I never thought when I came to New Orleans that I'd spend so much time in gay bars. But a large proportion of our friends are gay, and so are many of the best bars in town, so I feel quite at home there now.

Nor did I ever expect to end up devoting so much of my time to football on TV, but you can't really avoid it at the moment unless you want to end up a hermit, rejected and unloved.

The Saints, our local team, are on a roll, having won every one of their eight games so far this season, and as a result the whole town comes to a standstill every time they play. This afternoon, the streets of the French Quarter were empty but for handfuls of bewildered tourists wondering where everyone had gone.

Pam and I watched the game at the Good Friends bar. One big advantage of this was that the staff handed out free shots of ultra-potent Cactus Juice liqueur every time the Saints scored, and the final score was 30-20 to us.

Anyway, the sole topic of conversation all afternoon was football. Not once did I hear the words "hurricane" or "storm" mentioned, which was surprising given that the category two Hurricane Ida is heading straight for us, and is scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon.

It was a bit like Katrina, when bars in the Quarter were abuzz all the way through America's worst-ever natural disaster, with many drinkers oblivious of the fact that 80% of their city lay underwater.