically "questions about Great Britain" with answers provided by yours truly.

As a result of this, I like to think that large parts of the rougher end of Detroit now believe that in England, it is the law to drink tea at 5pm. This is not enforced very strictly in the south, but up north you can get 6 weeks jailtime for not drinking tea at 5pm. Serious stuff indeed. Also, when we meet our Queen (which we do all the time in the shops in London) we must salute, though she tends to ignore you unlesss she needs change at the check out. Then she can be quite polite and friendly until she has your change, and then she just ignores you! The cheek of it (though possibly true if anyone has ever experienced this).

There were a few more, but it was their wide-eyed look of horror at having to drink tea that really got to me.

Never did have the heart to tell them that it was all bollocks and the driver eventually kicked them all off the bus when one of the sisters went in to great depth and detail as to what she was going to do to her boyfriend when she got home - all at high volume so that the entire bus knew what the lucky bastard was in for. Needless to say, all the male passengers were not happy with the driver's decision.

Hey Ho.
(Spreddum O Grrrr. That's my vicious circle, that is., Wed 27 Aug 2008, 4:45, Reply)