He came from a family of rough Irish settlers, who made their living by stealing livestock and waylaying innocent passers-by. He was a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged and was. Nor come to that, I dare say, would most of the shoppers of Alice Springs, who were no doubt delighted to get lots of free parking and a crack at Martha Stewart towels and shower curtains. Visually, almost every arrestingly regrettable thing in Alice Springs was a product of American enterprise, from people who couldn’t know that they had helped to drain the distinctiveness from an outback town and doubtless wouldn’t see it that way anyway. And now we box these places up and ship them to the far corners of the world. We have created a philosophy of retailing that is totally without aesthetics and totally irresistible. ‘You Yanks have a lot to answer for, you know.’ I started to protest, in a sputtering sort of way, but what could I say? He was right. ‘I can’t believe we’ve just driven a thousand miles to find a K-Mart,’ he said. Allan was evidently held by a similar thought, for a half hour later when we met out front he was staring at the same scene. In the two million or more square miles that is the Australian outback, I don’t suppose there is a more unfortunate juxtaposition. “My room had a balcony where I could watch the setting sun flood the desert floor and burnish the golden slopes of the MacDonnell Ranges beyond – or at least I could if I looked past the more immediate sprawl of a K-Mart plaza across the road. ― Bill Bryson, quote from In a Sunburned Country Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems.

For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling.

Whatever is inside-tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air-decides to leak out. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner my knuckles brush the floor. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket I look as if I could do with medical attention. “I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson