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In Boulder, Colorado, the Rockies are sheer and vertical, the food cheap, and Republicans pained
✒I am in Boulder, Colorado, again performing at the grandiosely named Conference on World Affairs which, as I may have said before, is basically a piss-up with speeches. But terrific speeches delivered by people who know what they are talking about, and if they don't, are clever enough to ask the right questions. Last year 92,000 people came to the 200-plus events. This year almost every panel seems to be packed. Helped by the fact that it is all free.
Boulder is one of those university campus towns you get in the American west, a small island of liberalism and bookshops at the very edge of the Rocky mountains.
I'm staying with my old friend Alec, with whom I've lodged most years for more than a decade. The mountains begin, sheer and vertical, from behind the fence at the back of his backyard.
✒On Sunday I went to the Boulder bookstore, all warm and cosy and welcoming, with the smell of freshly baked muffins wafting from the cafe. Outside the bright sunshine had been replaced by a ferocious, scouring hail. In the store they have a huge selection of books all arranged over endless floors, mezzanines and little nooks, as if by a mad bibliophile living in a Victorian country house. You can see little old ladies creeping around, jotting down the names of the books they want, before going home to order them on Amazon.
Then to Peppercorn, the greatest cookery store I know. Here, among the Belgian chocolates, the rare Asian ingredients and enough knives to kit out the Japanese army, they sell things you really didn't know you needed, such as a plastic half-banana holder, for when you want only half a banana and don't want the other half to rot. Nigella gazed beguilingly up at me from one of the scores of cookbook tables, so I felt right at home.
Finally, brunch at the Boulder Cafe. Salmon hash with poached eggs, followed by a soft apple pie fragrant with cinnamon, vanilla and cream. All for a ludicrously small price and the attentions of a polite and helpful waitress. British people sometimes say that "have a nice day!" is meant insincerely, and it's true that she didn't call that night to find out if I actually had had a nice day. But I don't care. I'd rather that than the surly British "not another customer" attitude you often find.
✒The centrepiece of the conference is the annual jazz concert, in which leading professional musicians of astonishing talent play – again, for free. Jazz musicians have a rueful, self-deprecating sense of humour. One of them told the joke about the young woman walking through a wood. Suddenly she comes upon a talking frog. "I used to be a top international jazz musician," he tells her, "until a wicked promoter turned me into a frog. If you kiss me on the lips, I'll turn right back."
So she stuffs him into her handbag and zips it up. "Wharra oo doin'?" comes the muffled voice inside.
"Are you crazy?" she replies. "Do you think a top international jazz musician is worth more than a talking frog?"
✒On a panel about gun control – not a hot topic in liberal Boulder, where they're all in favour – Terri Burke, who runs the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, not an easy job, told a story about the legislature. They installed airport security machines at all four main doors.
But members, journalists and lobbyists didn't want to get stuck behind 200 fifth-graders on a school trip, so they asked to be able to use some kind of ID to bypass the queues. Which they did: you needed your Texas licence to carry a concealed weapon. At least you didn't have to take the weapon in, but presumably you could.
✒There are Republicans in Boulder, but they tend to keep quiet about it. When forced out, people are tolerant, even kindly, though of course you can easily wind them up by asking them who they think should be their candidate for president next year. This generally induces a look of pained puzzlement and some meaningless reply, such as: "I hear good things about Mort Stuffenbacker, he used to be lieutenant governor of Nebraska …", or: "You know, if it was up to me, I'd go for Bill Nadge. He was mayor of Dogsbreath, South Dakota, until last year. There was a scandal about an underage girl, and he is only 4ft 11in tall, but he's sound on the economy."
Meanwhile Barack Obama has launched his re-election campaign, and is looking for the largest sum of money ever raised by a candidate – $750m (£463m). Republicans are claiming he wants a billion, but that's to scare their own supporters into coughing up more. If he did raise $1bn, that would work out at around $4.50 per adult, and around $9 for every person who actually votes, sums unimaginable to us.
✒The death of local newspapers has driven the internet to become more and more local. Patch.com offers the news even your neighbourhood rag would regard as too trivial to publish. It doesn't yet cover all states, but it's getting there.
The news is dizzingly small-time. I liked this post from a tiny place in Washington state: "Firefighters responded to a call from a man who had seen a house on fire. On arrival they could not locate the fire. On calling the reporting party back, he said he could no longer see the fire. Firefighters returned to station."
✒More wacky labelling. Imogen Burman bought a face flannel at Homebase. It warned: "Carelessness causes fires." She asks: "How careless do you have to be to have a face flannel combust?" Tom Maxwell bought a packet of euros at the post office. It read on the side: "Have a great holiday from everyone in the Post Office." "Comma needed, I think," he writes.