Trendy But Casual

The Curious Case of Morris P. Moody

For the last two years, we’ve been getting phone calls and mail for someone called Morris P. Moody. Who is he? We do not know.

All the calls and mail come from businesses, so we suspect that there is no such person as this MPM. He has been invented, we think, by a rogue computer program, combining my name – P. Morris – with T. Middy’s real name, which is T. Moody.

One piece of mail that arrived for him was from American Express, where we’ve been customers for 15+ years.

 

This was not the first offer of a credit card. Because apparently, even if you don’t exist, you can get a credit card. This is America, after all.

More annoying are the calls. If I answer the phone:

Caller: Hello, Mrs. Moody!

PM: That is not my name.

Or if TM answers the phone:

Caller: Hello, Morris!

TM: That is not my name.

Sometimes I try to tell them that nobody called Morris P. Moody lives in this house. They do not care. This is an actual conversation I had a couple of weeks ago:

Caller: Is this Mrs. Moody?

PM: My name is Paula Morris.

Caller: OK – well, can I speak to Mr. Moody?

PM: Are you calling to speak to Morris P. Moody?

Caller: Yes.

PM: He does not exist. Nobody of that name lives here.

Caller: So what?

I’m not making this up. He really said “so what?” Because he knew, for sure, that someone in our household had diabetes, and he just wanted to talk to them, whatever their name was. Other times the caller thinks one of us has leukemia. I tell them that there’s nobody called Morris P. Moody, and that nobody in our house has leukemia or diabetes. They find this hard to believe. They also find it hard to believe that we’re not interested in a free vacation in Branson, Missouri.

Today I looked up the name “Tom Moody” on the White Pages web site. We’ve lived in the same house in New Orleans for six years, and our number is listed under his name in the book version of the White Pages. (Before you all start drunk-dialing us, we’re out of here in two weeks. Plus we have caller ID.)

But the Tom Moody listed for our street address is one “Thomas P. Moody” (P is not his actual middle initial) and the White Pages web site lists him as “related to” one Morris P. Moody. None of this is right. Also, his age is listed as 65+. Now, T. Middy may be Dorian Gray, but he’s not THAT old.

I’m hoping that when we leave New Orleans, we will leave Morris P. Moody and his terrible health problems behind. He gets too many phone calls. Maybe he could pay the bill?

 

 

City Limits

I’ve announced this on Facebook, and via email, I realize, but not on this blog. Big changes are rumbling in the Morris/Middy household at the moment, and I’m not just talking about the dramatic change in rankings after Stage 15 of the Tour de France. We’re both leaving Tulane – I’ve left already, in fact – and we’re also leaving New Orleans.

We’ll be living in Glasgow (the one in Scotland, not Kentucky). I have a new job, teaching creative writing at the University of Stirling. TM is looking for gainful employment there (“ideally in or near a distillery”) ; he’s waiting for his work visa to be processed, so we can buy our tickets.

People keep asking us how we will cope with the cold in Glasgow. “You will freeze to death!” they predict, helpfully. I think the residents of New Orleans forget that T. Middy is from St Louis, which gets much, much colder in the winter than Glasgow does. The last time we spent a Christmas there, I got a blood nose every day from the dry cold, and slid onto my back on a patch of black ice (inside a covered parking garage). We’ve also lived in New York, where blizzards swirl through every winter, and in Iowa, where some days we couldn’t get the car up the incline of our snow-packed, icy parking area.

It will rain a lot in Glasgow, in a more incessant and drizzly way than it rains here. It will be gray and dark in the winter. The wet, chilly winter will feel unbearably long, the way the wet, sweltering summer feels unbearably long in New Orleans. We will persevere.

A rep from a shipping company came by today to calculate how much stuff we have to move. “It’s mostly books,” she said, telling us something we did not know. Unfortunately, books are heavy and take up a lot of boxes.

We’ve already begun clearing out and giving many things away, including some of the books. Thurgood Marshall, a school on Canal Street, now owns our set of encyclopedia. We’ve given others to the New Orleans Public Library for their weekly book sale, and had clothes and various household goods picked up by a charity. If anyone has any suggestions about where other things can be donated or put to good use in New Orleans – and remember, we have to get rid of or ship EVERYTHING – then please let me know.

There are many, many, many things we’ll miss about living in New Orleans, and I’ll write about them in a later post. But one thing I will not miss is the terrible driving here, especially the people who whizz though stop signs or drive the wrong way down one-way streets because this is New Orleans, baby, and the rules don’t apply. Also, the many people who cannot use a turn signal, possibly because they are holding their cell phone with one hand and a cigarette/drink in the other. (Or, like the woman driving her SUV through the four-way stop at Prytania and Jefferson on Friday: one hand used to clamp her phone to an ear, the other hand scratching her head.)

A related issue is the attitude of certain people who live in nice houses on nice streets, who don’t want riff-raff parking outside. Last Mardi Gras, during an evening parade, someone we know got their tires slashed because (they suspected) they’d parked too close to place-saving trashcans stationed in the street. And a month or so ago, when I parked as usual on Walnut Street, on the edge of Audubon Park, I incurred the wrath of someone who lives right on the park. I was parked legally, nowhere near the intersection or a fire hydrant. There were, in fact, two other cars parked between my car and the corner. I was well clear of all driveways. The car was an inch away from the sidewalk, with the side mirror turned it to avoid drive-by smashings by wide-load SUVs. Other cars lined this side of the block, as usual. But when I returned to my car that afternoon, I found this note on the windscreen.

There is no law about parking 15 feet away from a driveway on a residential street in New Orleans, because if there were, nobody would be able to park on any streets at all. (I guess this is what the owners of the house on Walnut Street would prefer.) And the ticket-givers of New Orleans, by far the most assiduous of our civil servants, would be going crazy up and down Walnut Street – and elsewhere – every day. I was parked about three feet from the driveway in question, not blocking it in any way. When I got this note, I was so irritated that I felt like driving through a stop sign while talking on the phone and scratching my head. But I did not. I’m very fond of our car, Otto Von Jetta.

Otto is for sale now as well, unfortunately, because we can’t take him with us to Scotland. He’s a 2004 Jetta in excellent condition – leather seats, sun roof, c 62 K miles. T. Middy keeps him very spick and span. We might even be persuaded to throw in our hurricane preparedness kit, i.e. a flashlight and a bottle opener. We have learned from sad experience (at a Super 8 motel in Mississippi) that bottle openers are not always readily available elsewhere. As Ignatius Reilly says, “outside the city limits there are many horrors.”

Today in New Orleans

It's very hot and humid. The crepe myrtles are blooming, showering parked cars with velvety pink and white blossoms. Traffic crawls along St Charles because of the roadworks that have been going on for months. Our street is quiet right now, but this afternoon the brass band summer camp at McMain will blast into action. I'm drinking iced pomegranate green tea, working on the manuscript of the new book, DARK SOULS, due at the end of the month.

This morning I parked on Jefferson while TM nipped into CCs to buy an iced coffee. Just as he arrived back, another car pulled in behind us - parking illegally, just like the cop car straddling the opposite corner. Both the driver of this car and the cop were going into CCs. We watched the driver of the car cross Magazine Street. He used a white stick to tap his way across. I'll say that again: the driver of the car needed a white stick in order to walk across the street.

My friend Mari Kornhauser just posted a story on Facebook about walking her dog in the French Quarter, where she lives. "I was assaulted, pushed, hit and spit on by a skinny inked white girl (20's-30's, blonde) when I told her that her dog might be hot in her car, which had no windows open." Mari kept calm, but stood her ground.It's 88 degrees right now but according to the weather report it already feels like 96, a little after ten in the morning. Dogs die here in hot cars. When the girl finished trying to provoke her, including spitting again, she accused Mari of the worst possible crime. "I bet you don't even live here," she said. 

And in the Gulf, where oil has made landfall along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, at least 35,000 barrels of oil is gushing into the water. 

Questions from Belle Chasse

Last Thursday a group of teachers and about forty eighth graders from Belle Chasse Middle School (in Plaquemines Parish) visited me at Tulane. Everyone in their grade had read RUINED, and students had to take a test and write a paper in order to win a place on this field trip. In the morning they went on a tour of Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District, one of the key locations in the novel, and then they sprawled on the lawn outside the Department of English, eating their lunches. At noon we all crammed into the Media Lab in the English department for a chat.

They were delightful, of course, and I really enjoyed their visit. And big props to their very creative and dedicated teachers for using the book as a starting point for explorations of Louisiana social history. One teacher, Shelley McGar, wrote to me before the field trip and said that after reading the novel they’d embarked on “research and discussion about burial practices, death photography, yellow fever, the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue and the cultural influences of the refugees, voodoo and its incorporation with Catholic practices, the plaçage system, Creoles versus "Americans" in the New Orleans of the 1800s, among other topics.”

The field trip was organized by another teacher, Zana Curley, who emailed me back in February to see if it was possible. Zana was born in my hometown, Auckland. (New Zealanders infiltrate everywhere: we’ll be in charge of all Louisiana soon.)

When the group was leaving to go back to school, Zana handed me letters from a number of students. These letters included several questions I don’t think we covered during our chat, so I told her I’d post answers on this blog. Hopefully they’ll placate the other readers who wander here from time to time, wanting answers about the book. Thanks so much to all the students who came to visit me, and all those who wrote me letters. I’m going to take the letters back to New Zealand with me in May to show my family.

SPOILER ALERT: people who haven’t read RUINED yet should avoid reading these answers until they’ve finished the story.

Keshawn: Did Rebecca’s Dad reunite with his family? Did Rebecca move back to New York, and how is Lisette in heaven?

Rebecca and her father go back to New York together, but now they can come to New Orleans whenever they like, to see Aunt Claudia and Aurelia (and Anton, of course). I think Rebecca’s father might even buy a place there – maybe an apartment in the French Quarter. And I’m sure Anton is planning a trip to NYC at some point. Lisette is reunited with her mother, of course: she’s not condemned to haunting the cemetery and the Bowman mansion anymore.

Justin: Why didn’t Rebecca die instead of Helena?

Lisette saves her, just in time. And then there’s the crumbling tomb … But it’s pretty touch-and-go for Rebecca for most of that final showdown in the cemetery, as you’ll recall.

Devin: Which school is Temple Mead supposed to represent? How did you come up with the plot of the story? How long did it take you to get your book published?

I made up Temple Mead, though for its exterior and location I was inspired by the beautiful main building of Louise McGehee School in the Garden District. [Note to McGehee students: I know your school is a much happier and more sensible place than Temple Mead! No slights are intended.]

The plot of the novel came from lots of different places – experience, invention, pieces of ideas, other people’s stories, notions, questions, images, my interest in Louisiana history, my interest in cities, the characters that began to form in my head … Everything started coming together at some point, and I realized it could be a novel.

The first pieces started clicking together early in 2006, I guess, and I delivered the final draft to Scholastic in December 2008. So – almost two years of work, with another eight months work on the publisher’s side before it was in book stores.

Madison: Why did you name the book RUINED? Why did Lisette’s father want her to take care of him when he had yellow fever?

I had a notion of New Orleans as a city in ruins after Katrina – or at least somewhere that was seen that way by other people. And a key part of the curse is that a house will lie in ruins at the end, and that does happen when the Bowman mansion burns to the ground.

Lisette’s father loved her very much and wanted to see her again before he died. And people didn’t understand the causes of yellow fever then: he may have thought she was immune. He didn’t think she’d be in danger – not of catching yellow fever, and certainly not of getting murdered.

Jacob: Why did you choose New Orleans as the setting for this novel? What is your favorite cemetery to visit, and why?

I’ve lived in New Orleans since the summer of 2004, but I’ve been interested in it and writing about it for much longer. (It’s a location in my first novel, Queen of Beauty.) One of the seeds for this book, specifically, was a night-time carnival parade; another was learning about voodoo in New Orleans; another was exploring the Treme neighborhood for the first time. New Orleans is swarming with stories, as you know. Swarming with ghosts.

Cemeteries I like very much, wherever they are. My family went on holiday to Norfolk Island when I was a teenager and I made two visits to the old cemetery there to explore. (There are lots of Mutiny-on-the-Bounty connections.) Oddly, the only cemetery I’ve toured in New Orleans is Lafayette, which is by no means the oldest one in the city. I think I was intrigued by it because I drive past so often: I started thinking about what might be going on behind those high white walls. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived for a short time in New Orleans, and the house where he stayed overlooks the cemetery.

I’m always on the hunt for graves of writers, musicians, artists and adventurers I like – Kate Chopin and Tennessee Williams in St Louis; Anne Bronte in Scarborough, England; Charlie Parker outside Kansas City. On ‘Authors Ridge’ in the cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts: Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott and her family. Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri. Oscar Wilde in Paris. Robert Johnson outside Greenwood, Mississippi – probably his real grave. Billy the Kid in New Mexico – probably NOT his real grave. Jane Austen in Winchester Cathedral. George Armstrong Custer at West Point. (A disclaimer: I know Custer was crazy and awful, but after I read the fantastic Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell, I was obsessed with him for a while. Good books can turn your head.)

Mitchell and Seth: Are you going to come out with a sequel?

I’m working on a second book in a ‘haunted city’ series right now, but it takes place somewhere else. Mitchell suggested New York, which is a good idea, but at the moment I’m writing something set in old York – in England – which is the most haunted city in the world. [Note: Mitchell told me I should NOT call any sequel RUINED 2, and I will take his advice.] You know, I may write a sequel to RUINED at some point … never say never!

Thanks again to all the eighth-graders from Belle Chasse Middle School (and teachers) for your enthusiasm, ideas and encouragement. I really enjoyed your visit.

Blog, Blood, etc

Not much time for blogging these days, because I have a book to finish work on - it's my second YA novel, due horrifyingly soon to Scholastic. Luckily it's spring break right now, and I have all day, every day to myself. I like the way time disappears when I'm writing. I like writing, actually, which is just as well.

Last weekend was the Tennessee Williams Festival, and I appeared on a very lively panel in the Cabildo called "New Angles in New Orleans Writing." The other writers on the panel were interesting and funny: Bill Loehfelm (Bloodroot),  Rick Barton (Rowing to Sweden), and Andrea Boll (The Parade Goes on Without You). We had a great moderator, too - Ted O'Brien of Garden District Books, who insisted that the term "media escort" has no saucy connotations.

Everyone else on the panel remembered to bring a copy of their most recent book along. I forgot, needless to say, distracted by Saturday-morning English football and various serious fashion issues (i.e. drying my hair and deciding what to wear). Luckily, a very cute eleven-year-old ("nearly twelve") reader named Isabelle was sitting in the second row, and she lent me her copy to flash about.

Although I'm working on a novel right now, early Sunday mornings are devoted, as ever, to the crossword in the NYT Magazine. The clue this week to 18-down was "Like universal blood donors." The answer was "OTYPE."  After I wrote this in, I made the mistake of asking T. Middy about his blood type. This was the conversation that ensued.

TM: My blood type is O. That's the best.

PM: Why is it the best?

TM: Because either I can give blood to anyone or get blood from anyone.

PM: (showing him crossword) You can GIVE blood to anyone. You're a universal donor.

TM: (says nothing but looks smug)

PM: I'm A plus.

TM: It's A Positive, not A Plus. Please don't go around saying these things in public.

PM: Whatever - it's the best. Hence the plus sign.

TM: A Positive's can't be universal donors.

PM: We don't want to be.

TM: Typical. Even your blood is selfish.

Who Dat?

T. MIddy is all geared up for the Superbowl today. This weekend, in my absence, he's also built an entirely new shelving unit for the flat-screen TV.

When it comes to the Saints, no expense will be spared.

Autumn, New Orleans, November 2009

Hurricane Ida is on her way, curling up through the Gulf after terrorizing central American and the Yucatan peninsula. She’s breaking up now into a tropical storm, but that still means a lot of water and wind, especially along the coast. It’s gray outside, but there’s no rain yet. The Tulane flag hung over the porch railings by our peppy neighbors flaps back and forth. T. Middy has lifted all our plants off their stands, and taken his rain boots to work. As one of our friends said last night, at least when the electricity goes, it won’t be too hot.

The storm is passing to our east, so I don’t think the electricity will go this time. It’s very quiet outside: most schools are closed today, just in case. In Plaquemines Parish, it’s flooding already (storm surge), and some people are evacuating. Everyone’s selfishly hoping it’ll turn a little farther east, and hammer someone else.

I haven’t posted for a while, because I’ve been busy with the semester – including a fantastic visit last week from one of my literary heroes, Deborah Eisenberg, and a dinner with my screenwriting students and the writer/producer Eric Overmyer, veteran of The Wire, who’s creating a new HBO drama here with David Simon.

Also, I’ve been busy with lots of book promotion for Ruined – including four visits to local schools; two book groups (one at Octavia Books, and one at Barnes & Noble); a trip to the SIBA conference in Greenville, South Carolina; and book events here at Octavia and Maple Street, at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, in Mississippi at Lemuria Books in Jackson and Square Books in Oxford, and at the Neighborhood Preservation Center in New York City. I have another event coming up this Saturday at the Catholic Library Association conference. And, of course, there was the great trip to Orlando to film a marketing video for Scholastic Book Fairs. Ruined will be sold in book fairs all over the country from January.

T. Middy – for those of you pining for news – is busy as well, working on the Dean’s Colloquium, and the Ellis Marsalis performance this Thursday (Dixon Hall, November 12). We go up to St Louis for his birthday/Thanksgiving later this month, and then to New Zealand for two weeks over Christmas. My sister sent me an email, saying: “Would you two like to cook Christmas dinner? No pressure.” (Um, sure.) Only four weeks of classes left.

I’ve been scribbling notes for various posts – at the Epcot Center in Disneyworld; at the Angola Prison Rodeo; at the gravesite of Robert Johnson just outside Greenwood Mississippi. My bizarre autumn. Today, for the first time, and thanks to a tropical storm, it almost feels like fall.

New Orleans, August, Hot

On week days, when I’m alone in the house, I turn off the air conditioning – to save money, to see how long I can stand it. By four, my head starts to feel swaddled with cotton wool. I’m sleepy. I stick to things. Sometimes, clammy and oppressed, I feel almost feverish.

It’s overcast outside most afternoons: in the month since I’ve been back from the UK, there’s been two or maybe three days without a thunderstorm. On Monday it rained almost all day – the soggy shoulder of a tropical depression pushing up into the Florida panhandle. I lie in the bedroom, the coolest room in the house, and think of ways to describe the heat. Every day is sweltering. Outside the heat is a thicket, almost visible: we wade through its dense swamp in dreamy slow-motion.

If I could write my first novel, Queen of Beauty, over again, there’d be much more about the heat in New Orleans. The heat and the rain and the smell of things here. I was talking about this today with Susan Larson, the books editor of the Times-Picayune; she was interviewing me about my YA novel, Ruined. I would include more heat, more smells, and more lizards, I told her. In August, the lizards are the only fast-moving creatures in this place. At the moment the ones I see are bark-skinned and tiny, darting across sidewalks, disappearing into bushes.

TM has had various face-offs with lizards in the house in summers past, involving absurd hallway chases and daring Tupperware entrapments. Lizards particularly like the Venetian blinds in our south-facing back room, which is oven-like for six months of the year. They lie, lizard-legs dangling, on the dusty slats.

The heat won’t break for more than a month – maybe in two months’ time, maybe a little sooner. We were married in New Orleans nine years ago, at the very end of September. Knowing this place a little better now, we would never dream of arranging a wedding (a black-tie wedding, in fact) for such a volatile time of year. It’s the heart of hurricane season, the end of September. The heat is usually still ferocious and unrelenting. Last night, I met up with a few people for birthday drinks, and my friend Russell Desmond was talking about business over the summer – he owns Arcadian Books, in the French Quarter. People forget, he says, that September is still the summer here. It’s another hot, stifling month that has to be endured – survived – between the European tourists and the fall conventions.

Sometimes it’s Christmas here, and we’re still waiting for the fall.

Last night T. Middy got to indulge in a rare public rant on one of his favorite topics: the weather coverage of WDSU, otherwise known as Channel Six, the NBC local affiliate. We’ve lived here for five years, and TM continues to be outraged by the weather coverage. (Don’t ask why we don’t just watch another local affiliate: wherever we live, we watch NBC. We miss you, Sue Simmons.)

The WDSU empire has established an outpost on Channel 108, which is known as WDSU Weather-Plus News and Traffic. When TM has tired of being aggrieved at my various crimes – finishing all the wine, eating all the cashews, watching yet another past-season marathon of America’s Next Top Model – he likes to turn to 108 and complain that it’s never New Orleans weather.

Here is a transcript of a recent diatribe on this topic.

TM: No matter when I tune in, it’s Houma. Then Mandeville, then Hammond. You say it’s in alphabetical order, but, baby girl, look – it’s HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, AND THEN HAMMOND.

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Now it’s THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT. And what’s on right now? GRETNA.

 [Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: And then it’s mostly commercials for WDSU.

[Lower-level grumbling while distracted by Tropical Storm Watch in the Gulf of Mexico.]

TM: So now it’s New Orleans. They’re saying thunderstorms at noon tomorrow. Let’s check back tomorrow, shall we? Let’s see what they say then!

[Turns to another station for quite a while, then switches back.]

TM: Just to see what’s happening, let’s turn to 108. THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT! This is the New Orleans metropolitan area! Why don’t they show New Orleans? They could at least show Metairie.

[Swearing and muttering.]

TM: And you know, I bet a lot of these forecasts are the same. Because it’s a ****ing tiny area!

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Slidell. What’s next? HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, HAMMOND.

[The next day: I’m in another room]

TM: Ha! GRETNA!

Actually, I don’t know why he needs to watch the weather. It’s the same every day: mid 90s, with a chance of thunderstorms. I’ll be here, waiting for the sky to darken and for the heat in the house to simmer and thicken. Until my head aches, and my hair curls, and it’s time to turn on the air again and finish off all the wine.

New book

Last year, when I was holed up in the little flat on Albert Park in Auckland (courtesy of the very generous Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship), I worked on four big projects. One of them is published this week.

This is my YA novel, and it's published here in the US by Scholastic/Point. It's already selling on Amazon in various countries, as well as on other sites and in numerous US independent book stores like the great Lemuria in Jackson, MS. If there's a teenager in your life interested in a mystery involving ghosts, curses, murders, carnival/Mardi Gras parades, yellow fever, voodoo, New Orleans (especially the Garden District and Treme), Haiti, cemeteries, Roman society, high school shenanigans, or any of the above, please consider buying this for him or her. I'd like to crack the top 100,000 on Amazon!

If you need more persuasion, here's the starred review from Publishers Weekly:

"With this haunting love letter to New Orleans, Morris makes her YA debut, telling the story of 15-year-old Rebecca Brown, a proud New Yorker sent to live with a family friend while her father travels overseas. Ostracized as an outsider, Rebecca struggles to fit in and cope with her new surroundings. When she befriends Lisette, a ghost who has haunted the cemetery ever since her mysterious death 155 years earlier, Rebecca is drawn into an eerie story of betrayal, loss, old curses and family secrets. As Mardi Gras approaches, so does the culmination of something dark and angry that has been brewing for decades. This moody tale thoroughly embraces the rich history, occult lore and complex issues of race, ethnicity, class and culture that have defined New Orleans for centuries, turning the city into a character in its own right. Rather than shy away from the shameful or tragic moments of the past, Morris uses them to capture the city's essence. From Mardi Gras rituals to voodoo spells, Hurricane Katrina to jazz, this is a story that could only be told in New Orleans."

Note: I just checked on Amazon, and I've already cracked the top 25K - maybe I should aim higher (or lower)? Say, top 10K?

New Orleans, late July

Good things about being back in New Orleans: the blueberries from Pass Christian, MS, which are juicy and delicious. The crepe myrtles in bloom – white and lavender and mauve – sprinkling fallen petals over car roofs and sidewalks. The prospect of going swimming this weekend in Metairie, where our friend Becky has a real pool, or around the corner, where Sarah has installed something inflatable and possibly illegal in her back yard. The students are still away for the summer, so it’s nice and peaceful, apart from the times when the McMain summer drum camp starts rehearsing under the trees … but even that’s not bad, because it reminds me of parade season. (I always miss the endless schoolyard band sessions after Mardi Gras is over.) The fruit cart guy is set up on Napoleon: he always has ripe avocados. Lots of restaurants and bars have specials on right now, because it’s such a quiet time of year.

Annoying things. Hmmm. Yesterday lunchtime, a Cox Communications worker was tinkering with the lamppost outside. Next thing, our cable access is gone. A technician is due to come around this morning, in the approved two-hour window, but this has involved SIX calls so far – one to book the appointment, and the other five to confirm it. One last night, four today. Cox: please stop calling me and JUST COME AND FIX OUR CABLE.

This morning I called the doctor to make an appointment for T. Middy, who managed to get a touch of the old swine flu just before he left the UK. He’s feeling a bit better, but his ears have been blocked for ten days, and he may need antibiotics . No doctor at our local medical clinic can see him until mid-August. That is, almost a month away. I’m so glad we don’t have the evil “socialized medicine” in this country, with its long waiting lists! He’s calling the hospital now to see if he can get an appointment with a specialist. This will cost more – it’ll cost us more, and it’ll cost our insurance more – but what else can he do? Make a doctor’s appointment for a month hence and hope he’s still sick?

At Whole Foods, looking through their lunch salads – which manage to be dispiriting, mundane, and over-priced – and buying ingredients to make pizza, I was told that they will not be stocking pancetta again until the fall, because “nobody buys it in the summer.” I’ve never found pancetta anywhere else in the city. If any NOLA-based reader knows where I can buy this grotesquely unseasonal item, please email me.

The day I was home last week, in between getting back from the UK and flying to New York, a tremendous thunder storm flooded the streets and knocked out power along much of Magazine Street. I picked up TM and his office wife, Trina, so we could go and get some lunch, but everywhere was closed because the power was gone. We ended up at Crabby Jack’s on Jefferson Highway – crossing parish lines to get a delicious shrimp po boy! We would have driven to Houma if necessary: we were hungry.

The traffic lights were out at numerous intersections on St Charles and Magazine long after power had been restored to the neighborhood, which reminded me of the #1 most annoying thing about being back in New Orleans: the drivers. So many of them were speeding through four-way intersections –with no functioning traffic lights – without slowing down, let alone stopping. I understand that it’s impossible for drivers here to ever use indicators, because they need to steer AND make calls and send text messages, and that red lights/stop signs are perceived as an affront to our constitutional right to drive wherever it is we’re going without inconvenient pauses, but still. It makes every journey an adventure, I guess.

The cable guy is here. He tells me they turned off the cable next door yesterday, but the incidents are completely unrelated: this is not the reason our cable disappeared at exactly the same time. Hmmm.

Once he’s gone, I need to take my life in my hands and go out for more blueberries from Pass Christian. You can buy them at Rouse’s. Unlike pancetta, they are seasonal.