bottom drawer

The errands pile up and get dealt with: buying clothes, taking my violin to the shop to get a new bridge (the old one being completely warped by a year of Alabamian humidity), ordering a new credit card (they didn't automatically replace my old one because I spent too little money on it, can you believe!), going through a stack of mail, finally getting my super-long jeans taken up. Punctuated by some very nice eating and friend-seeing - St John Bread and Wine, Kulu Kulu sushi - and a long and interesting conversation about the nature of religion with a visiting fellow-blogger in Bar Italia to the background of the Inter-Rangers game. The conversation originated from, of all things, talking about the Internet: the parallel being the interconnectedness of everything made apparent by the linking world of the web, and that this is, of course, what religion is all about as well, at least if you are into mystical Kabbalah. So apparently I can forget about all the God stuff and still be ...

[Note: I was tickled to read Tom Coates on how he hasn't had time to blog about the things he really wants to write about. This post has been 'in progress for several days: it's rough and incomplete but I decided I should post it up anyway, otherwise I'd never get it out...so forgive any excess bluntness!] Race, due to Trevor Phillips recent comments, due to the disaster of Katrina, and the bombings in London, is high on the agenda. I've just lived for a year in an area where racism is popularly supposed to be the worst in the States, coming from the area of London that it is famous for being the 'melting-pot' of immigrants, with a white minority. I can only comment with any authority on the relationship of race to physical space - the much-used word 'ghetto', and the place of physical 'pepperpotting' of ethnic families in neighbourhoods. West Alabama is somewhere where de-segregation has happened legally regarding jobs, voting and services,...

Settling back into London, I've been trying to keep myself as active as possible. One of my worst tendencies in this city is to lapse into laziness, caused by always being slightly overtired, stressed and - well, just lazy about travelling more than a mile from my front door. But this time around, I'm determined to make more effort to keep work and life in balance and actively seek out and take part in new events and venues. On Friday night we treated ourselves to a good St John dinner, followed by pints in the pub with friends. Saturday was more active, with a frustrating (as usual) shopping trip to buy myself a wardrobe of worksafe clothing to replace the ragged t-shirts and cut-off shorts which a year in Alabama has left me with. In the evening we went to the Reclaim the Beach party on the Thames foreshore beneath Charing Cross bridge. Much fun was had by all dancing away, drinking and beachcombing by moonlight (or rather, the glow of the streetlights) for Roman pipes. The...

A mixed feeling of delight and sadness at being back in the UK for the foreseeable future, one year and one month after I left in a similar mixture of excitement and apprehension for Alabama. The sheer monotony and familiarity of the journey back to England (I've crossed the Atlantic 8 times this year) did something to smooth away my sadness but it was still with a heavy heart that I arrived back in foggy, cold Gatwick - the weather never helps when returning to England! - and it was quickly back to business as usual on the miserably crowded, late train into town. But the weather cleared and a warm sunshine took over; and London looked a little more palatable. I picked up a shiny, fresh conker in the street as I walked around Canonbury and Highbury for a couple of hours. Somehow it was cool and smooth, and remained cold despite being in my pocket. Highbury Fields looked beautiful and peaceful, and schoolkids chatted in groups on the street - a very London scene. It's funny how ...

For those of you who are so minded, I've got a new RSS/Atom feed going so you can subscribe to the blog - it incorporates both the regular posts and the Ephemera too in one nifty feed and it's here . For those of you who still haven't discovered the joys of RSS as a new method of procrastination, here's an explanation of what it is, courtesy of the Beeb.

Another wonderful weekend of music up at Paint Rock Valley Lodge - perhaps the most fun festival we've done, but one that also made me totally miserable that I'm going to be leaving all of this in two days. As my last gig with my wonderful band , it was the perfect way to cap off my year with them, but still, thinking how at my first festival here, I knew nothing at all about how to play all this old music, and what a fantastic learning curve I've had since then and, listening to the other bands that were playing at the weekend, how much I still could be learning, it's heartbreaking to have to leave it all behind. No matter what I manage to find in England, music-wise, it's going to be nothing compared to the whole-hearted, genuinely communal musical events that happen here. The festival had the best buck-dancers and cloggers that I'd encountered here, perfect for the old-time fiddle tunes and claw-hammer stuff that we play. I've never had a bigger thrill ...

Another week, another Demos report. This time its on 'People making Places', paid for by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation . Again, it is another worthy retelling of the old tale that it's actually the way that people use places that make them successful, and this has to do with the way they are programmed and managed, not just how pretty they are. Well I never. David Wilcox blogs it aptly: The issue in many of the areas researched by JRF these days is not so much knowing the problem, but getting the public agencies who can do something about it engaged and working together. I fear that the more research you produce, the more Government and other agencies can say - "ah yes, we know about that and are working on a comprehensive strategy". I.e.: less research, more action. Or maybe, action research - that idea so novel that the guy who coined the term died in 1947. At the Rural Studio , each team every year learns exactly the lessons that this (and every other publ...

I'm thinking that this blog might move more towards an essay-based version of life rather than a blog-as-collection of links. Most people who read blogs will probably know about anything I link to already through a bigger website than mine. But I know that a lot of my readers read almost no other blogs apart from mine and don't have an RSS feed popping up constantly on their desktop - so there's a new ephemera section on the side - stuff that's newsworthy, interesting or amusing that y'all might be interested in.

This is the look of the "inspiring suburban homes for the 21st century"? Sad...and this isn't just about desiring a more 'modern' look. Are pitched roofs really the most efficient use of materials? (This is supposed to be an environmentally responsible development as well.) Do we really think that 'contextually-sensitive' needs to involve pastiche? are we still stuck in 1981 Milton Keynes? [sigh]. Not that I think that the alternative should be this ... It's sad that these seem to be the options that the public sees right now - plasticky modernism or watercoloured neo-vernacular. The means of rendering - bad photoshop vs bad 'artists impressions' - seems to be half the problem. There's no real impression of actual inhabitation, texture, light. You don't really think that your house will look like that, but your choice is between buying into the signals of watercolour (tradition) or photoshop (modern) - buying a lifestyle, not a design ...

I can't really believe I'm sitting here while the Ashes are being won by England at the Oval. I saw the very first balls of this series at Lords in July and now...I'm here where no-one understands cricket, let alone the importance of this moment - and I just want to jump up and down and scream for joy! it's a terrible predicament - it's also only lunchtime and I desperately want to get champagne drunk. What to do. Test Match Special over the internet and the Guardian over-by-over commentary only serve to increase my jealousy of my good friends back home who I know are in the pub right now. Please, can we have a delayed celebration next week when I get home? I've never been a more bizarre mixture of utterly ecstatic and completely depressed at having no-one to share it with.

On diners On the road trip, we ate at a lot of diners. A lot of hashbrowns and eggs for breakfast, a lot of hamburgers for lunch. Following are some highly biased reviews of some of the principal food chains you may encounter along the interstates of America, and some of the other establishments that you may find yourself turning to if you, like us, follow the fairly well-trodden road-trip routes... Chains Waffle House . My favorite of all the chain diners. Others don't always agree. But for hashbrowns (tip: order them extra-crispy) and eggs, and coffee - at 4am drunk (think the Tom Waits song 'Eggs and Sausage') or at 10am hungover, or in the middle of the afternoon when the place is empty, Waffle House rules. The fantastic retro black-and-yellow decor, the open-plan allowing you to see the short-order cooks and allowing your waitress to not have to come round to the other side of the counter, just leaning over to pour your coffee or set your plates, the red padded banquet...

Apologies for the lack of posts -again. The truth is, I was planning a good post on food while camping, as well as a post on diners, both based on my recent roadtrip, but at the end of the trip I got caught up with all the Katrina news and food seemed, well, a little bit of a self-indulgent thing to be writing about. But seize the day, really, and why not talk about food? so here's the first of two travel-related posts. On the art of the campfire grill I just recently drove, with two friends, coast to coast. We did a fair bit of camping, but we were determinedly minimalist with our arrangements - no gas-fired grills for us. Added to that the fact that one of our number has been gradually recovering from a non-meat-eating state to a carnivorous diet, and had never eaten a steak before...the scene was set for a number of epic, and comic, campfire grill experiences. The first one was pretty well-organised. At the Badlands National Park, the store outside the gates had a very limited r...

As always, it's the music that gets me! and makes me physically pained at the thought that I'm leaving the States in ten days. We played a gig on Friday night in Selma, nothing that really mattered that much (fun but a pretty posh, old crowd), and I stood in with a local country band last night at a local bar - again, nothing 'high' musically, but the old feeling of how fun and personal it is to play music with other people came again, and how really, you hardly have to be able to speak to each other but when you play together, no matter how well or badly, something different happens... This musical culture - sitting on the street the other night playing the blues, playing with my fellow Kudzus, playing last night on a last minute invitation, let alone the myriad little festivals, events and spontaneous occasions on which ordinary people get out their instruments and play - doesn't exist in England, which alone is a fact that makes me extremely sad to be coming ...

I'm sorry - I loathe James Howard Kunstler. And it makes me sick to read him in conversation with Jane 'Goddess' Jacobs. Twisting her into a New Urbanist - ugh. He's so clever with his words, yet so stupid in their content. She is, sadly, getting old and probably surrounded with too many cronies, but yet almost everything she says shines with perception and intelligence. Unlike his loathsomely crude judgements. A little quote from JHK: "[The Garden City movement] was in some ways another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for—including Mumford who got sucked in really big." Are we going to be saying in 50 years that New Urbanism was another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for - including Jane Jacobs? Poor woman. What a sad misuse of her central work that it becomes the mantra for a whole lot of pastiche, sentimental, claustrophobic, fake 'urbanism'.

Katrina continues to impact on Greensboro, over a week later and 300 miles away. We learnt yesterday that 10,000 elderly and disabled evacauees are to be housed in neighbouring Greene County in a Red Cross tent city - Greene County itself only has a population of 9,900 , of which over a third are officially below the poverty line. A rental truck stuffed full of donated items turned up in town from the Red Cross in Tuscaloosa - enormous amounts of donated clothing, shoes, random toys and other thrift-store miscellaneous items. Again reminding us of the physical ramifications of these donation drives - masses of stuff that is not, of course, what we most urgently need - food, diapers, baby formula, for example. And it's totally unsorted, piled up in black trash bags, and surely more clothing than we can reasonably distribute in our area. Yesterday we learnt that the Red Cross has been giving out debit Mastercards that evacuees can use to buy things they need - $360 for one person, r...

Meanwhile, life goes on here with lovely and horrifying moments. On Monday night, we had an impromptu dinner at Pam's apartment, where I stayed the last few nights, which ended up being a lovely affair, sitting on the pavement with candles as it was cooler than inside, eating, drinking and playing a little blues music too. Somehow, the kind of informal occasion that will never happen in London. But at the same time we hear of horrendous news - an old local man, impoverished, black and disabled, killed by his nephew for $40 to buy crack, and dumped in a local sewage pond, bound with duct tape. The nephew then went on to shoot a local grocery store owner, and then went to ground before being found by police the other day. Presumably he was high during the whole incident, but the callousness and desperation of such deeds is so saddening. And now the family are sitting and grieving, and wanting to make T-shirts to memorialise Freeman Nixon, whose name is so strangely redolent of the co...

Yesterday we had a very strange day, getting up before dawn and leaving at 5am to drive down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast with donated supplies for the relief effort, specifically for a relative of someone in town who she was worried about, needing baby formula, food and other supplies. When we got to her, she was in fact a middle-class woman living in a middle-class subdivision outside Gulfport, and really didn't need any help whatsoever (power back on, air-conditioning running) so we gave her the stuff from her family and took the rest of our trailer-load of stuff around the area to see where there might be people who needed help. We drove around Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula, not really knowing where we were going but trying to get a feel for the situation. Firstly, obviously there was an enormous amount of damage. Houses completely destroyed, not much electricity, mile-long lines for gas, shops and services wrecked by the storm. But the flooding had receded and from what we ...

Addendum -some blog reading matter on the politics of the New Orleans disaster - all worth reading. Transcript of interview with NO mayor . A rant but still gives a real sense of his frustration, at least. Boing Boing blogs an email on letting poor people drown. The BBC reporters log is very thorough and terrifyingly detailed. Corante on how come there aren't more resources being called up to help. A bit too I-told-you-so but interesting post on how the authorities had been warned of what mgiht happen - from Wired. Experiment in the power of wiki web mapping to get better information to those who need it during a disaster. Daring to dream about a new New Orleans? WorldChanging looks ahead - I'm still trying to absorb the human and social impact of this rather than what physical form a rebuilt city could take (is a rebuilt city even socially feasible any more?) but nevertheless worth reading. I don't know if there is a place for humour right now, but try this blackly f...

It's time, now the travelling has come to an end, to blog about the storm. I've had a lot of questions from friends and readers about it, but it's really hard to know where to start. Having been on the road, and therefore not glued to CNN, when it struck, I think we had quite a strange perspective on it. But in many ways, I think our gradual realisation of the depth and awfulness of this event mirrors the response of the authorities. And now I'm sitting in front of Larry King Live and the continuous roling coverage, I guess it's time for me to contribute my small thoughts on this disaster. I don't really know what kind of news is reaching the UK but I'll try to add some observations. Firstly, I really have no words to describe the awfulness, the scale of this. More than the natural disaster of the storm itself, the absolute, total chaos that reigns everywhere, even far from the worst damage. Katrina hit over five days ago, yet it feels like absolutely no pro...

We are back in Alabama! After a hard nights drinking in Austin, Texas, and a night's camping on the eaastern-most point of Texas' coastline, near the strange oil town of Port Arthur, yesterday we headed straight through the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Initially curious, in a slightly ambulance-chasing way, our foolhardiness was paid off when we started to run out of gas in the middle of the wasteland - with everything destroyed around us on the near-deserted interstate, we crawled our way to Hattiesburg where we finally found gas on the edge of the town, with huge queues and rationing in force. Our gas ran out literally yards from the pumps - we were incredibly lucky not to have gotten stranded. Hattiesburg itself was a ghost town, with wrecked buildings, fallen trees and no power anywhere. All the way to Meridian the interstate was covered in fallen trees, sometimes reducing it to a one-lane road, and Meridian had a curfew in force. Obviously we couldn't get into any...