Breakfast, Baseball and Global Thermo-Nuclear War

There was one fly in the ointment today: the thrashing that Laura gave me at mini-golf this afternoon. But even that is not cause for complaint, being so well deserved. At least I have a few more years before the boys are as difficult to beat as she is.

Cooperstown is as lovely as last night's brief exploration promised. The boys and I sauntered around the village (officially it is a village and not a town - I had no idea America had villages, apart from Greenwich). We got pastries and coffee for breakfast and sat on the shores of Lake Otsego whilst grey-blue waves lapped at the rocks and jetties. This is a special place, full of character. It's the sort of small-community-in-a-spectacular-setting that one would expect to find in a BBC1 Sunday night drama. In fact, quick, pass me the number for WGBH-Boston, I feel a co-production pitch coming on.

The 'Cooper' of Cooperstown was a Judge William Cooper who bought the land in 1785. His son was James Fennimore Cooper who wrote tales about the area, including Last of the Mohicans. It was he who gave the nickname 'Glimmerglass' to the narrow, but nine miles long, Lake Otsego that fills the valley to the north of the town. Glimmerglass is now also the name of an opera company that runs a summer season on the western shore and it's this that has drawn us (or rather Laura) to Cooperstown whilst we're on our travels. I'm not complaining about this either.

The opera is a big draw for many people, but it is more famous for the baseball. After breakfast and before mini-golf, the boys and I went and sat on the bleachers and watched some games. During the summer, for $500, your local amateur or kids' team can come and play a game at the mystical, ahem, 'birthplace' of baseball: Doubleday Field. It's free to get in and very casual. Today it was almost empty. We watched the last three innings of one match and the first three innings of another - all kids teams, perhaps Under 15 or so. A perfect introduction for William to learn how the game works, and an even better introduction for me to how to explain how it works without sounding like I was making it up as I went.

No doubt about it, baseball is a great sport. It's fun to watch, it makes sense and it has a natural rhythm unlike the ugly stop-start incomprehensibility of (American) Football. Before today I hadn't appreciated quite how important the pitcher is or how much of the narrative of the game is weighted around his performance. He is literally central to proceedings and the mental stamina required in the Majors must be phenomenal. One of the boys today had a visible crisis of confidence out there on the mound and a tightly controlled innings unravelled about him. With two Outs, two Strikes and no Runs on the board, he was utterly in control. Cries of 'Finish them!' came from the scarily zealous parents in the empty stands. But a series of no balls followed. He had choked and the previously cowed batter was given a free walk to 1st base. The next guy up slammed the ball deep over the heads of the fielders and they ended up scoring five from the innings. The pitcher never recovered and was relieved in the third.

Yes, I am trying to show off that I think I have developed an insight into baseball having spent three hours watching teenagers play. It's either this or I write about the mini-golf.

Oh there was one other thing that happened today that was marginally less traumatic than Laura's crushing victory. It's a small town. Full of character. At 12 noon, with no warning, an air-raid siren roared into life. For a few seconds I felt compelled to doubt my safety. It's an incredible noise, an urgent drone, very loud and high and low at the same time, insistent and unignorable. Immediately it conjured up images of blitz-stricken cities and hitherto vague memories of childhood. It's odd suddenly remembering being lectured on the possibility of nuclear war as a small child. Small children just accept ideas like that - there's no other way of dealing with the information, I suppose. But part of me, I think, part of my brain anyway, has been waiting thirty years for that noise to sound. There was no catharsis.

Of course, within seconds I had checked the not-at-all-panicked expressions of passers by and rationalised away my own unbidden anxieties. I unclenched my hand from the shoulder of the son that I had been able to reach.

I found out later, from the delightful Kiwi woman who owns the place where we're staying, that the noise is a daily practice for the alarm that calls the volunteers of the Cooperstown's Fire Department when there's an emergency.

This made me wonder how I'd react if it went off in the middle of the night.

Then the next thought I had, I shared with her. "Oh right," I said brightly, thinking of all those Blue Peters. "Just like the lifeboat back home." The thought after that was me remembering that just because she wasn't American, it didn't mean she was British and she probably wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about.

"Oh yes," she grinned. "We do that back home too."

Such a lovely place.