I am in an airport

I am in the airport known as JFK waiting for a flight to Sao Paolo. It is a six hour wait, which is quite long.  From Sao Paolo, I will go to Porto Alegre, and from there, to a suburb and an office. We are unlikely to see much of Porto Alegre, although it has (apparently) an enchanting late Victorian central market, where I could (if I wished) buy gee-gaws and sparkling items, and outfits with which to dress up as a goucho.

On Thursday I will take a 6am flight from Porto Alegre and go to New York. I will be there for 3 days.  I will have some meetings and some dinners with old friends, and my "husband", the French-Canadian veterinary research histopathologist with whom I share my life (and fleas) and I will wander the streets and possibly sleep. We will have dinners. I will not go to either Eileen Fisher or Anthropologie and buy everything in both shops (especially not the plates). We will fly back to Burlington, again, and from there we will drive home.

Anyhoo. I have been visiting things. Here are my reviews.

Miami
Hot as all hell and like in the pictures. Lots of ladies with scrawny bodies and sun damage. They have heads like horses and eyes brimming with despair. I think they should eat some cakes and not spend so much time on pedicures and all of that.  Lots of French people and Quebec people in the W being knobbers.  Didn't see much of it, to be fair; spent most of the time buying emergency projectors for $700 and sweating.  The Standard is where I would stay if I had to go to Miami again for work. It has views of the lake, Chinese ladies singing jazz, yoga twats in $500 outfits, and millionaire hipsters sitting in swing seats, drinking ironic beer.  

Austin
Hot as hell and not like anything else. It is great and people really do wear boots, even when it's hot.   I had Mexican food there and it was brilliant.  There are hippies there and all of that.  On my first day there I was offered a beer, a discussion about Lakeland terriers and threatened with a gun within 3 minutes by the same people - a generously butch couple fresh from their holidays in the Isles of Lesbos, who I intend to visit next time I am 'in town' (week after week after next). I go there a lot so it's just as well I like it.  Austin is a bit like Montreal and Amsterdam. People don't give a shit and don't sneer. I like that in a city.


Burlington
I hate Burlington and I've never even seen it. I just go to the airport and get picked up my by "husband' (a man who is an intriguing mix of sociopath and saint), or driven from there to my house by a serial killer called Don who lives in his van and has a girlfriend called Betty who eats crips and rides shotgun (with me paying).   When Don gets lost (which is often), he ignores his GPS, maps and me and chooses instead to call his friend Merv, who reads extracts from Wikipedia to him via a hands-free device patented by Sir Clive Sinclair in 1984. Last time, we were 3 hours late.

Montreal
This is where I live now, except I am not really seeing much of it because I am working all the time.  It is my choice to work, but I am not managing to remain truly non-working in my heart, which is an ishoo, as I am sure you will agree.

Enough of that.  I am in the "Skylounge" with only 2 hours to go until my 11 hour flight to Brazil boards. I am grateful I am in a 'lounge' and not downstairs. I am eating free peanuts and drinking free wine, and being called madam.  It is, of course, the beginning of the end.  I do not like corporate hotels, but I am consciously choosing a certain type of hotel to collect points. The only place I want to go is home, or maybe Stockholm for a holiday, but I get cross when the work travel agency forget to redeem my flight points against my 3 different cards.

It is odd to see them written down, those things. Even when I do them I am aware they are ridiculous, but for a while, this is what I have chosen to do.  But I must confess that it is nice to be writing with my tiny little monkey hands again. Tap tap tap.

Pip "tap tap" pip

NWM

Items of moderate interest

I have been to Miami of late.  Called a "fucking shit" by a cab driver with one leg, I drank too much tequila and nearly fell in the hotel pool.

The next day, returning to Canada via Burlington (for reasons too distressing to relate), I was followed on two flights by a woman with the kind of voice that causes parts of  your skull to shrink closer to your brain to protect it from bad forces. "I saw something so cool outside Target this morning", she said. "A man with only a head and a torso, on a stand. No arms. No legs. Just a head and a torso, on a stand. Sad. But also SO COOL. Do you want a breakfast burrito?"

Her children did not want a breakfast burrito. Nor did the "maid", or her husband, Eric.

I will write more in a minute. I have to go and eat a tortilla. I am scared.

I am going full-tilt with the 'holiday snaps'

Actual house where we are staying. All of England looks exactly like this.

"I tell you who would find this interesting. Graham. He loves this sort of thing."

We did not see any froglets.

Old pots and stuff.

Bee things.

Gigantic English bee.

Gigantic sandwiches.

N-Dubz is my favourite food, too

There is a lot going on in Cornwall.

I supply more photographs of my 'holiday'

Vanity!!!

We didn't, but only because it is illegal to take bulbs back to Canada and, as everyone knows, I am very law-abiding (apart from the whole hams)

I do not wish to view Rolf Harris' new works. Also, since when did he paint with his mouth?

I am on holiday

It has been "all over the gaff" on the internet front, but now I am in a place called Shop, and BT are offering me the internets for only fifteen British pounds for five days.  It is great! Last week we went to  Llandudno for a bit (i.e.  4 hours). It is quite amazing: there are over three (3) shops hiring out those mobility scooter things, and sometimes game old gentlemen get stuck in pub doorways trying to execute a three point turn. I do not have photographic evidence of that, but I do have other photographs. Here are some of them:

There will be more. Until then I remain, in this, as in all weathers,

NWM