Road Trip Concluded: At Last Fair Florida

  And a couple of hedonistic days at sister-in-law's pad in Naples.

    The bougainvillea....

The Muscovy ducklings (in October?) for whom I had to take on a new job, as a lollipop lady. (Crossing patrol to the Americans).

The sunsets on the lake, in the company of sister-in-law's fabled chocolate martinis.....

 The palm trees....

 The hibiscus......

Lazy times by the pool etc etc.  I make no excuses because I had a hunch I knew what was coming when I got back to Western New York.

Road Trip Continued: Trainspotting in Folkston

Yes, British readers, that's Folkston without the "e" and Folkston, Georgia, no less. (And yes, there's a Dover nearby too but, so far as I could tell, no Calais.) Please, everyone, visit this place if you can. Just before the Florida state line, it was one of the unexpected delights of our trip. We stopped to look for somewhere to get a halfway decent coffee. "I know!" said sister-in-law, "I'll ask in that gift shop". The next minute, there she was, beckoning frantically for me to join her. The gift shop, name of Whistlin' Dixie's also sold the "Best Coffee in Town", in proper mugs, none of your styrofoam and Dixie herself greeted us like her long-lost cousins. She suggested a bit of lunch and recommended the home made "Southern Georgia Grits Soup". This sounded a little eccentric but it proved to be just heavenly. Never before have grits (which I always thought of as the stuff Oliver Twist asked for more of in the workhouse), sausage and tomato combined together in such sweet harmony.  

  And the gift shop itself was full of train memorabilia. Folkston, it turns out, is, by American standards, a trainspotters' paradise, as several trains a day miraculously pass through the town. They are freight trains of course but for train-starved Americans, they are gold dust. Here's the restored old station 

The level crossing ("grade" crossing to Americans) barriers coming down.

And here comes a train!

Carrying goodness knows what. American "Railroad Crossing" signs are quaint.

As was little Folkston itself.

You can even stay in a renovated hut by the track so you can train-spot to your heart's content all night.
  Plus Folkston had some very friendly people. I came out of the Post Office to find a lady engaging sister-in-law in conversation. Sister-in-law had been sitting in the car and the lady had knocked on the window, "Hi! I saw you looking at a map. Do you need any help?" Turned out she'd gone to school with Dixie.
  People don't know what they're missing by not taking the back roads.

What Americans Really Think of the British

  Was brought home to me startlingly this morning.
  The story about the deadly Sainsbury's banana spiders has hit the American news (that's globalisation) in a flurry of shrieks and "yeeeugh!!!"s.
  The comments spawned a lurid cauldron of debate, with people sharing their spider/centipede/lizard/snake horror stories and much discussion on the wisdom of biting into a banana which had mold (sic) on the peel. Then someone pointed out: "In Socialist England you consume whatever you can get".

Road Trip Continued: Pigs in the South

 What is it with the South and pigs? They seem to love 'em.  A traditional food- source perhaps and they cherish their barbecued pork restaurants with names like "Pig in a Pit".  (Incidentally there's nothing so good as pulled pork in a bun, oozing barbecue sauce. Though the best I've had were right in Western NY).
  Then of course there's the fabled Southern supermarket chain:

Making the most of its porcine theme

Thing is, we've travelled thgrough South Carolina and Georgia a number of times now and never seen an actual alive-and-kicking pig. Unless this one counts:

Tantalisingly luring us to his restaurant,

a place we'd earmarked for lunch; its name, even by American standards, being irresistible.

But sadly, like its heavenly counterpart, the Garden of Eat'n was closed to us mortals.

A Lament for Guy Fawkes Day

 Alas it's a day not celebrated here and in any case, how could it compete with Halloween? No ghouls, or witches or inflatable ghosts, or wacky costumes or hoovering up sacks of sweets, courtesy of your terrorised neighbours, just some interesting history and good old-fashioned fun.
  I look back with nostalgia to childhood Guy Fawkes nights at my friend's house, when pyrotechnics were still something reserved for November 5th; the frosty night air, dads lighting modest, sputtering fireworks, "Stand back everyone!" making shapes with whirling sparklers held in woollen mitts, the badly secured Catherine wheels that spun off their posts and shot, sparks flying, into the crowd, the Jumping Jacks (probably banned now) chucked around by naughty little brothers, making us run screaming, grownups starting the bonfire with a Woosh, the misshapen, stuffed Guy going up in flames wearing dad's old pyjamas.
     Here in Western New York, one of the few local British families - well the only one at the time, attempted a couple of years ago to throw a Guy Fawkes party, bonfire and all and recapture all that lost innocence. The kids patiently handed out leaflets saying, "Remember Remember the Fifth of November" and telling the Americans all about why the British eccentrically celebrated the Gunpowder Plotters trying to blow up Parliament in 1605. The Americans just looked bemused and sidled towards the buffet.

Coming Up: Of Pigs and the South

Watch this space

Heading South: Perils of an Unplanned Road Trip

  Before we'd crossed the Bridge Tunnel on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, we'd driven into Virginia. A sign at the side of the road, superimposed on a Confederate flag read, "Dixieland - the South Starts Here". Other signs announced"Swine n'Dine" and the "Great Machipongo Clam Shack". 

  Travelling south along the Historic Albemarle Highway, churches grew even more numerous, surrounded by giant car parks, as did pro-life billboards, "A Father's Joy", "My Heart Beats 18 Days After Conception." And some newer slogans: "Faithbook: God Has Sent You a Request".

There were languid  rivers and lakes reflecting the trees and an old, broken down bridge over the Roanoke River . And there was our first cotton field....

There seemed to be copious cotton fields, way before we'd even got into Georgia - more than I remembered from last time - a more pc substitute for tobacco perhaps?
   We overnighted in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, once a spa town. "There's not much left of the waters, just a little stream. Blink and you've missed it!" said the girl in the delectable Stick Boy Bread Company bakery, which sold  us croissants and brioches and great lattes.
  Monday saw mist rising over fields and rivers.    We passed a sign for a Dickensian-sounding law firm, "Thigpen and Jenkins". Some houses, like this one being renovated in Carthage, were gracious,

Others a little less so.

A typical sunny main street.

What was this? Not a forest fire but a tractor in (yet another) a cotton field.

Hooray! Our first palm tree, in a place called St Matthew's

And our first avenue of live oaks with trailing Spanish moss.

Yep - we were really down south now! Even if the places nearby were called Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
  But all wasn't so sunny. At one point, in South Carolina,  we found ourselves in a dead zone - in more senses than one.  No phone reception anywhere, almost derelict towns, closed down factories, grass growing through concrete cracks, deprivation. It looked like a scene from the Walking Dead, with not even a zombie in sight. They must have really felt the recession here. We hadn't planned where to stay the night and this was one region of America where there wasn't the usual forest of hotels and fast food places on the outskirts of every town. The only motels were either boarded up or made Bates look like the Ritz. Finally, in Hampton, a fairly decent Days Inn.  Trains howled along the track opposite and and an angry baby screamed through the night but there was white clapboard and a wooden swing-seat and cheerful yellow tablecloths in the breakfast room. The manager had done the dried flower arrangements herself. The girl at the desk directed us to a Mexican restaurant we could walk to and it proved to be friendly and full of hunters in camouflage - their deer season lasts from August to January and you can bag as many as you want. To sister-in-law's endless amusement, The waitress struggled with my English English - normally they don't understand when I say "water"; she didn't understand when I said "salt", as in "Please, no salt on my 99 cent Margarita". Yes the Margaritas were just 99 cents. Things were looking up.