The heat is on (duh nuh nuh nuh nuh, duh nuh nuh nuh nuh - Whoa - ooo - Whoa -oh-ooo)

I am writing this blog in a state of exhaustion, brought on by two things:

1. The Couples’ Decathlon was this weekend
2. Seattle is experiencing a humid heatwave

The decathlon was the awesome event that I built it up to be. Ten events (really?!) over two days, made to test physical strength, agility, stamina, patience, creativity... and luckiness.
Kira and I triumphed in the latter category. Despite being 5’6” and 4’11” respectively, we came 2nd out of 9 in the volleyball – almost entirely through reverse psychology. Kira was so vocal about our lack of ability that our opponents took pity on us for the first 10 or so points, after which they realised we were not quite (quite...) as bad as she had made out. At that point they brought their A game, but, without having played themselves in, enough balls were over-hit for us to win the game!

Next up was the crossword, which we won! Beating the US at their own trivia on their soil – it was enough to make me nostalgic for the invasion; but that is still on hold... more on that later...

Unfortunately, the next event relied on pure sporting ability - a canoe race over a kilometre. We lost, but not terribly - considering one team had a canoe instructor in it (30-40 seconds behind most of the field, and a minute and a half behind the winners, who did it in 6 minutes). Then onto mini-golf (where

we placed mid-pack) and the final event of the day - a newlyweds game show (wives ask questions, husbands have to guess their answers and vice versa). Incredibly, after that event we were 2nd going into Day 2.

Day 2 was, however, a disaster.

Last in the first event (an engineering challenge), mid table in the 2nd and 3rd (a taste test and a creativity challenge, result shown in photo below). Then came horseshoes. Horseshoes is an awful, awful, awful game. You have to throw a horseshoe at a metal post 40 FEET AWAY, and try to get it to ring round it. NO ONE could play this game, so we actually managed to come in 6th – even though Kira could only throw the horseshow 30 FEET...
Then the Eliminator – an obstacle course requiring speed, strength and no fear of gunge. Needless to say... we lost by a mile... video to follow shortly.

This meant that we ended in 6th place overall. Not bad, but hardly striking fear into the natives.

However, the invasion is in deeper trouble than this conveys. It is really hot here. It’s been in the late 80s all week and is now into the 90s for the foreseeable future. As we all know, the only things we British can do in the heat are moan, go out in the midday sun, and drink tea – so the invasion is well and truly off until the Autumn (which the Americans call “The Fall” – if only they knew how apt that will become...).


In other news... the healthcare battle rages on. I see that you’ve been getting articles on this in the UK now (one in the observer over the weekend) so you may well be fully briefed, but to further clarify, the figures I gave were for one adult under 30. As soon as I hit 30 my premiums go up by 25%. Then it’s a 25% increase at least every 5 years. On top of inflationary increases. So once you get older... well, you do the math. And then the insurance companies use your money to employ people who work day and night to figure out how to make sure that you actually won't be insured once you fall ill (for example, a women was denied cancer treatment because she hadn't properly notified the company of acne when she was a teenager).

Please never let this happen in the UK!! It is evil – pure and simple.

And how does it survive here in the US? As far as I can tell it is actually because Republicans, (who depend on health insurance company donations to maintain their mansions) and some like-minded (i.e. greedy) democrats, feign disgust at a universal public healthcare programme because it is “Socialist” and will leave health in the hands of faceless “Bureaucrats” (despite the fact that, as members of congress, they are on a public plan).

Socialism, in most of the US, is equivalent to Satanism. This is unbelievably ironic in a country in which politicians incrementally increase their references to ‘God’ and ‘Jesus ’ each year (Read the Gospel of Luke and you'll see that Jesus was pretty keen on the welfare of the poor) – yet these politicians have somehow used consumer dread and cold war echoes to sell large swathes of the country on the belief that providing equal access to healthcare is both un-Christian and un-American. Guess Defoe was right when he wrote “And of all plagues with which mankind are curs’d/ Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst” – especially when the ecclesiastic is really a money-grabbing politician.

Anyway, enough pretentious vitriol from me! The next post will be sooner than you expect (want?), as Kira and I are renewing our vows this weekend. Should be a great day, with a ceremony, then BBQ and watersports! More next week...

Double D out