It was late evening, and I was sitting down at the computer with a bottle of Blue Moon Belgian-style beer to tell you about a funny sign I saw today when I heard the now-familiar blare of a brass band passing outside.

At first I thought it was a belated Halloween parade, but gradually it dawned on me that this was a celebration of the Day of the Dead - All Souls' Day.

The dead are always peering over your shoulder in New Orleans. The ghosts of the early settlers who perished in a dreary succession of swamp-borne epidemics and natural catastrophes still stalk the streets after sunset. Because of the high water table they could not be hidden away beneath the ground, so they were interred in necropolises, streets lined with monuments inscribed in French, German and Italian. Many gape open and empty after their denizens floated away in the flood two years ago.


The day of the dead is a Catholic festival with strong voodoo connections, and people still congregate in the cemeteries to clean relatives' graves and replace the sun-blanched plastic flowers.

Although the revelers parading down our street with lamps, candles and skeleton outfits were mostly middle-class white youngsters using the event as an excuse for yet another party, they were keeping alive an old and worthy tradition of ancestor worship.

Halloween was just as spectacular as my first one last year, the streets of the French Quarter a joyful, heaving mass of pregnant nuns, bandaged zombies and naughty nurses. Time was when I used to mutter excuses when invited to fancy-dress parties, but here I've long since stopped caring. We were the king and queen of hearts. I look like I've acquired a huge beer belly, but it's just the way the costume hangs - honest.


A man fluttered up to us in Decatur Street and said: 'Ooh, nice tiara, darling'.

'Why, thank you,' Pam replied, flattered.

'No, not yours,' the man said in a mildly irritated tone of voice. 'His'.

And finally, the sign I saw beside the road today. I found it so funny (and strange too) that I almost fell off my bike. It was an advertisement for a construction company, and for a moment I thought maybe they specialised in rather non-PC housing for people with learning difficulties. Their website is here.