Doctor, No

Six months before I moved to Texas I had a blood test. The results came back confirming my being in possession of so much cholesterol that I could have caught fire at any moment, and that my blood pressure was so high as to facilitate my fighting crime as a sort of blood-gusher-based superhero by opening a vein and blasting criminals with a high-pressure geyser of claret.

'It's winter and everywhere is frozen,' I explained to my doctor, 'I've been sat on my arse for the last six weeks, but okay - I'll make the effort to get out and about a bit more.'

She wasn't having it and prescribed Simvastatin, which struck me as a little premature seeing as I felt fine. I had the feeling she was just really into writing out prescriptions.

After three days of taking the drug, I hadn't slept for so much as five minutes, hadn't even felt drowsy, and I wanted to kill myself. By suggesting that I wanted to kill myself, I don't mean to imply that I felt a little bit glum and went around with a frowny face. I mean that I wanted to kill myself. I therefore stopped taking the pills and immediately felt better.

My doctor told me off, saying that I should have consulted her before quitting the prescribed medication and that I'd been very irresponsible.

'It's because I couldn't sleep and wanted to kill myself,' I explained.

'Of course, there are sometimes minor problems of that nature,' she admitted, 'but side effects usually pass after the first couple of weeks.'

'I would have killed myself by then.'

I refused further medication, instead knuckling down to riding my bike fifteen miles each day regardless of ice and snow. Six months later I underwent another medical examination at a Harley Street practice, as required by the immigration people. My cholesterol was fine and my blood pressure was normal.

Gosh.

More recently I underwent a medical examination at the Oakwell Farms medical center, something required by my medical insurance. I came close to weighing 210lbs before Christmas and had therefore been trying to get my weight down, mainly just through increased exercise and less snacking. It seemed to be working, and I was down to about 194lbs when I went for the medical.

'Shouldn't I take off my clothes or something?' I asked.

'No. Just get on the scale,' said the nurse. 'Do you know how much you weigh?'

'I was 194lbs this morning.'

'Well, you're 205lbs now.'

'That would probably be the boots and the three layers of clothing.'

The examination was over in minutes and struck me as lacking attention to detail. The results came back confirming I had more cholesterol than anyone who had ever lived in the entire history of triglycerides, and my blood pressure was so high that I could have severed my feet at the ankles and blasted myself off into outer space like a human rocket.

The results pissed me off so I ignored them. For one thing, my blood pressure was usually normal when I had it checked at the periodontist's office three or four times a year.

Another couple of months later I decided to have yet another medical examination. It seemed like high time I should have a doctor stick his finger up my arse in search of prostate cancer, and I figured I might as well have a proper check up on the same ticket. I was exercising every day, losing weight and doing well, so I wanted to know just how well because the previous examination had been a bit of a joke.

The nurse weighed me, stood me next to a tape measure, filled five big Cumberland sausage sized test tubes with blood, and asked a string of questions.

Do you smoke?

How much do you drink?

How many fingers am I holding up?

Can you tell me the name of the president?

I pulled a face answering the last one, and so did she.

The doctor came in.

'Are you going to stick a finger up my arse?' I enquired.

'No. No. There's no need. Cancer screening is all part of the blood test these days.'

'Okay.'

'I see that you smoke,' he said happily.

'No.'

'You don't smoke?'

'No, I don't.'

He seemed disappointed. 'Well, your blood pressure is a little high.'

'Is it really?'

'Yes, if I could—'

'I can tell you now, I'm not taking statins.'

'Statins are used to treat cholesterol, not high blood pressure.'

'Oh okay.'

'Well, perhaps we'd better wait until the results of this latest blood test come back.'

We waited, but I'd already knew I didn't like the guy. He was younger and fatter than myself, and I was somehow the wheezing porker in the equation. I could already sense him angling to prescribe something. He seemed to be fishing around in my medical history for anything he could work with. That was the impression I received, and the phone call came a few weeks later.

'The doctor urgently needs to discuss the results of your blood test. You have so much cholesterol that we've had to invent a new number by which to quantify it, and your blood pressure is such that at first we thought it was simply that Hulk Hogan was somehow living inside you.'

'Oh fuck off,' I didn't say, not actually slamming the phone down. I made an appointment, then cancelled it and made another for a day on which my wife would be able to come along, because she works in healthcare and is fairly adept at bullshit detection.

We were bang on time because they charge twenty-five dollars for missed appointments, a fine imposed because they could have spent those minutes curing someone, and healing the sick is the only thing with which they are concerned. Forty minutes later we were at last ushered into the presence of my doctor.

'You have a 13% chance of contracting heart disease before you reach seventy,' he smiled.

'Well, no-one lasts forever,' I said, 'and 13% - aren't those about the same odds as I have of being hit by a meteorite?'

My wife pointed out something statistical regarding the hereditary aspect of heart conditions such as the one which had an alleged 13% chance of killing me. I didn't really understand all of what she was saying, but the doctor did, and didn't really seem to have an answer for it, not directly.

'So, is there any history of heart disease in your family?'

'It isn't really a disease though, is it? I mean you can't have a stroke because you ate a sandwich with heart disease germs on it, or have I failed to understand some aspect of my impending doom?'

'It's a very real condition,' he said, apparently not having grasped my point. 'Do you know if anyone in your family has suffered with heart trouble?'

'No-one whatsoever, although significantly more or less all of them have had cancer, which was the actual reason I came here seeing as that seems a more pressing concern from where I'm sat.'

'Well, you're fine on that score.'

'That's good to know.'

'Everything is looking good aside from the cholesterol and the blood pressure.'

'Well, I'm not taking statins as I already told you.'

'Statins have come a long way and have been greatly improved over the last couple of years.'

'I don't care. I'm still not taking them.' I reiterated the account given in the first nine paragraphs above, mainly because it seemed as though he'd forgotten our having met on the occasion of the examination which had yielded the results now under discussion.

'Yes, I've heard all about your NHS,' - he curled off a wry smile, almost a sneer - 'no diagnosis, just chucking a handful of pills at you and sending you on your—'

'There's nothing wrong with the NHS,' I said, noticing I'd used that tone of voice which expresses openness to the possibility of finishing the conversation outside in the parking lot. I wasn't having this fucking tosser running the NHS down.

'Well, for now we can consider other options, healthier eating and so on.'

'I eat healthy,' I said. 'I suppose you're going to tell me I should cut my McDonald's intake down to just four visits a day, or something of the sort.'

'We eat very healthily,' my wife confirmed. 'He does all the cooking and it's all fresh. We don't eat salty things.'

'You may not think you do, but even when you open up a can of Campbell's soup because it's in the recipe, well, the salt content—'

'That isn't,' I cut him off with just a hint of Margaret Rutherford in my voice, 'the sort of cooking in which I engage.'

My wife has a recipe book typed out by an ageing relative during the great depression. I barely recognise any of the recipes, which truly belong to a culture to which I am alien. Many of them seem to combine ingredients which are already recognisably food, a tin of mushroom soup poured over battered onion rings, then baked as a casserole - and the recipe concluded with a bewildering comment of sooooooo good or similar. It seems like the sort of cooking I tried when I was fifteen, baked beans plus a teaspoon of every herb or spice on the rack because if one is good, then twenty-six will surely be amazing. I like to think I've evolved beyond the culinary level of a bewildered teenager left to his own devices.

'I apologise if it seems like I'm on the defensive,' I said without feeling even remotely sorry, 'but you have to appreciate that I eat pretty well, I don't smoke, hardly drink, and I cycle one hundred miles a week, and you're telling me that it isn't enough. I may as well be sat on my arse scoffing pies and cakes all day for all the difference it makes. That's what you're telling me.'

'Well, I'd like you to imagine the effects of a stroke, being unable to speak, maybe one side of your body paralysed—'

Now he was trying to scare me, somehow imagining I had no idea what a stroke could be or how it might affect a person. 'Sure, but if you don't mind I'll just keep on as I am. I've lost a stone since Christmas and a little bit more drops off every week, so I'm not even sure what I'm doing here.'

'Well, we can see how you're getting on in another six months.'

'Fine.'

We left with no real intention of coming back. It seems I put on weight when I first moved to America, because the government forces us all to eat a cheeseburger whilst saluting the flag every morning; I have about a stone to go before I get back to what is supposedly my ideal weight for my age and height. I will get there, and if my blood pressure and cholesterol remain high then I'll just have to assume that's how it's going to be.

Truck Pictures

The diner is called Bar-B-Cutie, which makes me wince somewhat. Barbecue is okay but it's way down my list, contrary to current geographical determinist thought or at least to Mary, my dad's partner who asked what sort of thing I eat in Texas, then declared but it's all barbecue innit. This will be my third top convention, an event hosted for the benefit of collectors of high-end hand-tooled metal spinning tops.

Me neither, but Andrea does, and Andrea is my wife's best friend. The person who agreed to organise the convention raffle has gone AWOL, so Bess is helping out. The convention is tomorrow but we're meeting tonight for the sake of having a look at the venue.

Bar-B-Cutie seems to be the McDonald's of barbecue - the cheap and cheerful version. I order decimated brisket in a burger bun with sides of mashed potato and coleslaw, plus a beer - obviously. The two previous top conventions were similarly held at barbecue joints, the towns of Mansfield and Spring respectively. Collectors of high-end hand-tooled metal spinning tops enjoy barbecue.

We find a seat and wait for the food. I haven't eaten all day so I'm very hungry. Other spinning top people mill around, and Andrea points out Robyn and Lawerence. I recognise Robyn from one of the two previous events.

The brisket is delicious, once it arrives. The mashed potato is decent. The coleslaw is unpleasant, with a faint tang of waste disposal or a sink which fails to drain. After two forkfuls I decide against it.

Robyn turns up at our table. She remembers Bess and she shows us photographs of her resin creations. They're purely decorative but are quite nice. She explains that Lawerence's name is spelled that way because his father didn't make it through high school, so the misspelling is legal. Funnily enough, when banks and shitbrained employers misspell my name, that's how they misspell it.

'Also, he's Lawrence with a w,' Robyn adds. 'I know back in your country it's mostly Laurence with a u.'

I try, but am unable to recall ever having met a Laurence. I can't think of many Lawrences either, excepting Lawrence Miles.

I'm still hungry so I order another burger, this time with Polish sausage. It comes with fries and tastes good, although the fries are a bit dry.

Robyn shows me a photograph on her smartphone - a truck with horns attached to the front bumper.

'We knew we were in Texas just as soon as we saw this.'

I don't know if she expects us to be flattered, impressed, amazed or what. I think about my dad showing Lynda around Coventry Cathedral, telling her all about Australia and what it's like to live there based on the month he spent visiting Frank, his younger brother. Lynda moved to Australia in 1973. I expect she knows a fair bit about what it's like to live there but is too polite to say anything.

Meanwhile, back in the present, back at Bar-B-Cutie, Robyn is showing me a picture of vehicles driven by herself and misspelled Lawerence, both dayglo lime, a truck and a Dodge of some description, therefore ticking another couple of boxes.

The air conditioning is such that I'm cold enough to wish I'd brought a jumper. I can't really hear what anyone is saying because we're in a room full of people, specifically top enthusiasts; and when I can hear them, I don't always understand because they speak with that wide-ass Texan cracker accent which I don't actually hear on a daily basis; and when I do understand them, I can't work out why they're telling me. Someone is showing me a picture of their fucking truck and I feel a powerful need to be elsewhere before anyone asks what I thought of the last Spurs game.

Bess, as usual, is able to read my mind. 'We'll leave before nine,' she reassures me, except it doesn't because it's only just gone seven. I don't say anything but my face says it for me. I've always found it difficult to conceal expressions of despair and horror.

Ten minutes later we're in the car heading home.

'Maybe you should just do a half day tomorrow,' Bess suggests. 'I could come back and pick you up around lunch.'

I agree to this, then realise I simply can't.

'Do you really need me to be there, I mean at all?'

'Well, I don't like to leave you on your own.'

'I'll be fine,' I say.

'Honest.'

Ourselves from an Alternate Timeline

From time to time my wife takes to walking the neighbourhood for the sake of exercise, usually depending upon whether it's that time of year during which Texas is actually hotter than the surface of the sun. On one such excursion she noticed what she came to think of as the Sea of Tails House. The door opened as she passed by early one morning, although she couldn't see the person within. Cats - and too many to be counted - appeared from trees, bushes, beneath cars, and everywhere around, all answering the call of breakfast and making a beeline for the door with tails happily aloft, hence the name.

Many of the cats were often sat out on the front lawn of the Sea of Tails House and we would drive past on our way home just to get a look at them, because we like cats. During one such manoeuvre we additionally noticed a silver-grey Honda Element parked in the driveway of the Sea of Tails House, its rear adorned with a sticker in memorial to Cecil, the lion famously killed by massive wanker Dr. Walter J. Palmer DDS dba. Bess was driving a silver-grey Honda Element when first we met, and we both felt fairly strongly about Cecil's death at the hands of a fucking twat, so we considered the possibility of the residents of the Sea of Tails House actually being ourselves from an alternate timeline, given their having even more cats than we do.

They weren't ourselves from an alternate timeline, despite the evidence of the car, but were a couple named Susan and Randy. We met them one day as we passed and saw they were stood outside their house surrounded by cats and talking to a visitor. We stopped the car and introduced ourselves, although it should probably be noted that by this point Bess had already communicated with Susan on Next Door, our neighborhood internet chatroom, so the encounter wasn't quite so weird as it may sound.

They were about our age or maybe a little older, kind of unpolished in some respects and of unmistakably Texan heritage. Their visitor was Susan's sister-in-law from her previous marriage, a woman originally from Leicester, England, which was weird given the city being in such proximity to where I grew up. We stood around talking about cats, how we too used to get around in a silver-grey Honda Element, and how we knew their home as the Sea of Tails House.

Aside from day jobs, it turned out that Susan and Randy were representatives of the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. In this capacity they spent much of their spare time feeding feral cat colonies, rescuing strays, and participating in the trap-neuter-return program. The trap-neuter-return program - or TNR - entails neutering feral cats then returning them to the environment from which they were taken in the hope of reducing the numbers over time, whilst keeping the colonies otherwise stable without anyone ending up in the gas chamber. This has proven to be the most effective means of dealing with feral cats because exterminating an established colony simply leaves a gap in the local ecosystem which other less-settled and almost certainly more fertile ferals will occupy.

As time passed, we became good friends with Susan and Randy, who were additionally able to help us out with some of our own cats through their membership of the Feral Cat Coalition granting them access to certain veterinary services. In return, we took on a couple of feeding slots, and so every Tuesday evening we convey food and water to feral colonies behind Walmart and Advance Auto Parts, giving Susan and Randy a night off. It takes about ten minutes and we get to see cats. The Feral Cat Coalition drops us off a bag of cat chow whenever we're running low, so it's neither an expense nor a trouble.

Now we're deputies, or something of the sort. Susan and Randy are taking a trip down to the coast and have asked us to fill in on three nights of feeding at more than just the usual two spots. We meet on Deerwood, just behind the bowling alley. Deerwood leads into a distinctly knackered neighbourhood of apartment complexes and waste ground at the back of everything else. We get the feeling we won't be seeing yachts in the driveways. Neither Bess nor myself were aware of these streets, despite having lived within a mile of them these last eight years. Susan has drawn a map marked with six feral colonies in addition to the two we already knew about. The largest colony comprises four or five cats, but most are just two or three.

The first is outside Merlin's place, which is at the back of the office of Jan Ischy Prin's law firm, which looks a bit Better Call Saul from where I'm stood. Merlin lives in a trailer situated behind the chain link fence and Susan is talking to him right now. One of his cats has something which sounds like ringworm, he tells us through the fence. Susan describes an ointment.

'We have some of that at home,' Bess pipes up. 'I could drop it by for you tomorrow, if you like.'

Merlin nods an affirmative whilst somehow nevertheless failing to acknowledge my wife. He's kind of old with a bit of an aroma, and we're all trying to keep from looking at what the hell is going on at the front of his pants, but he doesn't seem like a bad guy and he likes cats. The thing that he doesn't seem to like is people he doesn't already know, but never mind.

We move along to where the fence meets the bushes. Susan pours out a little pile of dried cat food and fills styrofoam bowls from her container of purified water. Cats emerge from the undergrowth, one of them Siamese.

'Is he really called Merlin?' I ask, watching the subject of my enquiry shuffle back towards his trailer.

'Yup,' Randy tells me.

'He seems a bit awkward around strangers.'

'You don't want to worry none about that. It's a job to shut him up once he gets started so be thankful; and all he'll talk about is the Bible once you got him going.'

'Oh.'

Randy pulls a face, amused but not unkindly. 'He don't hold with the theory of evolution.'

'Oh dear.'

'Every summer he goes to stay with all his buddies in Mexico some place, like down near Cozumel. I think they're the only friends he really has, and he always takes the coach.'

'What? All the way to Mexico?'

'Yeah - a couple of thousand miles and three coaches, he says. Always tells me, I was sat next to this one feller the whole way and couldn't get a word out of him. I think that's because he starts off telling them about the Bible.'

'Sheesh.'

We adjourn to our respective vehicles and drive one hundred yards up the road. Susan and Randy leave food and water by a tree at the centre of a green associated with an apartment complex. There are no cats to be seen, but apparently they're around somewhere. Next is a vacant lot on Cloudhaven, cracked concrete squares where a house once stood, now overgrown with the usual scrubby hackberry bushes and dry things with thorns. Randy pours food onto a wooden door laid flat on the grass verge. Cats emerge from the house which isn't there, three of them, two orange.

'Hey, Swirl,' Randy greets the smaller orange cat. 'How you doing?'

Next is the apartment block behind the antique castle. It was once a mediaeval themed restaurant, hence the ludicrous crenellations running along the edge of the roof, as on a castle. Then it became a private museum dedicated to the history of film, which I only found out because it was mentioned on the radio, on NPR. This function was advertised by a giant model movie camera at the top of a pole serving for a sign on the Austin Highway, despite that curious parties were apparently required to apply for the privilege of going in and having a look around. Now it's a similarly secretive antique center owned by a guy who allegedly hates cats. We therefore feed this colony in the parking lot of the apartment block, on the rough ground down near the fence. Unfortunately some guy in one of the apartments also hates cats.

'He comes out and tips over the water bowls,' Susan tells us. 'He's threatened us a few times.'

This worries me. Susan bears a striking resemblance to Freida from Orange is the New Black even to the point of her voice sounding similar. Freida is resourceful and deadly, and I realise I have come to assume Susan to be the same. I can't imagine anyone threatening her.

'He spreads dog do all around to scare off the cats,' Randy adds. 'Sometimes he's sprayed the cat food with weed killer, and as you know, that's illegal.'

'You just got to explain to him, cool and calm, you're working for the Feral Cat Coalition and it's all legal and has been approved by the city.' Susan waves the legal papers at us, signed forms in a clear plastic wallet. 'We got a right to be here and if he has a problem he needs to take it up with the city.'

'He don't like me much, I can tell you that.' Randy chuckles. He seems very much a guy who takes everything in his stride.

'Well, we don't like him, and even his neighbours don't much like him,' Susan adds, glancing around at the apartments behind us, 'so I guess it all balances out.'

'You'll give us a copy of that thing,' I say, 'in case he has a pop at us too?'

'We already have a copy,' Bess says.

We watch the four or five cats come out to eat and drink, and then we're off again.

Rainbow Drive has a number of large apartment complexes which have recently been shut down. The tenants were all shipped out and quite a few pets left behind to starve or turn wild. Susan and Randy have mentioned this before and it's been a major headache for them over the last six months. The places remain empty, boarded up behind secure fencing, but the emerging cat colonies seem to have stabilised. They're very happy to see us too, and as we feed them I pet a black fluffy one, which has been my first friendly cat of the evening. I have an unusually soft spot for black fluffy cats.

After this, we're done, with only the Walmart cats left, and we already know about them as they're on our regular route.

The week passes, and then we fill in from Monday to Wednesday as agreed. Our shifts are without incident, aside from a homeless man emerging from the vacant lot on Cloudhaven to apologise for having trespassed on what he seems to suspect is our property. I tell him that we're just feeding the strays, and the rest of the conversation is about how I'm from England, because he has to ask, naturally.

I don't mind, but it's one thing I like about Susan and Randy, namely that they've never seemed bothered, presumably because they already know someone from Leicester so it doesn't seem such a big deal. At no point of my previous existence could I have predicted the arrival of Susan and Randy in my diminishing circle of friends. From one point of view, I suppose they might seem weird and cranky. They have a million cats in their yard. They're about as Texan as it's possible to be. I don't know if either of them have ever set foot inside an art gallery, and Randy's truck is festooned with the sort of bumper stickers you would probably expect of a guy with that beard, accent, and baseball cap - jovial threats involving firearms; and yet I've never known a man appear so genuinely happy at the sight of a kitten. They're good people, honest, and without any strange screwy agenda. In fact, these days and in terms of my present location, Randy and Susan are easily the nicest, most well-balanced people I have the pleasure of knowing, aside from my wife. I'm still not sure if this says more about me than it does about them, but whatever it says is, I feel, probably something good.

From the Cheese Cave to the End of Days

'My friend Jeremy will be in Dallas,' Bess said. 'We need to go.'

'We need to go to Dallas?'

'Yes. He has a one man show. The cats will be okay for one night and I haven't seen him in ages.'

'He has a one man show?'

'Yes, and it's in Dallas.'

'Despite our having been married for eight years, this is the first time you've ever mentioned anyone called Jeremy.'

'It is?'

'Yes, and that's why I have certain reservations as to the urgency of this proposed visit to Dallas even before we get to your use of the term one man show.'

'We've been friends for ages, since we were at school. I can't believe I've never mentioned him.'

'Well, maybe you have, but I already have a friend called Jeremy and it's not a very common name in my experience so I'm sure I would have noticed your mention of this additional Jeremy.'

'Well, we need to go to Dallas.'

'For a one man show?'

'Yeah. I don't know. It could be awful, but I have to see him. Even if it's really bad, it will still be exciting to go. We can visit Dealey Plaza.'

'Can't I just stay here? That way we won't have to worry about the cats. I hate leaving them on their own overnight. You should go and meet your friend and have fun.'

In the end we reach a compromise because Bess is similarly uncomfortable with the thought of leaving the cats unattended. We're going to set out early in the car, see Jeremy's one man show, then drive back the same day. It will be a long time spent on the highway, but we did it back in 2013 when we drove to Fort Worth to see a baby elephant then recently born at the local zoo. It's a bit of a hike, but we've done it before.

We leave at around nine. By ten we're already passing through Austin, which seems weird. Austin is usually to be found at the conclusion of a long road trip, but the travel time has passed more quickly on this occasion with Austin now marking off just one segment of a greater distance.

Bess explains how she first encountered Jeremy during a school trip to Washington DC. The trip brought together kids from all across the country rather than from any one specific school, and she and Jeremy were in the same hotel. They hit it off immediately and have kept in touch ever since.

The next major conurbation through which we pass following Austin is Temple. I look at the map and deduce that we should be in Dallas shortly after midday. We've been on the road since nine, it's now eleven, and Temple isn't far short of Waco which looks like two thirds of the total distance to me. We've been listening to a CD of a lecture by Howard Zinn entitled Stories Hollywood Never Tells, about political bias in the movie industry. Andy Martin gave me the CD many years ago and I recall having once found it interesting and enlightening. We tend to listen to either spoken word or stand up comedy on our road trips, and Howard Zinn seemed like a good choice as I hadn't heard the thing in a long, long time. Unfortunately, whilst I continue to sympathise with Zinn's general position, he pauses and mutters and doesn't seem to speak well in public, and there are a whole string of movies conveying anti-establishment, anti-war, or otherwise left-leaning messages to refute his theory; which leaves him sounding like your archetypal whining snowflake - as I believe is the current nominative - and this is a realisation which places me in the company of your archetypal whining Trumpanzee, which is awkward. Bess feels the same so we eject the disc.

Approaching Waco, we begin to notice billboards advertising the Cheese Cave.

'The what?' Bess asks, having missed the billboard.

'It's a cave, probably one of the old mine shafts where they used to dig for cheese,' I propose.

'We need to go there.'

Traffic slows as we come into Waco.

'We could just go to the Cheese Cave and tell Jeremy the traffic was too bad,' I suggest.

'I'm tempted.'

We crawl along, idly making an assessment of the city of Waco based on what can be seen from the highway. We already know they have a Cheese Cave. They also seem to have something to do with a mammoth. Inevitably we get onto the subject of David Koresh and whether or not the city has chosen to remember him with a statue, or at least a blue plaque. Realistically we both know that a theme park would be expecting too much.

By now, we're both hungry. We make several attempts to dine at branches of Cracker Barrel, an eating establishment dedicated to the dining requirements of crackers such as ourselves, but it's Father's Day so the parking lots are all crammed and with lines of customers trailing out of the entrance awaiting seating. We settle for Heitmiller Steakhouse, and Bess takes the opportunity to learn more of the Cheese Cave by reading about it through the agency of her phone. Apparently it's a store selling all sorts of cheese, so we definitely need to go there at some point.

Duly fed and watered, we return to the road. Dallas, when we arrive about an hour later, reminds me of Austin. At least the city centre has the same look about it, which I didn't expect. I think of this as being my third trip to this locality, but the two previous visits were actually to Fort Worth, the neighbouring conurbation which I've tended to regard as being simply west Dallas, at least up until now.

Dallas, the TV show, was pretty big when I was a kid growing up in England. Its influence was such as to have impacted upon the language of myself and my peers, specifically in the coining of a verb, to do a Dallas. Holding two slats of a window blind apart with one's fingers whilst peering out at an approaching visitor, perhaps with a look of suspicion forming upon one's face, was doing a Dallas. I seem to recall that Sue Ellen Ewing spent quite a lot of screen time doing a Dallas, and presume that's where it came from. It seems that I must have watched Dallas, and enough so as to negate the need for anyone to have explained the verb to me, but it was a long time ago and all I can otherwise remember are grassy plains, skyscrapers, and big hats. So this is, after all, a new thing for me.

We pass what curiously resembles a British pub, then find ourselves at Theatre Three. Jeremy's one man show will be performed in the basement, in a subsidiary venue wittily named Theatre Too, and we're here with twenty minutes to spare, which seems like good timing. We purchase drinks in special theatrical sippy cups from a goth wearing a Church of Satan pendant, then head downstairs.

Jeremy sees us in the queue - which isn't too surprising given that the queue comprises just Bess and myself - and is overjoyed that we've made it. Introductions are effected, breeze is shot, and I am relieved to realise that he's a nice guy. This is because my wife is disinclined to befriend arseholes.

The show, which is called Keeping Up With the Jorgensons, isn't well attended, just five or six of us for whatever reason, but is nevertheless an exceptional performance of a wonderful piece of writing. Jeremy spends an hour talking us through the events of a road trip taken with his father when he was a kid. It's both hilarious and horrifying, and most impressive is that I somehow forget I'm watching one man playing all of the parts - himself as a kid, his father, grandfather, neighbours and others; all are brought to life in detail so agonisingly plausible that you can almost smell the booze and the foot odour. It's exhausting to watch, but in a good way.

The hour is up. Jeremy comes out to take a bow, seemingly unconcerned by the poor turnout, and Bess and I get back on the road. The woman who sold us our tickets said something about a tornado warning, which is worrying. Back upstairs, we stare from the theatre doors at a Biblical deluge where before there was sun. We were going to take a look at Dealey Plaza, but this changes things; and Jeremy was supposed to be heading off to the airport to catch his flight immediately after the performance, so it probably changes things for him too. We run for the car, having reasoned that it may get worse, and maybe we can get ourselves out of Dallas before it hits.

It takes less than a minute to get to the car but we are both soaked by heavy blobs of rainfall sluicing from the heavens. We drive cautiously around Dallas, back onto the highway. The streets empty as everyone else takes cover. The sky darkens and we hear thunder. Visibility drops and the vehicle in front reduces to red lights in the dark grey haze of noisy water.

Back at Theatre Too, the woman selling tickets showed us the animated weather forecast, horizontal waves moving west across Dallas and Fort Worth. It looked as though we would be okay south of the city, with the storm proposed to hit Waco no sooner than 6.30PM, and it's only just gone four. I try hard to keep from visualising our car sucked up into the sky.

The rain eases a little and the sky brightens, but the roads are still slick with water and the car hydroplanes across the highway from time to time. Bess grips the wheel and drives slowly.

'It looks okay up ahead,' I suggest.

'Yes,' she says, 'once we're clear of the city…'

The sky darkens, thunder cracks, the rain renews its efforts, and this happens over and over for the next hundred miles or so. Sometimes we even see a thin stretch of blue running along the horizon or hit a dry patch of highway allowing us to go a little faster, but then I look away and when I turn back the storm has somehow revived itself. Lightning flashes, our wheels lose traction, and golfball hailstones batter the car, on and off for the next couple of hours, all the way through Waco, and then Temple. At one point a lightning bolt strikes a light pole about fifty feet away, so quick and loud it makes us both jump. The light at the top of the pole seems to explode and it resembles a special effect.

It's after six as we approach Austin, with more and more blue sky somewhere ahead of us. We're hungry so we stop in at a Cracker Barrel, reasonably confident that it will have cleared by the time we've eaten. We eat and the rain is harder than ever as we once again run for the car.

We drive slow, and eventually it no longer feels as though we're driving through the Biblical end of days, and it's after nine by the time we get home. We survived, and next time we'll go looking for that Cheese Cave.

Nearly New Kids on the Block

'Look,' my wife chuckled, holding her smartphone so I could see the screen. 'Someone dug up New Kids on the Block.'

I squinted at the tiny font and saw that New Kids on the Block were playing at the AT&T Centre on the 16th of May. 'They'll be a bit long in the tooth by now, surely. I'm surprised trades descriptions aren't after them if they're still going by that name - assuming we have something like the trades descriptions act here.'

We both chuckled and then rededicated ourselves to viewing Wheel of Fortune, smiling as a contestant to whom we had both taken an immediate dislike submitted an obviously wrong answer.

My wife's smartphone rang.

'Hello,' she answered. 'What's up?'

'What are you doing on the 16th of May?' asked Will, her brother.

'Well, I know I won't be going to see New Kids on the Block,' Bess laughed. She laughed because she knew that there was no way her brother would be interested in going to see New Kids on the Block, and he'd be sure to find it funny.

Nevertheless, here we are. A few weeks have passed and we're at the AT&T Centre, myself, my wife, and my brother-in-law. The New Kids are still alive, still performing, and are engaged in something called the Mixtape Tour. This means not only the hits, but appearances by Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Salt-N-Pepa, and Naughty by Nature, so it's mostly an eighties nostalgia thing - a concert based on the sort of stuff which would have ended up on a cassette tape, although not one of my cassette tapes which is why both Esplendor Geometrico and Portion Control remain conspicuously absent from the bill. Personally I don't have a whole lot of nostalgia for the eighties, and particularly not the stretch inhabited by the New Kids, but it's a night out and I figured Naughty by Nature might be approximately worth a look.

Will is here because he's a massive Debbie Gibson fan. He's a very complicated man.

I don't know anything about Debbie Gibson, other than that herself and Tiffany were presented as examples of everything which was wrong with music at the end of the eighties by the comedian Bill Hicks. The routine in which Hicks presents this argument daringly goes against the consensus by suggesting that the music of both Tiff and Debbie was ephemeral and therefore inferior to that of fucken' Hendrix, man. The routine was additionally of such macho shithead composition as to put me off bothering with any further Bill Hicks material ever again and, if anything, to leave me slightly better disposed towards both Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, as people if not as recording artists.

Back in the eighties I was in a band called the Dovers. We hosted a competition during one of our gigs - whoever applauded the loudest would win a copy of our album. The punchline was that our album was a copy of Tiffany's debut which Carl, our singer, had come by at his place of work, a design studio specialising in record covers. We never said it was something we had actually recorded, only that it was an album owned by ourselves.

Ha ha.

Tiffany's cover of I Think We're Alone Now was one of the songs on that record. As for Debbie Gibson, the title Electric Youth rings a bell, but her celebrity otherwise passed me by; and I always thought The Right Stuff by New Kids on the Block was a great song, but have no idea what happened to them after that.

Weren't they one of those dance routine based outfits? Wasn't Mark Wahlberg a member? I wonder whether they managed to lure him back to the fold, given that he's clearly a busy man these days.

Anyway, we're here and I'm sure that all of my questions will either receive answers or else cease to matter in the fullness of time. The AT&T Centre is enormous, on a scale sufficient for basketball and rodeo events, and nevertheless the place is swarming for a phenomenon long past its sell by date. It feels as though we're at an airport as we migrate towards the section of the arena in which we are to be seated. It seems incredible that this bunch could inspire such a turn out thirty years since they could legitimately be described as kids. There are a great many women in their early forties who would have been teenagers when The Right Stuff hit the charts, but the age range of tonight's audience varies wildly, including even men. We see a few women togged out in dayglo rap gear with big hoopy earrings - actually more TLC than Salt-N-Pepa, so far as I recall - but mostly it's fans of the New Kids, big gangs of them, possibly even a few hen parties. More than once I'm fooled into thinking I've spotted someone from the cast of Orange is the New Black.

Will is after a T-shirt so we join one of the many queues. After ten minutes I go and buy a beer, then come back. I've had two beers by the time we get to the front of the queue although to be fair I may be drinking fast, and it turns out that this particular concession is out of Debbie Gibson merchandise. We retrace our steps and find another concession, one with Debbie Gibson T-shirts on display.

Some of us grew up listening to NKOTB, reads the shirt of one woman who passes us by. The cool ones still do, is the punchline on the reverse of the garment. I'm apparently on that planet where New Kids on the Block were cool.

Music starts up.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I wander over to the entrance for the nearest terrace and draw back the curtain. I'm gazing down into an entertainment grand canyon. Termite trails of fans shuffle towards their seats over on the far side. A rapper and a DJ are at work upon a circular podium at the heart of the auditorium, about a hundred feet below where I'm stood. This is the warm up act, Illtown Sluggaz which is something to do with Naughty by Nature without actually being Naughty by Nature. They sport baseball clobber and the DJ wears a cartoon bear head, like a sports mascot. He looks fucking ridiculous and I feel an involuntary shudder of disgust that I, a fully grown man, should be presented with this Disney teddy as entertainment.

'Everybody put your hands in the air,' suggests the rapper, 'and wave them like you just don't care.'

The DJ segues a few bars of Material Girl into a few bars of The Final Countdown into a few bars of Walk This Way - hits of the eighties, and everyone cheers because they recognise the songs. It doesn't matter that more than half of the songs are shite, because familiarity is the point. To my ears, it may as well be Peter Kay asking who remembers Curly Wurly or Crackerjack. I am more or less watching the twenty-first century version of Jive Bunny

'Everybody make some noise!'

I turn to rejoin my wife and brother-in-law, who has at last bagged himself some Debbie Gibson merchandise. We resume the Tolkienesque pilgrimage towards our section, ascending an escalator to the upper floor past vast stylised murals of the San Antonio Spurs and their mascot, a man in the suit of a chubby coyote with googly green eyes suggesting substance abuse - to me, but apparently to no-one else in the entire city. You would think that being able to afford this futurist space station of a venue, the Spurs could at least slip some grade school kid a few dollars to come up with a less-creepy mascot.

Our seats are on the back row, up against the rear wall, almost in the roof. The incline of the terrace seems perilously steep, certainly more than forty-five degrees, although at least we shouldn't have any trouble seeing the stage, which is still occupied by a man wearing a cartoon bear head playing snippets of Can't Fight this Feeling, The Heat is On, and other crowd pleasers. Gazing upwards, I have a view of the underside of the roof structure criss-crossed with monumental air conditioning, pipes large enough to facilitate escaping prisoners. It feels as though we're underneath the USCSS Nostromo from the movie Alien.

The venue fills to capacity, not an empty seat to be seen. A larger stage is set up against the far side, facing the central podium upon which the Illtown Sluggaz skillfully play short excerpts of familiar songs. This larger stage is picked out in neon strips delineating the shape of a huge cassette tape, and the screen behind is suddenly illuminated. We are shown a short film of the individual members of New Kids on the Block as they are now, mowing the lawn, renewing home insurance, riding a horse, having a colonoscopy…

The crowd go wild.

The face of Donny Wahlburg - brother of Mark, hence my confusion - fills the screen. He holds up a smartphone. He tells us we need to download an app called Appix in order to get the most from tonight's performance, which raises all sorts of questions that I can't be bothered to think about.

'I love you, Donny!' screams the forty-year old woman sat next to me, and she really screams, just like those teenagers in the black and white footage of the Beatles. Now the New Kids take to the stage, five tiny figures dancing upon a giant cassette tape which now has The Way written across it in neon as though by an invisible giant, that being the name of the song they are performing. A woman I uncharitably come to think of as Fat Snooky stands in her seat, directly in front of me, blocking my view. I can see only her silhouette, but what I can see suggests Snooky from Jersey Shore. The women of the three seats adjacent to Fat Snooky also stand. The terrace is at such a profound incline that my knee is higher than the top of the head of the person seated in front, and yet Fat Snooky and her friends somehow need a better view, placing me in the position of being unable to watch something I'm actually not that bothered about seeing, or wasn't until my view was so rudely obstructed.

I poke in the ear plugs as the New Kids go into My Favourite Girl. This reduces the volume, cuts out some of the distortion, and the music actually sounds sort of listenable as a result, even though it's New Kids on the Block. Despite believing that The Right Stuff was okay, they were never my sort of thing. It never bothered me that they were manufactured so much as that most of their material is quite clearly designed to make young girls go week at the knees, and its effect on me is therefore minimal. Beyond that, I'll concede that they have decent voices, and certainly with more actual soul than is the case with most boy bands; but the bottom line is that I couldn't give a fuck about dance routines, and I dislike the sort of blandly efficient corporate emoting which has been normalised by shows such as America's Got Talent and the rest. I thought we'd got rid of it all in the seventies, but somehow it came back bigger and more powerful than ever, much like an X-Men villain.

The writing on the giant cassette tape announces I Think We're Alone Now and on comes Tiffany. She seems older and a little more grizzled, but the on-screen close-up shows the face of a regular person. She reminds me of Wendy. She doesn't look as though she's had any facial surgery, and her make-up is just kind of average. Most surprising of all is that she has a rich, powerful voice, the sort you might associate with a few of the more ruthlessly authentic country artists. I'm sure she didn't sound like this as a teenager in the eighties. I'm impressed in spite of myself.

Tiff is followed by Debbie Gibson who accompanies herself on a piano which emerges from the plastic window of the giant cassette tape. She doesn't seem familiar, aside from a passing disconcerting resemblance to Debbie McGee, wife of the late Paul Daniels. Just like Tiff, she too has a surprisingly powerful voice, and I guess her piano is the only live instrument we'll be hearing this evening. She's knocking out a ballad which sounds like the sort of thing you hear on the aforementioned America's Got Talent. It's not to my taste at all, but I am warmed by just how wrong the late Bill Hicks has turned out to have been regarding this woman's musical chops.

Salt-N-Pepa are up next. I actually have a few bits and pieces of Salt-N-Pepa in my collection. They date from the era of mainstream rap having been mostly annoying and reliant on cheesy nursery rhyme style hooks, and there's only so much of that stuff I can listen to. Salt-N-Pepa give us the hits and are actually pretty entertaining. They perform with an authenticity, a certain rough, lively edge which I hadn't anticipated. It's also pretty clear that they're having a whale of a time, and the audience picks up on this too.

The New Kids return to the stage.

'You know, they said we wouldn't last,' bellows Donnie.

They would presumably be the critics. I don't specifically recall anyone doubting the longevity of New Kids on the Block, the major criticism being that they were manufactured and therefore shit, but never mind. The performance suddenly takes a peculiarly post-modern turn as we're treated to a slide show of other boy bands, everyone from New Edition to the Stylistics, reminding us that the form has occasionally thrown up a song which even miserable cunts such as myself have to grudgingly admit is decent. This is a preamble to Boys in the Band, a new song celebrating the history of boy bands, which is easily the weirdest number of the evening.

Next they tell us how happy they all are to be right here in San Antonio, which pleases the crowd no end. Houston and Austin are both called out as having played host to previous evenings of New Kids magic, which is greeted by good-natured booing from the audience of one-hundred thousand. Anyway, the point is that they like  Texas, a declaration prompting a verse of Deep in the Heart of Texas, but all I can hear are the four quick handclaps which conclude each bar and remind me of The Birdie Song. Next comes the Selena tribute - which of course we've all been waiting for seeing as how Selena was a local and all, and which is essentially karaoke, mostly sung by one lucky young Latina randomly picked out of the audience. I suppose it's the thought that counts.

'You know, life is precious,' Donnie waxes philosophically as preface to a ponderous spoken interlude, doubtless inspired by Selena's passing, and the truism that we're none of us getting any younger.

'I love you, Donnie,' screams my neighbour.

The boys briefly jig to the very worst hits of the eighties in illustration of our all having been younger than we are right now - Living on a Prayer, Eye of the Tiger, and others I would ordinarily cross the road to avoid. Naughty by Nature take the stage, and I realise I had erroneously recalled them as having incorporated Nature, the Queensbridge rapper who famously worked with Nas.

Naughty by Nature are best known for their hit OPP, the central thesis of which is that one should keep an open mind when it comes to nobbing persons already confirmed to be engaged in a sexually monogamous relationship with a third party. I have OPP on some CD somewhere so I've heard it plenty of times, and yet I still don't remember the track. I don't even remember how it goes right now even as it is being performed live on the stage in front of me. The rest of the set is convincing and energetic, but I still can't quite get away from it being just a couple of blokes rubbing their lips together on a podium accompanied by a twat in a cartoon bear head. The words are just a pointless rhythm from where I'm sat.

Blu-blub-blublu-blu-blu-bluh-blu-bluh! That's right y'all.

Salt-N-Pepa return, and then it all begins to blend into a gushing noise that's been going on far too long, unless you're here for more sincere reasons than I am. I have a notebook on my person, and I've been scribbling away for the duration of the performance, the current stretch of which is acknowledged thus:

We conclude with some spiel about how the best people are those who grew up in the eighties, then a song along the lines of you're my eighties girl, which somehow begins to feel a bit Readers' Wives; and then everyone is on stage doing everything at once for a while.

Fat Snooky and her pals make their way to the aisle. Three hours of their bobbing ponytails have left me with an impression of four young girls with Croydon facelifts - even that I've spent this time back in south-east London - but in profile I see that none of them are much younger than myself, and we're still in Texas in the year 2019. We've all had a great time, even if I've had a great time for the wrong reasons; and Will particularly has had a great time, which was the main point as this has been something to do with his upcoming birthday. The woman sat in the next seat along has apparently spent the last three hours hitting on him, but he found her advances a little weird, which is understandable.

He settles into one his monologues in the car on the way back, softly spoken and very witty with the confidence of a man who has more than earned the right to not give a shit about what anyone else thinks of his dedication to Debbie Gibson. The monologue is born from notes compared about staying at Edi's house when she used to live in Houston. Bess recalls a home which was quite different to that which Will remembers. His story expands to include a period of infirmity at Edi's place, confined to bed watching a stretch of late night television dedicated to Mariah Carey; then finding himself somehow about to buy a Mariah Carey album.

'What am I doing?'

He recreates his own reaction, disbelief mixed with horror, leaving me laughing for more or less the rest of the car journey. As with everything, not least being New Kids on the Block, I guess you had to be there.

Fireworks

We're driving along, out in the Texas countryside heading towards Castroville. The sky is absolutely dark, spattered with stars, and as usual I find myself looking for the one which is following us. This is because the Target Books edition of Larry Kettelkamp's Investigating UFOs had a massive impact on me when I was a kid, seven or eight-years old and living on a farm in rural England. Being a kid I was fascinated by anything weird. I'd heard of flying saucers, but Kettelkamp's book was where I first read about their notional occupants, specifically in relation to the notorious case of Betty and Barney Hill. Oddly, the detail of the story which has stayed with me is that of Betty idly gazing from the window of their vehicle as they drove along and noticing how a star appeared to be following them.

So that's what I always think about under such circumstances, and possibly because it's very rare that I'm ever inside a car driving upon a country road after dark. The reason for this is that I've lived in cities since I was roughly twenty, which is fine because I don't like the countryside once the sun has gone down. It reminds me of being a kid, and of all the things I thought were real when I was a kid; and whilst I no longer believe those things to be real, I state this with greater confidence when the sun is shining, or at least when illuminated by the lights of town and city.

We're heading for Castroville because it's New Year's Eve, the last evening of 2018, and we've been invited to celebrate with Margot, one of my wife's co-workers whom I've yet to meet.

There will be fireworks. We were going to bring some to add to the pyrotechnics, but all of the places selling fireworks along our route - because no-one in Texas is allowed to sell fireworks within city limits - are tonight crammed with customers, truck after truck backed up onto the highway.

We drive for forty or fifty minutes, maybe an hour, following smaller and smaller roads until we're on a dirt track. I'm looking for names and numbers upon the mailboxes we occasionally pass because Bess is concentrating on driving.

'What was the name on that one?' she asks.

'It wasn't a name. It was some pro-life thing.'

'Well, that won't be Margot's place but we must be near.'

We're there within a few more minutes. There are lights up ahead, and as we approach I see a house and a barn - nothing else because it's darkness all around. It's now about eight in the evening.

We see people and we park.

Out of the car, I look up and realise I've probably never seen so many stars in my life. The sky looked nothing like this when I was growing up in England.

The people we see are Margot and other members of her family. They're stood around a bonfire. It's cold so we crowd in, watching cinders sail up into the black sky, warming ourselves by an orange glow from within the logs.

My first bonfires were Guy Fawkes night on the farm where I grew up. Being the only two kids on the farm, myself and Alan would get started on the bonfire about half way through October, dragging dead conifers from the spinney at the back of the cottages to a corner of the orchard at the foot of the hill, then stacking them against each other like the bones of a wigwam. I recall the conifers as having been some twenty or thirty feet high, but then I was myself much smaller so they probably weren't much taller than a clothes pole. Guy Fawkes night came and we all gathered around to light fireworks from little cardboard boxes and bake potatoes wrapped in tinfoil in the embers at the foot of the bonfire; and naturally this is what I'm thinking about right now as we stand around in the dark at Margot's place.

I've bought a few cans of Boddingtons so I get started on one. Bess introduces me to Steve and Lupe, both of whom work with her and Margot. Junior runs off to see the critters - cattle, horses and a donkey, amongst other things.

Lupe is not only from Mexico, but once lived in Toluca, a city I've visited many times. She only recently became a US citizen, so we get to talking about her citizenship seeing as it's something I've been considering. The process sounds complicated, with laboriously completed applications prone to disappear for no obvious reason, and without any apparent consequences for the government department that lost them. Maybe this is an example of America having become great again.

I tell her I had a similar, albeit less politically suspicious experience when applying for the visa which allowed me to travel to the United States and get married. It took me many months to fill in the application owing to the level of detail required. Eventually it was done and I sent it to the US Embassy in London from which I subsequently received an interview date. The interview began with an officious woman telling me that I had failed to fill in an application form and would therefore have to do it all over again.

'I actually did fill in an application form,' I said, 'and I posted it to you, so you must have received it.'

'We never received it, so you clearly didn't post it.' She told me this as a fact established by her having stated it.

'Had I not posted it,' I pointed out, 'you wouldn't have received it, and logically you must have received it because otherwise you wouldn't have sent me the letter asking me to come here for an interview.'

Despite the impeccable logic of my defence, I was nevertheless somehow in the wrong and had to fill in the same application form again, right there at the embassy, based on what I could remember of the month it had taken me to fill it all in first time around. This meant I had to take vague guesses at otherwise long forgotten details of employment history and the like.

Lupe sighs at the inevitability of the forces of officialdom which take the piss with a big smile because they know there's nothing you can do, regardless of your having gone through the supposed proper channels. We talk about the government for a little while. We're not very impressed with them.

We meet Kyle, who is already a little drunk. I have an impression of his being in his late twenties, but he tells us that his son is twenty-three. He describes himself as a skater. He and my wife know a few of the same people from high school, but not each other.

'Where you come from?' he asks me as others crowd around to savour the answer.

'England,' I tell them, prompting in response the usual anecdotes about either visits to England or having met some English dude at some point or other.

'No, I don't mind being asked,' I say in response to another question. 'I was asked the same question only today in HEB as it happens, same place I've been shopping since 2011. I guess the cashier never noticed my accent before today.'

This gets a laugh for some reason.

'I'm just going to start telling people I'm from San Antonio,' I add, which gets another, bigger laugh.

Trays of sausage, brisket and tortillas appear, freshly cooked and steaming. We fill our plates as Margot heads off towards a speaker sat in the grass connected to someone's smartphone and blasting out rock music, Smashing Pumpkins and a few things I actually recognise. 'I got me some ELO,' she announces ominously.

Kyle is engaged in an impersonation of what a Japanese gentleman says upon encountering a transgendered individual, a ladyboy by Kyle's terminology. He squints and grimaces causing his upper front teeth to protrude. His hand reaches down to tickle an imaginary penis as he delivers the punchline, four or five syllables which all seem to rhyme, one of them being dong with the hilarity pivoted upon long mispronounced as wrong - because it's an oriental person saying it. The joke, whatever it may be, is rendered incomprehensible by Kyle's delivery. It's difficult to tell where this one came from. Nothing within the conversation up to that point seemed to be heading towards either the Japanese, gender identity issues, or the phonetic disparity between certain languages.

Welcome to 1973, I think to myself, wandering back over to the bonfire as we get started on the fireworks. Margot's husband does the honours, taking fireworks across to the designated patch of ground and setting them off. The rockets are stood upright in the well of a couple of cinder blocks, one on top of the other. The fireworks look military grade, and when they go off, it's the sort of thing I'm used to seeing at huge public firework displays on Blackheath in London. We've come a long way since I was a kid with that dinky little cereal box of Roman candles and Catherine wheels.

Ooh, we all say, then ahh as we watch the sky light up with pops, bangs, and vastly spreading flowers of briefly electric colour.

Kyle jumps through a fountain of cinders flaming up from some giant landlocked sparkler. 'Yeehaw,' he accordingly whoops.

We watch, and then we go into the house to meet Margot's dogs, and other members of her family.

Her mother extends a hand in greeting and launches into a bewildering monologue cribbed from either Dick Van Dyke or one of those bloody awful Austin Powers movies. With hindsight, I'd say it was something along the lines of cups of tea with the jolly old Queen and blinky blonky blimey what weather we are having, but I'm unable to take in any of the specific details and receive only a general impression of cartoon cultural stereotypes. I'm on my third tin of Boddingtons and am approaching refreshed, plus it's difficult to believe that this woman is actually saying this crap in an apparent hope that I will respond, that I will recognise myself somewhere in there amongst the litany of Britface cliches.

I walk away because I don't know how to respond, and maybe because I feel sorry for the woman.

Bess and I pet the dogs, four or five of them including a collie, and also a cat.

'Good choice,' I say, giving Margot the thumbs up as I spot a Devo title amongst the DVDs just behind where the cat is lounging.

'That belongs to my husband,' she smiles. 'He's crazy about them. Myself, I like Cheap Trick…'

Margot's husband has been a peripheral figure at the edge of our gathering. Apparently he isn't much of a people person. I haven't even spoken to him but I already like him more than at least two of those assembled here today.

Everyone is inside, so I go back out, walking across to the still blazing bonfire and into the field beyond. The darkness is such that I can't see my own feet, so I'm treading carefully. I come to a halt as I approach what might be a fence, although it's hard to tell, and I look directly up.

I've honestly never seen so many stars. It's as though someone has taken a spray can to the sky. It's a little cold and absolutely quiet but for the distant buzz of the speaker relaying the hits of Green Day to an audience of no-one. The reason I could never go back to life in the country is that this kind of spectacle is simply too intense, and will never become anything familiar. I prefer illuminated spaces in which everything will occur within certain established parameters.

Out here, I'm right at the edge where lines blur, where stories such as the one related by Betty and Barney Hill don't seem quite so unreasonable. It's too much to take in, although it's beautiful beyond description.

I return to the house, happy to know that we'll be leaving in a few minutes. It's nowhere near midnight, but neither Bess nor myself are particularly bothered about the countdown, the ceremony, or the arbitrary division of one point in time from the next.

It's already 2019 in England.

Funerals and Santa

I only met Skip Brooks twice. The first time was at a Devo concert in Austin. My wife pointed out a guy who resembled Skip, her cousin Jenni's husband, but we didn't say anything because we weren't certain of it being him. I don't know if that really counts as a meeting. The second time was at a Fixations gig in San Antonio. Skip was playing guitar for the Fixations, who were tremendous, and we spoke briefly after their set. So I didn't really know Skip and now I never will. He was fine this time last year. In April he discovered that he had cancer, and now he's gone. He had forty-seven years and that was it. It seems very unfair.

I know Jenni a little better, and it seemed to be mainly down to timing and circumstances that I never got to know Skip; which is a shame because I'm sure we would have had a lot to talk about, at least with the music. He had two young boys and was a great father and husband, which I know because it was plain to see, and so much so that everyone remarked upon his being both a great father and husband - which seems a rare thing.

The cancer was in his mouth. The operation sounded nightmarish. They had to remove his jaw, clean out the cancerous material, then reattach it. For a while he was doing okay, and then he wasn't. The cancer had returned and spread, and was so located as to cause fractures in his spine as it grew. It's difficult to imagine how his situation could have been worse. The end seemed inevitable. Jenni maintains that he kept his spirits up throughout what might justifiably be called his ordeal, communicating with sign language.

Today is his remembrance service.

We're at Trinity Baptist Church.

Skip was introduced to me as a punk rock preacher - mohican, tatts, piercings, and prone to belting out hardcore thrash numbers at his sermons. Coming from England, this combination took some getting used to on my part. I don't have anything specific against the religious, but belief in the man upstairs does not come natural to me. I refuse to identify as anything so tediously dogmatic as atheist because I don't see why I should have to identify as anything; and if your religion works for you, then I'm probably fine with that. Dealing with the world by means of metaphor is as good a way as any, up to but definitely no further than the point of voices in the head.

As a preacher, it seems Skip was tireless in his work with the homeless, those brought low through addiction, and others traditionally spurned by the more clean-cut - and not particularly Christian, it has to be said - representatives of the Baptist church. He was a guy who spent his life doing good things, and now he's gone.

Trinity Baptist is huge, and is presently full of friends, relatives, and those who probably wouldn't be here today were it not for Skip picking them up and setting them back on their feet. About half of the assembly have studded leather jackets and tattoos. One guy has the cover of the Subhumans' The Day the Country Died album painted on the back of his jacket.

The record came out in 1983 and it's now 2018 in a different country. My own pretend noise band once played on the same bill as the Subhumans, and I hung out with Dick Lucas and Trotsky - respectively the Subhumans' vocalist and drummer - as we watched Opera for Infantry, the other support act of the evening. They were nice people. I feel like I should tell this to the guy in the jacket, but I don't.

Jenni talks for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

It's tough to imagine what she must be going through, what her kids are going through. She talks about how she met Skip, what he meant to her, and she gets through it just fine. It doesn't seem like she's reading from a script. She expresses herself very well and it's very moving.

Prayers follow, then further testimonials with greater emphasis on Skip the preacher, part of his world which I don't really understand, and to which I don't find myself drawn. It isn't that the sermons are all just words but I honestly don't know what else there is to be said. I barely knew the guy and yet his passing feels like something which had no right to happen, a great wrong which no amount of prayer can ever set right; but I guess it's just me.

At length we leave, Bess and myself, and we head to St. Luke's - straight there without first going home because time is tight. She and the women of her rock group have an event - referring here to a group of women who paint various designs on rocks, transforming them into objects given away in hope of bringing cheer to someone's day. The event is a Christmas rock exchange, the occurrence of which has been publicised through social media.

We are the second to arrive at St. Luke's parking lot. Sandy is already waiting.

'Where do you think we should set up?' she asks.

We gaze down at the St. Luke's rock exchange, a small circle of decorated stones on the grass verge at the side of the road. Members of the public are invited to leave rocks they have painted in exchange for anything which has taken their fancy. We have a table and the rock exchange is on a bit of a slope.

'Over there.' Bess indicates the corner of the parking lot, which is on level ground.

We unfold the table, spread out a table cloth, then set up the Christmas tree. Sandy wraps it in tinsel as the others begin to arrive. Some hang things from the tree. Others bring tins of cakes or cookies. Everyone seems to have brought more painted rocks, but it's still just five or six of us beneath a slate grey sky and it's kind of cold. Bess has told me this won't take much longer than half an hour. We're a sort of festive flash mob, you might say.

Another fifteen minutes pass and abruptly it all comes together. There are twenty or thirty of us now, and plenty of children. Santa strolls across from where he's parked his truck.

'Ho ho ho,' he informs us.

Santa is actually Byron, Bess's first husband. He's a goofball but in a good way, and without really trying. Being a first husband, his deeds occasionally give rise to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there's an honesty to the guy that's difficult to resist, and he's consistent, and when you need someone to dress up as Santa, Byron's your man. He's done it before and Bess called in a favour, so here he is handing out candy to the kids whilst cracking jokes about reindeer on the barbecue.

Bess and I watch, impressed in spite of ourselves.

'He's one of life's natural Santas,' I observe.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, Byron as Santa at the St. Luke's Christmas rock exchange…

The children hoover up all the available candy, and we hang out with gals for a while. Then, once we're done, everything goes back to the trunks of trucks and cars, and we drive home.

'Funerals and Santa,' I say to my wife. 'It's been quite a day.'

Desesperación

Once again it's market day. We loaded up the car last night and we're heading out to a spot where we'll set up our canopy, table and a couple of chairs. We will be attempting to sell our stuff to complete strangers - Bess's painted rocks and my canvases. Usually that means it's Saturday and we're heading for Mission Plaza, but today is Friday and we have a pitch at the Desesperación Community Centre*. It's their annual peace market, as it's called, a three day event, Friday to Sunday with a 9AM start; and it's a benefit for the LGBT community. We haven't even got started and somehow it already feels like work, but we're telling ourselves this is simply because it's something different and we've grown so used to the set up at Mission Plaza.

Some people make thousands of dollars over the three days of the festival, we've been told. We usually pull in about forty at the Mission, and that's entirely my wife because no-one can afford my paintings, relatively cheap though they may be. Mission Plaza is on the south side, which isn't really where the money is, but I'm personally not too bothered. People seem happy just to see my paintings and that works for me; but it bothers Bess, which is why we're here at Desesperación, which is fancier and is therefore patronised by overmoneyed Alamo Heights types looking to offset their economic footprint with something cute, ethnic, and preferably hand crafted.

The street is closed off for the market. We park at the Bill Miller barbecue place, which is opposite the Community Center. It's still early and there are only a couple of other vehicles in the parking lot. They surely won't mind and we can move the car elsewhere once we're unloaded. Between us, it takes two trips, fifty yards between the car and the spot which has been reserved in our name, Bess and Lawerence scribbled on the curbstones in chalk, my name spelled with a vestigial e. The first trip is punctuated by some Desesperación official letting us know we'll have to move the car once we've unloaded because Bill Miller is likely to get pissy.

Yes, we know.

The second trip is more complicated. I'm carrying an easel and a case full of paints whilst pulling a wheeled carrier containing Bess's rocks, one of those things with an extending handle. I have eight house bricks piled precariously on top of the wheeled carrier and I'm pulling it along with great care over the uneven pavement so as not to dislodge them. We're on grass at Mission Plaza where everything can be pinned down with stakes so as to prevent it blowing away, but here we're on asphalt so we've picked up a stack of bricks from Lowes with which to weigh everything down.

I'm pulling the wheeled carrier along the pavement at the back of stalls which have already set up and I come to a power line, a thick length of cable duct-taped to the ground. I'm having trouble getting the tiny plastic wheels over the thing. Someone more important than myself, whose time is more precious, dances around me so as to get past, obliging me to manoeuvrer, spilling my house bricks across the pavement. There are eight bricks in total and three of them smash in half.

'Thanks a lot,' I call out to the important person. 'That's great!'

I lift the wheeled carrier over the power line, gather up the bricks and the pieces of bricks, and eventually get to where Bess has already got our canopy set up.

She heads off to move the car.

I bolt things together and unpack more stuff.

We're next to a guy selling bead jewellery similar to the Huichol crafts you see in Mexico. The guy opposite has silver jewellery. To our left is the end of the street where they're setting up a stage and a PA. Ours is the stall nearest to the stage. Somehow I'm having a tough time feeling positive about any of this.

Behind us is the building of the Desesperación Community Centre, some sort of converted warehouse. There are two floors and a number of rooms within, presently all occupied by other traders. Some of them have come from Mexico, places such as Malinalco and Oaxaca, and these are the people who reputedly pull in thousands of dollars over the weekend selling art, crafts, clothing, jewellery, and delivering what they refer to as Aztec Horoscopes - which I'm not touching with a fucking bargepole. I've spent a lot of time up to the eyeballs in the Mexican Tonalpohualli calendar over the years, and I don't like to see it repackaged as a money spinning one size fits all new age nick-nack.

As with Mission Plaza, we don't have to pay for our pitch, but unlike Mission Plaza, Desesperación wants a cut of whatever we make. Bess and myself had our name down for a ten foot street pitch, which means they'll want 35% of our takings at the end of the day, assuming we sell anything. Smaller pitches were available for a lesser percentage, but we needed ten feet for the canopy because we don't want to take chances with the weather. Indoor pitches will be obliged to cough up 40% of their takings.

This was explained to us during the induction which we attended on Tuesday evening. First we had to apply, showing examples of our work because they don't want anything too shit lowering the tone. Having been accepted, we came to the induction hosted by four of the organisers, three young women and an older one, a Matriarch in traditional Oaxacan dress. The young women were like of the kind who, you know, when they talk they're all like ermahgerd this and, you know, ermahgerd that, and they're all like giggling and stuff and like they don't know words and everything they say sounds like a question, which didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence. The Matriarch - whom I shall call Ermintrude for the sake of both convenience and insult - had horrible hair and nasty shoes, although it was Bess who noticed this second detail. She seemed officious and humourless, like an unforgiving school teacher. I hated her upon sight and immediately understood that this was all a terrible idea. She put me in mind of the definition of a false wise man recorded by Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún in the late sixteenth century.

The false wise man, like an ignorant physician, a man without understanding, claims to know about God. He has his own traditions and keeps them secretly. He is a boaster, vanity is his. He makes things complicated; he brags and exaggerates. He is a river, a rocky hill.

Ermintrude immediately struck me as a woman who makes things complicated. The induction rambled on for far longer than seemed necessary on the topic of how it was going to be. Here's what we were going to do. Thanksgiving was coming up so there would be all that leftover food, and maybe we could bring it along to help feed the volunteers. In fact, maybe we could just take a day out to fix tacos for them, and don't worry about making too many, and we should advertise the market on all of our social media platforms. Everything was about what we could do for Desesperación, rules we should observe so as to keep ourselves from getting in the way or becoming a nuisance, how we were to pay the money we owed at the end of each day, how to sign our contracts…

Never trust a hippy, I thought darkly to myself. Anyone who projects their inner serenity with that much emphasis is invariably overcompensating for something, usually their inner Heinrich Himmler.

Yet here we are, because they had us sign a contract, and there has to be an upside to anything with that much small print. Maybe I'll sell a ton of paintings.

I wander around before the crowds start to thicken, checking out the other stalls. It's mostly clothing and jewellery, some animalitos,  muertitos and the like. The art is mostly decent, but nothing I'd want to buy, nor anything which makes me feel uncomfortable about my asking for eighty dollars a canvas - price adjusted so as to account for Desesperación wetting its beak every time we make a sale. One stall has a typically inept painting of the Joker and his girlfriend, Harley Quinn on sale. So much for filtering out those who might lower the tone.

It's ten, and the crowds begin to arrive. A group from the Centro Cultural Aztlan are engaged in a ceremony at the end of the street, four of them in approximately traditional Mexican dress chanting, saluting the four cardinal points, greeting the sun, and asking Ipalnemoani to bless the craft market. They also mention Huitzilopochtli a couple of times, which seems a little incongruous given his famed penchant for human sacrifice on a massive scale. The incense burning in their censer is cedar rather than copal, as it probably should be, and it feels hokey. Next, a Tejano band start up on the stage, effectively drowning out any attempts at conversation we might make. Tejano is a traditional fusion of country, Mexican music, and Bavarian oompah bands with particular emphasis on accordion. In between songs, our accordion player introduces himself as being in some way related to Flaco Jiménez, a local Tejano boy made good who was won awards for his accordion playing in some peculiarly specific capacity like fastest, loudest, or most annoying. I have nothing against Tejano music, but I prefer narcocorrido - a variant which celebrates the deeds of various drug lords - and I'm not crazy about the volume. The band play about a million songs, all of which sound more or less the same to me, and then on comes our compère. She resembles a hybrid of Yoko Ono and a Hispanic version of Toni Arthur who used to present Play School back in the old country. She smiles like it hurts, and it seems as though she's addressing an audience of small children. She screeches and her speech is seasoned with ill-fitting phrases borrowed from rap. She introduces people as being in the house, asks that we give it up for them, and so on. She is exhausting to watch.

Now it seems that Ermintrude is in the house, so we give it up for her. Ermintrude repeats some of what she told us at the induction. The thrust of her speech is that as we approach Christmas, maybe we shouldn't be giving our money to the multinationals who are destroying the Earth, but instead opt to ethically spunk away all that lovely lolly on independent traders, such as those gathered here today. Desesperación raised a million dollars last year, and the city matched that sum with a further million, and now - maybe if we really make an effort - we can raise another million for Desesperación over the coming days. Ermintrude is kind of vague on what this money is for.

'We save buildings,' she explains. 'We campaign for preservation orders. You know, we have many beautiful historic buildings in San Antonio, and that's partially thanks to our campaigning work. Also, last year we fought the city when they wanted to raise taxes to pay for a new pipeline for the water system, although we lost that one.'

Given that San Antonio's water and sewage system is in famously poor shape, I'm not sure how I feel about Ermintrude's apparent attempt to preserve its state of historic disrepair; and a few more taxes to keep us from turning into Flint, Michigan doesn't seem an unreasonable proposition. Furthermore, I realise that in all this time I haven't heard a single fucking word about the LGBT community for whom we are supposedly raising funds. Mostly it's been about our money and how we can help out. At one point I go to take a piss, and pinned to the walls of the rest room are flyers with DONATE in bold letters.

Never trust a hippy.

The Tejano group is followed by a mariachi performance, a band backing an elderly female singer in flamboyant dress who prowls the makeshift stage as though about to drag one of those nice young men off into the bushes. Her voice is unfortunately a shrill screech and far from seductive.

Then there's another elderly woman wearing an unusual amount of makeup and lamenting mislaid love, after which it all blends into an endless conversation stopping racket which has made its home at the end of the street, punctuated only by further announcements of who is now in the house along with requests that we either make some noise or give it up for them.

I've bought my easel, oil paints and a freshly prepared canvas, because I had a feeling this was going to be one fuck of a long day, and it's not even eleven. Seven hours to go. I set to painting the tree on the opposite side of the street, incorporating elements of the revolving sign of the Bill Miller restaurant. Within minutes my view is blocked by people watching the band, but never mind. I do what I can, pushing paint around the canvas until it looks like it's in more or less the right place.

The mariachi performance is followed by Yoko Arthur screeching and telling us who else is in the house, then drawing a few raffle tickets. Each trader was asked to provide an example of their best work to be given away as prizes in the raffle. Bess gave them one of her painted rocks. I didn't give them anything.

The Centro Cultural Aztlan people are back, reborn as a rap group. This time there are two of them along with a woman playing a flute, rapping to a backing track of hip-hop beats. It sounds okay, and they're lyrically pretty tight; but as with the ceremony, it feels too much like an impersonation and not enough like that which it aspires to impersonate. Generic ad libs asking where my people be at? and the like don't really help.

We're right here, I suppose.

Next is a woman named Azul. She sings and plays vihuela, and is backed by an approximation of a mariachi group. She tells us her music draws from the traditions of Veracruz on the Mexican gulf coast. It reminds me of Tarascan music and is happily lacking the oompah of Tejano. It's the best thing we've heard so far by some margin. Of course, I still find something to annoy me - there's a woman sat at the front in a turquoise shirt, late fifties, bit of a spare tire with the face of a librarian. She is lost in music. Her arms sway slowly in the air as she snaps her fingers. Her head is back and her eyes are closed in rapture. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone look quite so smug. She is every social worker I've ever met, and only now do I realise she's been doing the chair dance all fucking morning, just sat there being a spirit demonstrably more free than the rest of us. I never realised there was a female equivalent to the dance famously done by dads at weddings, but now I've seen it with my own eyes.

I paint the tree and Bess sells rocks.

Yoko Arthur returns, now treating us to a full screeching half hour of what seems to be either a one-woman play or performance poetry which outstays its welcome. Her voice swoops up and down as she describes the trauma of childhood jealousy. She wanted the Commodore 64, but they gave her a ballerina doll seeing as how she was a girl and all. Gender stereotyping is a bad scene. Her brother got the computer, but she isn't bitter because she saw the alien. It was in her room one night, like the aliens you always hear about with the bald heads and big eyes and everything. It blinked at her and was definitely real, and that was better than having a Commodore 64.

'Who the fuck is this for?' I ask Bess.

She shrugs and sells another rock to someone.

Yoko Arthur concludes her performance and we give it up for her, and then for another poet who is now in the house. This one seems a little nervous as she takes the microphone and informs us that this is a poem about when she had uterine cancer.

Death sits at a desk and in my uterus, she explains, and I'm so astonished that I jot the phrase down in my notebook. It was actually the doctor who diagnosed her cancer sat at the desk, but that's poetry for you. This poem just keeps on going like a more depressing Energizer Bunny™, becoming bleaker and ever more bereft of light by the minute. It's all we can do to not laugh.

I purchase beer and tacos from upstairs, and the music resumes, more Tejano, more horseshit, and then the world's most efficiently workmanlike blues band. The bass player used to be in Question Mark and the Mysterians who had a massive hit with 96 Tears. This doesn't mean a lot to me because I preferred the Eddie & the Hot Rods version.

I paint.

Bess sells rocks.

The woman in turquoise is still doing her dance, such as it is, arms in the air, fingers snapping, moves requiring nothing which formally acknowledges rhythm.

'Now she is why people voted for Trump,' I tell my wife.

I come back to the painting from time to time. I can't tell if it's any good. Bess swears that it is, but then she usually does. It feels like we've been here for at least a week.

Yoko Arthur introduces yet more people as being in the house.

I paint.

A little girl goes crazy over a small canvas my wife has decorated with a mandala, first asking that my wife sign it, then to have her picture taken with the artist.

'Now that has made it all worth while,' Bess explains happily.

Hours drag past.

My painting begins to look kind of okay.

It gets dark and I still haven't sold a single canvas, not that I'm hugely bothered. I pack up my paints.

'I'm going to take this stuff to the car, okay?'

The car is in the parking lot of San Antonio College, not actually a whole lot further than Bill Miller.

I return and it's twenty to six. Bess starts to pack away her rocks.

'You can't pack away yet.' Ermintrude appears from nowhere to deliver the warning like we're naughty children. 'You have to wait until six.'

'Sure. Whatever.'

We wait until six, and I tell Bess to leave the packing up to me. She has to take our receipts to the office so they can work out how much we owe them, and the queue is already long.

I pack things away. Bess returns after about forty-five minutes. She is strangely quiet as we carry our stuff back to the car.

'Are you okay?' I ask.

'Fine,' she grunts. 'Tired.'

We no longer even need to have the conversation about whether we're coming back tomorrow. We signed contracts stating that we would, but the penalty of breaking the contract is that we won't get invited back next year. Boo hoo.

We drive to a branch of Jim's. We're tired and hungry.

Bess tells me that we took $130 - which was all her rocks. The Desesperación people looked at our receipts and reckoned it was $133, by which point Bess no longer cared enough to argue. They said that we owed them 25% of our takings because we had actually been given an eight foot rather than the full ten foot pitch. Bess said she wasn't bothered and that we'd signed a contract to pay 35%, and in any case she'd already written out a check for $53.20, that being 35% of $133. They said we owed $54 because they had rounded it up. Having stood in a queue for three quarters of an hour, Bess threw a dollar bill at the woman and told her to keep the change.

We eat and we leave a tip.

The knowledge that we won't be returning tomorrow, that we've managed to reclaim our weekend from Ermintrude and the forces of evil is a feeling so wonderful that it has left us almost lost for words.

Never again.

*: Names changed because I've no doubt they have some really mellow and tuned-in lawyer ready to destroy the lives and empty the bank accounts of anyone who might be legally proven responsible for a bad vibe.