'Nother Solent

Er... you know that promised internet cafe?

The one from which I planned to send holiday postcards has devolved into a mere supplier of food. (I suppose everyone is now connected up themselves. An interesting economic parallel to the demise of the launderette.) By dint of great cunning I have found this terminal at a public library. The State supplies where the market fails - how embarrassing. However the family seem strangely lacking in enthusiasm for me spending my day attached to a computer.

Thanks for the e-mails. The American Civil War seems to be quietly re-running itself in a virtual arena inside my e-mail cache. Have fun boys, let me know when you get to Pickett's Charge, and I'll borrow Mike's Remington.

I'm going to run away now and play at the seaside. Back Saturday.

One guilt trip and one real life trip.

The guilt trip is over my e-mail, which is piled up so high in the computer that I'm surprised it doesn't start leaking out of the speakers. What with the mind-devouring jigsaw yesterday and it being Palm Sunday today (a bunch of us walked to church accompanied by a real life donkey) and kids and life and washing and packing and stuff I haven't got round to answering it, although I have read it all. And now my eyes grow heavy with sleepzzz. Sorry, I will try to catch up in the next few days, although...

... that will be difficult, as we plan to visit family over the Easter period. I'm hoping to check into an internet cafe on at least some of the days. But posting will be erratic, unless someone cares to drop the price of a laptop into the tips jar, not that I'm hinting or anything.

"Doctor, doctor, I've turned invisible."
"Next!"

I was on the floor over this one. There's this chap, see, and he writes an opinion piece for the Telegraph. And it's all about how no-one takes any notice of him when he sounds off about crime and immigration. I dunno why he wants to go on about that stuff all the time, who does he think he is, Home Secretary? Anyway - this'll kill ya, oh it really will - then the Telegraph totally forgets to put his name or job on the article.

Twit.

Drunken reveller spends night in clothing bank.

The (US) South saved civilization,

according to both Mark Byron and Possumblog. Mr Byron, who admits to exaggerating slightly, argues forcefully that the gifts of the South to the world in the century just past are military expertise, political and Biblical conservatism and an example of a peaceful and in large measure successful struggle for racial equality. Mr Possum (who is really called Mr Oglesby, but no one can have such a cute blog name as Possumblog and then expect to get away scot free) has a slightly different hypothesis.

Mr Byron says he picked up the idea for the post from a book which describes how the Irish monks kept the flame alive in the Dark Ages. And so they did, say I with pardonable pride in my forbears. Only my Welsh husband says it was the Welsh, and St David was the teacher of St Patrick.

Many people in Britain have a very quaint idea of the South. About twelve years ago I was in a wannabe writers' circle, and while reviewing another member's story I recall questioning whether a government employee in modern Mississipi would really get away with saying to a subordinate, "smart for a nigger, aintcha?" (In fairness to the writer, who was quite young at the time, I should say that he immediately took the point, and furthermore it was a good, menacing story.) For my own part, I only found out that so many of the mayors of the cities in the South were black through newspaper stories concerning the series of murders of young boys in Atlanta.

Perhaps British ignorance can be excused, though, on the grounds that there don't seem to be many US films or TV programs that feature the South just as background. There's almost always a plot line involving racial tension. Or maybe it's just that BBC and ITV won't buy any show that features Southern accents unless the plot features racial tension.

Be that as it may, Southern visitors to the UK may be taken aback to find so many Britons taken aback to find them fashion-conscious or internet-connected or law professors or even rich enough to afford the flight. Black visitors may undergo mixed feelings on being the object of concentrated sympathy over their choice of abode. Poor old Matthew Engel, whose snapshot of the American soul as revealed by a diner at the Olive Garden in Alabama was driven right off the Guardian's web record by ridicule from Lileks.com and others, was really no worse than many. (Did anyone else notice that his next column name-dropped Senators and Congressmen like mad?)

There remains one Serious Issue that I simply must resolve. It's hot over there, right? So when you people wear dungarees and no shirts, don't the metal clips get hot against the skin?

I forsook the lot of you yesterday

, and for what? To do a fiendishly difficult Harry Potter jigsaw. It's in the form of a circle covered with distorted images that only resolve into an actual picture when reflected in the shiny plastic cup that comes with it. I do one jigsaw about every five years, and when I'm not doing one I am quite clear that they are a complete waste of time. All that work, and then the end product clutters up your living room for two weeks until someone kicks the bit of hardboard it's lying on. I wish the Labour Theory of Value were true, for if it were I would surely get thousands for that tricky solid black area at one edge.