No surprise Harry’s homesick, California isn’t for gingers

And this week he's at it again. “Though currently, I may live in the United States, Britain is, and always will be, the country I proudly served and fought for,” he wrote, in an open letter ostensibly about Remembrance Sunday, but which also doubled as a list of things he is pining for as he sits at home in Montecito — the club, the banter, the “self-deprecation and the humour”.

- Samuel Fishwick, The Independent

I have been expecting Harry to come to this realisation for some time. The pasty and the ginger simply do not belong in California. It is not for us. It took me five weeks to reach the same conclusion when I stayed there. It has taken Harry five years. It is, obviously, too hot. There is a sea right next to it, but to get into that sea you need to take off your T-shirt and show Californians quite how ginger and pasty you are. That is an “authentic self” few have time for.

Then again, if you happen to be a particularly unfortunate combination of pasty, ginger and British then your luck is completely out. It is like landing on the surface of another planet, one full of stringy super-humans imbibing oddly coloured juices. They speak a version of English that is alien, full of the faux chumminess of social media; one that is so new age and winning, so fast and so coded as to leave me and my tiny, ginger brain in an absolute spin. Even New Yorkers aren't fluent.