I am returned from Austin

I am coming round to North America.  People are (on the whole) very polite, and when they ask you how you are, they are actually interested. Also, when they say that they think something is "awesome", they probably mean it.  I like the enthusiasm, even if I can do without the whooping.  Oh, I know there are cockmonkeys here, as there are everywhere (e.g. people on the telly shouting "Go USA!!!" in bars the night Bin Laden was killed), but I am now a non-subscriber to the supercilious condencension of the Europeans who believe that "America" is all the same, in the same way that some Americans believe that "Europe" is all the same. 

Anyhoo.  Austin's good. I was there for a week. Within ten minutes of arriving, I had been offered a beer, a squeeze of a Lakeland Terrier and a gypsy cab. Brilliant. I had to travel back to Montreal via Vermont, but what I thought would be a womantic weunion with my husband turned sour when we were woken at 7am by a man (apparently organising some sort of local history grouping) shouting in reception. Sourness turned to disappointment when the "delicious breakfast sourced from locally sourced ingredients" (fuck's sake) was replaced by a "Flapjack Buffet".  

In another amusing linguistic twist, it turns out that Flapjacks in Vermont are not biscuits involving oats and syrup, but pancakes. Pancakes served by ladies the same group as Shouting Man. Ladies who told us that there were no eggs.  Ladies who looked like they were shouted at a lot by Shouting Man, and were tired of it, tired to their very bones.  I did not like it, the lack of breakfast.  I did not like being charged all the money for our room, despite the rubbishness of the early morning alarm and the breakfast that was not there, and despite the one-eyed Labrador. The girl with the stupid face was apologetic enough, but it was a matter of principle, that $165, and matters of principle are things I find myself talking more and more about as I get older. In five years' time I will be insufferable. 

Here are some pictures. The beginning is Austin sorts of things, then there are photos of the floods in Vermont. The floods that did not excuse the lack of eggs and the Shouting Man. 

 

Beautiful tea bought by the English ladies I was sitting next to on the flight from Newark to Austin.  Seven British pounds, apparently.

Riff Randall Panty Explosion

On the Cinco di Mayo, I drank too much beer and wine with my esteemed colleagues and, weaving back home down South Congress, walked past a bar. I heard some good music. I paid $6. I went in. It was worth all the money in the world because in it was a band called Greyhounds. They are in London this week, I think. You should go and see them if you can.

Pip "I have ordered some cowboy boots" pip

NWM