STAND BY ME

(WHITE’S CITY, NM)

Breaking sleep for a cigarette at 06.00 hours something startled me. It was still pitch black but I could just make out the silhouette of a doe deer and two young, one I guess a yearling and one from this summer. He was tiny. I called Rip Van Winkle from her beauty sleep and she came to see them. I never know whether to keep those moments to myself or share them. I felt like Gordy in Stand By Me. It was ace.

We keep waking up so late, we promised each other we’d be organised but we ain’t. We don’t know from one day to the next where we’re driving to and I tend to make it up as we go along. Should we go to see the NASA space centre at Houston, or go see where John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I had to explain to Nat who JFK was and what happened at Dealey Plaza that fateful day.

Ah, bless. They don’t have school up north.

So Houston or Dallas?

If only there was a way someone else could make my mind up for me.

We’re 1233 miles into our adventure and part of my tooth just fell out eating some pistachio nuts, the rest of the tooth that fell apart in Sydney. It does not hurt, but what with my broken nose, bad shoulder, scars and now this I feel I’m falling apart.

It’s 18.00 hours on Sunday night - Corona with lime time.