An Englishman in New Orleans

2010-02-03T06:28:00.003-06:00

Sorry about the long absence - I'm in the UK, where my mother is very ill.

I've left behind a city even more exuberant than usual: not only has the Mardi Gras season kicked off, but the Saints are in the Superbowl this Sunday. And, thanks to my sister Jacqui and the stupidity of the National Football League, the Saints' catchphrase "Who dat" is making international headlines. Make sure you watch the video as well - I think a lot of the people in it must have been a bit baffled about what was going on.

Happy holidays!

2009-12-24T12:14:00.006-06:00

As I belatedly installed a pack of "holiday lites" on our Christmas tree last night, I realised just how comprehensively the C-word has been banished from the American vocabulary.

Google "happy holidays", and you get 61.5 million hits. Now try "merry Christmas": a pitiful 40 million. It's no exaggeration to say that in the past couple of months, I've seen the word Christmas in print about four times.

Tens of millions of people in this country don't celebrate it, but still it seems as though someone has done a colossal search and replace on every instance of the word in the United States, substituting something more inclusive, but also much blander.

I'm not religious, and I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm fascinated at just how quickly and comprehensively the word has been airbrushed into oblivion.

I'm certainly not in the same camp as Fox News commentator John Gibson who, three years ago, published a book entitled The war against Christmas: how the liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday is worse than you thought ("I had a guy who called me and talked about the Christmas party, actually a holiday party now, and he said people would whisper Merry Christmas in each other's ears.").

By the way, if you're looking for a last-minute stocking filler for an unhinged relative, you might do worse than Gibson's hot new opus, How the left swiftboated America: the liberal media conspiracy to make you think George Bush was the worst president in history.

Anyway, in keeping with the magic of Christmas (which most Americans actually do very well, and very enthusiastically), here's some poetry from a member of a profession not normally known for its literary leanings. Her name is Liz Stroebel, and she's a realtor, or what we Brits call an estate agent. This is the complete list of all her condos (which we call flats or apartments) in Homes & Land of Greater New Orleans magazine. The poetry is probably unintentional.

2726 Prytania $229,900
1563-65 N Roman $155,000
2512 Magazine $195,000
736 Harmony $112,500
7508 Asteroid $109,000
2035 Deogracias $125,000
3100 Rue Parc Fontaine $69,000
3225 Whisper $169,000
3304 Meraux $110,000

And finally, here's a painting I did of our house:

Actually I used a very clever piece of software called PhotoArtMaster Classic, which turns photographs into paintings or drawings. It's so much quicker than a brush and easel, and there's none of that tiresome cleaning up afterwards...

2009-12-17T20:12:00.004-06:00

I'm beginning to think that there may have been a hidden purpose behind the seemingly random sequence of events that led me from leafy London to the potholed poverty of Louisiana's biggest city.

Researchers from the University of Warwick in England and Hamilton College in New York have published a study of happiness in the USA. Its conclusions will leave most New Orleanians a little bit proud, but not in the least surprised.

They took the results of a major survey of self-reported happiness ratings in every US state, and compared these with objective quality-of-life measures such as climate, population density and house prices. And the state that ranked top based on all of these benchmarks was not Florida, not California, not Hawaii, but Louisiana.

I can tell you exactly why this is. No, on second thoughts I'll leave it to Dan Baum, the New Yorker columnist whose classic work of nonfiction, Nine Lives, encapsulates New Orleans better than any other. Of course Lousiana isn't just about New Orleans, but the city is home to a quarter of the state's population, and I like to think that a little of its lackadaisical outlook has rubbed off on its neighbours.

Most visitors to New Orleans start asking impolite questions: Why has the rebuilding since Katrina gone so slowly? Why do you put up with such corrupt and incompetent politicians? How can you waste so much money on Mardi Gras when you're still living in trailers? Doesn't anyone in this city ever show up on time?

New Orleanians are hard to offend. Stop thinking of New Orleans as the worst-organized city in the United States, they say. Start thinking of it as the best-organized city in the Caribbean.

While the rest of Americans dream and scheme and chase the horizon, New Orleanians are masters at the lost art of living in the moment. If we're doing okay this minute, goes the logic - enjoying one another's company, keeping cool, and maybe having something good to eat - of what earthly importance is tomorrow or next week? Given the fragility of life, why even count on getting there? New Orleannians are notoriously late showing up, if they show up at all, because by and large they don't keep calendars. Calendars are tools for managing the future, and in New Orleans the future doesn't exist.

Actually, we're not all living in trailers any more. When I first flew in to Louis Armstrong International Airport, three years ago and a year after Katrina, the city was awash with white FEMA trailers, but now they've nearly all gone. Life is getting better, but you just have to be patient. Fortunately, patience is a virtue that's in abundant supply round here.

If you live more than 500 miles from Jackson Square, you won't find this funny.

2009-12-01T13:57:00.008-06:00

You know you're from Louisiana if...

You've never heard of a dry county.

You've never heard of a county.

You hear gambling is illegal in some other states and are surprised.

You reinforce your attic to store Mardi Gras beads.

Your sunglasses fog up when you step outside.

When you give directions you use "lakeside and riverside" not north and south.

Your ancestors are buried above the ground.

You take a bite of five-alarm chili and reach for the tabasco.

You don't learn until high school that Mardi Gras is not a national
holiday.

You push little old ladies out of the way to catch Mardi Gras beads.

Little old ladies push you out of the way to catch Mardi Gras beads.

You leave a parade with footprints on your hands.

You believe that purple, green, and gold look good together.

Your last name isn't pronounced the way it's spelled.

You get pissed at people who pronounce it Nawlins, Norlens, or New or Leans.

You know what a nutria is but you still pick it to represent your baseball team.

Your town is low on the education chart and high on the obesity chart, and you don't care because you're No. 1 on the party chart.

Your house payment is less than your utility bill.

You don't show your tits during Mardi Gras.

You can spell and pronounce Tchoupitoulas.

Your grandparents are called "Maw-Maw" and "Paw-Paw."

You have to reset your clocks after every thunderstorm.

You're walking in the street with a plastic cup of beer.

When it starts to rain, you cover your beer instead of your head.

You save newspapers, not for recycling but for tablecloths at crawfish boils.

When you travel abroad, you always carry a bottle of tabasco and a salt shaker of Tony's.

You know that if you buy a drive-thru daiquiri, it's not drinking and driving until you put the straw in.

You drive east to get to the West Bank.

You stand on the neutral ground at parades and have no idea what a 'median' is.

Pulling a baby out of a cake is completely normal.

The only Bush you respect is a black man.

You refuse to believe that there is such a thing as the "Utah Jazz".

There is a color called "Bur-GUN-dee".

The concept of a basement never crossed your mind.

You have to get your car's suspension repaired at least twice a year.

Someone in a Lowe's store offers you assistance, and they don't work there.

You've worn shorts and a parka at the same time.

You've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number.

You install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both unlocked.

You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Louisiana.

2009-11-18T18:23:00.005-06:00

I had my first encounter with the US healthcare system yesterday.

I went to a GP with a minor ailment, and was told that the charge for the initial visit would be $200. (British readers: forget the official exchange rate. In purchasing power terms, $200 is roughly the equivalent of £200.) After that, it would be $70 a visit.

"So why is it so much more expensive the first time?" I asked politely, concealing my resentment.

"Oh, that's because the doctor has to take a detailed medical background," the receptionist told me.

Then the doctor came in. He didn't say good morning, and only reluctantly shook my hand when I proffered it. He showed me a piece of paper with about a dozen boxes on it: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure. "Ever had any of these?" he asked.

I told him no, and that was it - my detailed case history had been taken, and my 15-minute visit netted him about 22 cents a second.

It's no wonder the US spends twice as much as other nations on healthcare, and yet lags behind on basic measures like infant mortality and life expectancy. And nor is it surprising that inability to pay medical costs is the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in this country.

We're still being bombarded with TV commercials opposing President Obama's healthcare reforms, most of them by the thoroughly sinister US Chamber of Commerce. And when I visited the website of my insurance company the other day, there was a banner ad on the home page: OBAMA'S REFORMS WILL INCREASE YOUR PREMIUMS.

The other day, NBC news did a segment comparing British and American government policies on swine flu. They interviewed a British GP who was also a visiting lecturer at Harvard, and therefore had detailed experience of healthcare on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the end, he threw in a nicely crafted and seemingly casual aside. "Of course the two systems are very different. It's survival of the fittest here. If you've got money you're OK, but if you haven't, you get thrown to the wolves." It was so refreshing to hear this one little home truth amid the overwhelming tide of anti-reform propaganda.

2009-11-10T09:31:00.002-06:00

Well, that was a non-event.

First Ida was downgraded to a tropical storm, and then, perhaps offended by this snub, she stumbled ashore and lost the will to live. All she could manage was a stiff breeze and a sprinkling of rain.

2009-11-08T23:21:00.002-06:00

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.

2009-10-21T11:00:00.003-05:00

Our house is primarily mint green. I knew that, but I didn't know that it had drop-lap siding and a full complement of Eastlake details, such as turned columns, an elaborate frieze and decorative millwork of all varieties.

I learned this from the property section of the local paper, where one of the journalists (who calls herself Streetwalker), has the enviable job of wandering around town looking at houses and writing about them. Last Saturday, she chose the 600 block of Spain Street, which is where we live.

I know I'm biased, but it is a beautiful house. The landlord has won an award for his sensitive restoration, with details picked out in many different shades of green, and if we're not sitting outside, the tour buses slow down to let people take pictures.

And I know our good friend Jay next door will be flattered to hear himself described as the muscled man taking out the garbage. He often walks around with no shirt, ostensibly because the weather is hot, but really because he knows that every straight woman and gay guy on the block would love to get their hands on his sixpack.

2009-10-17T00:47:00.003-05:00

Every so often Louisiana makes international headlines, and it's always for the wrong reasons. That's partly because even in 2009, more than fifty years after the end of Jim Crow segregation, this state has way more than its fair share of redneck racists.

Two years ago, the world's press beat a path to the little town of Jena, where a handful of nooses hanging from a tree proved that the racial fault lines of the Deep South still lay close to the surface.

More recently, the state's lukewarm electoral support for Barack Obama had undoubted racial roots; Jimmy Carter was right to point out that many people hate him for the colour of his skin. Only 14 percent of whites voted for him in Louisiana. Many of those were in New Orleans, a haven of relative tolerance, and he received a rapturous reception when he visited on Thursday.

This week, a justice of the peace in the town of Hammond took his place in the international spotlight after refusing to grant a mixed-race couple a marriage licence, on the grounds that their union was doomed to failure. Keith Bardwell began his justification with the words "I'm not a racist". Nine times out of ten, this is followed by a "but", and so he continued: "I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom."

As I said in my previous post, this is a wonderful place in which to live. But I still despair of it on a regular basis.

2009-10-13T14:50:00.003-05:00

Excuse the long absence (I hope you're all using RSS feeds so you don't keep clicking on the site and finding nothing new). We've been away, first to Disney for Pam's birthday and then to the UK.

Back here, I'm pleased but not surprised to find that the Marigny, the district in which we live, has been named by the American Planning Association as one of America's top ten great neighbourhoods.

I've never lived anywhere with such a fierce and justified sense of pride in itself, and such a strong sense of community and tolerance. It's also beautiful, particularly when the evening sun lights up the paintbox of pink, orange and sky-blue Caribbean-style houses, though the sun hasn't been very much in evidence lately.

2009-09-03T15:07:00.005-05:00

You can tell a lot about people from the stuff they leave out in the street for others to pick up.

It comes and goes in waves: one person puts a couple of well-thumbed paperbacks on their front step, another follows suit with a broken laptop and a bag of Mardi Gras beads, and pretty soon everyone on the block has a little museum of unwanted objects on display. Then everything disappears, and a few weeks later the whole endless cycle begins again.

Last weekend, the guy living catty-corner from us moved out of his rented apartment, and left all his detritus for us vultures to pick over.

For several days, an ever-changing knot of people stood on the street corner, exchanging local gossip and discussing the relative merits of old copies of National Geographic, dusty pairs of shoes and glass ornaments.

Among the objects he left on the sidewalk was a collection of faded 1980s male porn magazines. That was snapped up pretty quickly, which was surprising since so many people get their thrills from a computer screen these days, but unsurprising in that at least half the inhabitants of the Marigny are gay.

Then a blow-up rubber female doll appeared hanging from the railings, only to disappear shortly afterwards, smuggled off under someone's arm to some sticky nocturnal tryst.

The neighbour left several days ago, taking the rest of his belongings with him. But then, yesterday afternoon, a couple strolled down the middle of the street carrying a coffin, slightly the worse for wear but still perfectly serviceable.

I was determined not to let my curiosity get the better of me, especially since I had visions of them opening the lid to reveal the decaying remains of some recently deceased relative. We chatted about this and that, but eventually I could no longer ignore the 600-pound gorilla in the room. "OK, what's with the coffin?" I asked.

"We found it lying on the sidewalk just up the street," the guy told me, kicking it open to reveal the neatly stitched cream-coloured lining. "We're going to take it home and use it as a dining-room table."

If coffins could speak, and thank God they can't, that one would have a long and interesting tale to tell.

2009-09-01T08:55:00.005-05:00

Can I ask for two minutes of your time to help make New Orleans a better place?

Melissa Sawyer, who lives two doors down the street and is a good friend, used her Harvard education not to line her pockets but to make a difference to people less fortunate than herself.

She co-founded the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), which provides case management, mentoring and educational services to at-risk young people in this desperate city. It's an uphill struggle, and sometimes a drug dealer's bullet gets there before Melissa does. She's the blonde woman on the right above, and her partner, Renell, on the far right, also works for the project.

YEP is dependent on grants and donations, and is currently applying to Nike for $5,000. This will be awarded to the entrant which receives the largest number of votes, which seems a slightly haphazard way of awarding grant money, but there you go.

Please go here to find out more about YEP and cast your vote, and thank you very much!

2009-08-28T07:50:00.002-05:00

We were in our local branch of Winn-Dixie yesterday. As we paid the middle-aged female checkout assistant, the man behind us started loading a mountain of shopping onto the belt. He was red-faced, sweaty, clearly shopping for a large family, and looked harrassed and grumpy.

Even the most basic interaction in the South is slow and courteous. I'm still amused when Pam calls the electricity or phone company with some trifling query about our bill, and ends up gossiping for twenty minutes with a total stranger in a call centre in Atlanta about their husbands, children and grandchildren.

Me, I try, but I have decades of bad habits to overcome. In London, until a few years ago, paying for your goods in a supermarket was an entirely wordless transaction: you don't like being here, I don't like being here, so let's get this over as quickly as possible.

Then some senior executive from Sainsbury or Tesco went on holiday to France or Italy or somewhere, realised that customers there took it for granted that checkout staff would at least pass the time of day, and revolutionised the UK retail industry by introducing the practice there.

I also like the fact that some stores here have greeters. I used to be a bit cynical about this, but now I realise that if you're a big-box retailer it helps to give you a human face, reminding your customers and yourself that no matter how much of a money-guzzling monolith you are, you're still dependent on men and women with mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Anyway, back to Winn-Dixie. The normal greeting is "How ya doin?", to which the reply is "Good, how are you?" But as the man unloaded the first of a dozen boxes of breakfast cereal, he growled: "Tell me somethin' interestin'."

She looked as bored and fed up as he did, but her wit was still rapier sharp and she rose to the challenge. With scarcely a nanosecond's hesitation, she said: "You're our one billionth customer. Congratulations. Ha, ha, ha." Then she picked up her scanner and silently set to work on his Cheerios and Rice Krispies.

2009-08-18T00:40:00.004-05:00

I'd been hoping to visit Humptulips, but we ended up going to Wanker's Corner instead.

Pam and I are staying with her brother Mark in Portland, Oregon, at the end of a thousand-mile northwestern road trip. We were supposed to be visiting friends in Canada too, but the Canadians wouldn't let Pam in: she had a drink-driving conviction several years ago, paid the fine and everything, but is still banned from Canada. We've visited lots of European countries without any problems, and it seems unfair that she should be punished in Canada for something she did in the US - but there we go.

Anyway, we turned this setback to our advantage with a spectacular tour of the Cascades mountains, and then set course southwards to Portland. On the way, I spotted a little town called Humptulips, Washington on the map, and because I've always been a great believer in visiting places just because they have interesting names, we decided to go there. But then we realised we were running out of time, so we changed our minds.

Afterwards, I looked up the origin of the town's name on Wikipedia. It says:

The name Humptulips may have come from a local Native American language, meaning 'hard to pole', referring to the difficulty local Native Americans had poling their canoes along the Humptulips River. According to other sources the word means 'chilly region'.^[4] Another possibility is that Humptulips was the name of a band of the Chehalis tribe.

In other words, no one has the faintest idea.

Anyway, today we awarded ourselves a consolation prize by driving 25 miles south from Portland to Wanker's Corner. We had lunch at the Wanker's Corner Saloon and Café, prosaically located in a strip mall, where the waitress patiently explained that they had a constant stream of sniggering, camera-clicking British and Australian visitors. Then we continued to the local store to stock up on provisions.
On the way back to Portland, we passed a sign pointing to Boring, Oregon. I was all for going there too, but it was a 15-mile detour and I was overruled by Pam and Mark, who said that was enough silly placenames for one day.

2009-08-17T12:27:00.005-05:00

I was handed this by a man in Seattle yesterday.

I told him it was offensive, an insult to all the millions who voted for Obama in the hope that he'd sort out the terrible mess that is the healthcare system. But he gave me the same beneficent grin as I got back at Mardi Gras, when all the loony Christian fundamentalists converge on the den of iniquity that is New Orleans. I told one what I thought of his banner saying that atheists and homosexuals would burn in hell, but I was just wasting my breath.

I regard it as an immense privilege to live here, and I don't normally believe in biting the hand that feeds me, but I make an exception where healthcare is concerned. I think it's the worst aspect of living in the United States. If you're rich, old, a child, or you work for the right company, you don't need to give it a second thought. Otherwise, it's a constant worry at the back of your mind: one episode of illness could leave you bankrupt. I have my own insurance because I'm self-employed, and it's so grotesquely overpriced that all I can afford is basic catastrophe cover.

Anyway, Britain's national health service has been in the news a lot over here recently, and for all the wrong reasons. The Republicans, and pharmaceutical and insurance companies masquerading as concerned citizens' groups, are trying to persuade the public that the NHS is somehow inferior to the US system.

The other night, we wandered into a bar in a small town in Washington state. It was empty except for the bartender, who was watching an anti-NHS rant on Fox News, with its laughable slogan, "Fair and Balanced". We got chatting, and he said: "You're from England. They have socialized medicine over there."

Socialized is a dirty word here, appropriated by the right and given a whole new meaning. To me, it implies that people look after one another and the rich help to subsidize the poor; to the likes of Fox News, it means that Britain belongs up there with Cuba and North Korea in a totalitarian empire of evil. It's like the word "liberal", which to many people here is the worst insult you can bestow on anyone. To me, it's the opposite of "illiberal", and therefore a good thing.

The bartender told me that he'd recently had a hip replacement, and was glad his insurance company had taken care of all the bills because there was no way he could afford them. "If I'd had to go through your system, I'd still be waiting," he said.

"Maybe, but the waiting lists have come down dramatically since Tony Blair came to power," I said. And then I told him about my first wife, Jayne, who died of cancer in January 2006. "She was in and out of hospital for seven months, and she had every treatment in the book - intensive care, chemotherapy, everything. And do you know how much it all cost?"

He shook his head.

"Nor do I," I said. "That's because every penny of the bill was picked up by the taxpayer."

He didn't look convinced, and that was the end of the conversation because he had to attend to another customer. But I hope he went away and thought about it, because until people like him are convinced that a national health service is exactly what America needs, it's never going to happen.

...and another

2009-08-06T16:29:00.003-05:00

I've just thought of another little milestone in the long, slow journey towards being an American in all but name. Though on second thoughts, anyone who's ever met me will know that could never happen.

I was cycling home from the post office yesterday afternoon when a traffic light turned red in front of me. I glanced briefly right and left, and continued with scarcely a moment's hesitation.

Back in London I used to get self-righteously annoyed with the minority of fellow cyclists who flouted the rules, usually as a statement of their youthful masculine identity. I figured that they gave us all a bad name, and for my first two years here I would meekly sit at the side of the road till the lights decided to change.

The problem was, in New Orleans I was literally the only person who did this.

This is not a misuse of the word "literally" ("I was literally blown away when Obama got elected, and since then I've been literally walking on a cloud"), nor rhetorical exaggeration, but measurable statistical fact. If you put a billion-candlepower red light the size of a tractor wheel slap bang in the middle of Canal Street, 99.9 percent of cyclists would fail even to notice it, and the other 0.1% would be me.

Peer pressure like that is impossible to resist, so now I go with the flow, which also includes cycling the wrong way down one-way streets. Someone recently told me that this used to be legal, but clearly old habits die hard because every single cyclist in town still does it. And if you were to open a shop selling nothing but bike lights, you'd be out of business quicker than it takes to say "hit and run".

I don't know why this attitude prevails here. It's not bravado, nor the famous American detestation of rules and over-intrusive government. As far as I can see, it's just because this is New Orleans, and that's how they do things here.

Three signs that you're going native

2009-08-03T14:15:00.010-05:00

You measure your life not in years, but in hurricanes

The other day, Pam was reading an ad in the local paper for cheap contact lenses and asked when was the last time I got my eyes tested. I thought for a moment, and then replied: "Ike". She said: "Oh", and went back to her reading.

My monosyllabic response was New Orleans shorthand for September 2008, when hurricane Ike devastated Galveston, Texas. We got off lightly, just catching the edge of the storm, which also caused serious flooding in parts of Louisiana.

I associated it with getting my eyes tested because I was waiting to see the optician on that day. Someone came through the door from the street, and the wind sneaked in behind them, picking up every single piece of loose paper in the shop and sending it whirling into the air.

Later that afternoon, we were walking out of a furniture store and couldn't open the door. It was closing time, so I asked the assistant to unlock it. "No, it's not locked," he said. "It must be the wind holding it shut."

It's not the most accurate measure of time, but you'll often hear people here referring to an event as having occurred between Katrina and Rita, or a few weeks after Andrew.

Incidentally, we recently met a friend of a friend whose name was Katrina. I was itching to ask all the obvious questions you ask someone called Katrina who lives in New Orleans, but I tactfully kept my mouth shut - it's a bit like being in Munich and meeting a man called Hitler.

You measure your weight not in stones, but in pounds

Another friend of a friend recently told me he weighed 250 pounds, and for the first time I didn't try to divide this by 14 in my head.

Until very recently, and like most Brits over a certain age, I weighed myself in stones. I have no idea why we still use this medieval unit of measurement, but I've finally managed to kick the habit.

It's amazing how the Americans, even more than the British, have clung to the wreckage as the rest of the world is swept away by the tide of metrication. Their weather forecasts are in Fahrenheit, their milk comes in quarts and gallons, and when I helped my father-in-law in Tennessee to build the roof of his new extension last year, he would get impatient when I couldn't instantly work out the difference between ten and five sixteenths and ten and three eighths.

Though as The Onion once reported, there are grounds for hope: a new generation of urban dwellers has become intimately familiar with grammes, litres and cubic centimetres.

You measure distances in hundreds of miles, not in miles

We were driving back from seeing Pam's daughter in Little Rock, Arkansas a couple of weekends ago, and I glanced at the GPS and said: "Not far now. It's only a couple of hundred miles."

It was then that I realised how much my perception of distance had changed since leaving my tiny, teeming homeland. Today, I think nothing of driving 450 miles, the distance from London to Inverness in northern Scotland, just to attend Pam's grandson's third birthday party.

Speaking of the GPS, there's a little game I play on long journeys. I'm trying to find the longest distance it instructs me to drive before I have to do anything. The best I've found so far is when we join the I55 interstate heading south towards home, and the GPS says keep left in 157 miles. I'm sure I'd find far better examples if we lived in west Texas or Nevada or somewhere.

2009-07-28T16:25:00.002-05:00

I finally picked the bananas from the back garden today. It's four months since they reached full size, and only now have they started to turn yellow - we were starting to think that they might never do so.

They are the best I've ever tasted - the small, intensely sweet Caribbean kind rather than the larger and less flavoursome bananas grown by big, evil multinationals in Latin America.

Pam is cooking dinner for friends this evening, and she's going to flambé them to make New Orleans' most famous dessert, bananas Foster.

2009-07-07T19:58:00.001-05:00

Anyone watching channel 264 on DIRECTV would get a pretty peculiar picture of life in modern Britain.

If BBC America is anything to go by (fortunately, it's not), we spend our weekends taking Lamborghinis on tyre-shredding 200-mph test drives along deserted, lava-strewn Icelandic roads.

When our squalid, cockroach-infested houses become uninhabitable, we call in the divas of dirt, a former MI6 spy and her matronly sidekick, who share the contents of our unflushed toilets with millions of viewers.

We open restaurants, but nobody comes. Salvation arrives in the form of an ex-soccer player who says "fuck" a lot to prove that being a chef is no job for pansies, and before long the phone is ringing off the hook.

All this is because BBC America only ever shows about three programmes: Top Gear, How Clean is Your House?, and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

I have no idea why the world's greatest broadcasting organisation is so parsimonious about sharing its bounty with the people of America. Complain, and you get a letter from a computer saying that the channel is committed to maintaining a diverse range of entertaining and educational programmes. Which is a joke.

That said, they are very good programmes.

For many years, I completely missed the point of Top Gear, which is about cars. I had little interest in the subject, and none at all in its presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who has now assumed George W. Bush's mantle as the world's leading climate change denier. He has little time for people like me: lefties, environmentalists, cyclists, expats:

Anyone who emigrates from Britain, no matter where they end up, is a bit of a dimwit... Every single expat I've ever met is the same: hunched at a bar in a stupid shirt, at 10 in the morning, desperately trying to convince themselves that they are not alcoholics, that the barman really is their friend and that it's only eleven hours till bedtime.

Then, when they clock your accent, they launch into a slurred tirade about Gordon Brown and the British weather and how their prawns are the size of Volkswagens.*

The trouble is, Jeremy Clarkson is a comic genius, and Top Gear is wonderful. What I didn't realise until I started watching it on BBC America is that it's essentially one gigantic pisstake.

Every so often, the programme gets a bit po-faced for a few minutes ("Of course the V6 version does have the added benefits of a tilt-and-telescope steering wheel, electroluminescent gauges and power mirrors"), but if you're watching a recording you can always fast-forward these bits, like the first five boringly easy questions in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Clarkson could have been a cult hero in this country too, but the US version of the show never got past the starting grid. This was partly because with its spectacular, elegantly choreographed set pieces, it costs a king's ransom to make. A Bugatti Veyron does battle against a Eurofighter jet; Clarkson turns up in a Rolls-Royce to open a public swimming pool and accidentally-on-purpose drives into the deep end; a snowmobile goes hurtling off the end of a ski jump.

The other reason is that the BBC is publicly funded, so it doesn't have to worry about putting sponsors' noses out of joint. Which is fortunate, because Clarkson and his co-presenters administer brutal tongue-lashings to any vehicle which doesn't come up to scratch: "This is a monumentally crappy car. Do not buy it even if the dealer gets down on his knees and implores you to."

We keep telling our American friends that Top Gear is the best thing on TV, but they just nod politely and uncomprehendingly. Jeremy Clarkson himself said that the programme had gone down poorly with focus groups on this side of the Atlantic: "They just don't understand a single word we're on about. They just don't get it really." Well, he was wrong. Pam is American, and she gets it.

* They are.

2009-07-06T07:13:00.003-05:00

I also like to keep an eye on the weather back in London - in the past week or so, it's been almost as steamy as New Orleans. I've just discovered this extremely addictive way of finding out whether it's raining in Trafalgar Square.

2009-06-25T23:17:00.004-05:00

Two summers ago, I wrote that New Orleans had experienced its highest-ever temperature of 102F (39C). Yesterday, that record was broken again, with the mercury hitting 104F (40C). At this rate, in 108 years' time the temperature will have reached 212F (100C), and I will no longer require a kettle to boil my cup of Nescafé in the morning.

2009-06-17T06:22:00.003-05:00

I didn't ask Father Bill Terry, who maintains New Orleans' 'murder board', what he thought of guns, but I imagine it would be fair to say that his opinion is not overly favourable.

One of his colleagues in Kentucky, however, has a rather less wholesome attitude towards firearms.

2009-06-15T12:41:00.006-05:00

If there's a 1, 2 or 3 in the date, there's a festival in New Orleans. This weekend there was a seafood festival, a tomato festival...

and the city's first World Naked Bike Ride.

Fifty or sixty valiant cyclists took part (I didn't). Most of them obeyed the New Orleans Police Department's ban on the display of naughty bits, making imaginative use of duct tape, old socks and body paint. Hopefully in future years there'll be too many naked people for the police to arrest them all, as is the case in other cities around the world: London has gone from 58 riders to over 1,000 in the past five years.

2009-06-12T09:24:00.006-05:00

New Orleanians have many virtues, but nonviolent conflict resolution is not one of them. Last year there were 179 murders, an average of one every two days, far more per head of population than any other US city. Of this total, 59 percent remain unsolved, 92 percent were shootings, and an estimated 49 percent were drug related.

Two years ago Father Bill Terry, of St Anna’s episcopal church on Esplanade Street, decided to do something about it. “We couldn’t fix the murders in New Orleans, but we had to act,” he told me. He placed a board outside his church listing the name and age of each victim, and the cause and date of their death. Continuously updated, it has now become a prominent and moving city landmark.

"We started listing names on the murder board around March of 2007. It was several weeks after the big citywide Silence is Violence march on City Hall. A deacon in training came to me and said, ‘We have to do something. But it’s so overwhelming that no matter what we do, I’m afraid that it won't change anything.’ That was the beginning of it all.

“We couldn’t fix the murders in New Orleans, but we did have to act. Then it came to me that one action was to humanize the victims. The primary way to give personhood to anyone is to name them. People who are not numbers and names have power and communicate humanity. So we began with the murder board as a place to remind us all that it’s not about numbers but people.

“In addition, four churches bring roses every month to the chief of police, the mayor, the city council and the district attorney, one rose for each victim that month. We also send them a note naming the victims and saying that we pray for the victims, the perpetrators, and all public servants affected by violence in our city. Violence has more victims than one can imagine – in some way we are all victims.

“Several volunteers dredge through the papers each day for the list of names, and occasionally call the coroner’s office. It’s laborious work, and takes an emotional toll. My wife collects all the articles and obituaries and we preserve them in albums each year. We have these on display as you enter our church, and we keep the albums for prior years in our parish hall.

“I write the names on the board myself. It’s difficult, and it takes a lot out of you. You begin to remember the names and recall the people. This week I posted the name of a young man who, at one time, briefly attended St. Anna’s. I struggled to remember his face and couldn’t, but it was a dark moment writing his name on the board.

“I used to write the names once a week, around Monday, then after a time once every two weeks, then every month. Unintentionally, I was avoiding the obligation. I’m now back to once a week, and afterwards I take time to work in our garden and pray.

“The parishioners are saying a lot by allowing me to put the board up. We read the names of victims each Wednesday and Sunday at Mass during the prayers of the people. St. Anna's folk now expect it, and feel like worship is unfinished or lacking if we don’t read the names.

“I remember in 2007 there was a run of about ten, maybe fifteen days without a murder. That Sunday I announced that we had no victims of violence to pray for in our city that day. The congregation shouted out in joy and clapped. That night I found out that Sunday a boy had been shot to death at about the time we were rejoicing.

“When the murder board became public in the local paper, the Times-Picayune, I got a dozen or more calls from survivors. Many were the mothers of victims. By six p.m. I could take no more calls and broke down and cried, something that I don’t often do. Each story was different, but in some way they were all the same. People said, ‘Thank you for remembering my child. I thought that they’d been forgotten and that nobody cared. Thank you.’

“At least once a month, at odd hours and without much ado, I’ll see a van or car or even two vehicles pull up. A family gets out and walks to the board to find a loved one. They spend a moment, not long, usually take cellphone pictures, then leave.

“On rare occasions a mom or other relative will become vested in the memorial. One brought a small wooden cross and we stuck it in the garden below the sign. Another has come back several times and dug up and replanted the gardens in front of the three signs that we now have; the stories go on. I’m always impressed by passersby who stop and look and meditate on the board.

"One priest has brought several youth groups here from New York, and makes it a mandatory visit. He told me never to stop.”

2009-06-09T14:01:00.002-05:00

My dealings with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service have not been pleasant experiences.

There was the official at Philadelphia airport last year who'd clearly got out of bed on the wrong side that day, and who threatened to deport me.

Then there was the computer which, for the past seven months, has been asking me for proof of income to support my Green Card application. Each time I've written pointing out that I've already sent this information, and each time my letter has been ignored. I've phoned, but they just say they can't discuss details of individual cases.

But at last, this week, some nameless human being noticed my plight and pressed a key on their computer. As a result, I received a very friendly letter telling me that I'm now a legal permanent resident of the United States, no longer stuck in limbo between two countries. I can get the social security number and driver's licence that everyone keeps asking me for and which I don't have, and I can start getting on with the rest of my life.

London

2009-05-18T05:12:00.003-05:00

Excuse the long silence.

Pam and I are in London for a couple of weeks. One of my main reasons for coming, apart from catching up with friends and family after nine months' absence, was to give a presentation at the conference of my professional body, the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Yesterday morning, we were staying at a hotel opposite Buckingham Palace near the conference venue. I was severely jetlagged, the room was very dark and surprisingly quiet for such a central location, and I didn't wake until the housekeeper barged in at 12.20 pm - five minutes after my presentation was due to start.

I threw on my clothes and hurried along Birdcage Walk to the elegant headquarters of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers where the conference was held. But I was too late.

Fortunately, everyone was very understanding, and they reshuffled the programme a bit and fitted me in later on.

The presentation was about my walk, with particular reference to the ways in which it had affected my attitude towards my job. I'd been a bit jaded with the whole profession before I started, but the walk renewed my enthusiasm for translating - not least because I took my laptop with me, and worked in all kinds of weird and wonderful places along the way.

Once, in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, the heartland of the Amish people, I plugged my computer into a Coke machine and worked as horsedrawn buggies laden to the gunwales with Amish families clipclopped by. The walk made me realise how, thanks to the laptop and the internet, translation is now a more mobile and flexible profession than almost any other.

Yesterday evening, we were staying at my parents' place in south London and I had to send a job to a client. They have no internet connection, so I took my laptop and walked down the road, looking for a wireless network that wasn't password-protected.

The thirty or so houses between my parents' and the end of the street had about fifteen networks, and I imagined all these people hunched alone over their computers, each in an online world of their own.

Eventually I found an unprotected network and sent my email, feeling very selfconscious and hoping that no one would come by. But it was cold, dark, and late, and the streets were empty.

Switching off the computer, I reflected that this was yet another instance of what I'd been talking about at my presentation.

I can now work with my laptop perched on a neighbour's front wall at 11 o'clock on a Sunday night. Once, I lugged dictionaries, the tools of my trade, around with me whenever I worked away from home; now they're online and free. The staff of the language bookshop exhibiting at the conference admitted to me that it was hard to sell paper dictionaries any more. The internet has freed us from the tyranny of the desk and given us near-total mobility.

Yes, we have some bananas

2009-04-04T17:57:00.016-06:00

A couple of years ago, during our guerrilla gardening phase, we liberated a couple of four-foot banana plants from what was then the derelict house next door and is now the beautifully restored historic home of our friends Kevin and Matt. They're now fifteen feet high - the banana plants, that is, not the neighbours.

We assumed they were like all the other bananas in their garden: ornamental, with long-lasting pink flowers and small, inedible fruit.

But a couple of weeks ago, I was standing at the top of a ladder and pondering yet again how much my life had changed, pruning bananas instead of the roses on my allotment in London, when I realised that hidden among last year's fading leaves was a huge, pendant purple flower ringed by the beginnings of three dozen bananas.

It was the real McCoy, the edible variety. I'd always thought of them as a tropical crop, but our summers are hot enough and our winters sufficiently mild for them to bear fruit.

Now, the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is wander bleary-eyed into the garden in my bathrobe to see how they're progressing. They should be ready very soon.

I looked up bananas on the net and discovered that the trunk of the "tree" is actually made up of huge concentric layers of leaf sheaths. When the plant is ready to fruit, a true stem grows up through the middle and the flower grows on the end.

The garden is looking rather good at the moment. Just as in England, I've spent the winter months thinking my obsession with growing things has evaporated, and then all of a sudden the days aren't long enough to complete all the jobs we want to do. Everything happens like a speeded-up film here, with plants seemingly flowering whenever the mood takes them.

For example, we have a couple of bottlebrushes, one of my favourite shrubs. I also have a rather weedy one about three feet high in my garden in London, which puts out its scarlet brush-shaped flowers in July. Here, ours are about nine feet high, have flowered twice already this year, and should eventually become big, mature shade trees.

Our tomato plants are knee-high, and we're hoping they'll have borne at least some fruit before we go to London next month. Most varieties stop fruiting when the daytime temperature exceeds 90F and the night-time temperature stays above 75F, which is not too far off.

Otherwise, Kevin and Matt will get the tomatoes as a thank-you for watering them in our absence, and as a rather inadequate recompense for the theft of their banana trees.

2009-03-25T08:30:00.002-06:00

Speaking of which, here's a hilarious story from the UK about Google Earth.

2009-03-19T11:25:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I go for little journeys inside my head, for no particular reason except to pass the time, and because I can. They're also a good cure for insomnia, much more effective than counting sheep.

They usually start at my house in Foxwood Road in London, and often head up the hill towards Blackheath station - a seven-minute walk I did perhaps three thousand times during my eighteen years there, the last being in July 2008, so the memories are still very vivid.

Sometimes I travel so fast that the houses on either side are a blur; sometimes I stop and pass the time of day with a neighbour. It's an oddly satisfying exercise that eases the sadness of separation from England.

Now, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are doing the job for me, freeing up precious brain cells for more useful tasks like earning a living and remembering my own name. Today, they launched Google Street View in the UK, offering a 360-degree, driver's-eye experience of most of the country's main cities.

This morning, I relived the journey on my computer screen instead of in my cerebral cortex. I left my former home and set off up Lee Park, the road leading to the station.

The pictures must have been taken last summer. The trees were in leaf, a dense canopy that allows you to walk most of the way to the station in pouring rain without getting wet; the stunning rockery on the corner of Shearman Road was past its springtime best; and the people were wearing t-shirts.

I scanned their faces, trying to spot someone I knew, but they'd been blurred to protect their privacy. When Google Street View was launched in the US, people were reportedly captured sunbathing naked, breaking into other people's homes, and visiting adult bookstores.

Outside number 64 Lee Park, two women stood chatting and eyed the Google car as it passed with its festoon of cameras. Another sped past on a bicycle, and a man walked his black dog.

At the top of the hill, I strolled past Costcutter, surely London's most inappropriately named grocery store. In the window, there was a big sign saying Convenient, Fresh, Friendly, Local, Value (I disagreed with most of these descriptions, but that's neither here nor there), and posters advertising French lessons, three bottles of cider for four pounds, and a children's bring and buy sale.

I continued past Prime Time Video, where the clock read 2:05; briefly peered through the window of the Cancer Research charity shop where I used to work, but saw no one I recognised; and overtook a 54 bus as I headed towards Greenwich Park. I had one more place to pay my respects.

When Jayne died, her friends and relatives installed a bench in the park with a little brass plaque on the back in her memory (if you're ever in the area, please take some polish with you). It has a spectacular view of the Thames and historic Greenwich, and is popular with passers-by catching their breath on the way up the steep hill.

Sadly, I couldn't see the bench because it was too far away from the camera, but maybe it's just as well that this amazing technology still has its limitations. Britain is already a surveillance society, with more CCTV cameras per head than any other country in the world and with privacy and human rights way down the government's list of priorities. Sometimes, people should just be left in peace.

Woohoo!

2009-03-14T12:20:00.003-06:00

They're letting me out of here. I finally got my advance parole, which has nothing to do with my extensive criminal activities, but is a piece of paper allowing me back in to the United States if I leave.

Until now, if I'd gone to England or anywhere else, I'd be deemed to have abandoned my application for legal permanent residence. So now Pam and I have the pleasant task of listing all the people and places we want to see when we go there in May.

I already have one engagement: I'm going to do a presentation on my walk at the conference of my professional body, the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Years ago, if I'd received such an invitation, I'd have mumbled an excuse, but now I'm following the dictum of my late wife Jayne: Say yes first, and worry later.

Having spent years translating other people's often mind-bogglingly tedious PowerPoint presentations, I now have to learn to use this arguably indispensable communication tool myself - and hopefully not put too many people to sleep.

2009-03-09T10:53:00.007-06:00

There is such a thing as a free lunch, but I was stupid enough to forget this.

On Saturday, I paid seven dollars and something for a cabbage and a handful of potatoes from Mr Okra, the itinerant fruit and veg salesman who drives his elaborately decorated truck up and down the streets of New Orleans six days a week, chanting a list of his wares through a PA system like a muezzin in a minaret: "I have oranges. I have bananas. I have mirlitons".

On Sunday, I stood on Judge Perez Drive and cowered as tens of thousands of cabbages, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic bulbs, lemons, grapefruit, limes, apples, bananas, candy, moon pies and even bags of ice and sugar rained from the sky.

It's that time of year again: just as the Mardi Gras hangovers fade and we've started thinking about work again, along comes another excuse to unplug our laptops and party.

This time the pretext is St Patrick's Day, when everyone in New Orleans takes to the streets in a spontaneous outburst of celebration after suddenly discovering Hibernian genes lurking in their DNA. My mistake was not to realise that the party started nine days before the event itself.

The people on the parade floats throw not just beads and cuddly toys but the ingredients for corned beef and cabbage, fondly believed to be the dish that people in Ireland eat on St Paddy's, though it's about as Irish as bratwurst and sauerkraut. They also distribute whatever food they have gathering dust in their pantries.

As a result, for a few virtuous days each year, we abandon our habitual diet of fried chicken and beignets and begin consuming our five daily portions of fruit and vegetables as hospital emergency rooms fill with people hit by flying cabbages.

The parade on Sunday

2009-03-01T14:11:00.004-06:00

At the end of Debbie Fagnano's calliope recital yesterday, I asked her to play You Are My Sunshine. It has very special memories for me, and I'd heard her playing it a couple of times before.

Afterwards, she told me something I didn't know: it's one of the state songs of Louisiana, credited to country music star and two-times state governor Jimmie Davis - though in fact he bought the copyright from the original writer.

It's a strange song, part mourning for a lost love:

The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms.
When I awoke, dear
I was mistaken
And I hung my head and cried.

This is followed by what sounds like a thinly veiled threat of violence, perhaps a late-night visit from a posse of redneck cousins:

I'll always love you
And make you happy
If you will only say the same
But if you leave me
To love another
You'll regret it all some day.

And then, tacked on at the end, comes this delightful agricultural and culinary irrelevance:

Louisiana my Louisiana
the place where I was born.
White fields of cotton
green fields of clover,
the best fishing
and long tall corn;
Crawfish gumbo and jambalaya
the biggest shrimp and sugar cane,
the finest oysters
and sweet strawberries
from Toledo Bend to New Orleans.

Somehow, it's a good choice of anthem for this tragicomic shambles of a state.

2009-02-28T16:38:00.006-06:00

With the possible exception of the train drivers and airline pilots who stir us from our slumbers in the small hours, Debbie Fagnano is the noisiest person in New Orleans. And yet she's also one of the city's best-known and most popular inhabitants, though most people have only seen her as a speck in the distance.

Debbie plays the calliope, or steam organ, on the steamboat Natchez just before it slips its French-Quarter moorings for a twice-daily Mississippi cruise. Her medley of popular tunes, sounding like a slightly off-key children's recorder ensemble, is audible for several miles.

I had to don earplugs when I sat in on her Saturday lunchtime concert which, for my benefit, she began with the British national anthem.

"Ever since I was a kid, I've always loved the water and wanted to own a boat or be on a ship. I'm originally from New Jersey, but my family always knew I'd be out of the ordinary; I had that little gleam in my eye that said something out there would call me away.

"When I visited New Orleans and saw and heard the calliope, I asked the captain if he needed anyone to play it. He didn't at the time, but he kept my name on file and eventually I got the job. I've been doing this since 1989, and I'm also the musical director of a local church.

"The qualifications for this job? Well, you obviously need a knowledge of black and white keys, ideally the organ. You need to be a free spirit; you can't think like a nine-to-fiver, and you have to play outdoors in freezing weather and blistering heat. The only thing that stops me is severe lightning - if I see it coming across the bridge, that's it for the day. But you also have to think small, because a piano has eighty-eight keys and the calliope only thirty-two.

"There are only three working steam-powered calliopes in the US, all on the Mississippi. There are also air-operated ones. Circuses use them a lot, and people have also told me they've seen them in places like Germany and Japan.

"If it wasn't for this job, I'd probably be in a loony bin. It's what mainly keeps me here in New Orleans. People say such nice things to me. One of the nicest was on the first anniversary of 9/11, when I played nothing but patriotic songs. It was very sad, but a woman from Colorado wrote a letter to "the calliopist with the flaming red hair" - I had red hair then - saying how thrilled she was with the calliope and the city.

"When Katrina was approaching, they took the boat upriver out of harm's way. I stayed for the hurricane, and then I went first to Baton Rouge and then back to New Jersey. That was when I realised I'd truly converted to a southern belle. For a few weeks after the storm, they weren't sure whether they were going to bring the boat back and start again, and I've never been so miserable in my life. It was like mourning someone's death.

"But it came back at the beginning of October. That was the happiest day of my working life, and I would just stand there and play for anyone who'd listen. A lot of people told me that the first time they heard the calliope playing after the evacuation, it was like a little bit of normalcy and everything was going to be OK.

"Not everyone likes my playing, though. Once, before the storm, there was a guy wrote a horrible letter to the Times-Picayune bashing me and the captain and the entire steamboat company about me making all this noise for three hours a day. I wrote back saying two times thirty minutes plus one times twenty minutes does not add up to three hours.

"People do sometimes recognise me. They'll say hey, are you that woman that plays the er....? And I'll say did you like it? And if they did, I'll say yes it was me.

"When I die, I'd like my tombstone to be inscribed: 'Here lies Ms Calliope. She made people smile."

2009-02-20T10:30:00.007-06:00

A front door gets the Mardi Gras treatment...

a hitching post...

a lamppost...

...and an entire house.

2009-02-15T12:33:00.004-06:00

Maybe that professor at UCLA was wrong when he said that people called Bud were underachievers. Twice a day, Bud shoots out of the front door like a cork out of a champagne bottle - I thought he was just desperate to go and sniff other dogs' urine, but it turns out he's showing commitment to fostering a positive human-canine relationship. He didn't exactly pass with flying colours, but don't tell him I told you.

In other four-legged news, today was the dogs' turn to dress up to the nines and take to the streets in the Krewe of Barkus parade, the canine division of the Krewe of Bacchus.

2009-02-10T12:47:00.006-06:00

There's a picture of our Mardi Gras float here on the site of the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune. Pam is on the left, having discarded her shark costume and dressed as a 1940s sailor instead.

And, yes, I've finally got round to putting advertising on this site - I hope it's not too intrusive. I can expect to earn less than $10 a month initially, but it's basically free money and an incentive to post more often. I'll let you know how I get on.

Readers in New Orleans will see Mardi Gras-related ads: hotels, balconies for rent to watch the parade, king cakes. What are you seeing in your part of the world?

2009-02-08T12:16:00.005-06:00

It's that time of year again: the hotels are full, parking spaces are at a premium, thousands of discarded strings of beads lie in gutters or hang from trees and railings, and the inhabitants have another chance to indulge their passion for cross-dressing.

Mardi Gras kicked off last night with the Krewe de Vieux parade. Pam marched with her sub-krewe, Krewe de Craps, and I volunteered to be an escort. In return for keeping the crowds back as our float made its stop-start progress through the French quarter, and staying sober, I got a free ticket to the krewe ball afterwards, including unlimited beer.

Most of the big parades are of motorised floats, but Krewe de Vieux still uses mules or human beings for locomotion. The mule in the top picture is not too happy about the prospect of hauling a ton of beads, beer and brass-band instruments through three miles of cheering crowds.

This year, Krewe de Craps' theme was sharks - not so much the aquatic version as the Wall Street derivatives traders and hedge fund managers who got us into this sorry mess.

And this is their float. I had to ask what SOL stands for: it's Shit Out of Luck.

One advantage of Mardi Gras for all of us lazy New Orleanians is that you don't have to take down your Christmas (sorry, holiday) decorations on Twelfth Night.

Our house is still festooned with lights, but the British and American flags have been replaced by carnival jesters, and the tree is decorated not with tinsel and baubles but with purple, green and gold necklaces - these being the traditional (and in my opinion hideously mismatched) colours of Mardi Gras.

What it means to live in New Orleans

2009-02-06T11:36:00.003-06:00

This article explains, better than anything else I've seen, why New Orleans is so special. It attracts a certain kind of person, and I freely admit to being one:

New Orleanians—no matter what color or how wealthy—aren’t great at planning meetings, showing up on time for them, running them in orderly fashion, deciding on a course of action, and then following through. This isn’t simply laziness or fecklessness; it’s a reflection of a commitment to enjoying life instead of merely achieving. You want efficiency and hard work? Go to Minneapolis. Just don’t expect to let the good times roll there.

There's no business like snow business

2009-02-03T00:30:00.005-06:00

Like I said, homesickness is not part of my repertoire. But today, I wish I could just hop on the first plane out of town and head back to London.

2009-02-01T18:34:00.002-06:00

I don't even know his last name, and he doesn't know mine. But he's called Josh, he's a transportation engineer from Boise, Idaho, and he made a small difference to several people's lives today, mine included.

I've run over twenty marathons, but when I did the New Orleans Mardi Gras marathon today, I decided to do something I'd never done before. I ran with a pace group led by Josh, who had sufficient confidence in his ability to finish the race in 3 hours 50 minutes, at an average of 8 minutes 49 seconds a mile, that he was willing to run all 26 miles holding a placard announcing this fact and invite others to follow him.

For the first 19 miles or so, I stuck close to him, setting probably the most consistent pace of my running career. Sometimes I found myself looking back and slowing to keep him in sight, which went completely against the grain, though I knew it was common sense.

Then came the only hill on the course - a very modest bridge - and I began to slip behind Josh as he kept up the same unrelenting cadence. He disappeared into the distance, and I never saw him again.

After that I hit the wall, and finished the course with a combination of walking and running. At one stage, one of my fellow runners came to a halt in front of me, turned round, looked me in the eye and said: "Come on Phil." My name was written on my back. "What's with the walking? You can do better than this." I grinned, resumed my slow trot and finished in 4 hours 13 minutes, coming 623rd out of 7,400.

It would have been a lot slower if it hadn't been for Josh and the other unnamed competitor; people like them are one of the reasons I run. I do it partly for the sense of achievement and the high as I cross the finishing line, but part of it is just for the sense of we're all in this together, we've got to look after each other. A bit like life, really.

Good news for redheads

2009-01-31T21:29:00.011-06:00

In New Orleans, more than in most other places, people turn their houses, cars and bodies into works of art. This car belongs to somebody up the street from us; you need to enlarge the pictures and read the writing to appreciate its genius.

2009-01-29T18:15:00.002-06:00

The world has entered a new era; America has reached a defining milestone in its history; suddenly there is light at the end of the tunnel.

But never mind all that: let me tell you about Heinz salad cream, McVities Chocolate Hobnobs, the Guardian crossword and other things of great moment.

When Pam and I got married last September, we didn't make a big thing of wedding presents. We'd both been through it all before, and we had most of the stuff we needed.

But one of the most thoughtfully chosen and welcome gifts came from our British neighbours, Vic and Polly. It was a 425-gramme squeezy bottle of Heinz salad cream, with an extra little green label explaining to explain to ignorant Americans what it was.

If I were ever on Death Row and they came to take my final lunch order, I'd settle not for lobster thermidor and a gallon bucket of Häagen-Dazs Rocky Road, as so many heinous but unimaginative felons do, but for a nice salad cream sandwich on wholemeal bread still warm from the oven.

Incidentally, did you know where the name Häagen-Dazs comes from? Let's ask Wikipedia.

Contrary to appearances, the name is not Scandinavian; it is simply two made-up words meant to look Scandinavian to American eyes (in fact, the digraphs "äa" and "zs" are a not part of any native words in any of the Scandinavian languages).
This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding. Mattus included an outline map of Scandinavia on early labels, as well as the names of Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm, to reinforce the Scandinavian theme. A name was created by reversing the name of Duncan Hines (Huncan-Dines"), an original potential marketer of the product. When that deal didn't materialize the name was manipulated to sound Scandinavian.

The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an 'a' with an umlaut/diaeresis) is used in the spelling of the German, Estonian, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish languages, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Estonian, Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has a short a, hard g, and a final s sound.
One close real name to the fake Häagen is the rare Norwegian first name Haagen. It also bears a resemblance to Den Haag, which is "The Hague" in Dutch. Dazs does not mean anything even in Hungarian despite the "zs" grapheme, and sounds too unfamiliar even to be a name. The closest real word in Hungarian is "darázs", which means "wasp".

A further step in branding is the renaming of the Teatro Calderón in Madrid, Spain to Teätro Häagen-Dazs Calderón.^[4] There is no ä in the Spanish alphabet.

Isn't that fascinating? Drily humorous, slightly pedantic, and obsessed with trivial linguistic details - it could have been written by me.

Anyway, back to salad cream, the one thing I miss most about British cuisine. Before I came here, I used to get through a bottle a week, hooked on its richly moreish mayonnaise mouthfeel with added vinegary bite, compatible with everything from french fries to Ritz crackers.

I find ranch dressing makes an acceptable substitute, but it's not the same, and I miss salad cream. I asked Vic and Polly where they'd obtained our wedding present and filed the name away for future reference: International Foods, a grocery store in nearby Metairie.

Last week, Pam and I finally got round to paying a visit. It was a cornucopia, with a whole big section devoted to British foods I hadn't set eyes on for six months or more.

There was Marmite, the bitter, salt-laden sandwich spread made from the stuff that leaks out of oilwells and forms festering puddles on the ground in Texas. Marmite splits Britain neatly down the middle: either you'd sell your grey-haired, twinkly-eyed grandmother for a jar, or you detest it with a passion beyond words.

Even the manufacturer cheerfully admits that Marmite is not everyone's cup of tea. Its website, Marmite.com, describes the product as "noxious gunk", and continues:

Eat Marmite? You'd rather rip the wings off live chickens. You'd rather be stripped naked in public. You'd rather swallow rat's tails and snail shells... Enough already! We get the picture.

Next to the Marmite was a stack of McVities Chocolate Hobnobs. These delectable oaty biscuits, or cookies if you're reading this in America, were the British marketing sensation of the 1980s when they made their debut. Over one hundred times more addictive than pure crystal meth, they flew off the shelves as fast as supermarkets could restock them.

As we stood in line for the checkout, I felt a sense of empathy for the other unnamed Brits who were presumably helping to keep the store in business. There aren't many of us in New Orleans - this is not Manhattan or Orlando, where half the population seems to hail from the UK.

I also reflected on the relative ease of being an expat in the twenty-first century. You no longer have to do without the things you miss most, the little icons that bring a twinge of... well, not homesickness, but nostalgia for what you've left behind in your quest for a new life.

Today, I can call my parents for eight cents a minute or share trivial details of my life on this blog or Facebook. In the past, I might have subscribed to my favourite newspaper and received yellowing copies by surface mail, three months late. Now I can read them online. My favourite is The Guardian, which even (joy of joys) decided a few months ago to stop charging for its crossword - something else I no longer have to do without.

A few months ago, passing through Washington's Dulles airport, I found a machine in a newsagent's that would print a while-you-wait, same-day copy of any of 150 international newspapers, from The Sun to the South China Morning Post, all for just five dollars.

As I reached for my wallet, the guy behind the counter noticed me and shook his head. "I wouldn't if I were you," he warned. "You'll miss your flight. They can take up to an hour to print."

So this technology may still be in its infancy, but one day soon I'll be able to stroll a few blocks and come back with my copy of The Guardian, literally hot off the presses.

Things have come a long way since those first settlers made what would almost certainly be a one-way journey, severing all ties with their past lives. I may have chosen to live 4,633 miles away from my birthplace as the crow flies, but compared to them I have it easy.

Driving over lemons

2009-01-07T09:34:00.002-06:00

That was the title of former Genesis drummer Chris Stewart's bestselling memoir of farmhouse life in Spain. New Orleans is no rural idyll, but people drive over lemons here too. Yesterday was a very windy day, and large numbers of them blew off the huge tree around the corner from us in Chartres Street and rolled across the road. No one spared them a second glance.

2008-12-19T18:30:00.004-06:00

I've been coming to this country for thirty years and I've never been to a football game before. So we recently remedied that omission by watching the New Orleans Saints play the Atlanta Falcons at the Superdome.

It was a stirring performance by both sides. Falcons linebacker Curtis Lofton pounded his fist into the turf after Pierre Thomas bowled over him for a first down. The game-sealing carry provided the perfect punctuation for the Saints' undrafted, second-year running back following the most important performance of his young career.

He scored his first touchdown on a 7-yard screen early in the fourth quarter, powering in for the winning touchdown on a 5-yard toss sweep, bouncing over offensive lineman Carl Nicks as he stretched for the goal line. Thomas also set up that last score with an 88-yard kickoff return after Matt Ryan's 12-yard scramble had given the Falcons a 25-22 lead with 7:51 to go.

Actually I didn't write that. I cut-and-pasted it out of the local paper, whose reporter clearly has at least a rudimentary understanding of the game. Unlike me.

I once spent a year at evening classes trying to learn Japanese, but it was a waste of twelve months; everything the teacher said just went in one ear and out the other. I've had just as little success comprehending the byzantine complexities of football: at least a dozen people have tried valiantly to explain it to me, but they were just wasting their breath.

As an experiment, I tried to read the Wikipedia article on American football before I wrote this entry, but I dozed off over my laptop after a couple of pages.

If the ball becomes dead behind the goal line of the team in possession and its "opponent" is responsible for the ball being there (for instance, if the defense intercepts a forward pass in its own end zone and the ball becomes dead before the ball is advanced out of the end zone) it is a touchback: no points are scored and the team last in possession keeps possession with a first down at its own 20 yard line. In college, in the extremely rare instance that a safety is scored on a try, it is worth only 1 point.

Incomprehension aside, I enjoyed the experience very much. From outside, the Superdome is a vast and sinister concrete nuclear bunker set amid a wasteland of elevated highways and crumbling warehouses, but when we emerged into the arena itself it took my breath away.

This is the third largest domed structure in the world, twenty-seven storeys high, and our seats were about as far away from the action as it was possible to be.

It was like watching the match through the wrong end of a telescope. But this didn't seem to deter our fellow spectators, many of them season ticket holders with their row and seat numbers printed on their t-shirts.

Speaking of which, this must be the only place in America where dressing your offspring in shirts with BUSH inscribed on the back doesn't constitute child abuse, like calling your son Adolf Hitler. The shirts we saw were a homage not to the soon-to-be-ex-chief-executive, but to Saints legend Reggie Bush.

I abandoned my attempts to make sense of the on-pitch action - constant substitutions, points mysteriously appearing on the scoreboard for no visible reason, incomprehensible announcements from referees - and concentrated on soaking up the atmosphere instead.

It was like a vast, rowdy communal Sunday lunch: 70,000 deliriously happy people scoffing grotesquely overpriced burgers, chicken wings and beers and walking out when the mounds of wrappers and cans on the floor made it impossible to see the players any more.

The Saints won, and we marched in a long, slow spiral out of the Dome. As is so often the case here, I felt both totally at home and an utter outsider.

I also experienced a twinge of envy. Football has a lot in common with religion, practised on Sundays by huge numbers of chanting people in big, echoey buildings. If you don't experience that weekly injection of passion from one or the other, or both, you're hard put to find its equivalent elsewhere.

A rose by any other name...

2008-11-29T19:09:00.005-06:00

After several days of agonised soul-searching, Pam and I have reluctantly decided to give our dog Bud a new name.

As I mentioned before, we originally called him Bud because we already had a cat named Miller.

For the benefit of British readers, Bud and Miller are two of America's leading brands of beer, both limply bland potations that stimulate the neurotransmitters but not the taste buds.

I once got chatting to a regional sales manager for one of the big US breweries at a bar in Midland, Texas. "I've just come back from a two-week beer-tasting tour of Belgium and Germany," he slurred. "It just made me realise what crappy products I've been selling for the past fifteen years."

Anyway, the worker from the animal refuge found Miller the cat sitting alone in the desolate parking lot of a strip mall boarded up since Hurricane Katrina. Beside him, an empty can of Miller Lite blew listlessly back and forth in the wind. That's how he got his name, and Bud seemed the obvious choice when we acquired a canine companion for him.

Bud is only a year old, his puppyish enthusiasm still undimmed by any trace of world-weary cynicism. He's at a formative stage in his life, and things that happen to him now could crucially affect his fortunes later on. We believe that the decision to rename him is an investment in his long-term future.

It came after I stumbled on a year-old article in the Christian Science Monitor by someone called Jacqui Goddard. It's about the increasing popularity of consultants who, for a modest fee, will advise you on whether the name you choose for your progeny is likely to inspire respect and career success, or have people guffawing behind your back at your incredible lack of taste.

Of course, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor is itself a living example of how an unfortunate name doesn't have to be a handicap.

It's a lively and authoritative international newspaper whose sole concession to matters spiritual is a daily article on religion - though Jacqui sometimes tells interviewees she's writing for the 'Boston Monitor' to avoid the impression that it's one of those deranged six-page religious rags, the kind that nameless people leave on the chairs in dentists' waiting rooms, hoping you'll undergo a Damascene conversion while having all your teeth pulled out.

Anyway, back to Bud. The article cites Professor Albert Meharabian of UCLA, who has researched people's perceptions of first names.

[Prof. Mehrabian] asked people to ponder lists of names and award each a score in five set categories: ethical/caring, popular/fun, successful, masculine/feminine, and overall attractiveness. The results helped him to produce a comprehensive profile of the kind of positive or negative impression each name conveys.
For example, Chad scored consistently high in all categories, while Bud ranked low – including a zero in the "successful" category. Chads are more likely to have a secure self-image, be regarded more positively by others, and be treated well at school and work than Buds.

In deference to public opinion, therefore, we've decided to call our canine friend Chad.

It wasn't our first choice. After all, Chad is the one of the world's poorest countries, a vast expanse of dusty nothingness sometimes referred to as the Dead Heart of Africa, still basking in the afterglow of being named the world's most corrupt country in 2005. It's also the name given to the little paper butterflies on Florida ballot papers that gave us eight years of George W. Bush.

But there you go: it was Shakespeare who said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but he also said that needs must where the devil drives.

2008-11-17T18:52:00.008-06:00

UK shadow chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne yesterday warned: 'We are in danger, if the government is not careful, of having a proper sterling collapse, a run on the pound.'

I have news for Mr Osborne, who clearly doesn't know very much about international finance: the government is not careful, and the pound has collapsed.

For the past two years since I came to the States, the pound has been riding high, at around 2.00 to the dollar, and the cost of living here has been laughably cheap if you're earning pounds and spending dollars.

New York department stores have been swamped by legions of pasty-faced Brits scooping up bucketfuls of designer knickknacks, and Florida real-estate agents by people from Southend lugging wheeled suitcases bulging with cash.

In the past couple of months, the pound has slumped by a third: for once, the UK is even more of a basket case than the US. The smile has been wiped off our faces, and sometimes, when I have nothing better to do with my time, I've been known to sit there mournfully monitoring the currency's helter-skelter descent in real time by repeatedly clicking Refresh on xe.com.

Until I came here, exchange rates were an abstraction that I only noticed when I left the UK for brief periods; now, they've caused me more than a few sleepless nights. I've been guilty of complacency, and the chickens have come home to roost; Pam told me months ago to transfer my savings over here while the going was still good, and I ignored her eminently sensible advice.

Anyway, that's enough of my woes: the credit crunch has been a salutary reminder that economics isn't just dusty abstractions, it's about real people and real lives.

A few days ago, when I finally got round to transferring some money over here, I was on the phone to a woman in my local bank. 'So what currency is it in the UK, anyway?' she asked. 'Is it Ukrainian dollars?'

2008-11-05T13:02:00.006-06:00

I'm delighted that Barack Obama is to be the new leader of the free world, but I fear he could prove a disappointment: after eight years of the worst president in history, people's expectations may be unrealistically high.

In Britain, Tony Blair was given a radical mandate for change in 1997, and largely squandered it during the ensuing decade, chipping away at the edges of all that was wrong in British society and failing to tackle many of the really big issues.

But there's no doubting that America is a better place to be this morning than last night, and it will be heartening to watch it regain its respected status on the world stage. Obama could get off to a flying start on his first day by shutting down Guantanamo, banning torture and calling a halt to so-called extraordinary rendition.

We watched the CNN coverage with next-door neighbours and fellow political junkies Kevin and Matt, and it was exceptionally good.

There were giant touch screens detailing past and projected results for every state and county, and ultra-detailed demographic breakdowns. We learned, for example, that the three most reliable predictors of Democratic leanings were being male, having a college degree and never going to church, which is me in a nutshell.

In a milestone in TV history, we were treated to interviews with holograms: not real ones, just superimposed on the screen, though grizzled anchor Wolf Blitzer made a convincing job of pretending his subjects were chatting away right in front of him. They wobbled slightly round the edges, as though trapped in limbo by a temporary transporter malfunction on the USS Enterprise.

I'm in a bit of a no-man's-land myself at the moment. I love elections, and I've never failed to vote in the UK, but in an exception to the principle of no taxation without representation it will be many years before I'm allowed to do so here, and I'll have to become a citizen first.

Voting is one of the two big advantages of adopting US citizenship; the other is never having to deal with the immigration authorities again.

I'm now in the long, slow process of adjusting my status, which means I've started the ball rolling towards getting a green card and becoming a legal permanent resident.

I've just sent off another sixteen pages of forms and another cheque, this time for $1,010. If these are approved, I'll actually get my 'advance parole', which sounds like an alternative to a jail sentence but is effectively permission to leave the country, which I can't at present.

But as I've said before, even when I'm feeling positively overwhelmed by red tape, I try never to lose sight of the fact that living here is a privilege not to be taken for granted.

2008-11-01T18:08:00.002-06:00

Like I said, translation is not normally a barrel of laughs. But this story is an exception.

Pam, car, dog, cat, job (for a while)...

2008-10-29T20:20:00.009-06:00

The long list of three-letter acquisitions continues.

While I was in Washington DC, Pam took advantage of my absence to acquire not one, but two furry friends. I've never owned any animals, apart from the fifteen goldfish pining for me in my garden pond in London and a quarter share in a guinea pig when I was a kid.

I liked the fact that in theory we could, at the drop of a hat, take off on an impromptu weekend's kayak rolling in the alligator-infested swamps of Louisiana's Cajun country without having to worry about who'd look after the pets in our absence.

But we don't. So Pam took the decision out of my hands, and my concerns were instantly dispelled when Miller and Velvet came bounding into my life.

Velvet is a crappy name for a dog, and the people at Bark in the Park, the event where Pam adopted him, admitted they were running short of inspiration when they chose it. So we rechristened him Bud.

He's part chow, part spaniel, about a year old, fully of slobbery puppyish enthusiasm and with an endearing habit of sighing deeply as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders. His favourite pastimes are gnawing high-voltage electrical cables and surfing the internet.

As for the cat: well, Miller is immaculately groomed and behaved, extremely friendly, and of way above average intelligence. He likes to work up an appetite for breakfast by polishing off the New York Times crossword; his record is three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

And so to the job: a nice little part-time contract as the grandly titled UK English language expert for Rosetta Stone, the world's largest language learning software company. They're not a well-known name in Europe yet, but in the US their bright yellow products have established a blanket presence, especially in airports.

My job was to adapt US English products into British English. I spent a week training at their headquarters in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a couple of hours outside DC, and returned to New Orleans full of enthusiasm for the intellectually challenging tasks ahead. And then, just a couple of weeks later, they unceremoniously dumped me on cost grounds.

I can't say I blame them. I did ask before I started whether there'd be very much work for me; after all, there isn't exactly a yawning gulf between US and UK English when you're learning sentences like "The girl is running" and "The men are reading the newspaper".

I was annoyed at having squandered seven precious days of my short time on earth, but at least I got paid for it, met lots of fellow wordsmiths, and got to see a beautiful part of the country. So no hard feelings there.

Washington, DC

2008-10-12T00:05:00.005-05:00

I'm here for a week on business, and at long last someone else is funding my travel habit - not something that happens very often.

Translating isn't too bad as jobs go, but it ranks somewhere below Trappist monasticism in terms of the social skills and level of physical activity it demands of me. So I'm looking forward to some new horizons and the chance to work with a team of flesh-and-blood humans for a change. It looks like it might be an interesting project, so watch this space.

Anyway, being here reminds me of two very inspiring people I met when I arrived in New Orleans two years ago.

Zack Rosenburg and girlfriend Liz McCartney were two young, high-flying lawyers living on Washington's Capitol Hill until Katrina struck in August 2005.

Along with their fellow Americans, they watched the scenes of devastation unfold on their TV screen - but unlike most people, instead of just tut-tutting and reaching for another family pack of Doritos, they decided to go and help. Leaving behind their comfortable apartment and all the other trappings of success, they moved to New Orleans and founded the Saint Bernard Project.

From unpromising beginnings - neither of them knew anything about construction - Zack and Liz have now rebuilt 120 houses in flood-ravaged St Bernard Parish, with the help of 6,000 volunteers from all over the world - including, briefly, yours truly.

Liz has now been named a 2008 Top Ten Hero by CNN, and could win the title CNN Hero of the Year and a prize of $100,000. The winner will be chosen by the public, so please take a moment of your time to vote for her here, because it won't take a minute of your time and because she thoroughly deserves it.

A shotgun wedding

2008-09-26T00:06:00.009-05:00

Any momentary hesitation I had about signing the marriage licence was dispelled when the registrar pulled a gun on me.

Pam had already appended her flourish, and now it was my turn. As I stood there in the registry office in the sleepy little Puerto Rican coastal town of Dorado, a cheap plastic ballpoint pen in my right hand as I prepared to take one of the most important decisions of my life, I must have paused for the merest fraction of a nanosecond.

The woman ducked beneath the counter behind her glass screen for a moment, and reemerged brandishing a pistol. "Sign it now," she snapped, gesturing impatiently at the blank space on the piece of paper.

It took a moment for me to notice the huge grin on her face, another to spot that the gun was made of plastic.

We'd already had the blood tests required of anyone planning to marry in Puerto Rico, and were relieved to find that neither of us had gonorrhea or chlamydia. How romantic. We'd shuttled back and forth between various government offices, nerves fraying in the tropical heat, dispensing substantial sums of money to substantial numbers of people.

As I stared down the barrel of the gun, I had another of what I call my Moments, when I think: is this real? how did I get here? I've had a lot of those in the past few years.

Bureaucracy aside, it was a thoroughly happy and wholly unforgettable week. We rented a house with a pool on this beautiful island and invited a small selection of our nearest and dearest to share our wedding with us. Here they all are.

From left to right, they are Pam's daughter Dana and her son Rowan. Then there's my friend Bill, who I'll tell you more about in a moment. Behind him is my brother-in-law Richard and his son Alfie. Pam is standing on the doorstep with her two-month-old granddaughter Arden. Next come my sister Jacqui, Bill's wife Daff, and Dana's husband Scott.

Bill was a secondhand book dealer until a few years ago, but in a dramatic midlife career change he became a Church of England priest. He was kind enough to conduct the marriage ceremony for us, cheerfully tolerant of my lack of religious belief.

I met Bill at university thirty years ago, where I formed a Scrabble club and he was one of the first members. Since then, our every encounter has been accompanied by the rattle of plastic tiles.

I suspect that for him the highlight of the week was not presiding over his friends' marriage, not the lush, mountainous scenery, not the convivial company or generous quantities of Caribbean rum, but the poolside game on Sunday, our wedding day.

He scored an extraordinary personal best of 205 points in one go, spread across two triple word scores and with a fifty-point bonus for getting rid of all his letters. He played crappily. No, sorry, he played CRAPPILY, off my LATRINE.

And so to the wedding itself. We held it on a quiet little stretch of wave-lapped, palm-fringed sand decked with long strings of beach morning glory, candles and coconut shells. Pam made her entrance from several hundred yards away and gingerly picked her way across a stream in her long coral-coloured dress before she reached us.

The only thing missing was sunshine: a tropical depression was brewing, and there was drizzle in the air. But the brightness to the west could have passed for a sunset, and the rain obligingly held off until the end of our short, simple ceremony; next day, the island suffered major flooding.

Here's some pictures. I thought Pam looked wonderful. I don't have any of both of us yet, because I took them, but as soon as someone sends me some I'll put them on here.

2008-09-12T07:35:00.004-05:00

New Orleans has by far the most poetic street names of any city in North America, many of them bespeaking the high-minded ideals of the nineteenth century.

I've already mentioned Tchoupitoulas (CHOP-i-TOO-lus, sometimes shortened to "Chop"), named after an extinct Indian tribe.

And then there's Desire, as in A Streetcar Named. There's Elysian Fields, Chartres ("Charders"), Royal, Burgundy ("BurGUNdy") and Frenchmen, all within five blocks from here. There's Prytania, Chef Menteur, Mardi Gras, Cucullu, Fleur de Lis, Annunciation, Manhattan, Stumpf.

There's a street for each of the Muses: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene,
Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania.

I even quite like the name of our own street, Spain. I have an apartment in Tenerife (which I'm actually trying to sell at the moment - anyone interested?), so I can say I have a place in Spain and a place on Spain.

This is almost as good an address as Gay Close in northwest London, where I used to rather shamefacedly reside - in fact, given the demographics of the Marigny district where we now live, Gay Close would be a great name for a new street here.

But it occurred to me the other night, when I took these pictures while out riding my bike, that the honours for best-named set of intersections must surely go to New Orleans Street. I'm sure this was deliberate on the part of the person or persons responsible for choosing street names all those years ago (what a great job! how do you apply? what qualifications do you need?).

Apart from Humanity, the names of the thoroughfares which cross New Orleans Street include Benefit, Treasure, Abundance, Agriculture, Industry, Hope, and Law. And this one.

New Orleans

2008-09-08T19:49:00.017-05:00

We got home on Saturday night, weary from our 400-mile journey and not sure what to expect.

There was very little hurricane damage in evidence, and the main victims were the trees, huge numbers of which had blown over or lost branches. One big bough had flattened half of our lovingly tended garden, but things grow so quickly here that we'll be back to normal in a month or so - unlike the thousands of Cubans and Haitians with homes and livelihoods dashed to pieces by Gustav and Ike.

It's also going to be a busy few weeks for the dustmen or garbage collectors or whatever you want to call them, because the accepted way of dealing with fallen trees is to stick them in your bin for collection.

And we're now out of the cone for Ike, meaning that if it continues on its current track, the good citizens of Corpus Christi, Texas will bear the brunt of this weekend's visitation.

On Sunday, I went for a bike ride round the Lower Ninth Ward, which Katrina wiped off the map. It was the first time I'd been there since November, but unlike so much of New Orleans, little had changed; it was as desolate as ever. Most of the houses in this once bustling and mostly black district had been razed to their concrete foundations; others had been smothered by a blanket of weeds.

Here and there people had rebuilt, with whimsical details like fountains and garden gnomes creating an illusion of normality.

I couldn't live here, I thought; it wouldn't matter how picturesque the house, it would be like living in a cemetery, constantly surrounded by absence: silent, empty streets, roofless houses, the ghostly voices of long-departed neighbours blowing in the wind.

But then I turned the corner into Tennessee Street, and suddenly, even on this hot, somnolent Sunday afternoon, it was a hive of activity.

I'd stumbled on actor Brad Pitt's Make it Right project, a community of 150 low-cost, sustainable houses being built right in the shadow of the Industrial Canal levee which breached during Katrina.

Each of these stunning creations, which Pitt commissioned from leading architects, will house a displaced family from the Lower Ninth. Each is raised well above ground level so that when the floods return, as they will sooner or later (thanks to Gustav, they almost did last weekend), they'll suffer the minimum of damage. And each, while firmly rooted in the southern architectural tradition, is very much a product of the twenty-first century.

I coveted all of the houses, none of which will cost more than $175,000, but sadly I'm not a part of the project's target market.

Make it Right is an example of an individual putting his money where his mouth is, and taking direct action to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. In a city where one third of the houses are still uninhabitable, he's planted a few green shoots in a huge, muddy brown expanse of alluvial nothingness - but like I said, New Orleans is fertile ground, so let's hope they take root and flourish.

Shreveport

2008-09-05T22:28:00.002-05:00

There's a simple way of finding out whether your electricity supply has been restored when you evacuate for a hurricane: leave your answering machine on, and call at regular intervals until it responds. We don't have one, but I phoned the neighbours today and they said the power had just come back on, so we're leaving for home tomorrow. The house is undamaged, apparently, but there's a lot of debris lying around.

Gustav has been a wonderful demonstration of the power of the internet. I've been keeping a close watch on www.nola.com, the website of our excellent local newspaper, the Times-Picayune. They've been publishing every day throughout the storm and giving the paper away as a PDF, and they also have local forums for every district of New Orleans, mostly populated with hundreds of messages from evacuees asking whether the power has been restored on their particular block.

One woman on our local Marigny-Bywater forum stayed at home during the evacuation and invited people to send her their addresses, so that she could go and photograph their houses to provide reassurance that they hadn't blown away.

I'm immensely grateful to Bill, Marnie and Garett for putting us up in such comfort for over a week. The local TV stations have been showing footage of the alternative, the hurricane shelters in Shreveport, which makes for pretty grim viewing. Visitors are greeted with the stench of urine and vomit, and showering facilities have been woefully short - a source of considerable local controversy.

Several people were arrested after a fight broke out in one shelter, and some inmates have been demonstrating against the unpleasant conditions. I have some sympathy with their plight, but 96 percent of respondents to a local TV survey thought the refugees were ungrateful whiners who shouldn't come here if they didn't like it.

There's a small but significant chance that we'll be back in Shreveport in the not too distant future. Hurricane Ike, the next but one in a queue of tropical disturbances backed up across the Atlantic, could be heading for the Gulf of Mexico.

Shreveport

2008-09-02T17:18:00.002-05:00

This is three-and-a-half-year-old Garett, my second cousin-in-law.

He's looking miserable because Gustav, now downgraded to a tropical storm, is passing overhead. It's been raining solidly for 24 hours so he can't play outside, and his back garden is fast turning into a lake - they're forecasting ten inches in two days.

Also, he has to put up with me and Pam till Friday when Ray Nagin, New Orleans' much-loved mayor, says we can go home.

Shreveport, LA

2008-08-31T23:11:00.006-05:00

It's been another surreal day.

The sun has been shining, as usual, and we've been doing all the things a family does on a Sunday at home: reading the papers, playing board games, swimming in the communal pool across the street. I went for a run, but it was too hot and I ended up walking for much of the way.

The Weather Channel has been glowering at us all day from the corner of the room, an ever-present reminder of what's happening to our home town. I wondered irreverently whether they'd called all their advertisers and said sorry, we're having a major weather event and our audience figures have skyrocketed, so we're doubling our rates.

This is when the channel truly comes into its own, with the country's top meteorologists enlightening us about the finer points of surface water temperatures, storm surges and tornadic activity. But it all seemed so abstract. I found it hard to relate to all these fancy graphics and colour-enhanced satellite images, until about 7 this evening.

Gustav's wispy outer fringes had just started to stalk New Orleans, and the reporter was standing in a very familiar location: Canal Street, the city's slightly down-at-heel main shopping street. With 95 percent of the population gone, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew in force, it was eerily deserted.

In the background, rain-lashed traffic lights cycled pointlessly from red to green and back again. The long rows of stately date palms, planted to cheer the place up after Katrina, were already straining at their hurricane tethers.

A tornado warning was in progress, which means that tornadoes have actually been spotted in the vicinity. And already, long before the full fury of the storm erupted, the reporter was lost for words and struggling to stand upright.

I'm glad we're well out of it, and I know we've made the right decision, but part of me wishes I could experience Gustav at first hand. Pam's best friend Toni is staying, together with many of her friendly and supportive neighbours, and at least one person on our block has decided not to evacuate. When we go home, all we'll see is the destruction, not the cataclysm that wrought it.

Another thing I'm very aware of is our good fortune in having relatives with whom to take refuge. The storm has displaced some 1.9 million people, many of whom will end up on makeshift dormitory beds in shelters just miles from here, surrounded by noisy, anxious and sleepless strangers.

Shreveport, Louisiana

2008-08-30T11:47:00.006-05:00

Storm, model, cone, voluntary, mandatory, contraflow: the language of hurricanes takes innocuous-looking everyday words and endows them overnight with new and sinister significance. Next day, they're on everyone's lips.

Everyone here is an amateur hurricane expert, though they don't call them hurricanes: they're storms. Everyone has the National H urricane Center bookmarked on their computer. Everyone knows that a model is one of up to twenty lines on a map showing a storm's possible track, calculated by supercomputers crunching trillions of numbers every second.

The lines form an inverted cone spreading out from a storm's current location and showing the area which it could hit: in the case of Gustav, anywhere from southwest Texas to the Florida panhandle.

When things start to look especially grim, the authorities will declare first a voluntary evacuation - we strongly suggest you get out now - and then a mandatory one, meaning if you don't get out now, you're on your own, and if we catch you in the street, we may arrest you.

They'll also introduce a contraflow system on major highways out of cities like New Orleans so that all lanes flow inland towards safety. Hurricanes are dependent on warm water for their energy, so much of their force is spent after they hit land.

It's not just words that acquire special meanings: so do the numbers from 1 to 5.

If the storm is a category 1 or 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds of up to 110 mph, people will consider battening down the hatches and sitting it out. If it's a 3, 4 or 5 and you have any sense, you'll evacuate.

If you return home a few days later after a false alarm - the storm hit some other poor unfortunate further down the coast, or it was only a 1 instead of the forecast 5 - no one will laugh at you. Better safe than sorry.

Katrina was a 5, but slowed to a 3 by the time she made landfall - it was the storm surge and poorly engineered levees that made her the most destructive hurricane in US history. Gustav is already a 4, and still has a thousand miles of open water from which to suck up fuel.

Pam and I left on Friday in the car which we'd conveniently and coincidentally bought only a week earlier; otherwise we'd have had to wait for one of the 700 buses that ferry people out of the city to shelters inland. As I write this on Saturday morning, the lines at the main bus terminal are already more than a mile long.

It was a beautifully, sunny, hot day, which made it hard to summon a sense of urgency. We emptied the fridge (if Gustav hits, the city will almost certainly be without power), closed the shutters and put away objects like flowerpots and dustbins that could cause damage if they blew around. But we made the hopefully realistic assumption that there wouldn't be any serious flooding: our house is in the 20% of the city that didn't flood during Katrina.

Outside was a flurry of activity as the neighbours loaded their cars with food, water, pet carriers and elderly relatives. The traffic on the interstate was stop-go, stop-go for the first hour and a half - it's also Labor Day weekend - but at least it wasn't gridlock. Pam once took thirteen hours just to travel the seventy miles to the nearest big city, Baton Rouge, during an evacuation.

After that, the 340-mile drive to Shreveport was relatively painless, and we're now staying with Pam's cousin Bill and his family. It's very strange not knowing whether we'll be returning home some time later next week (Gustav is expected to show up early on Tuesday morning) or remaining for much longer. I hope we don't outstay our welcome.

In an ironic coincidence, Friday was also the third anniversary of Katrina, and as a result we received an unexpected visit just before we left.

My sister Jacqui lives in Florida, and was the only British journalist in New Orleans on that fateful day in August 2005. She spent weeks here covering the aftermath and subsequent anniversaries, and has a deep affection for the city.

Recently, on a whim, she called the state coroner and asked whether there were still any unclaimed and unidentified bodies left over.

"Funny you should ask," he said. "It's three years now, and there are still eighty left. Three of them were babies. I was thinking I'd hold a jazz funeral to lay them all to rest." So Jacqui came to cover this moving story for several UK papers: here's one of her pieces.

2008-08-24T19:46:00.000-05:00

Huh, big deal. It was a bit windy, and it rained all day.

2008-08-23T15:24:00.004-05:00

It was only a matter of time before I experienced my first bit of Weather. I took this picture a few days go from my own personal satellite, Philos 4, which I can redirect to any corner of the globe at the flick of a switch - I usually use it as a means of reconnoitring beaches for possible visits.

It shows tropical storm Fay heading north from Cuba towards Florida, where it came ashore a record four times, dumping massive amounts of rain and killing ten people. It's now heading west across the Florida panhandle, and is likely to pass very close to New Orleans unless it suddenly peters out or veers off track.

What's a tropical storm? Well, I only had a vague idea until Fay started making headlines, but now I know that it's like a little sister to a hurricane, a cyclonic storm with less than hurricane-force winds, but the potential to develop into one.

People here are very blasé, as well they might be, having lived through the most destructive hurricane ever to hit the US. But they're not complacent, because they know that tropical storms are dangerous, destructive creatures.

In other news, we bought a car yesterday. I'm fast approaching my fiftieth birthday, but have never owned one before. You can manage perfectly well without a car in England, where the public transportation, for all its faults, is excellent.

Here, there's a bus that goes past the end of our road every fifty minutes until about 6 pm, with nothing at the bus stop to tell you when the next one's due. There's a very picturesque streetcar service that has just fully reopened after Katrina, and lots of taxis, and that's about it.

You can manage without a car, and the centre of town is very pedestrian- and cycle-friendly. But there's a feeling of being trapped in a gilded cage, with a great big state out there just begging to be explored: the bayous, Cajun country, the Mississippi plantations. There's friends and family to visit, and affordable places to shop rather than our local ludicrously overpriced supermarket, so I'm looking forward to having my horizons expanded.

2008-08-17T00:10:00.004-05:00

A few months ago, in London, we went to see Mike Leigh's film Happy Go Lucky. It was pure joy, one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages, though with sombre undercurrents. I fell in love with the main character, whose sole purpose in life seems to be brightening the lives of those around her - except her congenitally miserable driving instructor, who's driven perilously close to insanity by her sunny demeanour.

There was only one aspect of her personality that briefly jarred with me, and that was her response to the theft of her bicycle at the beginning of the film. "Oh, no, I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye", she chirps, and cheerily tootles off to take driving lessons instead.

I reckon I've owned about fifteen bikes since that first Halfords racer I bought to save on the 5p bus fare to school, and thirteen of those have been stolen. My reaction is anything but happy go lucky: a moment of confusion (maybe I just misremembered where I left it?) followed by blind, murderous rage - the kind where, if someone put the cowering culprit in front of me and handed me a loaded Kalashnikov, I'd pull the trigger with scarcely a moment's hesitation.

The last time it happened was in New Orleans at the end of last year. I'd borrowed Pam's bike, and left it locked right outside the main entrance to Wal-Mart on the city’s most oddly named street, Tchoupitoulas (talking of shibboleths, if you can spell and pronounce it correctly, it means you've finally arrived in New Orleans).

When I came out twenty minutes later, it had vanished. Once the rage had subsided a bit, I reported the theft, but even though it took place right underneath the security cameras Wal-Mart allegedly uses to spy on employees thinking of joining a union, the police weren't interested. Though to be fair, they do have rather more important things on their minds at the moment, like doing something about New Orleans' status as the nation's murder capital.

Anyway, it probably serves me right for shopping at Wal-Mart. Last year, I was stung by a wasp as I walked in to one of their stores, which left a huge, disfiguring crescent-shaped blister below my eye for several days. Someone up there is trying to tell me something.

Now that we're back in New Orleans, I've bought Pam a replacement bike, and also one for myself. I’m ashamed to say I bought it from Wal-Mart, and it cost a shockingly cheap $68 – some family in Guangdong is probably going to bed hungry tonight because of me.

It’s a perfectly good bike, with 21 speeds (a bit pointless when you’re living below sea level and the nearest hill is a few hundred miles away) and front suspension (anything but pointless on this city’s third-world potholed roads). I bought the cheapest one I could find, so that when the inevitable happens and it’s stolen in six months’ time, I won’t mourn it too much.

Incidentally, bike theft hit the headlines in the UK last month when David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservative party and the person most likely to replace Gordon Brown as prime minister, had his stolen in London’s Notting Hill. I was very amused to see that he’d chained it to a bollard (do you have that word in US English?) about three feet high, so the thieves simply lifted it over the top. Duh! And this is the man that could soon have his finger on the nuclear button…

Newspaper headline of the week

2008-07-24T00:56:00.003-05:00

This you-couldn't-make-it-up story about John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoeing accident, has nothing to do with Englishmen in New Orleans. But I think the headline is a work of inspired genius.

Y'all have a good day now, ya hear?

2008-07-22T22:24:00.012-05:00

I enjoy having a British accent, and I make few concessions to fitting in and sounding like a local. I relish the almost daily conversations with strangers wondering where I'm from (most think I'm Australian. Sometimes I'll say 'Have a guess', and occasionally people will say 'Oh', assuming Havagess is a fjord in Norway or something).

I'll always remember the housekeeper who knocked on my hotel door in Uniontown, Pennsylvania to ask whether I wanted my room cleaned. When I replied, her jaw dropped. 'Wow! I love your accent!' she said. 'It makes you sound so good looking'.

But sometimes needs must, and talking like an American is a matter of basic survival. If people ask me my last name and I say 'Goddard', they look blank and ask me to spell it. But if I say 'GAH-drd', they get it straight away.

When I was walking across the country in midsummer, I sometimes had to knock on people's doors and ask them to refill my water bottle for me. Cue the blank stare again. So I learned to say 'WAH-dr bodl', and after a while I stopped feeling silly adopting a fake American accent.

And there's a word I use, again with a degree of selfconsciousness. It's a shibboleth, a daily reminder that I'm in the deep south and not the east coast or the midwest or the west coast. As it approaches, a little alarm bell goes off in my brain and I have to prepare myself to say it.

Sometimes I lose my nerve and say 'You' even though I'm talking to, or about, more than one person. Sometimes I'll fudge it and say 'You all'. But occasionally I'll come up with a reasonable approximation to the correct pronunciation, 'Yahl'.

It's made me realise that there's a gap in British English that doesn't exist in large parts of the world.

Most European languages have plural forms of 'you'. The French say vous, the Germans Sie or Ihr, the Spanish vosotros or ustedes. Even the Irish have the convenient and ubiquitous 'youse'. But in Britain, where 'thou' and 'ye' have long since died out, we have to come up with some kind of clumsy circumlocution if we want to make it clear that we're talking in the plural.

Anyway, an unexpected 'Y'all' in a conversation can still send a metaphorical shiver of pleasure down my spine.

In the restaurant this evening the waitress said: 'I'll be back in a moment with y'all's drinks'. Afterwards, we staggered off, defeated by a mountain of spaghetti and meatballs, leaving a generous tip because we were embarrassed at the destruction wrought by two-year-old Rowan. But she'd seen it all before, and told us: 'Y'all come back.' Once again, she made me realise that the South is a foreign country within a foreign country.

By the way, Rowan is about to become my step-grandson. I could never have dreamed that a wonderful family of strangers half a world away in Little Rock, Arkansas would one day become relatives by marriage. Here they are: Scott, Dana, Rowan, and four-week-old Arden.

Home again

2008-07-10T21:28:00.003-05:00

Hooray! I'm an Englishman in New Orleans again. People have been badgering me to keep up my blog, but 'An Englishman in London' doesn't have the same stranger-in-a-strange-land ring to it.

As we entered the country yesterday afternoon, there was an eerie sense of déjà vu. In July 2007, as I reported earlier, Pam and I arrived in Philadelphia and had a two-hour encounter with a rude immigration official who threatened to send me back to England.

This time we landed in Philly again, and again I was sent off to the same room for secondary screening, two words that strike despond into the heart of any visitor to the States.

But the experience could not have been more different. The official scanned my file silently for a couple of minutes, a smile on his face. Then he said: 'Wow, that's an amazing story. ' He briskly stamped my passport, said 'Welcome to the United States, and good luck with your marriage'.

Did I mention we're getting married on September 20? We want a small, simple beach wedding, and we've decided on Puerto Rico because I'm not allowed to leave the country until about December. There will be six adults and two children in attendance.

It's good to be back in Spain Street, but the best thing about it is the garden. When I left in November, I planted two little banana trees about four feet high, salvaged from the neighbours' garden before it was demolished.

Today, after eight months of blanketing rain and heat, the taller one stands at around fourteen feet. The garden we created out of nothing is a jungle, in the nicest sense of the word: it looks like it's been there for decades.

Tomorrow we're off to Little Rock, Arkansas, to meet Pam's new granddaughter Arden. Then we're going to Eureka Springs, also in Arkansas, for the annual reunion of my new family. I went last year, and it was a baptism of fire which I wouldn't have missed for anything. After that, we have to settle down and do some work to pay for all our travels.

London

2008-02-20T13:18:00.003-06:00

Is anyone still reading this?

We're still exiled in London, and I'm wading through the mountains of paperwork it takes to get a fiancé's visa.

This afternoon I went to see my dentist, who owes me a favour after extracting so much from my mouth and my wallet over the past few months.

I had to get her to sign a passport photo for my police report, and prove to the Americans that I'm not an international criminal mastermind. I'm hoping they'll overlook my 28-year-old conviction for cycling without lights in Cambridge.

I was also bemused by the list of only twelve occupations deemed sufficiently respectable to sign passport photos, including teachers, lawyers, members of the armed forces, mayors (oh yeah, I know lots of those).

I've been enjoying our stay here - so much so that I quite like the idea of spending most of the time in New Orleans, but maybe coming back for a few months each year. The time since November has reminded me how much affection I still have for the city in which I've spent the majority of my life. For all its problems, it's getting better by the year - cleaner, better public transport, more prosperous.

I've also been appreciating the chance to spent significant amounts of time with friends and family, and my very friendly bunch of neighbours (well, some of them) here in Foxwood Road.

But I'm also looking forward to returning to New Orleans, and as soon as I do so (we're hoping maybe the end of March) I shall resume this blog.

A few shots from Lanzarote

2008-01-14T10:13:00.000-06:00

Time for da Mardi Gras, by Pam

2008-01-13T06:41:00.000-06:00

I know that I haven't done well in keeping up with this blog so let me apologize for that. I've been reprimanded by Lee and Mike, our neighbors across the road, for not giving them something to distract them whilst working. We see them regularly so it's hard to believe that there would be something I could write about that they don't already know but here goes.
My time to leave for home is fast approaching, although it is only for 3 weeks that I'm sure will pass very quickly. It will be 2 months to the day between the flight here and the return yet I still found myself saying last night that I'm running out of days to get everything done to prepare for my flight home.
We have had a few adventures since my last post. Aside from visiting here in England to see friends, we went to Lanzarote for a week with Tim and Anne Locke. They live in Lewes, south of London and Phil has known Tim since they were at Cambridge together. The Lockes were a good pair for such a holiday retreat as they encouraged excursion to other parts of the island and what magnificent excursions they were! Phil has a place on Tenerife but hadn't ventured to any of the other 6 islands that make up the Canaries. We found it to be charming and diverse, with wonderful touches of art from Cesar Manrique scattered across this lovely little escape. If you ever get the chance to visit, I say take it!
Now I'd like to address some things that have been running thru my mind in thoughts about this edition of the blog. It has struck me that most people don't greet or even make eye contact when approaching someone on the sidewalk. Coming from a place where conversations are often conducted from across the street, and often with a neutral ground in between, it feels unnatural to not acknowledge a passer-by. I've started a campaign to end this by uttering some sort of greeting to at least one person on each excursion. If everyone that reads this blog does the same thing, it won't be as noble as the motivation for Phil's walk, it might just make life around us a little brighter.
There have been things that I have discovered about London which will forever remain with me, no matter how long I go between visits. One is the sound of songbirds outside of our bedroom window. I wish I could record this magnificent sound, but I'm not sure a recording would ever do it justice. I don't know what kind of birds they are but I will miss their beautiful warbling when I've gone.
Another nice thing has been the gift of flowers from guests coming for dinner or one of our parties. We've had fresh flowers in the house much more than I have had at home and although friends at home are prone to bring wine or beer when visiting, the flowers thing has been a huge hit with me.
I'll miss the buses, trains, trams, and the Tube (London's underground transport). It has been incredible to know that walking to the end of the road or up the hill into the village is all that is between me and the rest of the city... or entire country, for that matter.
Getting to know Phil's world, his family and friends, tromping around his Alma mater at Cambridge, even thru the cold, the rain, the overcast days, has been a fabulous gift. I never envisioned living in London for 2 months, seeing the sites I've seen... and there's more to come!
I'll try to share some photos and an update during Mardi Gras but I make no promises. You can be sure I'll have alot to report, and the adventure continues when Phil meets me in Munich when I return from the States for a European escapade in which we hope to visit Austria,Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and maybe Belgium and The Netherlands.

Laissez le bon temps roulez!!!!

The Southern Belle chillin' in Jolly Ole England

2007-12-03T16:09:00.000-06:00

Well, boys and girls, since Phil didn't know what to write, not being an Englishman in a foreign country any longer, I thought I'd give a little of a Yanks perspective on y'all's neck of the woods! One thing I have to say, right off the bat, is that your weather lives up to every crappy thing I've heard and then some! We were told that the weather had been lovely... until the day before we arrived. Figures! We were greeted by a warm house, for which I was extremely grateful, and bedding was easily found since we were knackered from a longer trip than we expected.

(For those of you back home, 'knackered' means really tired. Don't worry, I'm just tryin' to speak the language here so the natives will understand me.)

The house looked a little sad from having tenants and the garden out back was in horrendous condition due to COMPLETE neglect for 18 months. The house looks like people live here again but the garden is still a jungle. I'm waiting for nice weather, which I've heard may be sometime in April or so... Hope Phil doesn't mind tending it in the cold. I'm sure I have something pressing indoors that needs my undivided attention, at least until the sun comes out!

Speaking of undivided attention, I have continued with my purse, uh, lady's handbag, idea with a new twist. Still using the cigar boxes, but with wine labels that I've had for years and maps of London, the Underground, better known here as the Tube, photos of familiar London sites tweaked on Picasa ( a Photoshop-type program from Google, check it out, I love it) and probably do some other European cities, as well. I've decided that since they're one-of-a-kind works of art, they must be named. The Tube bag is named" Mind the Gap" (Londoners will get this one),"Califonia Dreamin'" is naturally California wines, "Parlez-vous vin francais?" French wines, "In Vino Veritas"for the Italian wines since Italian is still the closest language to Latin, and with those names you should kinda get the idea.

We haven't been sightseeing (Did I mention the weather?) but we have had family and friends over to visit. Phil's sister Jacqui and brother-in-law, Richard accompanied Master Alfie Jake Goddard on his European debut. Alfie was born in August and was a trooper to travel all this way to meet his adoring fans. In honor of my fellow American, I slapped together some good ole cornbread dressing, injected a turkey and made a sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving dinner. I brought the Cajun injector (that would be like a big syringe) with me from the States and all I can say is thank the Lord for the internet! Did you know that you can make a halfway decent cornbread with DRIED POLENTA? There was even a recipe for injector liquid! Who knew it was only butter, lemon juice and chicken stock? Anyway, it was a great feast with loved ones so it was a nice way to begin the time here.

We also threw a party for the neighbors here on Foxwood Road. Between the food that I made, the back-up food that Phil bought in case we didn't have enough, 14 bottles of wine, several cans of beer, and the 16 or 17 people that we had in and out, Phil has decided that he likes having parties...so I'm going to show the Brits what we eat on New Years Day to start things off in the right direction, as well as help us revive from the previous night's festivities.

We share an evening with fanily tomorrow, then head for Lewes (that's pronouced Lewis) to visit a couple that Phil's known since his days at Cambridge, home Friday to go down to the pub with some of the neighbors, then Saturday morning, bright and early, we're headed to Leeds about 200 miles north of here. It's a couple of hours on the train, I think and it's supposed to be very pretty.

Do me a favor, would ya? Pray for a little sunshine over here? I'd greatly appriciate it and so would my dormant camera!

2007-11-11T22:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we had a yard sale to get rid of some of the stuff we threw out after having the clutter consultant in.

It was a great success, yielding a profit of over $200, and it also taught me something about the social role of yard sales, which are uncommon in the UK.

Some people came through the gate, looked over everything in seconds, and disappeared, clearly not finding what they were looking for. But others were determined to buy something, and spent half an hour or more picking over every item and bombarding us with questions before making their decision.

Several times, people sat down and exchanged life stories with us. One guy had arrived in New Orleans in a similarly unconventional way to myself: he rode randomly chosen freight trains from New York, ended up here, and liked the place so much that he stayed.

Another was the owner of a strip club in Bourbon Street, and I asked him how business was. He told me it was booming, not least because the conference trade, which collapsed after Katrina, was getting off the ground again.

At the moment there are tens of thousands of ophthalmologists in town, many making a beeline for his establishment after the day's last PowerPoint presentation on extorting vast sums of money out of unfortunate shortsighted people. The last conference had been for US police chiefs, but they had sensibly stayed away from Bourbon Street.

He bought a little portable grill, and I imagined lots of near-naked women making themselves toasted cheese sandwiches while they waited to go onstage.

Much of the stuff we were selling was Pam's old clothes, which attracted considerable attention, mostly from men. The first time it happened, I pointed out 'That's women's stuff you're looking at', but he ignored me and bought a couple of skirts. As the day wore on, we sold maybe fifteen more items, and maybe ten of those were bought by men.

Several people were in fancy dress. One guy wore a top hat so battered it looked like it had been hit by a cruise missile, and told me it was 150 years old. Another was clad in an extraordinary Mad Max assemblage, all painted in silver: miner's helmet, sleeveless singlet and lots of studs and leather. As soon as he came in, he spotted a rather fetishistic chain belt of Pam's; our eyes met, I said that's perfect for you, and he bought it.

This is a city in which many people have wardrobes full of fancy dress and bring it out at every opportunity: Mardi Gras, St Patrick's Day, Halloween.

There was more exotic clothing on the menu today, when we held a farewell party for neighbours and friends. The Saints, our local football team, were playing at home, so we timed it to start after the match, and several guests turned up in team gear, complete with gold-glitter eyeshadow and fishnets.

This is a city in which no one cares what you look like or what you get up to in your bedroom. Here, people parade around in exotic costumes for the hell of it, shedding their old identities and making up new ones as they go along.

2007-11-08T21:53:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, the signs began appearing on trees and lampposts all over town. I gave them scarcely a second glance, though the words struck a vague chord somewhere at the back of my mind.

Eventually, as the tide of publicity grew, it dawned on me: these are the opening stage directions of Waiting for Godot, and the signs were advertising free performances of the play by the Classical Theatre of Harlem.

The first night we went, it was so popular that we were turned away. But we persisted the next night, and were rewarded by one of the finest theatrical experiences I've ever been privileged to enjoy.

The setting could not have been more poignant: outdoors in the Lower Ninth ward, at a crossroads, just a few hundred yards from where the Industrial Canal levees broke.

The Lower Ninth, much of it several feet below sea level, was almost literally wiped off the map by the flooding. It was already one of the country's most poverty-stricken areas, and 98 percent of the people were black, leading conspiracy theorists to mutter, perhaps with some justice, that this part of town is low on the recovery agenda.

Where many other districts of New Orleans are now a bustling cacophony of bulldozers and jackhammers as reconstruction money starts to find its way into people's bank accounts, here all is silent. The streets are empty, the shattered houses are fast succumbing to the weeds, and there is talk of turning the area into floodplains or golf courses. This is what the world will look like when civilisation ends.

Which makes it a perfect setting for Godot, and I don't think I've ever believed in a play so much. I felt I was watching a real drama unfold before my eyes, and I cared deeply about the characters.

I'd seen the play once, and read it once, and what I remembered was the stifling sense of claustrophobia. It's as though the action takes place inside a seamless box - we can't be sure what, if anything, exists outside, because the characters' memories and perceptions of it are so flimsy and fragmented.

But this was outdoors, and real life was all too obviously happening not much more than a stone's throw away. Birds twittered, car stereos thudded, and a man shouted dementedly in the distance. There was a powerful echo, and if Pozzo yelled loudly enough into his loudhailer we heard every word bouncing back at us.

This time, I had a strong sense that the possibility of redemption lay just beyond arm's length, but the characters were so intent on waiting for God to save them that they failed to reach out and grasp the opportunity being presented to them.

Godot is a tragicomedy, and the cast milked it for every laugh and every surreptitious tear. It was a wonderful production, and yet in one sense it failed.

Before the play started, we were asked if any of us had been residents of the district. Out of 550 people, only a couple of dozen raised their hands. And later, as one cast member took a short cut through the audience, he ad-libbed: 'What a lot of white faces here in the Lower Ninth'.

Part of the purpose of tonight was to tell people here that the world still cared about them. Another part must surely have been to encourage poor black people to experience something that might otherwise have passed them by. Three of the five actors were black, their body language was black, and they inserted little black in-jokes into the script.

While we were waiting in line, an African American guy in his forties came up and asked me what was going on. I told him it was one of the greatest plays ever written.

What's it about, he asked me. But as soon as I started summarising the plot, if you can call it that, I felt stupid and knew that I'd lost him.

I heard a rumour there was free food, and I'm hungry, he said.

I told him there had been free food the previous night, but there was none on offer now. He looked disappointed, and disappeared into the darkness.

Afterwards, we stood on a dark street corner and phoned for a taxi, but like Godot it never came. Eventually, we flagged one down.

'It's lucky I happened to be passing,' the driver told us. 'The reason your cab never showed was probably because you've got the projects just round the corner, and a lot of drivers won't come here because it's all black people.'

He was from Pakistan, but he was the third taxi driver I've encountered here with less than wholesome views about the people who make up 80 percent of the population .

They always start their sentences: 'I'm not racist, but'. One, just a few nights ago, told me that the reason I sometimes found it hard to get things done in New Orleans was not because the city was recovering from a catastrophe, but because all the jobs were occupied by shiftless, inefficient blacks. Another asked whether I planned to live in this country permanently. I hoped so, I said, but there were a lot of hoops to jump through first.

'They should just let people like you in automatically,' he told me. 'You're just what this country needs. You're respectable, and you're white.'

2007-11-06T22:28:00.001-06:00

2007-11-02T20:03:00.000-06:00

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.

2007-10-28T14:20:00.000-06:00

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.

Fort Wayne, Indiana

2007-10-24T14:56:00.000-05:00

This is part of my new family. Ever since our first nervous meeting at their family reunion in July, they've made me incredibly welcome. They live in the sleepy little town of Decaturville, a couple of hours west of Nashville, Tennessee.

Starting from the left, Pam's stepfather Jerry is 58. By day, he is the sales and purchase director for a medical equipment supplier, and at nights and weekends he spends every waking hour building a huge extension to their house - the picture is taken on the porch. He is a true craftsman, a perfectionist who takes pride in his work, and it's a pleasure watching him.

I've spent many, many hours on the roof with Jerry, mostly banging in thousands of nails. He jokes that I can't hit them them in straight, but if you don't even pay peanuts you don't even get monkeys. Besides, he makes mistakes too - he just hides them better than I do. I like him very much, and we've spent so much time together that we can now understand each other's impenenetrable accents for whole seconds at a time.

Then there's Pam's mother Mary who, at 68, has discovered the secret of eternal youth: she has not a single grey hair on her head. She used to drive trucks, but recently retrained as a hospice nurse. At the moment she's recovering from a heart attack, but she should be back at work soon.

Destiny, 10, and Cheyenne, 12, are Jerry's grandchildren - he got custody of them because their parents were, to put it mildly, not making a very good job of bringing them up. They are both really lovely kids, and I admire Jerry and Mary for taking on the challenge of looking after them 24/7. I've threatened to start fining them a dollar every time they say my name, which is about five hundred times a day.

And finally, there's Pam, who needs no introduction.

They are an extremely close-knit family, and they stick together in adversity, of which they've had their fair share. I'm actually writing this from a hospital waiting room in Fort Wayne, about a hundred miles southeast of Chicago, where Pam's aunt Shirley is seriously ill after a fall. I wish her well.

I nearly forgot one other family member: Rowdy, a one-eyed pekinese/shitzu cross who more than lives up to his name. Here he is, posing with Destiny.

I said Decaturville was a sleepy little town, and that's how it looks to the casual visitor, all autumn leaves and Halloween pumpkins. But the local paper, as in most small towns, is a depressing catalogue of bounced cheques, domestic violence and petty burglary.

The other night we all went on a hayride, fifty adults and children clinging to a tractor-hauled trailer, bumping down narrow country lanes on a chilly night beneath a full moon. There was no hay because the South has been hit by a serious drought this year, but apart from that it was an idyllic scene: quintessentially autumnal, very American.

We passed a trailer, the kind people live in, its front yard littered with half a dozen rusting cars. Suddenly an overpowering, stomach-churning odour assailed our nostrils.

'Smells like someone's set light to their saucepan handle,' I remarked to Pam.

'That's no saucepan handle,' she told me. 'They're cooking crystal meth. It smells like burnt plastic, but worse.' And when we got back I checked on the internet, and she was right, as usual.

2007-10-16T23:09:00.000-05:00

Pam and I went to Florida this weekend to stay with my sister Jacqui and brother-in-law Richard, who live in Coral Springs, near Fort Lauderdale. We had two very pleasant encounters.

The first was with my new nephew, Alfie, aged seven weeks. His shirt says 'Dribbling for England', and he could probably burp and fart for his parents' home country too.

Despite his poorly developed social skills, we instantly fell in love with him. He is a real charmer, amply meriting the poster we bought him, which now hangs in pride of place on his bedroom wall.

The other meeting was with someone I haven't seen since February. Matt Gregory left his home town of Bellingham, Washington over a year ago, and has nearly finished his 5,000-mile walk to Key West in aid of cancer research. By a happy coincidence he was passing near Jacqui and Richard's home while we were there, so we collected him from Boynton Beach and put him up for the night.

Matt and I first crossed paths in El Paso, Texas - I was walking in the opposite direction. We spent a tequila-sodden day in the Mexican border town of Juarez sightseeing, comparing notes and eating boiled goats' heads.

I have huge admiration for him, (a) because by the time he finishes, he will have walked some two thousand miles further than I did, and (b) because he started out with just $2,500 in his pocket, the proceeds of selling his truck. He is also enormously likeable, and we obviously have a lot in common.

Matt was on the front page of the Miami Herald today. I felt envious and nostalgic as he vanished into the distance - I know from experience that he'll have a huge amount of adjusting to do after such a mammoth undertaking, and I hope he's as fortunate after his walk as I have been after mine.

2007-10-10T23:36:00.000-05:00

I've always hated paying other people to do things I'm perfectly capable of doing myself.

Fix my washing machine? Not my area of expertise, so I call someone who knows what they're doing. Load my dirty socks into said machine? I'll take care of that myself, thanks very much.

Rewire my house? Time to call in the professionals. Do the washing up? That's a job for Phil Goddard.

But sometimes needs must, and in this case the problem that needed urgent attention from someone else was clutter: mountains of it. We had four frying pans, six ashtrays, and no fewer than thirty bottles of Louisiana hot sauce - a staple of the local cuisine, to be sure, but still probably a lifetime's supply for a family with a cavalier attitude to birth control, let alone two people.

Often, the problem was self-perpetuating - we would tire of hunting for a stray object, replace it at great expense, and then rediscover it five minutes later.

We were full of good intentions about clearing up the Augean stable that we called home, but the problem had long since spiralled beyond our control. We were like the sorcerer's apprentice, watching helplessly as an army of bucket-toting brooms filled the house with water, and desperately awaiting the sorcerer's return to sort out the mess.

Eventually we found the sorcerer, and her name was Fanny. Remember the empty and derelict house next door whose overgrown garden we pillaged for banana, ginger and tropical ferns? Well, it's now neither empty nor derelict, but a little buzzing hive of industry, bought a few months ago by two extremely nice guys called Kevin and Matt whom we've got quite friendly with.

They've demolished part of an addition to the house to give it greater historical authenticity, and Fanny was the demolition contractor. We got friendly with her too - she was in and out of our house borrowing things like water and electricity, and we apologised for the fact that there was scarcely a square inch of sofa on which to park herself while we chatted.

'Oh, I can fix that for you,' she said. 'When do you want me to start?'

We both knew straight away that she was exactly the right person for the job: bossy, but in a nice way, with the ability to stay focused and not get sidetracked by a million tasks clamouring for her attention, a disinterested outsider who could see the wood for the trees. So we hired her on the spot.

She turned up yesterday morning, and soon we were humping boxes up and down stairs, constructing a ten-foot pile in the garden of things to sell at a yard sale, and filling black bags on an industrial scale.

At one point I saw Pam and Fanny sitting on the floor of the upstairs room that we use as a dumping ground, surrounded by piles of old electricity bills, family photographs and general junk, with a look on their faces that I interpreted as defeat. But no, they were just taking a breather from their Herculean task, and now, after two days, we've nearly finished. The house is starting to feel quite different: simpler, more spacious, and a more relaxing place to be.

Part of the reason why we needed the space is because Pam is starting a business and needs somewhere to work. After decades of cooking and waiting on tables, she's decided to exploit her natural gift for making things.

The first thing she's going to try selling is cigar-box purses - in Britain, we'd call them handbags. You take an empty cigar box -often beautiful handcrafted objects in their own right, and available for little or nothing - add a handle, some feet for it to stand on, a catch and a lining, and you've created a beautiful and unusual object which people will hopefully shell out large sums of money for.

Lots of people make cigar-box purses, churning them out at a rate of several a day, but Pam's are unique and much more labour-intensive works of art. In a New Orleans twist on a traditional artefact, she decorates hers with Mardi Gras beads , necklaces thrown into the crowd from floats in the Mardi Gras parades.

Here is one of Pam's creations, made in celebration of Endymion, one of the krewes, or carnival clubs, that form such an important part of life in New Orleans. She has turned into a one-woman factory, often working into the small hours, unable to lay down her glue gun and drill. If passion is a prerequisite of business success, then she'll do very well indeed.

2007-10-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

It was funny that I should title that last post 'Walking in New Orleans'.

Today I was cycling home when I saw a very familiar figure standing on the steps of his office and saying goodbye to some visitors. It was only when I looked up and saw the gold stars on the railings and the initials FD emblazoned above the door that it dawned on me who he was.

Seventy-nine-year-old Fats Domino lived in a relatively unassuming house here in the Lower Ninth Ward for over half a century, eschewing the trappings of wealth. When it was engulfed by eight feet of water in August 2005, he was evacuated by police and ended up at the Superdome, where refused to pull rank, stood in line for hours, booked himself in under his real name of Antoine, and ended up sleeping on the couch of a student from Louisiana State University who recognised him.

For several days he was believed to have perished, and someone wrote in red paint on the front of his house: RIP Fats. You will be missed.

I discovered his music decades ago when I saw a TV documentary called Walkin' to New Orleans, with the song of that name as the theme tune, and bought a cassette of one of his albums. I little dreamed that one day he and I would be living in the same city and I would spend so many hours walking in New Orleans.

Pam said I should have gone and introduced myself - in times past, you could knock on his door and, if you were particularly lucky, join him in a meal. But he's reportedly a lot more reclusive now.

Walking in New Orleans, 1

2007-09-29T00:19:00.000-05:00

It's very easy to kid yourself that nothing has happened in New Orleans.

Several times a week, I go for a long walk. Each time I step out of the front door into the early-morning sunshine I have to make a fundamental choice.

I can walk for miles east or west, parallel with the Mississippi. Here, the levees didn't break, the city didn't flood, and the only reminder of what happened two years ago is the occasional boarded-up window or painted cross telling us that no one died there. The faces I see are predominantly white, and the homes are all the colours of the rainbow.

Or I can stride boldly northwards towards Gentilly and Lake Pontchartrain, through what looks like the results of a particularly vicious artillery bombardment. I went to Beirut once, just a few years after the civil war, and it looked like this.

I try to go north as often as possible, just to remind myself of my good fortune in living where I do and stop myself from developing a ghetto mentality.

I am usually the only white person around, and many of the people sitting on their ramshackle front steps have defeated looks on their faces. I have to be in the right mood before I venture into this part of town.

If I'm feeling good, I concentrate on all the green shoots, the signs that New Orleans is fighting back. Some of the people at least have got their insurance money and built sparkling new homes amid the heaps of debris that line the streets.

But if it's a muggy, overcast day and I haven't woken up properly and everyone's dog barks at me, I think there's no hope for this place and it just needs to be swept clean by a giant broom so everyone can make a fresh start.

On the positive side, walking in New Orleans is anything but a solitary experience - in the space of an hour I will exchange greetings with perhaps twenty people.

A complex set of unwritten rules governs the whole salutation process, and sometimes I get it wrong - for example, you don't have to say how ya doin' to people with their backs to you, passing cyclists, or on busy main roads - but I prefer to strike preemptively by greeting almost everyone I see.

Each encounter is a pleasant little reminder of our shared humanity, the lazy pace of life here, and the old-fashioned southern courtesy that still prevails in most places. It's one of the reasons why I love it so much.

Another is that although New Orleans is one of the most car-dependent cities in America, with public transportation almost non-existent, it's a very walkable city. I've always said I'd find it difficult to live in the suburban sprawl of places like Phoenix and Los Angeles where you have to drive miles just to buy a newspaper in the morning. So for all its woes, it will do me just fine for now, thanks very much.

2007-09-03T23:43:00.000-05:00

There's some scary people out there in cyberspace.

This is a comment I received in response to my remarks about guys walking round with their trousers falling down. The writer hasn't actually bothered to read my posting, so he's completely missed the point.

I've left out the second part of his missive because it was a vicious, hate-filled rant, but here's the first.

people in this country have the right to wear what the fuck they want to.we have already lost too many of our freedoms and the last thing we need is the government telling us what we can and cant wear.you are insulted because you saw his underwear? what do you think when you see a hot chick ina thong on a public beach with kids running around?showing her ass?? huh?double standard there maybe?it ain't your business what people wear and if you dont like it then dont look.

2007-08-30T15:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina came screaming in from the sea and changed everyone's lives forever.

President Bush was in town to commemorate that terrible day, and he opened a school a couple of miles down the road from here. All morning, helicopters buzzed back and forth above our heads.

I watched him on TV giving a speech in a classroom, surrounded by black children in red uniforms. It was a pathetic performance: rambling, uncharismatic, more of an impromptu chat than an oration.

He had a card in his hand with some statistics on it - billions of dollars spent on rebuilding levees, schools reopened, that kind of thing - and whenever he started running out of ideas, he would glance down and read out another figure. Whatever the reasons he was elected, it wasn't for his oratory.

In the evening, Pam and I went to a candlelit vigil in Jackson Square, in front of the lovely black-and-white Disneyland-style cathedral that dominates the view from the river.

We listened to mayor Ray Nagin, a figure only marginally less unpopular in these parts than President Bush. He was widely criticised for dithering when it came to ordering an evacuation - though if one of the most destructive hurricanes in history was making a beeline for me, I wouldn't hang around for instructions from some politician.

Nagin told us how, on the day after Katrina, he had taken a helicopter for a tour of inspection. He was very keen to emphasise that this was not some cheapskate chartered chopper, but a Black Hawk, a deadly airborne arsenal of the kind used to pacify restless natives in Somalia.

A sign-language interpreter stood beside him, and I was hypnotised by her expressive gestures. Every now and then I could recognise a word. To say 'helicopter', she made a T of her hands, then wiggled her fingers in a semblance of rotors.

'We flew out across the northern suburbs, and saw a terrible trail of destruction,' Nagin told us. 'Then I asked the pilot to swing back here, back towards the cathedral and the Mississippi. I saw Jackson Square gleaming in the sunshine, and it was like a picture postcard.'

He was doing so well, and then, with a few ill-chosen words, he lost all my sympathy and I found it hard to keep a straight face.

'Right there, in that Black Hawk helicopter, I heard the voice of God speaking to me. He said: "Do you see that square and that cathedral? I shall spare them, so that the city of New Orleans may rise again and make a fresh start"'.

I was very taken with this image, a man with such delusions of grandeur that he had a hotline to the Supreme Being from his rotary-winged Noah's Ark. And I couldn't help wondering irreverently why God had decided to spare Bourbon Street, that great den of drink-sodden debauchery just two blocks away.

But all was not lost. Suddenly we were hearing from a string of prominent Southern preachers, including legendary civil rights activist Al Sharpton, and the mood of the crowd changed dramatically. They were electrified, as one voice after another rose in impassioned condemnation of the bedrock of injustice lying just beneath the topsoil of American society until Katrina laid it bare.

The speakers told us to yell out the names of people we knew who had died or been displaced, our hopes for the future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and how we would help to make it a better place. And we did.

Walking sombrely home, we talked about the art of speechmaking. Listening to Bush and Nagin had been a depressing experience: no fire, no passion, precious little sincerity. But it was good to know that in churches and chapels up and down the land, people could still stand up and send shivers down others' spines with a few well-crafted sentences.

2007-08-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

'Foe of baggy pants urges statewide ban', screams a banner headline in today's edition of our endearingly named (and extremely good) local paper, the Times-Picayune.

Local councilman Ronnie Smith has amended the indecent exposure ordinance in his parish (the Louisiana equivalent of a county) to fine anyone exposing their underwear in public. His is the latest of a growing number of communities to introduce such bans amid the vogue for 'low-rider' jeans.

A couple of weeks ago, in a gas station in Tennessee, we saw an example of the kind of person Smith is targeting.

A black teenager shambled across the forecourt towards his car, counting his change with one hand and holding up his beltless trousers with the other. Every so often they would fall to his ankles, and only when he reached a convenient break in his conversation with two friends would he stoop to retrieve them. All the while, his blue-and-green checkered underpants were on prominent display.

I sat there gaping until Pam admonished me. 'It's a free country,' she pointed out. 'If he wants to look stupid, that's his right.'

I couldn't agree with her more, and human rights groups across the country are up in arms, saying the rules are a violation of the constitutional entitlement to free expression.

Ronnie Smith's ban was modelled on one already imposed by Lafourche parish, where councilman Lindel Toups somewhat confusingly contends: 'We're not telling (people) how to dress, just how to wear their clothes'.

I'm not sure which is the greater human folly: a young man's belief that walking around in his boxers makes him anything but a laughing stock, or a lawmaker's hubris in assuming that he has any right to intervene.

Of course all this is a storm in a teacup, a positively picayune matter. Which brings me to the question: why would one of the country's most respected newspapers want to describe itself as 'small and of little importance', which is how Webster's online dictionary defines this word?

Well, when the paper was launched in 1837, its price was one picayune - a Spanish-American coin equivalent to a sixteenth of a dollar and derived from the Louisiana French picaillon.

The paper also publishes a weekly listings supplement called Lagniappe, a word I'd never seen before I came here, though with my semi-autistic Scrabble-player mentality I immediately spotted that it was an anagram of 'appealing'.

Once again, my wife-to-be enlightened me. 'It's a little extra gift, like when you buy a dozen beignets and the guy throws in one more for free,' she said. Lagniappe (lan-yap) is another Louisiana French word, this time from the American Spanish la ñapa, and most people round here are familiar with it.

You know you live in New Orleans when...

2007-08-20T23:46:00.000-05:00

-- You have FEMA's number on your speed dial.
-- You have more than 300 C and D batteries in your kitchen drawer.
-- Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of spaghetti.
-- You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood covering your windows.
-- You keep an ax in your attic and you know why.
-- When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a safe hallway.
-- Your social security number isn't a secret, it's written in magic marker on your arms.
-- You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.
-- You are delighted to pay only $3.50 for a gallon of regular unleaded.
-- The road leading to your house has been declared a no-wake zone.
-- You decide that your patio furniture looks better at the bottom of the pool.
-- You own more than three large coolers.
-- Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; now you can assemble a portable generator by candlelight
-- You catch a 13-pound redfish in your driveway.
-- You can recite from memory whole portions of your homeowner's and flood insurance policies.
-- At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the biggest chainsaw.
-- You have had tuna fish more than 5 days in a row.
-- There is a roll of tar paper in your garage (if you still have a garage).
-- You can rattle off the names of the meteorologists who work for the Weather Channel and you want to name your next child after that guy.
-- Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof.
-- Your "drive-thru" meal consists of MREs and bottled water.
-- You spend more time on your roof than in your living room.
-- You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder or tree worker.
-- A battery-powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.
-- You don't have to worry about relatives wanting to visit during the summer.
-- Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's Christmas.
-- You know the difference between the "good side" of a hurricane and the "bad side."
-- You still think it's normal to live below sea level.

2007-08-17T21:20:00.000-05:00

New Orleans is an extremely friendly city. This is partly because it's America; partly because it's the South, and some of it is also a camaraderie borne of shared adversity during Katrina and Rita.

So you're never alone when you're sitting outside on our veranda. There's a dog park just down the street, so dozens of dog walkers parade by at every hour of day and night, and almost no one passes without a brief conversation.

On Tuesday night we were out on the steps with two of the neighbours, beer bottles piling up on the sidewalk as we tried vainly to combat the stifling heat, discussing the latest in an endless sequence of Louisiana bribery scandals.

A guy walked past with his dog, and we exchanged greetings. A minute later two cyclists pedalled silently past and into the darkness.

New Orleans is also an extremely crime-ridden city. It's the murder capital of the United States, and police have just announced that violent crime is up 31 percent over the past year.

Fifty yards down the road the cyclists pulled over, waved an unidentified object at the dog walker, told him it was a gun, and ordered him to hand over everything he had. Fortunately he was travelling light - all he had was a phone, which he gave them. We continued our noisy conversation, oblivious of the drama being acted out a long stone's throw away.

Only later, still badly shaken, did the victim tell us what had happened. We had experienced the best and worst of New Orleans in the same evening.

In other news, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco has declared a state of emergency as the first major hurricane of the season heads our way. The latest forecasts suggest it may make landfall well to the west, in Texas.

In the meantime, Pam has achieved the rare distinction of having two hurricanes named after her. The first was fictional: Pam was the name given in 2004 to a very realistic simulation of a hurricane, used to test the state's preparedness. But this time it's for real: my fiancée's last name is Dean.

2007-08-12T23:03:00.000-05:00

Even by the steambath standards of a southern summer, this has been a hot one.

Today the temperature at Audubon Park, which houses the city's zoo, hit a record-breaking 102F (39C). As I write this at 11 pm the mercury is still hovering around 90F (32C), and when I venture gingerly outside the front door of our airconditioned home, I have an inkling of how a chicken leg feels when it's taken out of the freezer and placed on the top shelf of the oven.

Weather is a dominant topic of conversation here at the best of times - we're just approaching the height of the hurricane season and the second anniversary of Katrina, and people are jittery - but the two words on everyone's lips at the moment are 'heat index'. My oven analogy was possibly not wholly appropriate: Arizona may be an oven, but here in the dripping swamps of Louisiana the 60 percent humidity means that on days like today, the temperature feels more like 115F (46C).

'The oppressive heat and humidity make the summer months a misery', opines Lonely Planet's guide to New Orleans. Well, I beg to differ.

When Pam and I went to Paris last month, we had to don sweaters and buy umbrellas - neither of which we'd expected to need in midsummer. Now that's what I call misery.

I like the way the heat here envelops me in its sensual embrace. I like the way it slows everything down, and forces me to allow extra time to leave for appointments so I don't arrive dripping with sweat - though even if I do, no one seems to mind, because they're dripping with sweat too. And I like the fact that the sun never stops shining for very long, and we can grow bananas in our garden.

So there.

New Orleans

2007-08-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

I hope no employees of the department of homeland security are reading this, because I'm about to be rather uncomplimentary about one of their number.

We're back home after several weeks of me introducing Pam to family and friends in England, where she appears to passed their intense scrutiny with flying colours, sunning ourselves on the beach in France, and Pam introducing me to her family in Tennessee (of which more anon).

I've always been aware of the enormous privilege my 18-month, multiple-entry visa represents - most people only get six months, and I never take this generosity for granted. But this time, I only got back into the country by the skin of my teeth.

A recent report prepared for the commerce department found that the United States' share of the world tourism market fell by 20% in the six years to 2006, despite the dollar plummeting to record lows. It said part of the reason for the fall was the hostile reception - long queues, photographs, fingerprints and general rudeness - awaiting many foreign visitors to the US.

Geoff Freeman, executive director of the Discover America Partnership, a coalition of businesses seeking to boost America's image around the globe, said: ‘People find that experience to be awful. They believe they are treated like criminals. The system is an inefficient and unfriendly process. We’re talking about staffing and basic customer service.’

Why am I telling you this? Because I experienced it at first hand when Pam and I arrived on the flight from London.

'How long are you planning to stay?' asked the immigration official when I finally reached the front of the usual interminable queue.

'Until my visa expires in November, hopefully,' I told him. He raised an eyebrow, spent a long time tapping away at his computer, and then said: 'I want you to go to the secondary screening office over there to your right, and answer a few questions.'

My heart sank, and I felt rather as though Winston Smith must have done when he was packed off to room 101. I'd already had an encounter with secondary screening the last time I arrived, to do my walk across America, and I still had the bruises from that occasion.

It was half an hour before I was called forward to stand in front of the desk like some petty offender cowering in the dock.

The officer wasted no time launching into his tirade. 'It says here you want to stay till the end of your visa,'he snapped. 'What makes you think you're entitled to do that? And who gave you an eighteen-month visa, anyway? The maximum is six months.'

I told him that there had been special circumstances involved because I'd been walking across America.

'That makes it even worse,' he persisted angrily. 'You know you're not allowed to work.'

No, walking, I said, making a little gesture with my hand by way of demonstration, two fingers trotting across the desk. He ignored me.

'Just because it says multiple entry doesn't mean you can come in as many times as you like,' he said, inexplicably. 'I'm going to have to send you home, but I can't do anything for now because our system has crashed. Go and sit over there.'

By now Pam had come to find me, and we sat despondently for another half hour or more, discussing what we'd do if I had to leave the country. Then my nemesis summoned me to the bench again to deliver his verdict.

'We've decided to let you in for three months,' he told me. That was a month short of the date my visa expired, but it was better than nothing.

I pushed my luck and pleaded for an extra month, but he was unmoved, still unable to fathom why anyone should want to walk from New York to Los Angeles.

Then Pam had a bright idea. She pulled out a Daily Mirror article about how we'd met, and just as she did so a supervisor strolled over. He took the piece of paper from his colleague, scanned it briefly, and said: 'Give him till November'.

It was an exact replay of the previous time, when they'd made me feel about as welcome as Osama bin Laden, refusing to give me any more than six months until I virtually got down on bended knees in front of the supervisor's supervisor.

I wondered whether it was some kind of choreographed bad-cop-good-cop routine, designed to prevent people from being complacent about being allowed into the country, or whether my oppressor simply failed all the exams at charm school.

Scotts Hill, Tennessee.

2007-07-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

Excuse the long silence - I've been away in England and France, and now I'm staying with Pam's sister Leah and her family in Tennessee.

We stayed in the south of France for a couple of weeks, and then spent a day in Paris on the way back. It was unseasonably cold with frequent heavy showers. Then the rain stopped, the sun came out, a rainbow appeared above the rooftops, and we went up the Eiffel Tower.

There was a sign at the bottom saying level 3, the top of the tower, was closed. But we still thought it was worthwhile going to level 2, and as it happened level 3 had reopened when we arrived.

At the top, a thousand feet above the rainswept streets, I said to Pam: 'I'm glad we made it all the way up here. It wouldn't have been the same if I'd asked you to marry me halfway up the Eiffel Tower."

'What?' she said.

Then I asked her to marry me, and after about a nanosecond's hesitation she flung her arms round me and said yes. So what had been rather a miserable day suddenly took a distinct turn for the better.

This is a photograph taken immediately after I popped the question.

Freezer jolly bad fellow (allegedly)

2007-06-05T00:24:00.001-05:00

Even as it struggles to pick up the pieces after Hurricane Katrina, this is a wonderful, vibrant city. But it has a dark side too, in which a long history of poverty and economic weakness has spawned a culture of widespread corruption.

New Orleans made international headlines today with the indictment of local Democrat congressman William Jefferson on charges of bribery, obstruction and racketeering. If found guilty on all counts, he faces up to 235 years in jail.

Jefferson, and more specifically one of his household appliances, have been the butt of endless jokes here ever since I first visited last year.

In August 2005, FBI agents raided his Washington home and found $90,000 in his freezer, wrapped in aluminium foil and stuffed inside plastic boxes. They allege that the numbers on the notes match those on a $100,000 bribe paid to him by an informant.

As an outsider to American politics, there were two things about this story that I've never understood. One was relatively trivial, and easily clarified; the other is much more important, but remains a mystery to me.

One of the charges of which Jefferson stands accused is wire fraud, an odd-sounding concept that doesn't exist in English law and which I've never understood. So I asked my resident legal expert, and Pam told me that it simply means any form of fraud in which electronic communications were used.

So, for example, if I advertised something on eBay, you sent me money, and I didn't deliver the goods, that would be wire fraud. Likewise, if I advertised a non-existent item in a newspaper and you put a cheque in the post, that's mail fraud.

Both carry substantially heavier penalties than ordinary fraud, and both are essentially legal pretences. Most fraud involves some kind of communication by one or other means, but the concepts of wire and mail fraud turn local offences into ones that cross state lines, allowing the federal authorities to grab power from local and state investigators.

So I learned something today. But what I still don't understand, and maybe there's someone out there who can enlighten me, is this.

The facts of the case have been in the public domain for a long time, and two former aides of 'Cold Cash Jefferson', as he's widely known, have already pleaded guilty. Rolling Stone magazine nicknamed him 'Bribe Taker'. And yet in a runoff election in December, he romped home with a 57% share of the vote.

I just wonder what that says about the 35,000 people who cast their ballots for him, and about their tolerance of politicians who betray their oaths of office.

Jungle warfare

2007-06-03T22:35:00.000-05:00

For years, I used to share my fantasy with anyone who'd listen.

I wanted to win the rollover in the lottery (not the easiest of undertakings, since I never bought a ticket), wave adieu to my ho-hum, humdrum life as a freelance translator, and build a vast avant-garde conservatory over my back garden in London, a tower of Babel so dizzying it would make the palm house at Kew look like a garden shed.

Then I'd run up sky-high heating bills creating my own dripping rainforest of waterfalls, exotic fruit, and sinister-looking carnivorous plants. I'd make Alan Titchmarsh an offer he couldn't refuse: give up his job as Britain's foremost TV gardener and be my full-time horticultural adviser. No, on second thoughts, not Alan Titchmarsh: that one who never wears a bra.

At first, the curtain-twitching neighbours would mutter behind my back about this blot on the landscape, but gradually they'd succumb to the heady fragrance of oleander, wet decomposing leaves, and the hundreds of beers on tap in my free 24-hour bar.

Well, that particular ambition may have come to naught, but I've got the next best thing: a garden in steamy, sticky, stifling, sweaty, sultry, sweltering New Orleans. As a bonus, I have a wonderful woman who shares my obsession with all things green and pleasant, and a fridge full of Sam Adams.

The yard beside our house is about a hundred feet by fifteen, and when we arrived there was nothing very much in it. Months later, it's fast becoming full to overflowing, and if we don't kick our addiction to plant acquisition soon we're going to need medical detox.

I call it guerrilla gardening, because much of it involves outright theft.

The house next door is empty, lost in a Dickensian legal limbo, slowly going to rack and ruin. So the other day we hopped over the fence with a spade each and helped ourselves to half the garden. There was so much of it, a tangled riot of ginger, bananas and huge-leafed elephant ears (that's one in the picture at the top) that the owners will never notice it's gone.

We also go for a daily walk which, since the Pacific Ocean got in the way of my hiking ambitions, I've vowed to do for the rest of my life. And we always make sure we have at least one pair of scissors with which to purloin cuttings.

Once, we passed a tract of waste ground which was being dug up by a trio of exhausted-looking Hispanic labourers. Strewn abandoned in a pile were dozens of sunflowers and rudbeckia - everything blooms much earlier here than in London - so we came home triumphantly clutching armfuls of these. And on the way back, we helped ourselves to the abandoned, rusting supermarket trolley (or should I say shopping cart?) that now houses Pam's herb garden.

I have a feeling that plants and planting are going to play an important part in this blog, so better get used to it.

Pam and I are off to England and France on Tuesday for five weeks. I may do some more posts while we're away, but I'm currently engaged in the thoroughly pleasant task of deciding where to go with someone who's never visited my home country before. And the one place that's top of the list: Kew Gardens.

Welcome to The Pod

2007-05-31T19:55:00.001-05:00

This is our house at 631 Spain Street, New Orleans. We call it The Pod because it's green and has two Ps in it.*

We put the flags up a week or so ago to make it even more colourful than it already is. You could make a really good living selling flags in New Orleans because everyone has them. The one in the middle features the fleur-de-lys emblem of the city's founding dynasty, the Bourbons. Flags are a great way of making a statement about who lives inside, as in the example below, round the corner from us.

Our house is called a shotgun double. 'Shotgun' means the rooms are arranged in such a way that if you fired a gun through the front door, the bullet would exit through the back without being obstructed by any walls - an experiment performed on an almost daily basis in this city, where the homicide rate is ten times the national average.

'Double' is what in Britain would be called semidetached, except that here, unusually, the houses are back to back instead of side by side. Our landlord, Steve, lives in the one at the back.

We live in Faubourg Marigny, known for short as the Marigny. This is the next district down the Mississippi from the French Quarter, the city's tourist and entertainment hub. It's just as colourful and historic as the Quarter, but without the drunken students vomiting up their margaritas in shop doorways.

Fortunately it escaped significant damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, so it's an oasis of tranquillity amid a desert of destruction - you don't have to travel far to find large areas of abandoned housing.

I tend to like ultramodern architecture, and my place back in London is a somewhat minimalist 1960s box with a grey and white interior, but I think The Pod is beautiful. We spend a large part of our lives outdoors: working with laptops, gardening, and sitting on the swing chair on the porch, shooting the breeze with neighbours and passers-by.

This is Pam watching TV in our living room, from where a spiral staircase leads up to one of the two bedrooms.

*Just like a grasshopper, or an apple - perhaps an unripe Cox's Orange Pippin. Can anyone think of any other examples?