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What I was going to post about today was the events of the last few days - going down to Mobile and Dauphin Island and swimming in the sea and sunbathing on a deserted white sand beach, going to Atlanta and ending up in an Arsenal-supporting bar showing the England U21 game, etc. But somehow how, I don't have the heart. A huge thunderstorm is breaking overhead, the rumbles shaking the floor of Beacon Street. The sky is mourning Charlie with torrential rain and sheets of pink lightning.

Tragedy I have very sad news to report to the blogosphere. Charlie the duck is dead. Myself, I can hardly believe it. My parents had arrived barely three hours earlier, Charlie had been introduced, he had run up to them in a friendly fashion, and then, after dinner, disaster struck. Johnny Parker and his dog Doofus came round and while I was chatting to Johnny, the dog wreaked death upon the duck. By the time I raced out screaming to try to rescue him, it was too late, although I didn't realise it at the time - I thought the duck was merely in shock. But then my father went out to look and he came back looking solemn. I cried a rather embarrassing amount. I screamed at Johnny and I kicked Doofus, to whom I will never lavish any love or kindness ever again. Charlie was by far the most affectionate of my feathered charges. He would eat out of my hand and follow me around the back yard. He would let me stroke him and every morning he nearly exploded of over-excitement when I would com...

Exciting food news this week - I have a teapot! I had been completely unable to find a teapot here so my kind friend brought me one from England....I'm in tea-drinking heaven. Also, my little black book has arrived. I'm excited. I even took a picture of it with my friend's camera (mine is temporarily non-functional) but my new wireless connection has some weird firewall issues going on which has stopped me uploading it, so you'll just have to wait...

This week's lack of blog entries has again not ben anything to do with a lack of events, but because I've been having Company to stay in the palatial shed of Beacon Street. Which means we've been running around, cramming in all the possible activities in West Alabama into a few short days and combining that with drinking a lot of beer and a lot of late-night conversations. But it has been a lot of fun, especially given the blissful weather over the last few days - a hot, sunny spell that ended in a huge thunderstorm last night. We had been at my bandmate Brian's house picking and eating hotdogs, because his parents were in town and they'd never heard the band play, and afterwards we decided to go out to Perry Lakes Park to see the Rural Studio projects there together. We got there as the sky was darkening and incredibly bright, jagged flashes of pink lightning sheeted across the sky. By the time we finished walking round the projects, it was dark and the first drops...

I'm sure everyone in the architecture world is writing about this, but I read today that a City and Guilds survey shows that architects are the unhappiest profession. Well, what can I say...those of us who are avid readers of the rags like BD and the AJ (yes, they even are sometimes spotted in Alabama) already know that architecture firms have a bad long hours culture, are underpaid, and put off women by the macho building culture and by being horribly un-family friendly. This always amuses me because people from outside of architecture always say how they wish they could be architects, how well-paid we all are, and apparently, how attractive, given the number of surveys which name architects as the ideal marriage material. To all the moaning architects, I would say, just do something about it. The majority of you work for yourselves, or for relatively small firms. It's not like you're a civil servant in the faceless halls of bureaucracy, unable to change your job descript...

I was sitting on Fajita Monday at the local Mexican pondering the lack of subject material for my food blog. It's not that I haven't been eating, it's not that I've been eating particularly badly, it's perhaps that I've been in one of those phases where I dont' eat anything that is either so spectacularly awful or so blazingly fantastic that I feel the need to rush home and write about it. I've been making more lunches for myself, to eat in the sunny back yard with my rooster and duckling pecking around, but they've been mostly along the lines of a simple spaghetti, leftovers, noodles and miso soup, or something-on-toast. I've eaten out, but nowhere that I haven't already mentioned several times. I did have very good barbecue twice recently - at Thomaston as the reward for lifting about a hundred poop logs [RS nickname for large railway sleeper-type objects made out of compressed household waste) into place, and at Butch's Doonanny where...

Apologies to my regular readers for a lack of posts! this is not due to nothing happening here - quite the contrary - but rather my having to impose some self-discipline in order to get my book research done for GPA . But there have been many things to blog over the last week - a misty, drizzly day driving around on slightly failed missions, listening to Tom Waits while watching the landscape of the Black Warrior slide by; the Doonanny where much fun was had by all in the Woods of Wonder; the continuing growth and development of my animals, who also came to the Doonanny due to a lack of babysitters in Greensboro. Me and the chick and the duckling in the green jeep with bluegrass on the iPod, driving through a blissfully warm and sunny Alabama set the weekend off to a perfect start. Long-lost friends from England, playing the blues in the sunshine, folk art and cold beer...I almost forgave Butch for getting too sentimental to butcher his pigs Oxford and Dictionary which he had been rai...

OK, so now and then, like any blogger, I check my hit counts (not that impressive, sadly) and it's always funny to see why people came across my blog. Now, which of you out there googled "loftus nightlife pictures" and got me? is someone really that interested in how I look in Club 28, or rather where is Loftus the town/city?

For your delectation, I reproduce my first ever fan mail. Check out the redneck spelling. I'm proud. HEY GUYS.SAW YALL AT THE ABMA SATURDAY NIGHT.YALL WERE AWESOME.IT WAS THE FIRST TIME WE HEARD YALL.ALL OF YALL WERE GREAT.HANA IS ONE THE BEST FIDDLE PLAYERS IVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME,AND ALSO ONE OF THE PRETTIEST. IF YALL HAVE ANY CDS FOR SALE I WOULD REALLY BE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING SOME. (name and address withheld!)

What a lovely surprise to get a package all the way from Guam with not only the promised CD from Santos but also a package of breakfast miso soup sachets, real ones with no English writing on them. Yummy, and just what I needed to assuage the hangover, no effort required. They have little pieces of dried tofu, seaweed and little dried spring onion rings in them, in case you were wondering. Thanks Santos!

Yesterday was, in its simple way, a perfect day in West Alabama, the kind of day that makes you nostalgic for it before it's even over, that makes me not want to leave here, ever. After a Friday night grilling steaks and playing late-night pool at the 28 Club with Chip (in its way also rather perfect), it was up in the morning for a day of bluegrassing at the ABMA showcase in Bessemer. It was a beautiful sunny day, clear blue sky, no humidity, a warm breeze. Up we drove to the Bessemer Civic Centre, where the showcase (10 hours, 20 bands, jam sessions upstairs) was being held. It being too beautiful to go inside right away, we started out playing under the acacias in the car park, attracting a few onlookers and greeting fellow musicians as they arrived. Then it was inside to start the jamming in earnest, taking up residence upstairs with Ted's father George and some of his band members, including their wonderful and absolutely poker-faced mandolin player. They say of him that y...

My small ornithological charges continue to grow at an astonishing rate. Charlie the duckling knows how to swim, which I suppose shouldn't surprise me, but seeing as he'd never been in water before I tried him out in our tin cattle trough, nevertheless filled me with motherly pride. As does the way he follows me around when I let him out of his pen. The rooster can also be lured out anywhere if you call his name and shake the bag of feed in his direction. They all eat and shit an amazing amount. My latest new skill is wiring. I now can wire up outlets, lights, and switches! a small victory.

OH NOOOO..... we're out . I'm actually rather glad I'm not in England for this football season. Next year, going by how we generally do, should be way better. One day we'll manage to string two good years together...

Hanification now registers on Google (along with some stuff about China that is obviously not nearly as important.) The OED will surely follow...

Yesterday was another good civic function in Greensboro which passed off to the accompaniment of the Kudzu String Band - the 175th anniversary of the Episcopalian Church, which they were celebrating with a wine-and-cheese do from four to six, followed by a catfish fry. It was quite bizarrely civil, taking place in one of Winnie Cobbs' B&Bs which are all antique furniture, portraits, drapes and impeccably clean crystal. If you can tell a lot by someone's bookshelves, make what you will of 'Confederate Currency' nestling with Simon Schama's 'Citizens'. The crowd was rather like a drinks party in Suffolk - everyone very jovial from the wine, the upper and middle classes making conversation in their buff jackets and floaty scarves, the rather jolly vicar (sorry, preacher), deacon and bishop trotting around with pink cheeks. I saw only one black face, which belonged to an elegant but aloof older woman. One could have been oblivious to the fact that this is on...

I know it's a cliche, but I do find it quite wonderful that I can sit in the back yard of an abandoned auto garage in a forgotten small town in Alabama, with my bare legs in the sun and my chickens pecking around, and do useful work for a cutting-edge UK company by surfing the web from my laptop. Inside, some friends make huge papier-mache puppets for a short film they will shoot with a pocket DV camera and edit in iMovie. How did we ever live without this stuff? It is ultimately liberating, enabling a lifestyle choice that questions every convention about where we need to live and why. Why do I have to return to the UK? well, the only reason really seems to be that the US government requires me to have one of those old-fashioned visas, and my perfect lifestyle choice unfortunately doesn't qualify me for a green card. Though if they'd ever find me in Hale County, I don't know...

Well, so so many exciting things to report, I hardly know where to start. Lots of things have arrived at Beacon Street in the last few days. A new laptop! I'm writing this at my spanking new G5 powerbook, bought at great crippling expense to myself to replace old 'bruised and battered', my faithful friend, whose battering (as seen in previous posts) finally got to be too much. The joy. Animals! I am the proud custodian of a 6 month old rooster and a baby duck, bought from the egg-man himself, Jimmy Jones of Marion. This has been a whole learning curve since 4pm yesterday when we carried back Lucky Ducky the rooster (who shat in Carol's car on the way home) and Charlie the duck, along with a very small baby hen-chick. The first, and saddest part, is that Charlie turned out to be a bit of a bully despite his young age. He nearly drowned the chick in the water-bowl we gave them (thinking they could share) and then pecked it to death. So, tragedy came early but we hope that...