Wet windy Wellington

Excuse the cliché for a title but that is exactly how it was for my second arrival within the week. This one kicked off with an alarm call at 4.45am Monday for a 5.30am departure for the airport. No sense trying to use public transport this time – the ferry doesn’t run til after 6am and the Airbus from the city side is hopeless as mentioned. Taxis and shuttles are ridiculously expensive so the trusty old Toyota gets demisted and heads for the ridiculously expensive airport car park for the day.

Not so lucky with the weather this time, its raining hard on departure and hasn’t stopped on arrival. No nice views on the trip down, just 400kms of gray cloud and sometimes a little turbulence. The ‘wobble’ isn’t too bad, but arriving at four different interview locations around the city in ‘drowned rat’ mode is going to be very hard to avoid. Impossible as it turns out.

The taxi driver is from Indonesia this time and as chatty as the last. Just as well because we hit morning rush hour traffic in the capital and have long enough to get to know each other quite well while I am getting late for my first appointment.

Time may be better managed for the rest of the day, but staying dry is not. My feet are wet from the start – quite a shock for the Texas boots I suspect. I am cold and tired when I sink back into a taxi at 4pm and head to the airport and home. Auckland weather isn’t much better. At least it’s a few degrees warmer.

To add a more cheerful note to the Wellington interlude, some random views from last week’s visit. An exhibit from the Scots in New Zealand exhibition at Te Papa – the National Museum – where I spent a spare hour. I will give a fabulous prize to the reader (if any) who can tell me what it is and how it works! Another prize for the most creative suggestion.


The sign outside the building advertizes the Matariki (Maori new year) festival. New Zealand has a lot of new year celebrations – Chinese, Maori and Indian as well as the 1st January affair. There may be others I don’t know about.


A common kiwi (and Australian) definition of moving house, which I never came across before arriving here. Houses are built on deep foundations in Scotland, so the person moves rather than the house. Not so here.


One of the nice things about New Zealand – we wear our values on the gatepost – 'nuclear free' could sit alongside the sticker on this one.


Another nice thing is the broad definition of art and the range of ‘icons’ that can be found around the place. I expected a jandal (flip flop or thong in some translations) on this one but maybe that would be too clichéd!


Just a note for John E if you happen to check in again – that was Robert Louis Stevenson in the last entry, not Robert Burns! Two very different storytellers. Though both from Scotland, Burns is not ‘from my neck of the woods’, literally or otherwise.

On the road again

[Pix to follow - I left the digital card reader at home. I hope these words do justice to the stunning beauty of the scenery described.]

Just eleven days after landing back in Auckland from the US adventure, I make the next exit through the airport across the Manukau Harbour. No 100ml liquids limit or twelve hour flights or connections this time – just one hour south to the capital, which is known, with affection, as 'wet windy Wellington.' Yesterday it was 'gray fog bound Wellington,' a title usually reserved for Hamilton, and the airport was closed until 1pm. I have picked the right day to travel. Its bathed in glorious sunshine and not a cloud in the sky today, even if there is a discernible nip in the air. Cold that brings tears to the eyes by evening. A perfect day for flying though - the North Island is a tapestry of ruffled green hills edged by sweeping curves of black sand beaches that stretch all the way down, out and along the contours of the west coast except where it breaks for a natural harbour.

Ruapehu and Ngaruhoe expose their snow tipped cones to the sun. What could, from a distance, create the illusion of volcanic ash and lava spilling out from the topmost crater, is revealed from another angle to be storm clouds gathering far away to the east. The slow left hand turn over Farewell Spit – the long, golden sand finger pointing north from the top of the south island - carries us back over the Cook Straight. The sea so often in turmoil and shades of moody gray is flatter, deep blue, flecked with tiny white horses. It could be summer.

The approach is smooth, the famous 'Wellington wobble' where the pilot fights to level the wings of a 737 sized jet at twenty feet up then drops it straight onto the runway before it gets blown off balance is in abeyance. The often told tongue in cheek tale is that landing here is the final exam for Air New Zealand trainee pilots. I've landed here in winds gusting to 100kph to spontaneous applause from the passengers.

The Samoan taxi driver who takes me to the city is more friendly than his Auckland counterpart who talked little and awkwardly, then fell silent after I declined his request to stop for gas. I was running late, having tried, and as usual failed, to take the environmentally friendly option of the Airbus that never turns up. I hear glowing reports about the Scots, thanks to the country's famous son, Robert Louis Stevenson, who settled in Samoa in the later years of his life. He wrote many books there, and made the island known to the rest of the world. That knowing still endures, the house he built now occupied by the head of state and his grave up on the hilltop are major tourist attractions.

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me die.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

His legacy is a widely held belief that the Scots are wonderful people I am told. I wonder how a few years in the life and reputation of one fellow countryman could have such lasting impact. I appreciate that this is the legacy of many Scots who traveled the world and left a warm, hospitable welcome for those who come behind them, as well as spawning the future generations who so love to talk about their ancestry and find music in the accent.

The next three days in Wellington are a blur of meetings, workshops, networking, catch up conversations with colleagues from this side and 'across the ditch,' trips uphill to Victoria University in cabs or by cable car and downhill again on foot. Half an hour in Arty Bee's second hand bookshop adds two items to my reasonably lightweight luggage - a 1901 16^th edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and Alan Moorehead's No Room in the Ark – a 1959 portrait of the African continent. Then home in time for the weekend.

Home again, home again – only til next week

The trip back to Auckland is easy and uneventful. Drive from Santa Fe to Albuquerque for a slightly emotional farewell. Til next time which surely won’t be long. Tom has the travel bug too, and Stacy seems happy to indulge it. We talk of Tanzania, Zanzibar, South America and Scotland - the only limits are time and how to make the choice.

Processing at LAX has become an acceptable routine. Partial undress for security screening, boots off, jacket off, belt off, remove contents of pockets, laptop and other electronic devices. It looks like a unisex dressing room on the inside, but people are humorous and certainly look it! No worse than anywhere else. Perhaps easier than Heathrow, which always seems so crowded, chaotic and more visibly paranoid for some reason unexplained. There are never long queues land side in LAX. A man sporting an air of importance asks for the first class checkpoint and is pointed to the back of the 20 or so folks in the plebs line – ‘its all the same in here sir,’ like the cemetery I guess, no fast tracks or privileges for the rich.

I have no freebies for an airline lounge this time but spot a row of seats outside the doors to these exclusive havens and slightly removed from the rabble. It’s easy to hook into a wireless network, so the eeePC is in service again. Blogging on the go is great, and I never once had to resort to St**Bu*** to find access.


A few hours, supper, a movie and breakfast later I am in Auckland ahead of schedule at 5am. Always a busy time for arrivals, there are long queues at immigration and a long wait for bags. I fail to appreciate the logic of the latest so-called improvement in the terminal. Arriving and departing passengers were separated earlier. This doesn’t happen in LAX though I was told the rule originated in the US. This time, access to NZ immigration looks like its via the duty free shopping check outs – if you look hard enough there is a narrow channel that allows you to avoid this bottleneck with a purpose, but it sure ain’t easy to spot in the wee-small-hours-after-a-long-flight state of mind. That, and the removal of BNZ and self-service machines for departure tax are huge leaps backwards in my humble opinion. I forget to fill in a feedback form.


Outside kind friends await to run me home to Sunday morning Devonport where the cats are onsite and the boi is not. He’s in Wellington for a gig and we don’t connect til the following night. The slightly immoderate pile of purchases made it through with no bigger problem than carrying the weight from domestic to international terminals in LAX. That was my choice to walk rather than use the shuttle bus. Once home, they are thrown stright into the washing machine or the books for filing pile and I take off for coffee at The Stone Oven and a long walk on the beach. Life is back to ‘normal’ for the next week and a half. It’s a sunny winter morning – quite a come down from 109F and not unwelcome at that.

Nearing the end of the road

The drive back to Santa Fe is long and sweaty with minimal breaks - a quick pit stop for a last feed of Texas BBQ and fuel for the trip. The temperature touches 109F, and the Scandinavian designed air-con can only do so much to fight the glaring sun through the windscreen. A long straight road leads out of Archer, meanders through a couple more small towns then hits the interstate back towards New Mexico.

A famous sight marks the way – the old route 66 nose down in the dirt Cadillacs outside Amarillo with tourists like ants all over them. A brief (illegal) stop at the side of the highway and a long lens is a close enough encounter with an 11pm eta in Santa Fe in the frame.


Many more miles of featureless dry plains, occasionally marked by rocky outcrops and miniature table mountains bring the question of volcanoes to mind. Not as far as anyone can recall, but this is very old landscape. Wind to drive anyone crazy. I recall and understand tales of women driven mad on the Canadian prairies in winter. Crossing the state line into a more feature rich landscape is a relief. The sun goes down. Cooler evening air offers another level of comfort. The fall of the wind and rising altitude complete the transformation. Its 75F when the distant orange glow of Albuquerque touches the edge of the sky. Within an hour is Santa Fe and the familiar spot that TandS call home.


It’s been a long day. The bliss of sinking into a bed that’s missing the impersonal feel of a hotel or motel moves closer. Comfortable though our travels have been, there is no place like home – and for me – pretty much anyone friendly’s will do.

A spot of stress mars an otherwise calm arrival. The house has not been lived in, but looked after by passing friends and rellies. While everything looks ok, there is no sign of baby. She’s hard to spot outside in the dark with only a pale, skinny torch beam. The full search and discovery is left til morning, when she turns up in the bedroom, camouflaged by blankets, hungry but otherwise fine, having escaped from her turtle-pen by the fire.


The next few days are for chilling out, reading, writing, listening to newly acquired music, eating healthier (and less) food and taking walks.


Early summer gardens in Santa Fe are attractive to explore, a healthy population of baby salamanders populates the pond - need to look out for snakes there - and various spiky cactus plants wear glorious coloured flowers.


Items I bought on the internet arrive in good time to get packed and carried home. One such prize is yet another pair of really cool boots acquired for $10 on eBay. Postage brought that up to $22. More books – as if I need them – that will be hard to find in NZ shipped here for free.

Stacy and I do yet more shopping – op shops (thrift stores) are fun anywhere. The novelty and quality of what’s on offer here is hard to match. Time for a clear out when I get home!

Home is clear on the horizon now, the prospect both welcome and not - more air miles, more transitions, more of the same but different. Going home is always something of a new beginning and a parking of cases til next time, the time after that and the time after that. There may be more movinglikethesea tales from Wellington, Christchurch, UK and Australia before the year is out. The handbag sized wireless enabled eeePC improves the chances considerably. Dunedin preceded this trip by only a couple of weeks, and theer are a few outstanding from last year - arriving back to London from Ethiopia, Singapore and Scotland in December. So the name really does make sense.

Armfuls of books...

...that is how Tom described our take home prizes from the best part of a day in Archer City’s four upsized second hand bookstores. It could have been crate-fuls if the prices had been lower and other constraints removed. So what did we all end up buying?

Tom (pre-shave and haircut - he was a different man on arrival in Austin)


A Gabriel Garcia Marquez non-fiction work ‘News of a Kidnapping.' From the cover notes:


The topic is bit ‘off the norm’ for Marquez, but every bit as captivating as his other works – maybe more so because of the factual aspect.

Alan Moorehead’s ‘Late Education: An Episode in Life’ and autobiographical work covering his time as a war correspondent in the 1930/40s. I have recently read two other titles from this prolific and versatile author, ‘The Blue Nile’ and ‘The While Nile’ about 19th C British explorers competing to find the source of the river Nile and discovering there are in fact two. The river forks at Khartoum in Sudan with the Blue Nile rising from Lake Tana in Ethiopia and the White Nile from Lake Victoria on the Kenya / Uganda border. Travel was not easy for at least a dozen reasons which the books do a great job of describing. Tom was half way through ‘The White Nile’ by the time we stopped in Archer.

Stacy (posing on request)


Hard to find art books I can’t remember the titles of and some ‘Kiwi Taonga (treasure)’ in the form of two early 20thC green card bound illustrated booklets. One summarized the story of the discovery and anatomy of the long extinct Moa (NZ's largest known flightless bird, which looks like it might have been a rellie to the ostrich). The other featured a 19th C Maori leader in a south island area around Christchurch. These were picked from a collection of similar items that should probably be in a NZ national museum or iwi (tribal) archive somewhere.

Cathy (seldom in front of the camera)


I was a little overwhelmed by the size and scope of the collection, the price of some of the items and limitations of my already bursting at the seams luggage which had to fit on a plane a few days later. I chickened out on the U$50 price tag of an original edition of Livingstone’s journal from the Nile expedition – not because the late 19thC publication isn’t worth that kind of money. I also disciplined myself in front of a huge collection of African American history books and came away with none. In the end my rather mundane choices were ‘Street Corner Society’, a hard to find 1943 book on the social structure of an Italian slum, and a Robert Louis Stevenson autobiographical work ‘The Amateur Emigrant’ and ‘The Silverado Squatters.’ Stevenson has always inspired me. We share common roots in the wintry gloom of 'Auld Reekie' (Edinburgh), a passion for travel and telling stories. He is one of my absent mentors.

Other stuff (now installed in my living room)


This modest list does not fully explain Tom’s comment about ‘armfuls of books.’ Another reason for restraint that day was the large collection each of us had acquired over two and a half weeks weeks starting at The Black Cat used bookstore in Truth or Consequences. Stacy found a prize in a curious and beautifully illustrated book on boxers (men in gloves – not dogs!) Tom got a present of ‘Need More Love’ a gorgeously illustrated biography of Aline Kominsky-Crumb, underground comic artist and wife of Robert Crumb. Robert created many of my ‘naughty’ comic heroes from the 1970s. I did not know his wife was similarly creative.

I had another 7 titles in my bags along with the Archer City purchases by the time I packed to leave, plus one as a present for someone back home.

Two more Cormac McCarthy novels – ‘The Road’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’

Daniel Goleman’s ‘Social Intelligence’ and co-authored ‘Transparency – how leaders create culture.’ (A bit of back to work thinking there.)

‘Native Science - Natural Laws of Interdependence’ by Gregory Cajete. This New Mexico-based author visited Auckland a few years back. A colleague lent me his book, which offers a valuable and accessible perspective on science.

2 x New Mexican recipe books were put to good use as soon as I got home.

Much of the pleasure of the day spent in McMurtry’s stores was climbing a ladder to explore the high shelves, parking on the floor to examine a rare 1880s title and picking over the treasure without feeling the urge to acquire and carry it home. Archer City scores high on the list for another visit, despite the distance and limited scope for other indulgences. We could take a picnic next time, or see if the Spur Hotel could serve us a wild pig dinner from its well-stocked freezers!

Breakfast in Archer City

In the morning, the Wildcat Cafe opposite the hotel is open for business. This is a business the US is famous for, along with others less appealing. The business of eating.


The comment 'good biscuits' escapes between bites of bacon, eggs and what other nationals would call scones. Praise indeed from someone who cooks as well as Stacy. No matter about the name, we may have upset the supply / demand chain by adding 3 to the population of 1848 for the day. Only three biscuits left by the time I order. One will do. I haven't quite managed to get up to speed with portion size in two and a half weeks. The choice is not too hard to make - one, two or three eggs, biscuits or toast.


The establishment is popular with groups of men in denim dungarees at separate tables from women in t-shirts and jeans. The air of familiarity is neither exclusive nor unfriendly to strangers. Respectful distance is my impression. Smoking is allowed - a rare thing these days - probably by popular demand.

The 'Times Record News' from nearby Wichita Falls reports that liberals have become captive to 'environmentalists and the green gestapo.' Great turn of phrase and reflective of sentiments expressed on radio shows discussing the topical issue of same sex marriage. Other news is like any small town paper, mostly unremarkable except in context.

After the refuel stop, its time to quit the hotel and hit Booked Up Nos 1-4, an event we have all been waiting for. I've called canny on book shopping til now, waiting for this opportunity to add to the stock in my second hand bookstore look alike home. TandS are similarly keen - like Gary Harvey in a cowboy and Indian souvenir store - we approach in a mood that verges on manic!

Arrival in Archer City (population 1848)

The temperature had still not managed to drop below 103F at 7.30pm when we arrived in the rural west Texas home of author Larry McMurtry. No need to say the town is small. How could it be otherwise this far from anything at all of size, or anywhere of note? Not to suggest the place is insignificant, just a bit out of the way and insubstantial is all.

The Spur Hotel might be the only inn in the state that leaves keys out for guests – who have to book in advance – as no one will be there to check them in. The front door is open, the kitchen at our disposal and keys to the suite in an envelope with instructions where to leave a cheque when we leave in the morning. Trusting, but then who would drive six hours to nowhere just to rip off a hotel?

The Spur is as TandS remember, except its had a make over. Probably something to do with it being for sale. Its one of a number of attractive older buildings around the town centre. Three storeys of solid brick at the side of a wide windy through highway. Behind it stands an old jail house, now a museum. Its closed of course, but displays enough history on the outside for that not to matter much.

It used to be a jail house with a hanging room inside. Heavy metal bars protect the locked tight front door. Less ominous remnants of the sand stone structure's past include a fossilized tree, a centuries old fern etched in stone and an ancient Indian stone tub used for doing something – I can't remember what - to corn.

Half a block away stands a county court house of suitably stately character and construction. The town centre is marked by cross roads with a few old shops, a library and a couple of corner gas stations. One is still operational, the other derelict with a large decaying snake's body squashed on the forecourt.

The Spur's owner shows up as we leave to go to the only restaurant in town for dinner - if the Dairy Queen chain and its culinary offerings can be so grandly described. As well as the owner of a not so busy hotel, Abby is a hunter of large wild pigs. A TV documentary told us just a couple of days ago that this area breeds them bigger and better than anywhere else in the state. The hunters featured in the doco claim to have caught one as big as a man, and have pictures to prove it. Locals are somewhat skeptical as no one actually saw the beast, and anyway, the camera crew was from out of town. Hunting is most definitely popular though, as the stuffed deer heads and wildcat bodies adorning the lounge and the antler chandelier in the dining room bear witness.

This dining room offers no service tonight, and the choice is somewhat limited. Eat or don't eat is about the sum of it. As the pattern of this trip is already well established, we decide to feel the fear and do it anyway. Dairy Queen is an experience probably best avoided except for the close up view of local culture it offers. When we arrive it looks closed, and only trying the door to the seemingly deserted, and dimly lit 'chain restaurant trash' style kitchen / diner proves otherwise.

Within minutes of placing our order, a large red pick up pulls up in the parking lot. Then another, and another. Red must be 'the' colour. A cross section of the town's population soon joins us inside. Moms with kids, mature men with younger, apprentice men, a group of skinny teenage girls parks outside and giggles helplessly when we walk out, but does not make eye contact or acknowledge the presence of strangers, although this must be screamingly obvious. Specially give the car that is neither red nor a pick up, but does have bright yellow and crimson flames painted across the front and licking up the sides.

A drive around the block on the way back to the Spur is graced by a beautiful sunset and a surprising close up of some of the equipment that made Texas rich - oil rigs. Being more used to the kind that get towed out into the north sea on platforms- these seem implausibly small.


Although the town may be small there is much to be said about it. Breakfast at the Wild Cat Cafe and more than half a day browsing Mr McMurtry's second hand bookstores that have all but taken over the town centre feature in the next installment.

San Antonio

An hour or so south of Austin on I35 is the historic town of San Antonio. Right slap bang in the middle of that is the Alamo, a cool hat shop and an antiques/collectibles mall where I acquired the second of three pairs of cowboy boots. Acquiring them is easy – anything that fits on my small almost square extremities and isn't baby pink or vomit yellow will do just fine. Getting them home in my modest sized suitcase along with all the other wise and foolish purchases will be the fun part.

More on the social stuff later – first a piece of history. In brief, Spanish colonization started around 1718, when Franciscans constructed a mission, San Antonio de Valero, in what was originally a Coahuiltecan Indian village. The aim was to convert and educate the locals, and create an economic base for the settlement. More settlers arrived over the next few years and four more missions (all still standing) were built along the river. The original mission converted to military use and was known as The Alamo. The territory on which it stood became part of Mexico following a battle for independence from Spain.

The Alamo is now a central city monument at the site of the 1836 battle and thirteen day siege involving the Republic of Mexico against American settlers fighting for independence along with Tejanos (Mexicans living in Texas). Although the Mexicans won this gory battle and seized the mission, they were later defeated at the battle of San Jacinto and the independent Texas forces won the war. Texas became part of the United States in 1845. The Alamo is a haunting place at night, like many other historic battle grounds. Wikipedia has more information for interested readers.

The surrounding area is a little less daunting with the usual shops, bars, parks an attractive riverside walk and hotels, some with longer history than others. Horse drawn carriages decked with fairy lights offer tourists a leisurely way to browse the central area. A couple of real historic buildings grace the centre, though many more provide further evidence of the chain company mania that seems to have spread everywhere across the country like a highly contagious rash.

A bit away from the centre are some highlights of our two day pit stop in a slightly seedy but cheap and mostly acceptable motel. (The nut case screaming 'I am the redeemer', banging on random doors at 2am and causing the pool to be closed for fumigation the following days was not a permanent fixture!)

A great dinner venue is the fabulous Leaning Liberty Bar. A repurposed whore house I'm told, with unique features like heritage recipes on the menu, an upstairs veranda and downstairs windows that look ready to topple over into the street. Ain't nothin' straight about this old weather board and sheet iron baby – even if the business is nowadays.

Then there's Casbeers, what seems to be a typical Texas style watering hole (down to earth, slightly dingy, stuffed animal heads on the walls...) with cheap, basic, excellent food, good beer and live local blues to satisfy the most discerning 'chasin' the blues' tourist.

Carrying on down the 'friends of friends' hospitality route, our local guide is John, a Wall St Journal reporter turned school teacher. Methinks the man must either be mad or have a heart. Maybe even a little of both.

He and Tom are certainly amusing - vis this transcript for the above photo:

John: Once you buy a couch you can never be free [with pathos]
Tom: Fear of furniture is what I call that [with empathy].

I-35

Once we reach the city of Austin, Interstate 35 (I35) becomes a key feature of our lives for the next ten days. We arrive at our destination on it. Some of us walk a mile past the Harley Davidson shop to get to the mall on it early Sunday morning (Texans don't walk - for one thing its too darned hot - but we don't have a car).


All of us, thanks to our gracious host, drive up and down it to reach, then escape from the city back to our 5 mile south suburban base.


Some days we avoid it so as not to spend hours stuck in backed up traffic. Finally I leave on it with TandS driving north through Waco towards Dallas, then veering off east towards the small northern town of Archer City (population 1848). But there is a lot more Austin than the long straight four-aside lanes of I35

The rest of the kiwis flew in from Flagstaff Arizona earlier on the day we arrive and are already installed in the fabulous Onion Creek residence that is to be our home for the next week or so.

Our host Kristine is a friend of a friend met only on email til now. The 'in person' version and the extreme hospitality are unforgettable. We get to meet most of the fifteen rescued cats and have many cooling off sessions in the pool, its over 100F most days.

But the purpose of this stop is to catch live music and to work off the shopping lists we all brought along in our US$ loaded pockets. The exchange rate is favorable for once, so no holds are barred. Baggage allowances back to NZ are twice the usual 23 kgs in one bag, and will be packed with $8 jeans from Walmart, $60 cowboy boots from second hand stores and various other acquisitions from local op shops.

This is, by reputation, the music capital of the US and we are here to enjoy that status. Turns out we couldn't have planned our dates better if we had tried. There is a benefit concert for a Californian woman singer Candye Kane at the famous venue Antones.


This is the third or fourth venue that has hosted the club since Stevie Ray Vaughan and other blues musicians made it famous in the 1970s / 80s. Antone died over a year ago after a somewhat checkered career, but the name and the tradition live on.



The line up from last to first; The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Billy Joe Shaver, Carolyn Wonderland, Rosie Flores and Paula Nelson. For those who don't know, as mostly I did not, these are all either totally famous already, up and coming or latterly, the daughter (or maybe grand daughter) of the famous Willie Nelson. All this for $12 and the price of a few beers and Margaritas, the signature drink of the trip.

One day we caught a happy hour session at another famous venue - the Continental Club - a dark, slightly shabby and therefore suitably atmospheric venue where live blues (or country - this IS Texas after all) is always on the menu (though we didn't care to sample any of that).


Another musical highlight was our host's third annual 54th birthday party for which she had Spencer Thomas with a jam session band and Jimmy La Fave with his own. Jimmy instantly gained another fan and got added to my iPod collection. Kristine does not mess about with things that she likes, and a good time was had by all as they say.



This next shot is just to prove that I was actually there.


A list of other things - fun and otherwise - will be added to the story of our stay in Austin; feeding frenzies in op shops and various restaurants, social invitations that exposed us guests to some of the 'done things' in 'nice' and 'old fashioned' Texas society and interesting slants on life through the local press. Fabulous food in large-ish quantities has to feature somewhere in the story too. Just for starters, this is a shot of the best plate of beans encountered in southern Texas - served up at the Green Mesquite cafe.