Strange Customs
I have developed a reputation for speaking up in defence of the US and its international actions. I don't think that everything that the US has done is perfect, but I want to provide some balance to the 'alternative orthodox view', as I call it, that the US is a rogue state, which I find so lacking in perspective.

I've been to the US about seven times, but only twice in the last five years. My early visits were all extremely happy ones. I came back from my first vist in 1977 thinking how advanced the US was compared to Britain. I had never seen a digital clock before I went there! It was such an obvious idea to have numbers instead of a dial, yet I'd never seen one. And what's more, it was in a car!!!

Visiting MacDonalds was like travel to another galaxy back then when you were used to the boring, slow service of a Wimpy (what a terrible name) with food that was far worse. The way I felt then about the Big Mac is the way I now feel about fillet mignon. Breakfast TV was a real eye-opener. Kids were watching cartoons before they went to school! In every way, the US seemed light years ahead.

But I've had a couple of weird experiences with the US authorities. In the early 1990s I flew there alone to stay with friends and had a surreal moment at JFK Immigration. When it came my turn to be screened I was asked the usual questions and then the man said 'Right, Mr Young, you are wanted in five states for armed robbery.'

I was ever so slightly taken aback and expressed some surprise. He followed on to ask - "Did you come here in 1982?" I said no. He asked a few more questions. There was a pause after I had answered. He turned his computer screen to face me but I couldn't make out what it said. Eventually I said 'If that was me, do you think I would have come back?' He gave it some thought and shrugged. 'Okay', he said and let me through. It's so weird that I sometimes wonder whether I dreamt the whole thing.

That's not the only weird encounter I've had with US Immigration. In 1998 I flew to San Francisco to visit a friend who lived in the Bay Area. I had just resigned from a pointless sales job and was planning to either look for something else once I got back or to have another shot at playing poker. There was one internet related sales company that was potentially interested in me but I wasn't thinking of seeing them until I got back. The internet boom was at its peak in the US and the authorities were looking out for foreigners who might be planning to look for work. I was so naive then that I didn't know that I was in Silicon Valley. I always thought that Silicon Valley was further south, like Death Valley.

As I stood in the queue I rememeber thinking 'Please don't ask me what I do for a living'. When I got to the front of the line, the first question was 'What is your occupation?' I was struck dumb. I couldn't recall ever being asked this when I had held a job. I replied that I had just quit a sale job and would look for another one once I got back. He didn't seem impressed. 'That's not good', he said. I added that there was an internet company that was interested in me. He asked me where this company was. I said that it was in London. There was another long pause. I was getting worried that the holiday I had looked forward to for so long was about to go up in a puff of smoke and that I might get blackballed from entering the US for some time to come. So I added 'But it's not a problem as I've always made money from playing poker back home and I can do that whenever I want'.

He said 'Show me your poker face, Sir!'.

And I stood there motionless, with no expression for about ten seconds, though it seemed like an hour.

'I wouldn't know what you had' he said and he stamped my papers and let me through.