Blonde seeks identity…
8th July 2007
After two months here, what has California done to me? I know what I've done to the state of California, more or less. I've put money into the bits of the local economy dealing with bikes, swimming and sun tan lotion. I've offset the good that cycling does to my carbon footprint with the energy used to produce steam from my ears every time someone tries to explain to me that driving is a necessity here. I've made many Californians laugh in a politely puzzled way at my quaint British expressions and my deliberate refusal to acknowledge the July the fourth is about celebrating the Americans getting rid of the British instead of the other way around. And I have consumed many cups of tea.
What hasn't it done to me? According to my dad on the phone this morning, California hasn't influenced my accent. This is a good thing. People listen to you for two sentences longer before mentally switching over to "afternoon radio" attention levels when you speak British English. It hasn't made me watch dreadful American tv - I still get all my news from Auntie*, and so I haven't actually got a clue about local issues and what the Governator has been up to recently. It hasn't made me have any plastic surgery, which is an idea that makes my skin crawl - and it won't ever get the chance to make that a literal statement. And no amount of pottering around on beaches has yet converted me to flip-flops, items against which I have had a secret vendetta for years.
California has made me very tanned, in spite of my best efforts to avoid getting fried, and in spite of it being cloudy most of the time since I arrived. People compliment me on the tan and are then very surprised when I explain that actually, I don't really want one. Well, at least I don't want skin like leather when I'm forty, which comes to the same thing. I did almost buy my first bikini, but then couldn't quite take it seriously enough to do it. I think that might count as a theoretical conversion, even if it isn't a practical one yet.
And as my skin gets darker, my hair gets lighter. I now have some proper natural blonde streaks and the rest of it seems to get lighter and lighter. I'm sure that some women would pay a price equivalent to a couple of meals out in a very posh restaurant to create highlights like that in England. But I'm just worried that I might be turning into a blonde bimbo. I'm making sure that I do at least one mathematical thing a day, so that I don't forget how to. Are all the equations stored in the dark pigments in my hair? Are they going to be bleached away by the sun?
The speed of the administration here has so far failed to convert me into a real person though. You are not real until you have a driving licence. They frequently do not accept passports as ID. Unless you are a verified Californian who is licensed to drive, you are not real. I am not real. I suspect that the length of waiting time for ID appointments is really just to make sure that by the time you have the ID, the state has converted you to one of its own. The ID will probably arrive in the post on the day that my hair reaches golden labrador colour, the same day that I buy a surfboard and ask whether I can "get" a coffee in Starbucks. But by then, it might not be me any more…
* Auntie - an affectionate term for the BBC. The "Governator" is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
