What's kicking ?

So it seems I'm on a once-yearly blog-writing regime at the moment and that really isn't enough. Will try harder. I promise.

It's better than my website which currently has four years between two news items. Actually that's not true. I know. It doesn't really make any sense that one post is four years after the last and that's because it's not. It was with a heavy heart that, after having paid three years of hosting subs (all at once - it was a good idea at the time) to my server, some nasty person who I could call a very rude name decided to send a nasty boom in the direction of my hosting server and my website disappeared. Because I had recently moved everything online to Wordpress (which, in all other matters, is a wonderful thing to be working on), I lost all my website updates back to sometime around the beginning of 2011. Doh !!!

Here I was anyway, kind of starting again. It was, however, interesting to note a few developments since 2011 which I took the opportunity to 

I am now the resident pianist at the Cáca Milis Cabaret. A wonderful Wexford institution run by the marvellously scatty Helena Mulkerns who aims to bring together the best she can find in the worlds of dance, music, comedy, film (shorts), spoken word and sometimes a mix of more than one. She called me when she had decided to start a Dublin version of the same thing and we have a lot of fun putting new songs together and singing and playing them for the audience in the gaps. I also like to travel down to Wexford and perform at the original of the species whilst getting a chance to have a Pad Thai at The Vine. It's still lovely.  I digress. Sometimes I accompany some of the other singers or musicians. Sometimes, when I think nobody is listening, I sing a song myself.  You're never quite sure what you're going to get but mostly, it's a good evening at least. 

Through the Cáca Milis, I was reaquainted with Miss Truly DiVine who I had met previously as Lou Van Laake with David MacKenzie in a tiny cafe on Clare Street on Dublin 2 back in 2004. We were playing as a duo and she was the first person to ever applaud a solo - this made her stand out from the crowd for me so it was nice to meet her again when both Hedda Kaphengst who I have worked with on and off for the last 12 years and Helena Mulkerns independently of each other allowed me cross  her orbit. Over the last year, we have been putting shows together in Arthur's Pub on Thomas Street and sometimes in other places too. We tend to criss cross two shows. One is called Burning Love, a fun mix of songs sketching the darker side of love - what I like to call love noir. The other has been an evolving show featuring the songs made famous by Marlene Dietrich - Dietrich's Angels. Truly Louly is a marvellous singer and a very very positive person to be around. It is a lot of fun to work with her. I do hope you can make it to one of the shows soon. Actually, we're putting the Dietrich show on ice temporarily as we decided we needed something more summery given the beautiful weather we've been having so we're going to pay musical tribute to Doris Day instead. Being the person she is, Truly Louly can't resist finding the dark side of her but the evening will be great. That's on August 22nd, again in Arthur's on Thomas Street in the city centre of Dublin. 

And that's not all - other singers have come and gone and returned and disappeared again. They're just the ones that spring to mind at the moment. 

I didn't have a house at the beginning of 2011 which, although it wouldn't have meant very much to my average website reader, certainly pushed me up a few rungs of the growing up ladder. I enjoy entertaining visitors if you can catch me in. Do call first. 

Not doing a huge amount of my own stuff at the moment - no change there from 2011 - but I quite fancy changing that a little next year. I still haven't managed to venture very far internationally but you never know, that could all change soon, particularly as I'm about to turn forty. Aaaaggghhhh. 

Time marches on - Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself . . . . . . . 

Compose Yourself

I never usually watch reality TV, least of all music-based reality TV.  I'm not snobbish about it. I just don't think it's the most valuable way of unearthing new talent. However a new show began tonight on RTE Television and I figured that, as I knew a number of people on the first episode, it couldn't hurt to watch.

It's called The Hit and tries to pair up songwriters with stars who are looking for their next single. It's an oddly antiquated concept for the Irish circle of musicians in 2013. There is no Tin Pan Alley culture in Dublin - there is instead a huge and wildly diverse collection of songwriters and composers who perform their own music with a great deal of originality and creativity in their arrangements, lyrics, execution and design of their package. It is so original that it makes doing covers difficult, best left to the bar room one man band (and they usually stick to the international hits of yesteryear anyway). The first acts to try and find a new single from six pitching songwriters were Steve Wall (excitingly on behalf of The Stunning who would release the final song as their first single in twenty years) and Julie Feeney. Jezzebelle (a performing and writing duo whose work I've admired for many years and had the pleasure to record with a few years ago as well) were one of the "teams" sitting in a little room to play their selected song for Steve and Julie who moved around the cubicles before staking their claims to two songs and hoping to get to their favourite before the other. The final decision would be made in the studio with the songwriters only knowing the final decision on the night.  Both winning songs were markedly different to their demo performances. Both decisions were down to which songs the artistes could most make their own. I enjoyed watching the transformation but The Stunning performed a song at the end of the show that sounded very like a The Stunning song.  Julie Feeney sang a song that sounded like she had written it. Jezebelle didn't get through but they already sounded too like Jezebelle already and that may have been their downfall.  The only question that remains is: given the royalties to be reaped, and the fact that our songwriters already have such performing talent with fully-formed arrangements, and the fact that we will just change these ones to sound like our own, why should we spend large amounts of time trying to find other peoples' songs to sing ?

 Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a thing discovered called music and, over time, people discovered they could put different pitches together in different combinations of instruments and create compositions.  Over more time, a divide (not entirely unworthy) was drawn between the composers and the people who chose to perform the composed music. The performers knew better than to go around tinkering with the notes or playing the soft bits too loud and vice versa. The people who were studying the composed music put a lot of time and effort into correcting themselves (if their teachers hadn't already done so) when notes played deviated from the score and nobody was taught to improvise or play from scratch - composing at its core.  A century of jazz and other popular music has helped redress the balance with the educational system remembering to teach children to improvise again and the concept of composition and the interplay between composer, performer and listener challenged time and time again in all music styles. A previously productive musical partnership i had with a classical musician soured when I played one of my colleagues' composition and took one section out (playing ABA instead of AABA). Aware that this had upset him, I offered to make it a co-write to preserve the integrity of the original composition for which this would be a first performance (which angered him even more). Then I got frustrated.  Then the partnership was no more. In our 8 year partnership we had had many conversations about what constituted the "composition", ie the process that earns the royalty. Melody and lyric, or chords as well ? Or full arrangement of first recording ?  This vexes everybody involved in popular music at some stages and the person who considers themselves the songwriter or composer need to work out the answer and work with people who share their version of this.

As an aside to this, it is interesting to work with songwriters who have a huge amount of ideas trapped in their heads without the musical vocabulary to tell their musical colleagues what they want them to do. I'm not being snobby, just amused to observe how far down this road we have come only to arrive at this frustrating disconnect. Frustrating for everybody; the self-styled composer and the session musician.

People perform other peoples' songs for a huge number of reasons and should continue to do so. If we in Ireland can channel more of our great drama heritage into our music, we should be really good at this. There are surprisingly few who excel t interpreting other peoples' music outside the trad community - Christy Moore and Mary Coughlan spring to mind. Both Steve and Julie commonly referred to songs they could "feel" or "make their own" and eventually they did that with both the songs. However, this is difficult when writers write so personally. This makes the song awkward to cover but mostly, I think, because the singers are all in their own little box as well, either musically or in terms of what they're comfortable singing about, often both. We need to get back to telling stories about other voices in other rooms. Peter Gabriel recorded an album in 2008 called "Scratch My Back".  It featured radically reworked covers of songs by a vast array of songwriters from Paul Simon to Bon Iver via Elbow.  It doesn't sound particularly like a Peter Gabriel album but it does sound like Peter Gabriel.  This is the sign of a truly creative force.  A new CD comes out in September of all the different songwriter performers featured on this CD interpreting Peter Gabriel. It's titled "and I'll Scratch Yours". I look forward to hearing how they have interpreted In return and what new perspective they can breathe into his music.

I hope you don't expect me to come to any conclusions. If I was able to do that I would be working at the Irish Times. No, I was just watching this curious new programme and it set me to thinking . . . . . How I wished Irish musicians were better and more interested in performing other peoples' music . . . . . . How I wished people wouldn't get distracted by silly TV game shows and just concentrate on the hard work that will get them where they deserve to be . . . . . How it's good when people can see they're really good at certain parts of the jigsaw puzzle and don't try to do the whole thing.  Even though you didn't see the whole thing, it was interesting to see the bits of the process they did let you see. I don't have an opinion of the Julie Feeney song although I do like her CDs. I don't think she would have done Jezebelle's song any better although I would have been pleased to see them get a break. I liked the song The Stunning turned their hand to very much, more so after they rearranged it but can't say, if I'm honest, I like it more than Steve Wall's original songs. A promising and interesting start though. I was only going to watch one week. I now look forward to seeing how the series develops. A birth for a Tin Pan Alley in Dublin ? I don't think so somehow but if it gets us all thinking somehow that's not a bad idea, right ?

Small World !!!

OK so I was last here in June. I've started doing The Artists' Way and I seem to remember that the last day I wrote this was a day I didn't want to do my morning pages and I felt this was a good alternative. I suspect I've not done my morning pages since. I've enjoyed the experience when I've knuckled down to it but have not been very disciplined since oh, about the 23rd June. Maybe a little later.

I've been travelling again. I went to Avignon (again) to play at the OFF Festival, their fringe festival for the towns' main (but much smaller) festival. Peadar King came up with the idea of playing in Avignon after he wound up doing an Erasmus year in the university there. We played two very successful concerts in the town in May which found the three musicians getting on well together, eating and drinking well, enjoying the music and playing to two packed (50) houses. We were lured into a somewhat false sense of security by this and when the theatre we had played in suggested we return for a week of the three week festival, Peadar was intrigued by the idea. I suggested the 'band' (Tom Portman and I) return too and we all agreed that we were happy to just take a share of whatever came in which wasn't likely to be much.

In reality, it was not much at all although probably slightly more for Tom and I than Peadar. The music was the easy part. We had a good show rehearsed and although it changed slightly over the run, it basically ran to script most nights which allowed us all relax thanks to a certain familiarity and ease that the show worked the way we were doing it. Some bands and singers don't like this but I believe that a live set has a natural rhythm and flow and if you hit a good order, don't mess with it.

The hard part was getting the audience in. An extra boulster to the false sense of security came when Peadar played a show a few weeks earlier to 35 people in the same theatre lending a certain bounce of "what can possibly go wrong ?" to Peadar's step when we arrived. We realised pretty quickly that people were not going to come unless we made them very aware what it was we did and so, after two nights (Saturday - 12 people, and Sunday - fewer than 12) we took to the streets for what is known as Tracting where you get out and busk and hand out flyers and talk to everybody wherever they are (usually outside the cafes but sometimes there are other good busking spots) and urge them to go and hear this excellent Irish band who are playing tonight in this strange theatre nobody's ever heard of or has any idea of how to get to at the obscenely anti-sociable hour of midnight. It was a hard sell. The sun heated up Avignon to about 35 degrees Celsius every day (and when the wind blew it went down to about 32) and we did an hour or two (or sometimes three) of this every day in a number of different locations and drank copious amounts of water. Being shite at French and not strong enough to carry a piano on my back, I got away with doing very little. Peadar's friend Ivonne and Sara did a lot of the talking and leafleting, Peadar and Tom did the playing and I hid under umbrellas trying to stay out of the sun. There was one night with one audience (our audient, I christened him) and one night with no audience at all (we played two songs to make the fact we were there and went home). After that, it was 6, 8, 15, 40 (on the last night).

Once the audience were beginning to come in, this presented a few hurdles of its own.  On the last night, Peadar had friends in who had worked in another theatre where he was working during the day and they had been for a 'few' drinks beforehand. On another night, an audience member became so enraptured by the show she started singing along, one thing in a big stadium or even a club but quite another in a 50-seat basement theatre. She was glared at by everyone in the room and enjoyed the rest of the show in silence but apparently greatly enjoyed the evening even so. We finished the run wondering (and only half-jokingly) whether we preferred the show with audience or without audience. The two instnaces I refer to above certainly threw the musicians on the stage but we realised by the end that we need to learn to project something from the stage that says "this is our show - enjoy but be aware of who is on the stage", obviously in a nice way. We're still finding that familiarity and ease and sympathetic assertiveness but it's been an interesting learning curve.

And after the run was over, I had three days of holiday taking my ipod and book down to the river in the shadow of the half-finished bridge and lazing away the exceptionally hot day before getting an ice cream on the way home or getting crepes for lunch or croissants for breakfast. I even discovered a new game called Munchkin which I have since bought three sets of. I highly recomment it. It was a good fortnight.

I needed a break when I got home and I spent a serious amount of time in front of the Olympics which was just the tonic I needed to get me back in the flow. Well done Katie, our medal winners and our entire team on a job well done. The coverage on the telly and, by the looks of it, the organisation of the whole event was super. Although it's probably not cool to say it, I was also delighted to see how well the British team did - it's great to see a country finding its rhythm and running with it, even if the BBC were a bit hysterical about it. I was a little bemused by the Closing Ceremony but hey, somebody had a bit of fun making it all up and I'm sure the crowd who got seats (ie not the athletes) all had a great time.

August is a month of weddings, rehearsals and lots of gigs. It feels like only rehearsals at the moment but I know in about a weeks' time, the heat is going to turn on.

* I'm still doing the nursing home circuit with Hedda Kaphengst and the Klawitter Theatre Group. I've been working quite frequently with her in the last wee while, I'm looking forward to working with Lou Van Laake (who I last worked with way back in the Sundance Cafe with David MacKenzie) tomorrow and on the horizon is the inaugural Klawitter show in the Mermaid Theatre in Bray.
* Helena Byrne's Breakaway Project is reprising their New American Musicals evening on Tuesday 21st August in Bewleys, this time with one of the composers from America (Scott Evan Davis) in the room to play the piano on his own tunes and other musicians from America joining us on various songs too. The Irish contingent remains as before; Helena Byrne, Simon Morgan, Silvia Napoleoni, Anthony Kinahan and myself on piano. Tickets are €15 on the door.
* Hege Anita Skjaervik is a great singer who I've worked with on various occasions over the last few years but it looks like the next year or so will be a particularly fruitful collaboration as we are working on songs which she will then paint - she will paint interpretations of her composed songs and compose musical interpretations of her songs. We've got going on the songs anyway and, having finished two and made good tracks on another two, we are going to play our first four songs at the Monday Echo "Occasional Piano Night" at the International Bar on Monday 27th August (starts at 8.30 or thereabouts).
* I'm also working madly with singer Keith Allen who is a superb singer, about 20 years old and working in Michigan for a degree in musical theatre but also dabbling in writing his own songs and they're great. We're a little way from showing any of them to the public but the collaboration is proving to be fun.
* The Dublin Unitarian Church is opening its doors for Culture Night on September 21st so that's already occupying my life in preparation for that. I'm also going on my next trip; to the edge of civilisation that is Great Hucklow in Derbyshire for the Unitarian Music Society AGM at the end of the month.

Who said August was a month for summer holidays ?

Last week I went to Roundstone

Roundstone is one of my favourite places in the world.  I first went there with Roesy at the invitation of Sheena Keane and the Roundstone Arts Festival. I returned at the invitation of Noelie McDonnell to play in his band the following year at the following festival. I haven't been back since but often dreamed of returning. Ronan Swift is one of my favourite singer-songwriters in the world and when he told me that he'd been asked to perform in Roundstone in the local Church of Ireland church in aid of their restoration fund, I jumped at the chance. Little budget for fees but we would be put up, fed and watered and get to perform for the people of Roundstone and then drink a pint on the pier watching the sun go down. These rather romantic notions were rather nicely played out thanks to the weather being agreeable. The gig went well and the audience enjoyed themselves. We won't have saved the belltower singlehandedly but we certainly did our bit.

The following morning, I waited for the unreliable Bus Eireann bus to take me to visit my aunt in Galway. It was six minutes and I was starting to get worried although a passerby assured me this was too early to get worried. A gentleman approached from across the road and came straight up to me and said;

"How do I know you ?" He was French.

Quick as a wink, we both realised that he had been at one of the two concerts in Avignon in May (the first trip). He told me that he had enjoyed it greatly and I pointed out to sea in the general direction of Inis Bofin, the home of Peadar King, the main man on the stage that night. The bus arrived and I was off.

Small world !!!

What's The Score ?

After the USA trip was over, I thought I had probably had quite enough of this blog to last me the whole year so it is with some surprise I find myself back at the blogface chipping away once more. The trip at this remove seems somewhat like a strange dream - they said it couldn't be done. At least they said it shouldn't be done and I was determined to prove that not only could it be done but that it should be done as well. I loved the experience, crazy as it was. I was a little sick in the middle but I survived and was delighted to make all the plans I had set for myself.  Once home, I arrived off the plane with a day free before I was straight into preparations for Leaving Cert Music Practical exams which I was accompanying, Iveagh Singers rehearsals, church business to catch up on and an ever busier diary. Since then, I have been never less than quite busy every weekend and this has often extended out into the week as well. 

I started to do The Artists' Way but haven't found the will power to stick at it. Initially, upon learning the basics which are to keep "morning pages" where you write three pages on any topic - the less thought the better - every morning, and "artist dates" where you take yourself off to do or observe something creative once a week, I decided that if I did these things in isolation (without actually throwing myself into the book) that this might be enough to get me going. I even got through the first chapter. In fact, the first chapter and the two tasks daily (which got done almost daily for about two months - the first month much better than the second month) definitely produced a palpable improvement in my demeanour and mental health. However, in May, I got a little bored, a little busier and went to France. I had the Ipad with me in France but somehow the tasks were left undone during that week and I haven't been able to start them up since I returned. Having said that, I am much spritelier than I was before I left for the USA and I put this down to the work done with the Artists' Way book - I just need to get back into it. My friend David has suggested that I may need to do the course too - that to do the tasks in isolation is not enough. I have to find the key to getting myself back into it. 

The gigs in France were with a very talented young fellow with the name of Peadar King. A good singer, a good songwriter, he and his girlfriend Gabrielle opened up their home to myself and Tom Portman from Galway and, in return, we played our musical instruments to back him on two concerts in a theatre in Avignon in May. He had already been offered 9 gigs in the Avignon Festival and so we are returning there for ten days in July. I need to pack the suncream. I've been remiss with it recently and I'm feeling a bit woozy thanks to the hot sun over the last weekend in Dublin. 

My work with the Unitarian Church in Dublin has intensified somewhat and is proving to be equally frustrating and enjoyable. I am now the director of music there, a title I have been given informally for a great many years but which now has grown to be so all-encompassing and intensive thanks to the hard fundraising being done for the pipe organ that the managing committee have conceded that it is now impossible to do it as a volunteer anymore. The result of this is that I have now thrown myself into it even more. There are now a huge number of gigs and events in the church as well as weddings, baptisms, funerals and part of the balance of the fundraising appeal is working out where our opportunities lie - making sure people are aware that the appeal is there without it seeming (to our visitors and congregation) like pressure or advertising; also making sure all in the church are spreading the word out to their own circle of friends and that there are plentiful and appropriate channels to send information out and take donations in (and that everybody knows what they are). So I've been setting up Paypal accounts, organising gigs along with our ever-industrious and hard-working caretaker Kevin, working on policy with ministry (and of course, being a Unitarian church, every minister has a different policy), updating the website alongside many other thankfully interesting things. All the events are different to hopefully not draw on the same crowd each time. Last weekend a group went on a historical walk - our next project is to open up the church on Culture Night in September.  We have a minister whose contract has just been extended by five years but who previously only ever felt to me like a temporary minister so it feels like we have a new minister. On that basis, we're also starting into a new period of examining our own worship and that involves through music as well. I have a lot of ideas myself and I look forward to working with the minister and congregation to find challenging but agreeable tweaks to the way we conduct our services over the coming years.  My level of input in the church is such that I often feel like leaving due to tiredness and perceived apathy from others (about once a week) but you learn to get positive signs from the smallest things and then you see them and that's what keeps you there. I'm still there for the moment. 

So church is taking up a lot of my time but I've started an exciting project which is keeping me up very late at night. I've started transcribing my CD The Shape Of Things onto a notation program on my computer called Sibelius. I'm working out the whys and wherefores as I go but suffice it to say that a lot of people who own the CD have asked for it so I'm working on it. It's a slow process. When I recorded the CD, there were no dots for me to follow - I knew the tunes that I was recording and a general structure but the actual notes other than the tunes were improvised so now I have to go through the original compositions on the CD and work out exactly what I played, then work out how to phrase it so that it looks playable to the pianist, then design it all nicely so that all the tunes fit nicely together, and then finally decide whether I'm going to sell all the tunes in a book or offer them for download individually (or both). At the moment, I'm looking at the music I've transcribed so far and missing the developments in the arrangements that I'm now familiar with since I committed this version to tape but I'm fairly sure I should leave the score as what the owner of the CD would be familiar with - fairly sure but not totally decided yet. It's a job I'm trying to get to as often as possible but it tends to mean I get to bed at 2am in the morning. Thankfully, I'm minding my aunts' house now so I can't do any late-nighters for the next three weeks - if I can force myself into a 9-5 at home, I might actually make some good inroads on it. 

If it was my only project, I might also make some ground but I'm also enjoying doing a lot of work with Hedda Kaphengst of Klawitter Theatre Group (who bring music and theatre to nursing homes and elderly care centre), Hege Anita Skjaervik (who is putting together a really exciting music and art project which will hopefully blossom next Spring), Emilie Conway (who released her fabulous CD The Secret Of A Rose in March but still manages to find time occasionally to work with me on a seperate project), Mark Conway (who is finally getting around to recording an album which will be brilliant), Orlagh De Bhaldraithe (who with Macnas is bringing me to Durham to reprise the band that was formed for their St. Patricks' Day Parade presentation in 2011 for a festival there), playing a lot of weddings in the church and getting ready for Peadar's gigs next month. 

As always, I'm busy but that's the best way to keep me.  Join the mailing list if you want to know when the sheet music will be out - I'm not very good at keeping the website up to date. 

Some links just in case you want to hear more of what I've been talking about above - all a bit lo-fi but you should get a good idea of why I'm enjoying working with all. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ4hnVT9s0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4CmutH-Jds&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSe8RGMz978&feature=related-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqZfpZQR70

Byeeeee.

josh

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Homeward Bound

I have had two early mornings over the last two nights. On Tuesday morning Stephen Phayre dropped me down to the local port to catch the commuter ferry to Seattle. An enjoyable cruise during which I filled in my Canadian customs form (2%) and slept (98%). There were some thoughts of breakfast but with my dicky stomach of the last three days, I wasn't sure I was quite ready to test the waters (pardon pun) quite yet, at least not before the customs shed at the border. I got a taxi to the bus station - not in the mood for adventure at 7.30 in the morning - keeping an eye out for a post box to post Sheila's map back to her in Connecticut. I still had it in my bag having forgotten to give it back to her the week earlier in NYC. The taxi decision was made easier by the fact that my bag now felt like lead, this extra weight caused by two bottles of ranch dressing bought the previous day at Walmart in Silverdale Washington. I'm not sure how two small bottles of the stuff can have made so much difference but I wasn't up for deliberating. I had some dollars and I had the ranch dressing and although I had plenty of time to walk, the combination of the previous two made a compelling argument. Taxi. !!!!

I didn't have a post office though and I made a mental note to find one in Vancouver rather than wander off to find one now.

The bus journey was mercifully uneventful. A rather giddy young lady who had spent a week in Spokane on a new chapter in her life only to decide it didn't suit her and come home was waiting in Seattle having waited in Spokane for eight hours for the bus and then four hours in Seattle - what is a 5 1/2 hour drive eventually took her 23 hours. This is the strange way greyhound works sometimes. Her level of excitement became more pronounced wit each stop.

We passed through the town (city ?) of Bellingham Washington which claims to harbour the Alaska Ferry - I'm not quite sure that this is true or, if it is, who would get a ferry from Washington State to Alaska. Maybe I missed something.

Apparently the Canadian border officials have got meaner recently and now they're trying to be more American than the American border guards. Having never been to Canada my only experience of the Canadian border was the Graham Nash song "Immigration Man" and they seemed pretty mean in that. It's quite unbecoming of them - my advice is that they should stick to what they're good at and be nice Canadian border guards. That said, the procedure was fairly painless. We all piled off the bus, collected our bags including my "boulder" with the ranch dressing and queued up to be asked difficult questions. My interviewer was rather confused about how long I was staying but seemed to finally understand or, at least accept, the odd eccentricity that made up Josh's Itinerary and sent me on my way. We all piled back onto the bus and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. It turns out there was a Chinese dude being investigated. There's always one. I guess there has to be just to make sure you don't think it's too easy getting into Canada. Those pesky Canadians.

My reason for visiting Vancouver was, in fact, very logical. Vancouver is right there at the border. You're looking at the map and you could skip from Seattle to Vancouver. By the looks of the map, you'd think the border crossing was right there in downtown Vancouver. Which made it only right that, as I had got this far, it was only right that I should visit another almost-cousin Siobhaun and her husband Greg, as well as Kath O'Kelly whose family grew up at the top of our road (and we grew up at the bottom of theirs) and who now lives in Vancouver with Andrew and their four kids. When they moved out west a few years back, we put them in touch with Siobhaun and Greg and their daughter Addie and the two families are now great friends. This was a great opportunity to meet more than one group of friends at a time and The Last Supper was planned - no connection between this and the more famous Last Supper is intended, certainly not linking the two events' guests of honor.

The investigations into the Chinese dude knocked us back a bit in schedule but that was fine because Vancouver is, like, right on the border, right ? Wrong. But eventually I got there and Siobhaun, having put off at least one meeting to make it, met me at the station in, apparently, one of the city's dodger districts (they always seem to be in the dodgy neighborhoods) armed with pizza. She drove, I ate and then she dropped me downtown. I spent the afternoon walking around Vancouver, posting the envelope, and drinking hot chocolate in Starbucks (again - I was dead set against this place but I'm coming around to its merits now) before meeting up with Siobhaun, Greg, Kath, Andrew and all he children.

Yesterday started early again - my first flight of two was at 6am and Andrew very kindly dropped me to the airport at 4. The high excitement of the evening before had meant their youngest had been up all night with a temperature so Andrew had not slept all night. I, meanwhile, had slept like a log. Vancouver Airport is very nice, for an airport. I did USA immigration again and was in plenty of time for my flight. For some reason, I was unaware Chicago was on the side of a lake - it looked great in the morning sunshine as we flew in to wait for the transfer to Dublin. In fact,even with the large complicated bulk of that airport to manouevre about, I still had a six hour wait at my gate - a good lunch break. Irish planes always seem to be thrown in the mankiest terminals several miles from the best restaurants (or, in fact, the best anything) but I found some lunch, found my gate and waited patiently.

Another harmless but pretty boring film and a few meals later and I was back in Dublin. My dad broke his rule of not picking anybody up from the airport and we went home to his place for breakfast. The jet lag hit at about 5 that evening but hasn't been too bad. I've discovered various things missing from my suitcase but nothing major and I definitely managed to survive the bus rides unscathed and with all property intact. I just tend to leave things in different places.

And normal service has resumed, although accompanied by nicer weather than when I departed. The buskers on grafton street seem to be noisier but otherwise it seems to be business as usual. The Spanish students have begun to invade the buses again and I've been rehearsing music with junior and leaving cert music practical students. I already have a few gigs in the book for the next few weeks and the organ restoration fun(d) continues in the church in earnest. No rest for the wicked !!!

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Most of the last three paragraphs were written a few days after the first half of the post which is when I'm writing here too. I'm on a different kind of bus now - a more familiar Dublin Bus double-decker No. 7 heading to Dun Laoghaire to see the Irish Jungmanns in Killiney having worked my way around the United States of America visiting most of the rest of Scott's family. Emilie Conway asked me yesterday by text; "u miss America ?" I replied; "no, I found it. Straight through mayo, next land, you can't miss it". I don't miss it yet. There are lots of reasons I love living in Ireland and lots of reasons I love my new house in Kilmainham but I would expect that I would want to go exploring the States again. Might not happen for a while but it's there in the back of my mind for sure. It's given me some ideas - for work, for song lyrics, for future holiday opportunities, for contacts - but on the wider question of what to do next, I've not had a eurekA moment this time although a lot of people have given me advice and I've taken it all in, I hope. I'm in a little bit of a rut on this one but I'm staying as positive as I can and trying to address faults as I see them - too lazy being the main one - so as to address improving On them. Kath O'Kelly and I chated about a book called "The Artists Way" and I want her to know that I used my new iPad toy to download it at Vancouver Airport and am working my way into it. It seems an interesting course and I am looking forward to working through it over the next few months. I've read the introduction so far so it's early days. It suggests writing morning pages every day - the Description of them sounds very like what I've been doing in this blog but neither you nor I am supposed to read these notes. I hope I have the discipline to stick to it. Bits of it sound a bit hippy but if they work for unlocking stuff then I'm up for giving it a go. About to miss my stop - will let you know how it goes.

The Big One

Dear Greyhound Customer Service,

Please train your staff to know which routes take the discovery pass !

Please train your staff to remember that some of your passengers are tourists; visitors to the united states of America who have not been there before and who do not know the ins and outs of your quite complicated system. It's also worth pointing out that some of your staff don't either.

Otherwise, it should be noted that despite these small points of feedback, I've had a very enjoyable time on this trip and, for your part in this, you should be thanked very muchly.

All the best,

Josh Johnston

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Last time we spoke, I had been traveling overnight to Nashville Tennessee having travelled down the east coast from Boston.

We arrived into Nashville with a two hour gap before the comparatively short journey to Evansville Indiana where I was stopping to visit my brother-in-law's parents. In Richmond bus station, I had overheard a conversation between three ladies of three separate generations. The elderly concerned grandmother, the doting and well-behaved aunt and the somewhat dopey younger girl (grand-daughter, it turned out who was dopey on a number of different levels) and they were discussing the ups and downs of their family's checkered past detailing mistakes made by all and sundry and leaving no stone unturned, throwing particular scorn at the girls' mother who wasn't present. . As younger girl went off to have her third cigarette (smoking opportunities gain value - to smokers - the longer you are on a greyhound bus) I chatted about nothing in particular to the two other women who were wondering when the bus would arrive - eventually left 45 minutes late - and it transpired that Jen (dopey youngster) and I were going to same place.

Concerned grandmother to josh:

"do you think you could make sure Jen gets off at the right stop ?"

Josh:

"I guess so"

A two-hour gap is a nice comfortable gap for breakfast. Not entirely sure what this would entail, I nonetheless had ideas along the sausages / bacon / bagel combination line and so it was with tears in my eyes that I read the sign on the cafe door - "grill closed until 11am" (ten minutes after my bus departed). I settled on a package sandwich which was actually pretty good and a lot fresher than the packaging implied. The bus was 50 minutes late but I did not revisit the food idea as I had eaten the sandwich by this stage.

The bus that arrived was a different design to the others I had travelled on this far and while there was no reason to fear for safety or even comfort, this was the beginning of a slow dawning that the next few days would mark a great decrease in technology options available to passengers. No wi-fi. No power sockets. The continued arrivals of white buses over the next week (as opposed to silver buses) brought groans of despair from countless passengers who had obviously started their journey on the east coast like myself and who assumed the silver buses were the only types of buses. By the end of the trek, there were four coaches identifiable;

Posh silver - wi-fi and sockets

White - wi-fi and sockets but sockets didn't work very well.

White - no wi-fi or sockets but by far the most comfortable bus

White - no wi-fi or sockets, everyone squashed in, pile 'em high, sell 'em quick

These buses tended to run east to west - i think they obviously must migrate west as newer fleet comes in.

The absence of wi-fi definitely made a long journey longer so the two hours to Evansville felt like a marathon. Somehow or other, I missed the stop at Clarksville (think i was asleep - particularly annoying as I had a song I needed to sing at that point) and minus phone battery and wi-fi I found it very hard to work out where I was (google maps is wonderful) so the trip felt very long. It also felt very long for poor Bill and Mary who were waiting for me at the station and had left their house before the phone message i left to say I was most likely going to be an hour or so late. I managed to make sure Jen got off before finding Bill and Mary. We headed back to kentucky and had a lovely night with them eating steak at the finest steakhouse in Owensboro Kentucky (which is a lot better than it sounds). We also had a great Skype video chat with Becky, Scott and Aoife in Killiney which was super for all concerned. Got to catch up with Jungmann family news as well as see the philpott ranch that I'd heard so much about but never seen.

A good sleep and a mass recharge of all my various devices and I was ready to head back up to Indiana for the beginning of what has been since christened the "big one" and with good reason.

Between 1.30 on Thursday and 2.30 on Saturday I was on a bus or at a station either grabbing something to eat or queuing up for another bus. Some people might find this or even the idea of this hideous but I enjoyed the adventure of the idea. There were plenty of people to talk to throughout and many people were crossing multiple legs with me. Las Vegas was a common destination and there were many tales told of fun and games there. The bus arrived (a white one without wi-fi) and the two of us piled on. The first person I met at this point was coming home to Arkansas from Las Vegas and had been left in Evansville by his friend because this guy didn't want him to drive back on his own. He warned me about greyhound journeys and the fact that Americans can be mean. He told me of a woman he saw being robbed on an overnighter having left her money in her bra. He saw but didn't realize what was happening until she reported it in the morning due to the half light by which stage the perpetrator had long since departed the bus. I made a mental note not to be flashing things about and to carry my hand luggage with me but was a little tetchy for most of that leg. After the rest stop at Mount Vernon Illinois (first McDonalds of too many) four burly men who all looked very dodgy at first glance got onto the bus and sat beside and around me. A little flustered but resolutely staying as calm as possible, I kept myself to myself even as the guy beside me asked if my phone was an iPhone. About five minutes later another of the dudes suggested that I might be Irish . . . .

"yes"

"and what are you doing in illinois ?"

So I told the four of them the full story (I figured we had plenty of time and so I told them the FULL story) during which they stopped and listened with wide-eyed amazement, stopping every now and then to say "wow" and "really ?". Suddenly I was totally part of the party, with the Irish being poked fun at as much as all other nationalities in the group. Think Arlo Guthrie on the group w bench. In the space of an hour, we had life stories of all concerned and, more importantly, what had them on the bus and where they were going. My initial friend coming back from Las Vegas, one going to Las Vegas, one traveling hundreds of miles to see his daughter having lost his wife after going to jail but now trying to mend fences with ex, daughter and foster a new relationship in Memphis Tennessee. Others too - can't remember everyone.

"New beginnings" was a common thread across all the fellow passengers that i met on the various buses - setting up new homes, new jobs, new lives and the travels taking place across a huge distance. I found this very interesting particularly as so much of the adventure is about re-evaluating my life and what I'm doing with it. In some way, many people found my tales entertaining and I found myself wondering whether it was mutually beneficent - I didn't HAVE to do the journey so, although it was very long, it seemed easier because I was observing these people who felt they did HAVE to do it and sometimes did HAVE to do it more than once a year. Likewise, it's possible that the eccentricity of what I was doing axe their journey shorter too - there was a significant feeling of for one, for all about all the legs (particularly the later ones).

St. Louis Toodle-oo

At St. Louis we got a grey bus (hooray) but our joy was short-lived when we discovered that our wi-fi was in payoff to working air-conditioning so when we arrived in Kansas City we were all loaded off and back onto a white bus.

One of the people I was chatting to longest was David. And although I wasn't sitting next to him from the beginning, I first noticed him in St. Louis. We had an excellent ongoing conversation from Denver to Salt Lake City where he told me about his views on everything: local, regional and national politics, marriage, the economy, foreign policy, the EU, drugs policy, and, of course, greyhound rules and regulations. These are generally informed by experience which has contributed to him having a fascinating backstory. Having just worked for 9 months at a residential drug clinic in New Jersey, he was on his way to Nevada to resume a job he left some years ago to get married. All my life's a circle.

Everything's up-to-date in Kansas City

What can we learn from Kansas City ? Mostly that it's not in Kansas which totally surprised me. After we changed buses onto the manky but cool one (in terms of temperature), we continued on through actual Kansas through Topeka and Lawrence before our driver Annie retired to go to bed. This was fortunate as most of the coach might have died from laughter if she had continued on the bus any longer. I have spoken about greyhound drivers before. They all have things they have to say but all like to be distinctive about their performance of these lines. There are a few basic rules about traveling on the bus. You don't smoke on board. You don't drink alcoholic beverages inboard. You don't partake in illegal drugs on board. You don't speak loudly and you don't use personal audio devices without headphones (and if the driver can hear it then it's too loud). On the journey between Richmond and Nashville we had to get off the bus at 5am to allow it to be swept through. Shortly before we arrived in Knoxville Tennessee our driver turned on the mic and started singing Smooth Operator which was a bit weird and creepy at first but was actually quite charming and a slow and gentle way to wake us all up.

Joining the bus in St. louis, Funky driver Annie was very proud of her re-worked script and rapped it eloquently often repeating it a number of times at each station. We would shortly be driving through Kansas and it might get windy and blow the bus a bit but not to worry, she wasn't asleep and she had it "all . . . . .locked . . . . . Down". Or the other one was the basic rule that if you wanted to smoke, you wanted to walk. And again she would repeat everything at least three times before leaving us to our own devices. By Salinas Kansas, when Annie was leaving us, the back of the bus had become increasingly giddy with loud guffaws on the "all locked down" line. Her speech was the same in salinas but it had slowed down considerably. She sounded tired and we were not altogether upset she was getting to go home either.

Rod's colleague in Richmond had pointed out that the Midwest was the main reason God had invented planes and my brother Luke had pointed out that while it might be nice to see sights along the way, the same sight after 8 hours might prove a bit boring. Both comments were valid. Bill and Mary who met in Topeka Kansas told me much the same thing. Kansas was certainly very flat and had a lot of nothingness to it and it was very nice that a lot of it was passed overnight.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore

I had two options at Denver bus station and with a half-hour changeover didn't have enough time to do both

1) get some breakfast

2) Check that all was ok to use my discovery pass between Ontario and Bend Oregon

I decided that the latter option was prudent, particularly as the Bend / Seattle conundrum had not been satisfactorily solved yet. This dilemma involved my trip to Bend to see a cousin of Scott's who is also a Unitarian minister and is also living with another Unitarian minister. Both have expressed an enjoyment of my music and I thought maybe there might be an opportunity to play at another UU service. Having made contact with Cathy and Heather, Heather said yes, she'd love me to play at her service. By the time we reached St. Louis, I had done some research and realized I was not going to be able to stay long enough to play at the service. So i needed to work out which bus was going to work to get me to seattle on sunday. I also wasn't convinced I was going to make all my connections or, for that matter, that my discovery pass would be taken on the last leg from Ontario. So much as I was excited about meeting new people, it seemed a long way to go for less than the 20 hours my schedule gave me there particularly as I now had three or four less than before (and missing church). I had made tentative enquiries with Stephen Phayre about coming straight to Seattle and leaving Oregon out altogether but, having forsaken breakfast and got a satisfactory answer from greyhound about the discovery pass, I decided to go to Bend as originally planned.

Rocky mountain high, Colorado

We set off from Denver, high in expectation at seeing wonderful sights of the Rockies, particularly important as I had missed the Appalachian mountains. The Rockies were impressive and I got a photo

I'm no photographer nut it breaks up the text.

This was at 11.30. We then saw nothing of any interest until about 7pm. That's a bit mean. There was some interesting bits but an awful lot of mind-numbing nothingness all the way through colorado and Wyoming and most of Utah. Our indian driver was definitely in training, drove like a snail kept saying "i will be getting your attention" and things like that. We stopped early in the day at a state penitentiary and picked up a prison guard and someone who looked like an inmate - nobody was quite sure of the circumstances behind this but there were plenty of theories - and somebody else was dropped off (but it may well have been a town too). After our 30 minute rest stop in Twin Falls Idaho, a wise owl in the back decided to light up a cigarette (and an illegal one at that) forgetting that there were three bus drivers and a prison officer on board. A few testy moments while the notion of pulling the bus over and waiting for the police were bandied about and eventually the dude in the hoodie fessed up and we were on the road again with good schedules to make everyones' connections.

Coming into Salt Lake City, it transpired that we had a local expert and as he had a girl on the bus that he obviously fancied the socks off, the rest of the bus got a guided tour of the approach into the city including pointing out a suburb on the other side of the canyon with the words "there's Colby, I once had sex with a girl there" as well as pointing out the highest artificial ski jump in the world except he knew it was "around here somewhere". Admittedly, it was quite dark so we didn't see too much either but it was an entertaining half hours' drive into the birthplace of the Jacksons and David Cassidy.

Here to Boisie, Idaho, That's how this business goes !!

That's Harry Chapin by the way. Not much else to say about the place !! An extraordinarily large woman who got on at Salt Lake City, sat beside me, fell asleep and then toppled in my direction. I held my breath from Salt Lake City to Boisie in order to give the lady as much space as needed to breathe out as she needed. I was however glad to see that she was as impressed by me on this journey as I was with her when she elected to not sit beside me after we returned to the bus at Boisie Idaho.

There was a fair share of nutters on the buses and in the stations. You had to have your wits and your bags with you at all times. An old geezer from Texas was on his way up to find work in Seattle on his way to find a house in Canada where he felt he would be safer when (not if) the world gets nuked. He felt it could happen in the next year or so. Particularly if the banks continue to get their way. He had had trouble sleeping on the lasr leg of the journey as this other woman had sat beside him and yabbered on at him all night. She was a nice person, he said, but a bit lost in the head. Which is what I had been just thinking about him. She had now lost her ticket and was i the nprocess of negotiating with greyhound that they might let her get home to Spokane Washington but even if she did make it onto the bus he wanted an alternative seating plan. Did I think I could sit beside him ? Bearing in mind the large lady who I had just had sleeping on me, I thought why not ? I let him chat at me for about ten minutes and then stuck on my headphones.

The girl who the Salt Lake City guy fancied was now being seriously flirted with in the seats across from me (like, SERIOUSLY flirted with).

She had been on my buses since St. Louis and I actually knew she was going to Bend, Oregon too so we had spoken a few times over the trip. She was escaping from a bad marriage in New Jersey that had got progressively worse - once her son had left for college, she realized that there was nothing left in the house to distract her from the troubles she was facing with her husband and when her friend from Oregon phoned and offered the room, she phoned her son, told him she was leaving for the west coast and left before her husband returned. Here we were on the home straight - a new home. She was resolute she would not be returning east.

Finally we got off the bus at the hole in the wall that was Ontario, Oregon

"hi, I'm getting the bus to Bend. He takes the Discovery Pass, right ?"

"no !"

"oh, the office in Denver told me the bus here did take that"

"no, sorry"

He did say sorry and he did let me use their private loo but in the meantime my other bus had gone so I was left paying $44 to get to Bend Oregon.

That said, the drive alone was worth it. We had a teeny weeny schoolbus - power sockets and all and Magnificent views over a four hour drive right across the top of the mountain and down again sweeping into Bend a half hour early. It was a fun drive and I got a bit of a sleep into the bargain.

The sleep was needed. I was absolutely flattened by the experience but loved it to bits, traveling through the most exciting, most boring, richest, poorest, flattest, highest, safest, most dangerous parts of America and through all extremes of weather from snow to heat wave and back to through the middle of a mini-tornado Kentucky style with companions of all ethnic backgrounds, religions. It has also reduced my insides to ribbons - not sure what part of the above has caused this. It's probably a combination of it all with an added complement of incessant McDonalds and air conditioning. Either way, I'm on a liquid diet until I get my digestive powers back.

Bend in Oregon is lovely and Cathy and Heather made for marvelous hosts. I helped them with their chicken project - the first steps to being self-sufficient. I ended up staying far too short a time and on Sunday morning, after having played a little on Heather's lovely piano, I was back on the bus again. I arrived at the bus station on Saturday and thought I'd check on the discovery pass situation again, understandably a little anxious by this stage.

"hi. I'm on a discovery pass and I want to travel to Seattle tomorrow."

The lady told me the times - departing Bend 10.15, arriving Seattle 4am. That seemed a bit crazy for what was 6 hours by car. I asked her to explain

Leave Bend 10.15

Arrive Portland 3.20

Leave Portland 7.20

Arrive Seattle 4.05 (am)

On hearing this, Stephen p kindly agreed to pick me up from Portland as we both agreed that another night on a bus might be the nail in the coffin. But before we confirmed this, I checked times on the Internet only to find that my friendly sales assistant had mixed up the words arrival and departure so I resolved to bus to Seattle for 7.20pm with a pickup and ferry ride to Poulsbo to finish the day.

To cap it off, i arrived to the bus station again to check my baggage in for the bus journey. I told her about the discovery pass saga - Denver, Ontario, Bend etc - and it turns out the bus provider from Ontario to Bend does accept the pass as does the Bend Portland bus this morning. You just can't get the staff. She promised she would ring the guy in Ontario to let him know.

Yesterday was characterized by boys chatting up very pretty girls. On the first bus coming down 4000ft from Bend through the most incredible scenes of snow, forest and mountain I've seen on the whole trip (bus moving too fast for camera), I listened to two teenage strangers playing twenty questions with each other for 2 1/2 hours. It was another small schoolbus coach so the whole coach was party to the conversation. Yet only the two participated. It was very charming and very revealing about youth and what's important to them. The second bus from Portland had me very close to hear a conversation between an American idiot trying to chat up an Indian girl and exposing to her and to me how little he knew about anything. It was very amusing, I suspect for both of us.

It has been wonderful to see Stephen Phayre and his wonderful wife Allison and their lovely three kids again and to meet one for the first time. This afternoon, we went out to look at the local shipyard with the USA naval aircraft carriers and went to Walmart to buy Ranch Dressing for my mother and then we went to Starbucks because i'm in Seattle. Tonight they (the kids) made my bed for me kindly supplying teddies to keep me company. See below for photographic evidence.

Tomorrow is my last day of this whirlwind romance before the somewhat quicker ride home. It's been a hugely exciting experience. I'm not sure yet what will come of it but am excited by that too. Looking forward to seeing Kath and Andrew, Siobhaun and Greg, and all the kids too, tomorrow for the last supper in Vancouver BC in the evening.

Not sure what it's like because it's night time, West Virginia

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I'm now in the early stages of an overnight bus to Nashville from which I'll change to a bus to Evansville, Indiana before the mad journey to Oregon which starts on Thursday and concludes 48 hours later. Everybody, including, to some extent me, thinks I'm mad to have not flown across the country but I am enjoying it so far.

When we last spoke, I was approaching Richmond, the capital of the South I've been advised by my hosts for the night due in a large way to its central role the town played in the American Civil War (although apparently only Europeans call it that - American name depends who you're talking to; northern whites call it the war of the states, southern whites call it the war of northern aggression).

I was staying with kind-of-cousins of which I have an awful lot but I'm not on inviting-myself-to-stay basis with most of them. I met Roderick and Susan for the first time (as far as I'm aware) at a wedding in Greece last year of my totally-cousin Malachi. It was a great meeting of totally-cousins and kind-of-cousins and a lot of fun was had by all over the four days spent together on the Greek island. At the end, they made the mistake of inviting us all to come and stay with them in Virginia. Not one to refuse such an offer, I made a point to include it in my itinerary. I also noted that the Organ Historical Society was based in the town and I also heard that the town had the finest Georgian architecture in the united states. Also the applachian mountains nearby. Lots of reasons to visit then.

I was somewhat correct to worry about my pickup - I had forwarded a mobile number for emergency use but as I had arrived a little early, I was resolutely not worrying, at least until the bus was due in anyway. After he was a little later again, I continued to stay calm and about ten minutes on, I received a phone call from a rather lost Rod. I was some help to him when I told him that it was right next to a big "stadium" which turned out to be the baseball diamond. Turns out the bus station is right in the middle of the black side of town and Roderick had had no need to attend a baseball match or catch the bus so - naturally - he had no idea where it was. His satnav had been no help. Greyhound buses and baseball were off-limits or if not, then there hadn't been any reason for them to become on-limits.

As Rod & Susan live out in the country, it was proposed that we do a quick tour of the sights of the city during which he gave me a history lesson of American Civil War 101 which filled me in for what I needed to know should I meet any history professors while in the town. I'm not sure I would pass an exam 24 hours on but I do remember some of the bullet points like the fact that Thomas E. Lee was actually called Robert E. Lee ( I was the only one who thought otherwise but I stand corrected) and that somebody was either captured or died on the 4th tee of the local country club, the same country club that, until recently, had a sign that read "No blacks, No Jews" - when they were forced to take down the sign, their membership changed not at all because the blacks a) couldn't give a shit about joining (and didn't have enough money anyway) and b) the Jews had all gone off and set up their own much nicer clubs into which they were allowing nobody else. I also learnt that Thomas Jefferson, US president and celebrated Bible editor beloved of some Unitarians, was from Virginia. We went into the magnificent Jefferson Hotel after which Rod paid the porter a tip for holding his keys which i found extraordinary (but kept my mouth shut). In the hotel, i got a lesson on where all the different americans had come from and how the white Virginians were mostly Protestants who had mostly come from from Ulster, Scotland and England, and how they had simply replaced their hard-nosed bigotry towards Catholics with hard-nosed bigotry towards blacks. I learnt about White-Flight that came with integrated schooling and the different schools that were in the area - private and university. We went up to Church Hill which overlooks the city and overlooked the city for a few moments - Rod told me how the city had been named because some learned intrepid explorer had thought the bend in the river looked just like the Thames at Richmond (it doesn't, it just looks like a bend in a river) and then went downtown to Rod's office which is a converted store-building in the oldest part of town - it went from being a brothel to being an investment bankers so it was generally agreed that was all continuing in the downward spiral that the building has become accustomed to. The tramp outside the front door is always there - "because you're an investment bank ?" I ask. "no, he was there before we came and feels he has as much right to be there as us". Rod's colleagues in the office are amused to hear of my trek but suggest that the Midwest is the reason God invented planes.

We drove up Monument Avenue with lots of monuments erected in memory of important people and then out to Sabot Hill where they live with their three children when they're home from university which isn't often. Their house is built in a fantastic development set up by a farmer and his IDE who had 40,000 acres and started buying houses and transplanting them onto their farm, renting them out and out of this, they created their own little community, Sabot Hill. Since then, people including Roderick and Susie have bought land and built, some houses nicer than others but all landowners have access to all the land for horse-riding mostly but other leisure pursuits too. The various homeowners have parties together through the year and although each house is secluded and looks to the outside world like a separate development it does actually feel like a community albeit one where everyone is not living in each others' pockets. Their house overlooks one of the three private lakes and it is very picturesque indeed. They have five (I think) horses and enjoy riding and hunting and golf. All quite well-to-do but Rod has worked very hard for it so you certainly can't begrudge them it.

I learnt ALL of this before dinner and then learnt of their family over dinner so was glad to be able to shut the door of my room and settle in relatively early. I find it quite hard to believe I was even contemplating this but last night I was considering whether to set off early this morning for Nashville as Rod was sorry I wouldn't be seeing the Applachian Mountains on my bus journey this evening. Mountains or sleep ? Mountains or sleep ? I took sleep and was happy to lie In this morning.

Pretty lazy day today - some time to walk the dogs and survey the forthcoming Bend Seattle conundrum (the only real scheduling nightmare of this journey - still unresolved) and then off for dinner in town ahead of them going to a concert and me going to a bus. Unrivaled disaster - traffic gridlock, no parking spaces, wrong food brought (Rod certainly didn't order Bread Salad, only made worse by the fact that the bread was stale. I, on the other hand, didn't realize steak tartare was raw burger - still, you've got to laugh), and then my taxi never arrived. Generous to the end, Roderick jumped in his car and dropped me to the bus. It set off 40 minutes late but I am on the road.

On arriving, I asked Rod what the predominant ethnic makeup of the city was as the Georgian architecture story I'd heard didn't sit with the many black people I'd seen milling about the bus station. He told me about the blacks and whites but something I worked out over the couple of days is that the answer to the question really depends on who you're talking to. Neither community seems to interact with the other except maybe in the younger Church Hill area which is quite well integrated. I would never meet black people in the sort of places Rod and Susan would go in the same way that I had to guide him to the bus station yesterday when he was lost. The two communities seem to co-exist quite peacefully but not interact - two cities in the one.

Apparently we're in the process of going over the mountains now. I'm not even feeling any air-pressure sickness and I won't see them this time but when I wake up I'll be in a new "other world". I have a new city to add to my list of cities seen and liked and I could very happily live in. And all the cities I've been in have been completely different to each other. I can understand how so many Americans don't leave their country - there's so much variety to discover here. Tomorrow is another day. Must sleep. Goodnight !!