The security in Philadelphia is so slow and so badly organised and so repetitive that despite having 90 minutes to make my transfer to Washington I miss it. Now some people reserve their especial opprobrium for American security. That, I can understand. Others pick out American bacon. Or American exceptionalism. Or the infiltration of the American mil-industrial complex into everyday life.

But, for me, the bugbear is American cheese. Cheese elsewhere in the world varies from the English plays on cheddar and stilton” to the Spanish “it should be hard and sour enough to counter a ham” to the Italian “it has to go with pasta” to the French “if you can’t smell it from the next town, it’s not ready to eat”. Even in the famously lactose-averse Japan, “where there isn’t grass to feed a cow”, they make good imitation cheddar these days (and have learned to love everything French, even if they can’t digest it.)

But American cheese is… I mean, what can you say. I was brought up on Fungus the Bogeyman, so to me something yellow and runny and salty and body-warm is pus, not cheese. Even the American waitress says that her Canadian mom won’t touch the stuff.

So I’m in Philadelphia. And I’m trying their speciality, the Philly Cheese Steak. Which is neither cheese, nor a steak, nor, according to the friendly Philadelphian oracle I’m sat next to, a normal Philadelphian speciality. He recommends I have a burger instead. But I always have to try the speciality in every area I go. (Which is why I’m dreading going to the Philippines, because I really don’t want to try Balut.)

Let me describe it. First, you have a large, cheap hot dog bun, which means you could confuse it with a Bahn Mi, if you had poor eyesight. Then, inside, there’s… uh. I mean, the inside is sprayed liberally with American cheese, which tastes just like the plastic cheese you get in Heinz Macaroni cheese; that is to say, a little like vomit. Then they put chopped steak on top of it. Again, chopped steak seems to be rough minced meat, presumably delivered in huge frozen bags, then fried. Then you add other toppings, to stop / increase it tasting like acid reflux.

Actually, considering the middling-to-shitty journey I’ve had so far, I wolf it down. It tastes like bile but I eat every crumb, and kind of enjoy it. I’m watching extra time of the world cup final as the two teams fail and fail and fail to score, and the company and beer’s good enough that it just hits the spot.  The tap water tastes like a swimming pool though.

(Five minutes later, I want something else to eat. I suspect it fart-collapses like a balloon when it hits your belly.)

Aside from that, I see nothing of Philadelphia. I was half-expecting for everyone to be an AIDs sufferers wearing a baseball cap, but the bright sunshine outside and the opaque blinds mean I can’t even see the airplanes outside this heaving bar – just the Americans in all their varied whitebread forms. Who groan as a group louder at the ‘kids do the stupidest things’ programme that’s on afterwards, than at the most important football game in four years.

I can’t leave the airport – my flight might be three hours distant, but that’s not enough time to get from an American airport to the city and back again (and I REALLY don’t fancy going through security…) So I’ll just sit here, musing about American homogeneity, and resisting the urge to order another cheese steak…