On the Corner of Main Street and Kennedy Memorial Drive

We've just moved into our new apartment, a two bedroomed flat in St Bonifacius. St. Boni is Minnesota's version of Tatooine, as far from the bright centre of the universe as it's possible to get without being able to see Russia from your house, and it is gorgeously, ridiculously wonderful. Our house is a purple-brown pastel shade straight out of the '50s suburbia of Edward Scissorhands, with white wooden window frames, and a screen door. It is, in all honesty, an unlovely edifice, a squatting hump at the top of the hill, raised at the back over a slope but with the rooms spread only over a single floor. Yet there is a curious personal splendour to it; it's our first apartment, and thus it receives the kind of attention and love which it would never get from those less enamoured by the freshness of the experience.

Plus, it's on the corner of 'Main Street' and 'Kennedy Memorial Drive', an address as American as Sam Eagle, the Muppety embodiment of Americanism.

'Merica

Main Street and Kennedy Memorial Drive; it doesn't get more American than that. It's as American as remembering the Alamo, hearting New York, celebrating the 4th of July, or forgetting all about Canada. As American as root beer floats and warm apple pies at a diner, saluting the flag before a Superbowl game, and drone strikes on Pakistani children.

Even more American than that, maybe, because on the other corners of the cross roads stand a launderette, a whiteboard church and a cemetery. St Boni. has everything an American town needs; seven bars and liquor stores, two churches, a gunshop and a laundromat. Standing out front gives me a great view of the local water tower. It is so quintessentially, stereotypically American that I sometimes suspect that I'm in some weird, cross continental version of the Truman Show. Everything is too perfectly Americana, to the extent that it appears inauthentic.

Wednesday was our first day in the apartment, and also the day they tested the St Boni. tornado warning system, which is just a 5 minute siren. Presumably, in the event of an actual tornado, it would be just a five minute siren and then the sound of a cow being hurled through your house, because I've seen Twister, and this is what happens, you guys.

Seems legit.

Because I'm at home whilst Jalyss works long hours in two jobs, I've been responsible for setting everything up, by which I mean I arranged all my books on the shelf and then threw all of the clothes on the floors of the closets. Closets, plural. Walk in ones. Ridiculously American.

I've set up a work space, and a book case next to it. I've got it into my head that as I'm unemployed and currently unable to even look for work I may as well enjoy the life of dilettante writer; getting up for a coffee and a pastry at noon, drinking wine and eating cheese in the evening, and every now and then writing an incisive, witty and humorous article that earns me enough to continue buying myself coffee, pastries, cheese and wine.

Instead I get up around noon, eat a stale doughnut, look at Buzzfeed, wait for Jalyss to get home and write a weekly review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for GeekBinge that's rarely funny and never insightful, and for the kind of money that makes awful American cheese look pricey.

But, if you're going to be just married, without a job, and failing to succeed as a writer anywhere, St Boni. sure isn't the worst place in the world for it.

And guys, I'm fairly certain that could be the town motto; "St Boni. Not quite as bad as you would think to look at it."

On USCIS

It's 7:58am, and for one of the first times since I've arrived here there's a steady rain falling on me, and on the other few dozen people patiently stood waiting for the door to open. Even on an unusually grey day, this early in the morning, Minnesota hasn't yet got so cold that I bothered to pick up a jacket on my way out the door, so instead I balance a box of documents on my head until a Good Samaritanesque Rihanna invites me under their umbrella.

We are waiting for a USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) processing centre, where I've been summoned to go for my biometrics. In preparation for me staying in the US the Government wants to harvest and catalogue all of the most intimate aspects of myself; my fingerprints, DNA, and probably my soul. Ostensibly it's so that they have this on file should there ever be a problem, for instance, if I abscond with all the benefit money I'm not receiving from them.

It's the kind of post-9/11 state overreach that should make natural conservatives screech about the boundaries and limitations of what Government has a right to take; about privacy, about safeguarding, about presumption of innocence. But it's only being taken from immigrants, so the total amount of a damn that they actually give is somewhat less than none.

In a display of Governmental irony the USCIS centre is based in a solitary wing of the ground floor of a Chinese restaraunt. If ever one building was the picture of American policy, this is it; zealously guarding the frontiers of a nation that Capitalism has already sold out and overrun. It's a truly ugly building, but very clean. Kellie is singularly impressed by this. I'm not; if anyone has access to the vast pools of cheap labour from abroad that they can exploit to keep it tidy, these guys do.

As the rain starts to slacken into the misty drizzle, and the horde forms itself into a natural, orderly line, I find myself feeling quietly content.

Honestly. Rain and queues. It feels like I'm home.

At exactly eight, the doors are opened and the crowd moves through - there's enough space in the reception for everyone to comfortably fit in, and so we move up to allow the end of the line to get out of the wet. It's an unhomogenous collection, a real American melting pot of ethnicities. The lady in front of me tells me she's from an East Asian country whose 'real', non-English, name is unintelligible, so I nod politely. She's with her sister-in-law, who's there to enforce the weight of American citizen approval. This, I've learnt, seem to be very important. Having an American with you lends an air of authenticity; you are not simply some over-the-fence, fresh from the dock illegal. You have contacts, American contacts, and so, by association, the presumption of legitimacy to be here.

Kellie is with me for today, and once the queue has made its way in out of the rain she joins me. I wave her over.

"Is that your wife" asks the American.

"Err, no. That's my Mother in Law". I reply. I am starting to wonder just quite what age a woman needs to be for people not to assume she's my wife. It's a really awkward question to ask unless you're pretty sure of an affirmative answer, but apparently Americans don't feel shame in the same way as normal people.

The biometrics itself is disturbingly simple. No tissue, blood or saliva samples, no invasive procedure. I didn't even need to pee in a cup, which is unfortunate because I had already bought one from home.

Instead, I simply had to give fingerprints, a short written record of my height, weight and eye colour, and have a photo taken. I had been worried about this at first, as I seem to have a hereditary disorder, passed down from my Mother, that makes fingerprinting me difficult.

Whilst on our honeymoon in Flordia we went to Universal Studios, which in part offers lockers and ticketing based on a scan of your finger. I eventually gave up using this service, and simply put Jalyss' hand to the screen each time, as whilst I could open the lockers to put everything in, they never seemed to recognise the same fingerprint by the time I returned minutes later.

Apparently though, the Government has better equipment and systems than a big business, because my fingerprints read correctly every time. Turns out that I do have them, after all. Who knew.