Europe is poor the same way your neighbour is poor because he doesn’t own a rocket ship. But we do own rocket ships. Here’s the thing about American wealth. If a man walked into a bar and told you he earned brilliantly, lived large, and was absolutely thriving, but happened to carry credit card debt forty times his annual salary, you wouldn’t call him wealthy. And frankly, nobody over here is particularly envious. That ship sailed sometime around 1980. Americans have two settings: work and home. That’s it. That’s the whole life. You commute, you consume, you collapse. Europeans have cities designed for humans, six weeks of holiday, lunch that lasts two hours, and the radical notion that a Tuesday evening might be worth living. No thanks. I’ll have my beer in Europe.

Recently watched The Wicker Man (1973). You rarely see sun-soaked horror like this from modern studios. No jump scares, no gore, almost nothing set after dark. The whole film is bright, smiling, and jovial, and yet completely ominous. Folk horror setting the bar.