It's back to Bama after the break, via a night in Atlanta with my housemate, who used to study there. A last breath of 'civilisation', in the form of wine on the porch with friends and hip-hop at MJQ's, the classic Atlanta club full, on a Friday night, of black b-boys from the 'ghetto' inner-city neighbourhoods, bling black girls, and white wannabes and hipsters. Driving though Atlanta reinforces what a perverse and typically American city it is; wealthy white students living in heavily gated communities in 'hip' (ie mixed-race and a bit on the wild side) neighbourhoods, miles of run-down black neighbourhoods without a white hipster to be seen, trendy graffiti-art cafes and a magazine called Creative Loafing, horrible new gated developments springing up everywhere, aping 'dense' and 'urban' block types but with no street access except through two sets of alarmed gates. Warehouse developments for hip, left-field young professionals, who in London would be vying with each other to live in 'edgy' parts of town like Dalston, are similarly fortified, and these bright young things never walk the streets, only drive.

And, strangest of all, a tribe of black cowboys riding the sidewalks on a Saturday lunchtime.