I want to break free

3rd Feb 2011...

We are at the not too shabby Days Inn, in the town of Tuscaloosa, just around the corner from a museum dedicated to football coach, Paul 'Bear' Bryant.




We have been driving all day on the A5 D, or we may just as well have been. Driving across Texas was a treat compared with this, at times, like driving through the middle of all the great Western movies, all mountainous, panoramic and just beautiful. Driving here through Mississippi is not. Maybe, like Milton Keynes, all the good stuff is away from the roads.
Still, this place has a small swimming pool which pleases the kids and the biggest book and magazine shop I have ever been in, where, guess what, I find a magazine which features Cardiacs! Oceansize! Amplifier and Genesis, all my favourites in one lump. Quick, must snap this one up and buy it, "daddy, it's you, you're famous," hey, can't wait to get this back to the hotel room, this is a hottie, oh, oh god, oh my...
I can't get back to the room quick enough, hands trembling, breathing heavily. I strip the magazine of it's scanty plastic bag and spread the pages hungrily...oh, what's this? A receipt...fuckinell, this has just cost me eighteen dollars!!




Driving through Louisiana yesterday, lots of swamplands where Gators lurk, though we don't catch a glimpse of any, it's too cold, so they find or dig themselves into holes and wait for the sunshine to return.
We hit New Orleans and park up.




All of the shops and houses are painted up in pretty colours, powder blues, pale reds and yellows, lovely old things. We head down Bourbon street for a stroll and there's music bursting from each doorway, all kinds of different stuff, the air filled with the smells of a hundred kitchens.




That hurricane they unfortunately suffered, back in 2005, is still evident...hundreds of houses we pass during our short stay, are marked with painted on crosses, which we guessed must mark houses that are uninhabitable, "do not enter" is marked across others.




I'm really sorry, but I just can't help but think of Live and Let Die, quite a few of my friends would understand...and there they are! The steamboats on the Mississippi river, just like in all those films! It is absolutely bloody freezing, so we're not about to get on one.
Tomorrow we're heading for Birmingham, Alabama, where we will be visiting The Institute of Civil Rights. Maybe pick up some Hot Soul Food for the journey...