That was a whistle stop to New Orleans but in excellent company. Mel knows this city well so she was an excellent tour manager, plus she has a car and managed to find a house for us both to live in. We hit the underside of this town.
Hurricane Katrina seeded lasting damage into the structures of the town here and to people’s expectations. Everyone has a story if they were there. And all over the town there are buildings gutted – huge buildings, small houses. The hospitals all got abandoned and have never been reused. “They had to euthanise some of the patients.” These huge buildings have been squatted since, gutted since. Some are for sale, others are just abandoned. But with the work needed, or the cost of demolition, the land isn’t worth the building. It’s a buyers market in town but its all sinking and nobody trusts the levees anymore. It’ll happen again, it’s just when.
We went for lunch in a Creole Restaurant. It’s fancy and they sell martinis for 25c on a Thursday lunch so all the tables were dotted with colour.
I couldn’t get through my pork it was so rich. The turtle soup was great as well but everything so complicated. I’m glad we went though. Afterwards we walked around the area looking at all the huge houses, full or empty, dotted through this fancy part of town.
I hate that it’s cold in England. But at least I can be happy that I’ve been away through the darkest months. Maybe the light will come back now, maybe I’ll be able to drag it back with me from the swamps here. I’m at the airport right now sweating like a dog in my suit and my coat with my boots on. They moved me to a middle seat because “the emergency exit isn’t working” so instead of having a peaceful window seat with legroom I’m gonna be in the middle and I’m so angry about it that I’m having to manage my breathing to make sure I’ll still be able to sleep. I really want to be able to rest on this flight so I can beat the jetlag fast. They’ve absolutely fucked me. Hopefully the woman next to me won’t be coughing all flight this time.
My hope is that it turns out to be oversubscribed and they upgrade me. Or I’m just gonna try and use my digital boarding pass with my old seat allocation. “Emergency exit not working” sounds like they’ve cleared it so flight staff can sleep.
AlBarclay 