American Thumb - Day 2 - Stratford Connecticut to Old Saybrook, Connecticut

I can't lie to you: I love The Gilmore Girls.  If you don't know what it is, it's a TV show about a sassy, fast talking mother and daughter, based in small town Connecticut.  Yes that's right, I used the word sassy.  I started watching it a few years ago while working with a psychopath who wanted to kill me.  It's a nice show where nothing really happens and it brought me such comfort, that I bought and devoured all seven series one after the other.  It also made Connecticut look like one of the most idyllic places on Earth.  I can't lie to you: it's one of the reasons we're over here.

After a very hearty breakfast, we headed north, away from the interstates and cities and into the small town Connecticut of my TV dreams.  It looked exactly as I'd hoped.  The journey took in clapboard houses of reds, blues and greys, white churches, flags flying, trees, pickup trucks, tidy little towns.  Washington Depot is a one such town and apparently the basis for the Gilmore Girls' home.  We stayed long enough to take in just about everything - about an hour.  We went into the town bookstore (called The Hickory Stick) to be greeted by the cashier shouting, 'Happy independent bookstore day!'  The cynical side of me thought it was a ruse to make sales, but it seemed to be true.  And it was perhaps the most beautiful bookshop I've ever been in.  So we bought a couple of things.  Best ruse I've ever been caught by.

When driving, I've almost lost my tendency to veer to the right.  Today's learning curve happened in the middle of nowhere, when the wheels started rumbling through gravel and some roadside branches began tapping at the windows.  I'd like to be able to say that E was really cool about it.  But she wasn't.  And rightly.  I've been much better since.

We made our way to somewhere called The Dinosaur Place.  It's a beautifully apt name for a place that boasts 40 life size sculptures of dinosaurs over 60 acres and it is brilliant.  I was genuinely moved to see an 80 foot tall plaster dinosaur.  I felt like Sam Neil in Jurassic Park when he first sees the big ones and John Williams' score comes sweeping in.  I heard it in my head.  S loved it and ran wild, meeting every new dinosaur she saw with enthusiasm as if she had just discovered it.  She exhausted herself in the playground there and in the maze (that we absolutely nailed) and at dinner, put her head down on the table and tried to go to sleep.  E made the linguistic slip of asking for the bill rather than the check, but thankfully they knew what we meant.

Tonight's residence is a proper motel in a place called Old Saybrook, a town where the Internet tells me Katherine Hepburn used to hang out.  The desk clerk was one of those people who starts nice, but becomes weird and the more he talks, the less you wished you'd heard him say.  But it all adds to the authenticity of the place.  We're on the upper deck, overlooking the car park.  We've locked the door and put the chain on.

The dressing on my thumb has become a bit weathered through the day.  It acquired a couple of stains at breakfast, one from the bacon I had with my cream cheese smothered bagel, one from the jam I had on the hot waffle I'd just made.  The donuts didn't cause any stains.  The thing with the jam stain is that it's right on the part of my thumb that was bleeding and every time I look at it, I have to remind myself it's jam, because I'm terrified I'll start bleeding again and I drive myself mad with imagining.  And I know it's definitely jam because I've tasted it.  Several times.  Anyway, if I keep eating breakfasts like that, I'll soon swell into a featureless mass of fat, my fingers will unite into blubbery flippers and it won't matter that I once sliced off half my thumb.

American Thumb - Day 1 - Hebden Bridge, England to Stratford, Connecticut

I can't remember the exact wording of the insult but I do know it was a real curve ball of an insult that hit me hard because the next second, I sliced the top off my thumb.   It sat on the chopping board like the cap of a boiled egg.  I watched the blood pool for a second before I put the remainder of my thumb under the cold tap and hoped and hoped that I hadn't just had my holiday ruined.  A trip to A&E later (the bleeding having refused to stop for several hours) and I was strapped up and confident my holiday was not in tatters.

Because this isn't just a blog about the holiday of a lifetime; it's a blog about my thumb.  It appears the holiday will march on in tandem with the thumb's recovery, so the parallels will be many.

The incident with the thumb happened on Thursday night, the night before we were due to leave.  I got home from A&E shortly before midnight.  I had to keep my thumb elevated which made it hard to sleep and because of my long hours at the hospital, E (my wife) had to do all my packing for me.  I have no idea what is in my suitcase.  I had organised this holiday meticulously, planned every stop, set up a domino run of what was going to happen.  This was not the start we had planned.  

In the middle of the night, S, my daughter, went nuts with a nightmare, probably exacerbated by her languishing cold.  We brought her into our bed, reducing the chance of sleeping by a further 6000%.  The morning greeted us with heavy snowfall, the stuff sticking to the roads and trees.  A recent binge on TV series Lost made me question if maybe, the island didn't want us to leave.  But we decided to anyway and were on the road at 9, driving through a blizzard.  I would have driven, but I was still compelled to keep my thumb elevated, which would have meant changing gear right handed.  Which is not too safe in a blizzard.

Seven hours on a plane is a long time but I got to watch films.  S was mesmerised by the seat back screen and kept quiet in stupefaction throughout.  Pixar's Inside Out made me cry a tiny bit but I think I managed to disguise it with coughing and pretending to rub my head like I had a headache.

At US customs, one of the apparently humourless officials was booking us in, checking our passports, taking our finger prints.  When I had to show her my bandaged thumb, exclusively appalling scenarios came to mind.  This damn thumb was going to get me thrown back on a plane and deported.  I imagined having to remove my dressing and bleeding everywhere or calling her supervisor and refusing to remove the dressing.  But in the end it worked out and she even cracked a smile at something, though I can't remember what - probably the fact that I'd sliced my thumb off.

We hired a car and drove out of New York, a stultifying holiday experience, much like being on the M62 on a Friday evening, except without having a clue what's going on in your mirrors and a tendency to stray to the right and encroach on other lanes but I think I'm getting better.

I'm writing this in a hotel in Connecticut.  It's half 9 at night but in real terms, it's half 2 in the morning.  S is asleep and E and I have just ordered pizza, though I may be too tired to eat it.

My thumb hasn't bled through my hospital dressing so all in all, a really successful first full day of the holiday.  And it doesn't hurt at all.  Well, not nearly as much as that insult did.