My time in this country is running out, for the time being at least.

My visa expires on 16 November, and it will take at least three months after that to get another one, so Pam and I will be living in my house in London for a while. I'm looking forward to spending time with all the friends and family I've been neglecting over the eighteen months since I came to the US, and to showing Pam more of my country and its neighbours.

After that we'll be back in New Orleans, and we're hoping eventually to buy a place together. I have no idea what the future holds, but one thing I've learned since I came over here is to take each day as it comes.

Life has become incredibly unpredictable over the past couple of years. I never dreamed when I first visited New Orleans twenty-nine years ago that one day it would be my home and I'd be planning to marry one of its inhabitants.

Or maybe I did have some vague presentiment of the distant future. Last time we went to England, in the summer, we stayed in the room in my parents' house which had once been my own when I was a teenager.

After a couple of days, Pam noticed that on the door was a tiny, postage-stamp-sized sticker bearing the state flag of Louisiana. 'What's this all about?' she asked. 'Is it in my honour or something?'

I had no idea. It had been there for so long that I no longer noticed it. Its origins were lost in the mists of time, but I assume it was a souvenir of my first visit to New Orleans all those years ago. Now, after sitting there unnoticed for decades, it had finally come into its own as a gesture of welcome for my wife-to-be.