day 15, August 22nd, Washington

Beginning to feel a bit tired - may have got too much sun on my bald head! Was the hottest it has been all trip today and it seems to have sapped my strength. Still tomorrow is the day I leave the US so will quietly pack my bags and fill in time till it is time to get to the airport.

Yesterday I slept in for once and made a very late start. Wandered round a book shop, Barnes and Noble, and bought some books. Then went out to Arlington National Cemetery which is genuinely hallowed ground. It's hugely impressive and the memorials to the great and the soldiers are interesting and in cases moving. But gee it was hot! I'm afraid I started to wilt walking in the hot sun around a large location.

I've said before in this blog that I love the way Americans care so much about their history. I'm sure it is something we could learn from.

This is my last full day in the US - for now at least - and I cannot emphasise too much how much I've enjoyed being here. I really feel I could move and work here and be entirely at home. Not sure if anyone wants an aging radio editor of course.

I'm also enjoying writing this. I've always thought of myself primarily as a writer. I used to write long letters as a kid and I got into journalism primarily becauser they would pay me to write. Ironically I now no longer write anything longer than three or four sentences as an introduction, but I still feel my main skill is as a writer. I don't suggest these blolg posts are especially well-written, but I've found that once I have started to sit down and write the words have flowed very easily.

It makes you think whether I might be better in a role where I did more writing. RNZ doesn't care very much about writing - or perhaps more accurately, has a very narrow idea of what good writing is. And yet the airwaves are a wonderful forum for wordsmiths.

One notices in the papers here that different styles of writing are encouraged. Sometimes experimenting works, sometimes it doesn't - but it at least gives a variety of reading experiences. I wonder if back home, and not just at RNZ but in the media in general, we might be writing ourselves into a corner where we put formula ahead of the need to mix it up.

In that spirit, i will write the next post as a series of limericks...