... been to Lynchburg, Tennessee

NB: If anyone's confused by the apparent sudden return to the States, a couple of weeks after I got home, don't be: over the next few days/weeks I will be posting the blogs I wrote but didn't upload on the trip, when Hurricane Isaac got rather t(r)opical and I posted about that instead.

23 August, 2012

So I'm typing this in the back of a hire car driven by a woman I met a couple of hours ago called Cecily, who is on an impromptu holiday around the south. The reason Bex isn't driving the car is that the car hire company at the airport refused to accept her debit card as security for our (prepaid) car. So we got a ride …

Cecily is a feisty fortysomething redhead with something of the younger Susan Sarandon about her – she's down from Rhode Island on an Elvis-themed fly-drive, and works as a speech pathologist. I had visions of  a CSI-style job, analysing the speech patterns of killers' telephone threats – but it turns out she's what we'd call a speech therapist. Still, she and Bex bond over their respective vocations, helping the young with their stutters (Cecily) and their ASBOs (Bex).

Our chauffeur for the day

... been to a hurricane party

Monday, 27^th August 2012

The night before Isaac was due to hit, Bex and I were invited for drinks and dinner at the house of my friend Lander (whom I know through my very excellent ex Paul Eros – they studied together at Corpus Christi, when I was going out with Paul). Lander's family seat is in the Garden District, on Prytania Street – a good couple of miles west of our new billet at the Melrose Mansion, which is on the corner of Burgundy and Esplanade.

We weren't sure how easy it would be to get a taxi, but we had a mission to fulfil (we'd asked if we could bring anything to the party and Lander suggested gin) so we decided to walk west to Canal and look out for an off-licence on the way. We found a small general store with a wide range of booze, but no gin (it's not big in the South, which is odd, considering how refreshing a gin & tonic is – not to mention the medicinal properties of quinine).