Each time you move home there is the determination that this time you will sort out all that junk. Of course it is the very last thing on your long list of things to do and usually hurriedly addressed as the removal truck zero's in on your current location, only leaving enough time to pass it all from drawer, shelf and cupboard to plastic packing crate. You satisfy your conscience that you will sort out the junk when you get to your final destination. This of course is the last thing on you long list of things to do at your new abode and results in only shifting through this plastic crate with tired limbs for necessities which get passed to drawer, shelf and cupboard before stashing the remainder in a convenient cupboard; only returning for a rummage when some important item cannot be found anywhere else. Occasionally during one of these rummaging sessions you may suddenly find a forgotten item sat in the palm of your hand that brings memories flooding back.

This is how I came to be staring at the key, a thick and weighty version of the classic English Chubb except the rounded end was an angled square which was attached via a short chain to a dangling flat blue triangular key fob. Printed on the fob in white indented letters was the address in Utah it should be returned to in the event it was ever lost and then found. It should not really have been in my possession at all, but I kept it as a memento for a sequence of events that took place in April of 2005.

In the spring of 2005 I found myself sitting in the aisle seat of a Boeing 747 looking out over two empty seats and through a small window at the uninviting English countryside. My journey that morning through Sussex had been plagued by frost and a cold fog that lingered in the thick air above the rolling downs, a massive kaleidoscope of lush greens and dark browns. The chill of that spring month had contributed in part to the heavy cold that now sat oppressively in my head and which in roughly three days, experience told me would manifest as a bad chest infection. My carry on bag contained a months supply of tissues, various over the counter remedies for flu, a collection of audio books and some music, the later more to drown out the cacophony of annoying humans and doubtless precocious girl child that would plonk herself with a deep sigh into the seat just the other side of the aisle.

Utah is the fairly sizeable chunk of mostly barren real estate that sits left central of America. It is one vast mountain range to the right of the west coast and about ten hours drive north of Las Vegas. Getting there from the UK requires a plane change at any one of the major airports of this land, you hope somewhere on the east coast and then a four hour hop into Salt Lake City. My ultimate destination: Provo is then a 50 minute hike down the interstate for which you need to pay attention otherwise you will miss it. On this occasion the first stop on this journey was to be Atlanta. It was literally the weekend after the new photo and finger printing protocols were adopted by US Immigration.

Fortunately my immediate companions for this journey were a prim twenty something American couple that had no desire to carry home some pestilence from the old world, so they kept a safe distance and conversation was thankfully limited to requests to squeeze past. On the other side of the aisle instead of child was a huge black geezer, and we are talking muscles, wearing the baggiest trousers I have ever seen, who spent most of the journey bopping his head and clicking his fingers to tunes that passed into his ears through gigantic headphones, not one decibel of which I heard. Through the hours that followed my eyes were often drawn from the printed words in hand to his restless form that contained so much in its meticulous construction; from gleaming studs at ear, carefully groomed skin and hair, gentle perfume that further enticed; through jacket, watch, rings and white tight t-shirt. At every move some eye catching reflective surface was revealed, drawing you in, his presence magnificent and demanding attention although I guessed for him not particularly mine or that of my gender. On one occasion my inquisitive glance was rewarded by a decadently salacious wink, I smiled back sheepishly before returning to my tissues and book.

Just over eight hours after banking out over Ireland we touched down in Atlanta and in procession all shuffled off the plane through a series of corridors and into the high ceilinged echo of the immigration centre, all the while with a pack of tissues held tightly at the ready, my breathing courtesy of the altitude and air conditioning had taken on a vadar like wheeze. The ever winding queues put me in mind of the scenes you get in movies of people trying to escape a war torn country, accept of course that we were all, of our own free will trying to get into this one.

Having wound to the mid way point of this snaking line of humanity a short Hispanic male dressed in US immigration uniform suddenly appeared bustling at my side. He had been working the line but I really hadn't paid much mind. On his darkly smart shirt was pinned a star bigger than my fist. He looked pretty impressive, if availed of the short persons malady of trying to appear bigger than he really was.

“Hello sir”

“Hello” I replied looking back down at his tanned, young round, pockmarked face.

“I am Alonzo from US Immigration and I am checking to make sure you have the correct documentation.”

I handed him my passport and the bit of paper you fill in that displays you're name, passport number and declares that you're not a terrorist or thinking about undertaking such activities.

“Sir! Do you know the address of your residency in the United States?”

“Yes Provo, Utah”

“No Sir, I mean the street address of your accommodation?”

“urrrggh no? Do I need this?”

“Yes Sir!”

“But I don't have it?”

“Ok Sir, then can you make one up?”

“Sorry?”

“Can you make up an address?”

“Urrmn yes I guess so”

“OK Sir, thank you. Have a good day”

I begged a pen off a fellow victim, noticing that stretching away in front nearly all the people recently visited by Alonzo were busy looking vacant into the air or busy scribbling, I did the same, making up an address that roughly equated to my known understanding of American street numbering: I think it had a whole bunch of numbers and contained the word 'boulevard'.

30 minutes later I was standing at a booth. The seriously unfunny immigration official was looking at me with resigned 'you must be kidding eyes', he was waiting for an answer.

“I am sorry, I just made it up”

“Why did you do this sir?”

“That guy over there in the uniform told me to?”

“I am sorry Sir, we need your accommodation address. Please proceed to the station at the back of the hall and locate the address.”

He pushed back my documents and looked past me, before hardly having time to scoop them up I was corralled by an oversized human in dark uniform who directed me towards the back of the hall, a good part of a thousand eyes followed me, conjuring stories in their own minds of my crime. For my part I sneezed heartily into my tissue using all that could be mustered through nasal passages and lungs, which I have to say was considerable and very impressive, giving most people around me cause to take a step back.

At the entrance there was a single and ancient PC at the head of a very long and straggly queue, eventually I took my turn and googled the address of my companies head office before returning to the human snake. Half way back along the queue Alonzo in his dark shirt and spangly star popped back up. By this time the cold and frustration was seeping into my psyche, drowning out all mechanism for humour or even irony, my nose was sore and my chest ached. The need to commit a violent act towards Alonzo bubbled like lava at the crest of a volcano but he had a gun and looked like his life mission was to find someone that would give him a reason to draw. I answered his repeated questions:

“Yes”

“Yes”

“Yes”

“Yes”

“Yes”

He walked on by.

As I approached the booth I decided that if I got knocked back this time I would request or do anything I could to facilitate being deported from this god forsaken place. Of course it is at this moment, as I teeter on the edge of lunacy everyone starts smiling sweetly and I am ejected post finger print and photo into 'no mans land'. It is here, in this age after September 2001 that you must collect your baggage before proceeding to queue and check in your bags once more and then queue to go through the intensive homeland security procedure.

Forty minutes later I thread my belt back through my jeans, next I retrieve my shoes and re-lace these and then re-add the layers of clothing that had been removed in an attempt to stop a flat palm size piece of plastic going crazy whenever it passed over my knee's. Somehow removing the laces from my shoes did this. The getting dressed again process was hindered by trying to juggle tissues, breath and not snot over shoes or shirt or the person urging me on from behind. Significantly my tissue stash was dwindling.

Having spent nearly two hours getting from plane onto official American territory I found after a cursory glance at the flight information that my internal flight to Salt Lake was now boarding, of course the gate could be anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes away, I didn't really need to guess which. Twenty minutes later I got off the tram and kind of hobbled at pace with bags and coat bouncing and flapping about me, towards the gate, stirring up all sorts of mayhem in my chest. There was nobody to be seen until I got to the gate where a neat little hat atop a pretty face and perfectly white teeth checked my credentials and ushered me onwards. As it turned out I was far from being the last person to get on the flight: we spent over an hour, that's more than sixty minutes after the scheduled take off waiting for 5 well dressed locals that seemed completely oblivious to the murderous rage that during this time had come to simmer beneath my ruddy, wheezing exterior.

During the flight I ran out of tissues and resorted to stealing napkins from the trolley. These though hardly covered both nostrils. Swigging another dose of my night nurse, which took me four times over the daily limit I somehow managed to fall asleep.

I awoke as we were landing having missed the one thing I had been looking forward to: the slow angled descent down into the wide flat valley that was courted on both sides by the great snow capped mountains that make this a very popular destination for all that love to frolic with board and ski. My nose now seemed cemented with god knows what and my lungs felt like they had been sandpapered clean, but I was breathing and would not need to consider stealing tissues in the short to medium term.

Security in Salt Lake city was cursory, trusting that those already in the country were a safe bet. After retrieving my bags without pain or hassle I found a seat and waited on my lift. It was Saturday, 20:00hrs local time, 03:00hrs in the UK Sunday morning. I had closed the front door behind me in Sussex twenty two hours earlier.

There is something unreal about being in America, or so it seems to this English born and bred male. In the past this has manifested through several holiday trips to the east coast and to various destinations within. It is movie world, an often relentlessly hot dry place where everything is man made and designed to make the passage of man as uncomplicated as possible. Sitting in this arrivals lounge in heartland USA, which I knew at least was not hot and dry, somehow seemed even further removed from reality. Sat beside me while I waited was an octagonal glass panelled display that rose ten foot into the air, on which shelves were adorned beneath a sign that indicated these were items that had been confiscated and therefore generally not allowed in hand baggage, including; fireworks, a handgun, a grenade, flares, garotting wire, an assortment of very fearsome knifes and a square wallet sized shape of putty that was distinguished by a little printed icon of fire stabbed into its surface, of an explosion I assumed. There was a certain calmness about the bustle that flowed through all spaces and around objects, a patience and surface politeness that manifested in the main as smiles and clothing that spoke of conformity and not standing out, it stood out because of this very imagery. People made way, bags were hoisted from tracks of conveyors and handed to their owners by strangers, mostly perfectly white smiles beamed at anyone in proximity and all in all, it unnerved me: Salt Lake city is of course the home of the Mormon.

Company policy at that time, as it remains to this day was for no car hire if you were travelling by yourself and I was going through a relatively compliant phase, so my lift arrived. Amanda was on secondment to the Provo office and someone I knew quite well from working in the UK, had socialised with in larger groups and probably had two or maybe three meaningful conversations with in a period of roughly eighteen months. I saw her weaving through the bustle of the arrivals lounge and stood readying the assortment of bags sat at my feet, she walked over to me, smiled and burst into tears.

The cause for this display of emotion, I quickly learned was the now ex- boyfriend living in Australia, the tears apparently a consequence of their sudden separation at the hands of a text he sent her after two weeks of silence. I had vague recollections of him from his visit the Christmas before just after they had got together. He had been proudly paraded and notable in my memory for the fact he was a couple inches shy of seven foot and probably the hairiest man I had ever set eyes on.

After tears were wiped away but threatening a teary relapse at any given moment we got back to her car, threw in my bags and then undertook a random journey of Salt Lakes suburbs under the pretence of finding a restaurant, which of course was an opportunity to give me the full story. In ordinary circumstances I probably would not have been the chosen conduit for this tale of tragedy and un-requainted love but Amanda was a long way from home and I was the only familiar face. I did what I have slowly grown to understand as the correct manner for conducting oneself in such situations: listen carefully, ask insightful questions and be sympathetic without ever attempting to offer advice. Occasionally being navigated through tear impaired vision by an emotional female in a two ton lump of fuel propelled metal unnerved me. After almost an hour of this without sign of food I guided her to the decision we should eat in Provo, which we did fifty minutes later where we were only accosted by two young Mormons that had recently served mission duties in London.

My condo was one of several owned by my employer and stood at the right of a very short cul-de-sac, Amanda was a few doors further around. These were all white painted wood on the outside, giving the street a turn of the century look but with a modern brick construct on the inside. Each condo housed two or three people with their own rooms and a communal living area which contained a kitchenette. Each bedroom was en suite with a shower, TV, telephone and possessed a very large bed. All were spotless. We retrieved the blue fobbed key from security and ten minutes later, having assured myself that Amanda would not be discovered the next morning frothing at the mouth with porcelain skin, pills and departing letter in respective hands; I swigged back a couple of flu pills with a slurp of night nurse, dispensed with all my clothes save for blue y-fronted pants: an uncharacteristic oversight, and crawling into bed fell asleep to the sound of the rail crossing bell tolling in the distance to the endless passing rumble of a cargo train.