i had been ten months in the USA, during which time england - for me - had become terra incognita. the lurid technique of the american radio and press had hidden all europe in an aura of death; at the same time i could not imagine this death - it was just not compatible with the college students or the new york intellectuals or anyone else i met in america; if this death were real, the americans before my eyes could not be real too. by autumn i had reached a point where, though england had not regained its reality, my americans had begun to lose theirs. therefore to enter the atlantic tunnel was to leave a growing unreality for an unreality which i hoped would vanish when i met it; otherwise my return would be - what some of my friends in america considered it anyway - a mere adventure in nihilism. but the answer was not to be nil, as i realised on the boat the moment i found myself among lancashire, glasgow, and cockney voices. all saying "bloody"; americans do not say "bloody".

from the selected prose of louis macneice.