The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island I am not at all sure how we should tackle such a crisis, but on the basis of what we know so far, I would suggest, as a start, quarantining Texas.” This is clearly a global problem and it’s spreading.

When functioning adults can’t identify London, England, or a hotel lobby, I think it is time to be concerned.

But it did get me to thinking that our problems are more serious than I had supposed. Now I am not for a moment suggesting that these incidents typify Austin, Texas, or America generally or anything like that. About five seconds into the ascent, she said to me in a suddenly alert tone: “Excuse me, was that the lobby back there?” “That big room with a check-in desk and revolving doors to the street? Why, yes, it was.” “Shoot,” she said and looked chagrined. When the elevator arrived, a young woman was in it already, which I thought a little strange because the elevator had come from one of the upper floors and now we were going back up there again. I finished the check-in process and went with my bag and plastic room key to a bank of elevators a few paces away. “Well, why not?” So she typed “London, France,” and the system was happy. “I beg your pardon?” “You can have ‘London, France.’ ” “Seriously?” She nodded. “It’ll take France,” the girl said after a minute. I couldn’t think of anything else to suggest. So I suggested Great Britain, United Kingdom, UK, and GB, but those were all rejected, too. I spelled that, too-twice (we got the wrong number of T’s the first time)-and the computer wouldn’t take that either. Is that a real country?” I assured her it was. She typed for a moment and said: “The computer won’t accept England. “Country?” “England.” “Can you spell that?” I spelled England. The girl typed in the building number and street name, then said: “City?” I replied: “London.” “Can you spell that please?” I looked at her and saw that she wasn’t joking. Our house doesn’t have a street number, just a name, and I have found in the past that that is more deviance than an American computer can sometimes cope with, so I gave our London address. When I checked in, the clerk needed to record my details, naturally enough, and asked for my home address. Consider two small experiences I had upon arriving at a hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. Above all, visiting America gives me perspective. There’s baseball on the TV, people are friendly and upbeat, they don’t obsess about the weather except when there is weather worth obsessing about, you can have all the ice cubes you want. “I HAD TO GO to America for a while to give some talks.

Road to little dribbling