I’m glad England doesn’t have a birthday. What would I get it? A World Cup, perhaps? They wouldn’t look after it; they lost the last one, and had to rely on a dog to find it. (Perhaps they should have a dog to manage the team, even a chihuahua would have had the sense to put more than one striker up front.) What’s more, what with the whole ‘United Kingdom’ thing, you couldn’t get a present for England and leave out Scotland or Wales, it really wouldn’t be fair. Still, at least a national birthday would give the English something to do with all those St.George’s flags they took down after Rooney trod on Portuguese balls.

Today was the Fourth of July; in fact it’s on the same date every year. Also known as Independence Day (I think it was named after a famous sci-fi movie; I wish there was a Star Wars Day as well). Over the past few days we have partaken in the barbecues, the cold beer, the discounted shopping, and, tonight, the fireworks. Hundreds (possibly millions, I can’t count in the dark) gathered as the sun set in the Davis Community Park, seated upon towels, deck-chairs or just the plain old grass, as if waiting for the Mother Ship to play them a bit of Jarre. The exploding colours began immediately, accompanied by no music (though local radio stations apparently play a soundtrack you can listen in on with headphones). The funny thing about fireworks is that sometimes, even if you’re unimpressed generally, you feel compelled to say ‘wow,’ and wonder at how the designers managed to get the shape of the explosion just so (well, they’ve had thousands of years to perfect it, maybe millions, I can’t count).

I managed to keep my ‘Independence for whom?’ views to myself as well. I had been a little nervous that, as a Brit, I’d be singled out for attention, them being the enemies in the American Revolution and all. I didn’t feel like getting into the whole thing about me having all Irish ancestry, about California being nowhere near part of the US at the time of the nation’s inception (it wasn’t colonised until much later; in fact, I think it’s about time this colony broke away from King George’s super-empire, those Federal taxes are not being spent as Californians think they should), about the fact it was the colonists and not the colonised who gained independence (it didn’t exactly get better for the Native Americans), or about the fact that most Americans celebrate something that their own ancestors were not part of, because they were immigrants – but that’s getting all messed up in Americana, and the psychology of what defines a country’s self. I’m not going there.

In fact, all I got was a comment on the fact I wore black today. “For us it’s a day of celebration, for you a day of mourning!” It took me a few moments to twig that he wasn’t talking about Beckham standing down as England captain. “But I always wear black,” I mumbled. I think it’s just better to let Americans celebrate their day, cheer for their fireworks, go to their sales, enjoy their barbecues, wave (or burn) their flags; at least they know when they were born, even if they divorced their parents. So Happy Birthday America – look at you, you’re getting bigger every year.