Setting the scene

When Alistair Cook moved to America in 1946 he started an iconic weekly series of over 900 radio addresses to his native country called "Letter from America". I cannot recommend these programs enough; their insight and gentle style made the letters a remarkable source of transatlantic understanding. While the title of this blog is something of a muted tribute to Mr Cook, I doubt the content will be of any significant interest to anyone other than those that know me and want to keep a track of my comings and goings. I'm going to try to write regularly and actively seek out interesting content when nothing is readily at hand.



So anyway, I've moved to St Louis (a mid-west city on the Mississippi about the size of Manchester in the UK, St Louis is famous for Beer and it's Arch) and live on Heman Avenue. Aside from Sparta and Chuck Norris Street, Heman Avenue is the most manly place to live in the world. It's a nice part of town, and well worth a visit (house guests are genuinely welcome and greatly anticipated here!). I'm not going to try to write a whole lot about St Louis right now because I don't really know a whole lot, but I'm going to blog about my exploration of St Louis and of America.



I arrived in the USA on November 5th 2012 - the day before the re-election of Barrack Obama. I'm not trying to claim credit,  I'm just saying - it looked pretty ropey for Barrack for a while there, then I showed up and suddenly he won. Those are the facts, draw your own conclusions.



So, that's pretty much the scene set.