2002-10-08 - 6:16 p.m.

Back, like a hunch. It�s always difficult to chronicle a week�s worth of lots of highs, a couple of lows and a not inconsiderable amount of in-betweens, so I�ll just kind of ramble incoherently for a bit.

No change there, then.

If there�s anything better than sitting around outside drinking Root Beer Schnapps with some of the most damnably entertaining and saucy company (Hello Slutboy, Meism and SB�s housemates) you could wish for whilst the second hurricane (Hi, Lili) of your trip makes rumbling announcements of its imminent arrival, then I�d love to hear about it. Could a night get any more perfect?

For those of you not with the programme, Slutboy inhabits Chateaux Bimbeaux, a suitably ornate boho residence in the Garden District of New Orleans, the kind of area that you expect to see in features titled �the world�s most effortlessly hip neighbourhoods� and the kind of place Hoxton, London and Williamsburg, NY would love to be, if only they could keep up the repayments on their �knowingly fashionable� rental schemes.

I stayed in a really jammy selection of cute hotels, some of them hipper than a new plastic pelvis, but why must pretension follow? �Please allow yourself to feel vibed� and �How may I enhance your experience� are not phrases that put me at ease, no matter how exclusive your polished slate furnishings are.

Tropical storms are now up with scars and red hair and some other things I�m too shy to mention as being the sexiest things in the world.

Sadly, even sexy things become tired when they�re confining you to a solitary hotel room for 24 hours and fucking up your flights. Suffice to say, 6 hours at New Orleans airport isn�t anything I�d recommend in a hurry. More about that tomorrow. I have to try and establish a sleeping pattern that will help me get through three days at work without looking like one of those coma victims that has to have tapes of their favourite boyband played on a loop in the hope that they�ll snap out of it if they think that that is the soundtrack to the afterlife.