Even though I now live 6000 miles from home, I’m saddened, disgusted, angry, that we rolled over and let the black & whites outplay us in the 1^st half.

I still think we’ll be OK but we really should be beating teams like that. ;-)

My “N” key has come off my laptop so I have to hit the space where it used to be to get the letter n to appear, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t so if this reads stragely, you’ll kow why. I could, of course, retrospectively put all the ns in, but that would spoil the fun.

Colours, or colors, as I’m over here. That’s what I was wanting to talk about today.

My back garden (yard, as they say here) is lawned, with a pecan tree in the middle, but not much colour. Yesterday, I wet to the nursery and bought a couple of hudred dollars worth of plants. So, in preparation for the family arrivig on Thursday, my fence is lined with flowers, red, white, red, white, etc.

My pecan tree has finally got some leaves on it so is showing a bit of green, at last, I thought it was dying.

I bought a book yesterday, I fact I bought two, but I’ll come back to that.

Birds of Texas, a field guide, is the first I bought. I have a couple of grey birds in my garden, but whe the sun catches them they’re the most wonderful iridescent blue. They’ve intrigued me since I arrived had I had no idea what they were. Blue Jays it seems, beautiful.

But as I was sitting outside smarting over our defeat, I noticed something on the tree: a red bellied woodpecker going about its day.

Common grackles have a blue head and a gold/black body, depending on the light. They also fight a lot in my garden, it’s obviously mating season. The Norther Cardinal is bright red, and lives I my front garden.

Then of course we have a couple of birds that aren’t indigenous, but were introduced into Central Park by the British I the 1890s and now cover the whole of the USA. Starlings and Spuggies may not be glamourous but hey, they remind me of home so they’re welcome around here. It’s like the revenge of the Red Squirrel by proxy.

I’ve been sat on my patio for a couple of hours and have just twigged that there must be a queue at IAH, or George Bush International Airport. For the last hour there have bee some very big, very low flyig aircraft over here. It’s rare that we see any aircraft at all in this part of tow, but to be able to read the writing on the side is almost unknown.

The other book I bought was “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama. Rarely has a politician intrigued me the way this guy does. If he means what he says I very much hope he gets to the White House. BUT, what a crap title, I suppose he has to be inspirational and that sort of thing will appeal to the American public, but I can’t help thinkig it’s just naff.

It did, however, encourage me to read another book. One I’ve read before and ejoyed immensely.

If someone is going to call a book “the xxxxx of xxxxx” they’ll have to go a long way to beat the title of the book I’m about to start: “The Salmon of Doubt”

How I miss Douglas Adams.