Fred and Gerri Ann drove us to the airport in Minneapolis today as we left Fred’s project for Dallas. (We did manage to get three games of pool in before we left on an otherwise busy schedule.) At security, they had trainees, one of whom spoke so fast and in a mumbly American accent that I didn’t understand him, his supervising officer didn’t seem to be bothered by that, probably thinking I was deaf, I’m not sure if he knew I was a foreigner, it didn’t come up. Anyway, it became obvious that they were taking the training to an exaggeration point as he informed me he needed to search my ‘groin area’. “Go for your life,” I muttered back. There was allegedly some alert on the big machine. I was wearing shorts, and had nothing in my pockets at all, not even a plectrum. It was almost like they were making it up to put the trainees through a rigorous sesh in the field. I saw one girl having her (what looked like) hand cream tested with little spurts of chemicals, like a cocaine test, she was not amused, whilst I wasn’t bothered.

The flight was an easy two and a half hours and I listened to Best Of The Pretenders (2008), Taylor’s country album (2006), two halves of Willy Deville songs that my iPod had trouble with, and four songs from ZZ Top’s Degüello (1979). I’ve forgotten how to get new songs onto my iPod, Olivia has managed to download new albums onto her phone, that’s what I need to do so I can listen to contemporary albums in this captive space. I still haven’t got to Daughter’s new album Stereo Mind Game, Feist’s Multitudes, Fever Ray’s Radical Romantics, or Boygenius‘ The Record to name but four, all new.

After picking up our luggage we went out to meet Sarah who was kindly picking us up and encountered Texas heat. It’s a different climate down here and I was glad of those shorts and T-shirt, this is not the weather for clothing. We drove into Dallas and straight to Thai Thai for dinner, followed by Kroger’s for groceries, followed by home away from home above the garage for writing and sleep. Tomorrow is mystery album day.