I've been eating rather well over the last week as a result of the influx of European visitors with refined tastes to redneck West Alabama. A trip to Atlanta airport with Quentin inevitably turned into an excuse to eat at a real, good restaurant with real wine, and then a trip to DeKalb Farmers Market in order to stock up on food for the parents, who I knew would not be content with eating at the Mexican and Buck's but would require cooking for in some way. Then they arrived laden with food from California - real cheese with oatcakes to eat it with, herbs, sourdough bread, organic salads, and best of all, a gift of half a dozen bottles of Ridge Wine from their previous hosts in the US of A. (These are the times I thank my lucky stars that my father is in the wine business.)

So we had real meals with more than one course, including that precious commodity of lamb (impossible to buy in this state), and real wine and real cheese and real chocolate with our coffee afterwards. Actually, we ate pretty simply, but for me it was an unusual civility to have meals with equally food-prioritising souls.

Then over to Butch's where him, his father and other friends had been cooking up an absolute feast of real Southern cooking. His father had done fantastic barbeque ribs and chicken and collards, Kim had made cornbread with crackling, Jessie had made great real baked beans, oatmeal bread, her grandmother's potato salad and peach cobbler, and Butch...well, he'd somehow gotten out of doing any cooking....But a feast it was, and only slightly sad because my foodloving father had taken ill (I blame my own cooking) and was holed up in bed unable to stuff himself like I did.

Then, back to the backwoods and it was straight to my bandmate Ted's twins' christening party, which was a remarkably upper-crust affair, complete with rather good catered buffet food and Bloody Marys. So I made sure to fill myself up well (staying long enough to get both lunch and dinner of leftovers) and then was donated a bag of leftovers to take home. Damn, Mondays are hard when lunch consists of smoked salmon with toasted bagels, baked ham and tomato salad with a Bloody Mary to wash it down.