sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: San Francisco, CA, USA

I don’t know who first had the notion of ambassadors and embassies. I’ll assume the Greeks, who seemed to have come up with most things both sensible and perverse. Unlikely it was the Vikings whose ideas of diplomacy was to rape every other woman in the village. I shouldn’t slander Viking, I’m making all this up. In any case, an embassy is a curious thing, a piece of land officially that of another state, there to represent it and.. well, give civil servants a few more job opportunities. Certainly no-one is there to consider a job in interior design. Take the US Embassy in Madrid. On the walls were those things you always associate with the USA – faded photos from the 80s.
Yosemite.
An ugly giant full moon above the Lincoln Monument, the Washington Monument and the Capitol.
Composites of baseball players.
Neil Armstrong on the moon.
A black and white photo of Elvis.
It was as though someone had raided an old Athena poster shop for patriotic images. Various sheets of information about 2012 election dates adorned the glass cabinets.
Mission accomplished, I left the building, unironically saluting the photos of Obama, Biden and John Kerry.