Saturday 4th.

Woke up at 7 - jetlag not too bad. Relaxed chat over breakfast and planning for the week ahead. We said we’d be happy to do anything at all so long as it is typically American. Then to the shops. In some ways, surprising how similar things are, but also how different. Obvious differences such as the types of plugs and sockets Mary Carolyn wants, but also less obvious differences – the black assistant serving on the fish counter who treated us to an impromptu rap sequence about how it was cold among all the fish and he just wanted to go home and eat chicken. Last seen dancing behind the counter with his co-worker. Or the Salvation Army ‘Bell ringers’ in red aprons, constantly ringing a little bell and collecting for charity – not quite in the same league as a brass band, but seemed to be getting the cash in alright. Home for a rest and lunch – savoury rice with black beans, onions and oil/vinegar, and beef taquitos.

Later, as it got dark and the snow started (did we bring it with us?) we went downtown. Houses of cream clapperboard, shutters and neat gardens. Public buildings with large Grecian pillared porticos. Lots and lots of churches, red brick, many with spindly rectangular spires floodlit. We stopped near a memorial to Robert E. Lee, astride his horse, and rapidly acquiring a white hat and cloak from the snow. We walked along the main street, glittering with lights on trees and houses, went in and out of the stores. Lots of local art – clocks made from computer interiors; a man playing a mandolin outside a theatre; coloured glass glowing and catching the lights of the Christmas trees; some amazing ornaments of people laughing – one a woman throwing back her head, her face creased with her uninhibited mirth. You couldn’t look at her without smiling – until you saw the price. A shop full of crazy things – heavy metal moulds for cutlery, a child’s soldier outfit of considerable vintage, wire tables stuck to the walls. They told us it was a ‘pop up shop’, that normally it was an office, but that in October it opened briefly as a furniture shop, now it is a gift shop till the end of December and sometime in the new year it will mutate into a barbers or a noodle shop – they haven’t quite decided yet. Shopping for groceries on the way home – unfamiliar items amongst the well known ones – tinned sweet potato in syrup, almond milk, green acorn squashes.

Then home through the tiny falling snowflakes