The Roquefort Files

Washington state rolled by without incident, all tree-lined freeways and unremarkable towns. I’d like to say that we hit Oregon before we knew it, but by God, we knew intimately about every minute we spent on the road courtesy of our bottom-of-the-barrel automotive contraption. Our Chevy Aveo was emphatically not a car in the accepted [...]

Ash arrived on the Friday before the last weekend in August. The month itself had been so full-on that I’d barely had time to register that my time was up; it took a chance meeting with Neil & Vanessa on Saturday (“hey Ash, look — it’s some guy in a Mogwai T-shirt. Wait a second…”) [...]

See, I did go on holiday.

was Memphis for two more days before we left for home. When we arrived the weather had changed from clear and bright in Nashville to grey and overcast, and downtown Memphis was as grim as ever. We checked back into the King’s Court (crack whores or not, you can’t argue with $40 a night plus [...]

in a cross-country dash to Tennessee. Mobile provided antiquated, grand accommodation, helping us by degrees back to earth from the rarefied heights of the Quarterhouse, while Birmingham was so deserted in the Biblical silence of a Sunday afternoon that we decided to press on to the next big city. The swampy land around Mobile gave [...]

on a clear, sunny Saturday morning and took the coastal road towards Pass Christian. Josh, Dave and I had stopped there for lunch on our way into N.O, and I had so enjoyed the journey last time that I felt morbidly compelled to see how this part of the Gulf Coast had fared during Hurricane [...]

staying in the Quarterhouse on Chartres Street. The place was palatial! We had a comically over-decorated (cf. gilt-framed oil painting of a violin-playing monkey dressed in 19th century costume complete with pince-nez spectacles) two bedroom apartment to ourselves, and it was way beyond anything we could have afforded by ourselves. Mad props must go to [...]

we drove southeast towards Tupelo, intending to complete the Elvis experience by visiting his birthplace. As soon as we turned off I55 we were in stereotypical Bible Belt country: almost many churches as homes, and as many trailers as permanent houses. Abandoned cars and trucks lay rusting in driveways and ditches every half mile or [...]

to find it warm and muggy – a happily faint echo of the sweaty furnace of the last time I was in the South – and took a cab to our salubrious lodgings. “The King’s Court Motel?” said our incredulous driver. “Lemme just say, if it was just you sir, you’d hear a knock on [...]

Neil and I both took our leave from Brisbane on Monday, after a final day of fine hospitality from Chris and Leyla. I was sad to leave – it had been great to be around C&L again for a while; I’d just started to appreciate the pastoral side of the country, and even though I [...]