America I love you...

But you're bringing me down.

It began in the 1960s, with Marvel comics. I loved the storylines and the superheroes and the artwork, but I loved the ads in the back just as much. I wanted X-Ray Spex and whoopee cushions; most of all, I wanted the kits that seemed to enable you to make your own plastic toy soldiers and insects. These were not toys available to us. And as I got older and learned more, “things unavailable to us” became a running theme: colour televisions, all-day TV, more than three TV channels, ice makers in fridges, food at sporting events, edible hamburgers, black music, movies that wouldn’t come to the UK for months. In some states, there was sunshine for more than three weeks a year. There was electricity without meters, central heating. There were things I didn’t understand: why did adults go and watch cartoons being recorded and chuckle away at them, even when they weren’t funny? Nobody had explained canned laughter to me.