A Very Short Note About the Election

Down-ticket.

To be honest, Texas can seem a long way from the this election sometimes. Yes, people are working very hard here, on both sides, and there are yard signs all over the place - but there's very little intensity. Nobody has any doubt that McCain will win the state - there's more chance that Obama will win Arizona. Having said that, Houston is a lot less Republican than much of Texas and I haven't spoken to anyone about the election who hasn't said they are voting, or have voted, for Obama.

'Real' America.

I'm not button-holing people either. 

The lady in front of me in the supermarket queue was very forthcoming. She had just seen 'W', she told me and had been disgusted. Not that she liked Bush himself, but the film had depicted the President on the toilet and that was unacceptable - it demeaned the office of the presidency.

Right, I thought, like he hadn't done that all by himself.

She hadn't finished though - she was going to vote for Obama. She was a Democrat. But she had voted Republican when she lived in New York, of course - things were different up there. And wasn't all this just lovely for the blacks? (The black woman working the checkout didn't twitch - just waited implacably for her customer to shut up talking to me and pay for her shopping already.)

'Of course,' the old lady continued, 'it would have been much worse if Obama had picked Lieberman as his VP, because he is a Jew.'

I might have raised an eyebrow at this point because she hurtled on to explain herself slightly. 'I'm Jewish,' she said, hand on heart. 'But if he had picked a Jew, something would happen and they would blame us. Absolutely.'

There wasn't any ambiguity about the something to which she referred. The threat of assassination is a foul undercurrent of this campaign, but it is there. CNN cut to live coverage of an Obama rally the other night and I became acutely and uncomfortably aware that this was an open-air venue. In a land that is so politically divided, where there are so many excuses for someone to mistrust or feel threatened by a fellow American, there must be someone, hundreds of people perhaps, who are scared enough of this good man to try and kill him. Let's face it, it's happened before when change threatened America. It is sinking in now that these fears will not go away once he is elected.

However, this election is about Hope and not Fear. Everyone should read this story from Hartford, Connecticut and, for extra credit, the letter in question.

And yes, the man has staff. What's your point?

A Father's Dilemma

Wait for it...

Tempted as I am to file another note on life in Houston and the aftermath of Ike, I thought you might all have had your fill of tales of dangerous driving, an over-reliance on gadgetry, the reckless destruction of property and mordant British wit. So I'm going to discuss James Bond with you instead.

I may not have mentioned this before, but I am a bit of a Bond obsessive. As a very small boy I watched the films on telly, as a young teenager I read the novels and I derived a lot of pleasure from both. And yes, I have also gone waaay overboard, reading non-Fleming continuation novels, buying soundtrack CDs and toy DB5s and playing Bond-related video games.

What you might have missed is that this passion has cooled considerably in recent years. I am not the utterly ardent Bond-fan I once was. There are plenty of reasons behind this, including the varying quality of recent movies and the return of 'Doctor Who' - I only have so much sad-obsessive-geekiness to go round you know.

But all this is skirting the issue - the real reason is that my reconsideration of Bond has coincided with becoming a father. To put it bluntly, it is harder to combine a love of all things Bond with the responsibilities of parenting. And just as we were undergoing this change, the world lurched in another direction: Laura's first bout of maternity leave overlapped with the invasion of Iraq. There was nothing for her to do but watch television and nothing else for her to watch apart from rolling news footage of irresponsible violence. In a world where suspected terrorists (i.e. innocent bystanders) could be shot dead on the Tube, the casual fantasy violence of Bond's world became more unpalatable and, crucially, less justifiable.

A Bad Man.

 When my parents had let me watch Connery or Moore save the world there had been no doubt that these adventures were suitable viewing. Even I understood the basic premise of the Cold War that shaped them. When William saw a television trailer for 'Casino Royale', his heartfelt, confused wail was "Who is that BAD MAN and why is he doing those BAD THINGS?!" Well, quite. Son, let me explain why it's okay to go around shooting people...

This what reading the Guardian gets you. Okay, that was then, this is now. Why am I suddenly thinking about 007 again? Well, it is a big Bond year. Sebastian Faulks' 'Devil May Care' was published in the spring (don't bother) and Charlie Higson's excellent 'Young Bond' series has just concluded with the release of the fifth book: 'By Royal Command'. Pre-publicity for 'Quantum of Solace' is about to go into overdrive with barely a month to go before the new movie hits cinemas. And finally, I am about to be reunited with all my books and DVDs that have been sluggishly cruising the Atlantic. I am getting the itch again.

And I am going to have to face up to the fact that there is little reason to 'shelter' the boys from 007 much longer. They don't have toy guns, but they make their own from Lego and there's no way to stop that. The boys next door (8 and 6) have real guns. Well, this is Texas. William, at least, is nearly six and certainly older than I was when I watched my first film. He's growing up fast too - there's a reason 'Return of the Jedi' is his favourite Star Wars episode and it is that gold bikini. Bond is already beginning to bleed into William's consciousness - the name, like that of Indiana Jones, is known even if it is also a mystery. Finally, let's not be coy: James Bond is, like a slice of cucumber in a glass of Pimm's, very cool and very British. My boys are growing up in the heartland of American machismo - plenty of kids in the playground can be Felix Leiter to their 007.

My dilemma has changed then. I'm not worried about William trying to rationalise the sex, or the sexism, or the violence, or the not-so-subtle racism (had you noticed all the baddies were foreigners?) That's all stuff he's going to have to come to terms with at some point or other - at least if I'm in the room with him, I can provide the necessary context and reassurances.

No, my new dilemma, having sort of made my mind up, is: where the hell do I start? I said at the top that I wanted to discuss Bond with you and I was serious - I'd like thoughts and suggestions. Twenty-one films over forty-five years - this knocks the Star Wars argument (I,II, III, IV, V, VI? or IV, V, VI, I, II, III? or just IV, V, VI?) out of the water.

Should I pick a film that is lighter in tone? 'Moonraker' perhaps or 'The Spy Who Loved Me'? Or should I go for all out brilliance - 'Goldfinger', obviously - although I would have to cringe through the scene in the barn: attitudes to sexual consent have improved a little since 1964 haven't they? Or maybe I should try and show him something fairly recent, something that takes place in a world he vaguely recognises? 'The World is Not Enough' or possibly something as old as 'The Living Daylights' might do, but again the world has changed a little: Soviet troops oppressing Afghanistan? Bond aiding the Mujahideen? Hmmm..

Another strategy would be to start with 'Dr. No' and work forwards. But, well... that sounds a little drastic. I'm fairly sure I know which ones to avoid off the bat: 'OHMSS', 'Licence to Kill' and 'Casino Royale' are too dark for now. As for 'Die Another Day', well there's no reason to admit that exists is there?

So, fellow aficionados, fellow parents, any ideas?

Power Complex

It's almost 11 o'clock in the morning here and I have electricity. For the last three days a neighbour's generator has run our fridge and a night-light for the boys but other than that we have had no power since about 2am on Saturday when Ike was approaching the most terrifying point in his rampage.

This is not going to be a long note - there are still over a million Houstonians without power and some of them don't even have houses any more. Many are still reliant on the city for handouts of emergency food and ice and petrol stations are still beset by queues. But I did want to let you know that things are getting back to normal for us at least.

We have not been uncomfortable this week - we have been royally looked after by Caroline and having a fridge also made a massive difference - but sitting in the dark, with no real idea whether the power will come back on tomorrow or in a fortnight's time, is the sort of experience which gnaws away at you day after day, or rather night after night. I admit that I was developing a complex of sorts - with every day that went past, it got a little harder to grit one's teeth and get on with it, a little harder to find a bright side by candle-light.

This morning, with the boys distracted by something soothingly quiet, I suddenly realised that an unfamiliar noise had been buzzing about me for several minutes. I looked up to see the ceiling fan rotating gently - but what? That would mean... I whirled about to see a standby light gleaming on the television. Once again neighbours poured out of their houses, this time giving each other cheery waves and slightly manic grins. My neighbour and I conferred and agreed it was probably safe to switch off the generator. We, at least, were properly back in the fold of civilisation. Until next time anyway.

* * *

Yesterday I took the boys to the supermarket. I rang ahead to make sure it was open and the woman on the other end of the phone seemed aggrieved that I had felt the need to check. Of course they were open!

The car park was nearly empty when we got there and inside it was like a listing ship. The near end and the checkouts were lit, but the far end was in total darkness, making it feel as if the whole thing was wallowing at an angle. The fridges and freezers were empty of course and the fruit and vegetable section and the bakery were fenced off. But everything else was there, albeit in shadows.

Reverently, we paced up and down, wading in to the darkness, checking the nutritional information of a can of soup by the tinny glare of my mobile phone. The staff were there in force, some with torches, all helpful and dedicated. It was at once both a chastening and an encouraging experience.

Things in our part of town are beginning to feel normal again. The traffic lights are still out which makes driving a fraught experience once again but everything else is coming together. Hopefully school will re-open next week.

For some people the wait for normal things - like turning on a light against the darkness - will be much longer.

After Ike

I've just got online at a friend's house. It's the day after the day after Ike and you all probably know much more about it than I do. We have no power, no internet and only the famous radio on which to receive news.

The news is we have been very lucky. The house suffered only the most minute amount of damage and our fence blew down. No trees came down on our street and nobody got hurt. Just driving around today we saw roofs and cars stoved in by falling branches.

Yesterday I was at a bit of a loss to begin with - after the storm had largely passed I realised I had given little thought to what happens next. But we soon got into clear up mode. The houses around us emptied and we all emerged into the rain to start moving leaves, tree limbs and other debris. It took all day, but it was one of those weird neighbourly things that the British only manage when there is a war on.

Today we have worked out how to manually open the garage doors and we have ventured as far as Caroline and Perryn's house (a few blocks away) - they have a generator so we are able to recharge the kid-occupying DS and portable DVD player, not to mention phones and the radio.

Downtown Houston is blocked off - a lot of high-rises lost all their windows (and a lot of office furniture) and it's too dangerous to let the public in. Entry to Galveston Island is forbidden for the same reason but it looks like thousands of people did not die.

Millions of people lost power though, and today they are saying that it could take 4 weeks for electricity to be re-connected. The water supply is low but we do have water and that should resume properly for everyone today or tomorrow once the appropriate tests have been performed. Really we are waiting for some normality - for electricity or at least for shops to open where batteries and stuff can be bought without a riot kicking off.

Map showing the power loss. That red splodge? That's me that is.

We have heard lots of stories on the radio from people who have been less fortunate than us - we really have escaped without a scratch - but overall it seems that the authorities are doing what they can and that the city will be back up and running soon. The clean up will take a long time but hopefully improvements can be made before the next hurricane - underground power lines would be good!

The consensus is that Houston hasn't had a storm like this in 25 years and hopefully there won't be another one soon.

Hide from the Wind, Run from the Sea...

Thursday morning.

Eleven days ago Ike was just a tropical depression, 3955 miles away. Since then it has wobbled and dithered, strengthened and faltered, meandering across the Atlantic ocean and the Gulf of Mexico all the way to - quite literally - my door step. On the way it became a Category 4 Hurricane and dropped its shoulder, smashing into Haiti and Cuba, killing hundreds of people and destroying whatever had somehow survived Dolly, Edouard, Gustav and Josephine.

With the limp exception of Edouard, none of that had come anywhere near us here. And as of Wednesday lunchtime that was what we expected of Ike too. But, uncannily, the storm pivoted, span around like a drunk looking for a fight and set of with heavy inevitability for the swadge of coastline directly in front of Houston - the third (or fourth) most populous city in the United States.

Thursday was sunny and warm with gentle breezes. 'A good day to get ready,' said my best friend Gene Norman, who is (as you'll know) Chief Meteorologist of KHOU Channel 11 News. The Mayor of Houston, Bill White, and the Judge of Harris County, Ed Emmett, came on the TV and made it clear what was going to happen. A list of ZIP codes was announced - people who lived here were told to evacuate as soon as possible. Mandatory. Everybody else was told to stay and shelter in place - the last thing they wanted after Rita (2005) was for the entire population of the city to try and get on the road at the same time. The imperative was to let people in mortal danger get out.

With both the boys at school and Laura toiling away out of town, I knew had a spare morning to try and snaffle a few more supplies before we had to batten down the hatches. Petrol stations were beginning to run dry and it looked like half of Texas had the same shopping list as me but I couldn't believe how polite and, well, almost British everyone was being.

Firstly, I went to Academy (basically a Texas-sized Millets). Expecting a power-outage, I wanted a cool box and a camping stove. The middle-aged woman who came in the door with me wanted the same things and we ended up side by side looking at the last gas stove on the shelf.

'You have it,' she said.

'Not at all,' I said, knowing I had the upper hand being actually British: no Yank was going to out-defer me... 'You got there first, you should take it.'

'Let's flip for it,' she said. And wouldn't take no for an answer. So she called Heads and I tossed a shiny quarter. It came down Montana cow skull (that's Tails) and she gave me the box.

Boy, did I feel bad.

I slunk about, found my cool box and some batteries and started looking for propane cannisters. There was a huge pyramid of gas stoves. And the woman. Phew. So we laughed about that and started discussing how many gas cannisters to get. An enormous man leaned over and whispered, 'Get a case.'

The scariest thing about that shop? The people rubbing their chins in the gun aisle. And - instead of sweets on the checkout - Remington shot gun cartridges.

I went to the supermarket and bought some more water and tins of food. With every storm I've bought a few more items but I'm still about two major storms away from being totally equipped, I think. I don't have an axe. And I don't have plywood for the windows but I'm still not convinced we need that. It's difficult to tell. Anyway the supermarket was a less decorous affair. There were no trolleys to be had for one thing and they were running low on water. People in Academy were swapping conspiratorial smiles - here there were shifty accusatory glances and I was glad to get home.

Back on the TV, the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry was issuing some stern stuff from the podium. He cuts an impressive figure and is tipped for big things by Republicans and it's easy to see why. The relevant authorities have impressed me throughout - they have had a plan and it has worked. So far at least. If this was eight years ago then it would be George W. Bush trying to reassure me. That's even scarier than Ike isn't it?

 

Galveston is the sliver of land marked A which is tonight under water. Galveston Bay, above it and to the right, funnels the surge water far inland. Central Houston (i.e. us) is off the map to the north.

I should point out that a hurricane like Ike has three elements of danger: sea surge, wind and rain. The first of these is the most dangerous. As the storm approaches land, it harries the water in front of it, creating massive waves that swamp the coast. Whilst Ike is currently a cat 2 storm, the surge effect is much stronger - more like a cat 4 or 5. Very serious indeed. This means that Galveston Island, the Bolivar Peninsula and the coast about Galveston Bay are either underwater or besieged. In these places the water level is going to rise to as much as twenty feet above normal. This is why mandatory evacuation orders were given. What I can not explain is why 25,000 people in Galveston (a sand bar with a highest point of 10 foot above sea level) have ignored those orders and are, in the words of the National Weather Service, 'facing certain death.' Each to his own I suppose.

Friday Morning

KHOU has been broadcasting rolling hurricane news since breakfast yesterday. All the time they've repeated the same maxim: 'Hide from the wind, run from the sea.' It might be the state motto for all I know but as advice goes it is simultaneously frightening and reassuring. The coverage itself is gripping television and is reminiscent of election night broadcasts - it's live, they keep cutting to reporters around the country and there is the same sense of anticipation. Instead of swingometers there are radar, wind speed monitors and a mind-numbing array of graphics. The reporters are amazing - delivering lines to camera whilst leaning into the wind at crazy angles, rain whipping at their faces and constantly name-checking the camera men - that's a bad sign in my book.

With every forecast the lurid swirl of Ike, curled like a fist, gets closer and closer. He is a truly enormous storm - six hundred miles across if you can believe it. This is actually a good thing - if it was smaller it would be spinning faster and be stronger. As it is he is a little unwieldy and that may make a big difference. It's 10pm as I type (4am BST) and we currently have very strong winds blowing outside, but no rain. We are safe from the flooding, but there is the slight chance of a tornado ripping up the street.

We'll just have to wait and see!

Friday Evening.

The middle of the storm is expected to hit about midnight - that will be hurricane force winds and rain - and Ike should have moved on by tea-time. Although the centre of the storm is, freakishly, going to mow straight through the middle of down town Houston, we are slightly to the left of that and consequently not on the 'dirty' side of the storm. At this range it may not make much difference I guess.

We are expecting to lose power any time so I'll post this straight away. We will be off line for a considerable amount of time: power could be out for many days. We are all fine and confident. The boys are bright and bonny.

As soon as we're back up we'll let you know what's happened next!

The Cone of Uncertainty

I'm sorry, I know it looks like I've become obsessed with the weather but a new hurricane is threatening the Gulf coast and it gives me a an opportunity to emphasise one of the points I made last time. Those of you who follow the cricket (and TMS in particular) will have heard and smiled at the phrase 'The Corridor of Uncertainty' which refers to the sort of ball which leaves a batsman in two minds as to whether they should waft the bat at it or leave it well alone.

Here in Hurricane Land we have a very similar situation with the Cone of Uncertainty - you hear this on the weather forecast and can't help but give a wry smile. It means nobody has a clue where the storm is going.

There are problems with tracking a major storm over four or five days - it can cover hundreds and hundreds of miles and turn unexpectedly. So you get these really helpful diagrams like this one:



The green swirl is where Gustav is today. The red ones show the probable track until Monday. Okay, so it's heading for Louisiana you might think. But the large pale circle around the swirl indicate that the centre of the storm could be anywhere within this area. When you draw it like this you get the Cone of Uncertainty beloved of Gulf meteorologists:



Gustav, a category 3 hurricane, could end up anywhere inside the white line; landfall might take place towards the Texas/Mexico border - or in Florida. But these diagrams still have a sober central line that draws the eye (ours as well as Gustav's) towards Louisiana. So, it's still likely to go that way isn't it? Well.. maybe, but there's another map, which compares computer projections by various global weather organisations. Here it is:



So, there's a vague consensus towards it being Louisiana that gets the worst of it, three years after Katrina. But the Met Office's prediction (the white line) scoots off towards Mexico. And the yellow one is ploughing straight through my front room by the looks of things.

As I mentioned last time, the anticipation is the worst bit (so far) and the inconvenient situation is that we all have to be ready, because by the time we know for certain that it is coming our way it will be too late to prepare.

Now I formally promise that I won't do this every time a storm starts heading my way, but this is the busiest week of hurricane season: Hanna is already on her way to Puerto Rico and two more systems are beginning to organise in the Atlantic. So forgive me if it looks like I'm using these notes as some group therapy session to help me with my Limey culture shock.

Hurricane Watch

I’m not complaining. All I’m saying is that I now know more about hurricanes and tropical storms than I would ever have wished, and we are still 15 hours or so from Edouard making landfall on the Texas coast. Yep, Edouard. It’s not enough that these faceless meteorological phenomena are given names (and, of course, having names means that it is personal), but do they have to be given daft names? It makes it harder to take the threat seriously. But I’m compensating for that in other ways as you’ll discover.

For the record, Edouard is a Tropical Storm which might, just might, turn into a Class 1 (that is to say, ‘small’) Hurricane by noon tomorrow. It is aiming straight for central Houston. That is to say, my house.

His (although I think one is supposed to say ‘it’s’) sudden arrival has left me in a bit of sorry state because I have simply no way of judging the risk that’s attached. Laura, a veteran of sitting out typhoons during her Hong Kong childhood, is annoyingly unfazed which means I have to be worried on her behalf as well as my own and that of the (utterly oblivious) children.

I knew there would be Hurricanes and Tropical Storms – I guess I just got a little distracted by the whole moving to another country thing. There was just too much to worry about before we could even get here. That changed pretty quickly as we were driven from the airport. As you may have heard, one of the first things we saw here was a dot matrix sign on the Freeway that read: ‘Hurricane forming in the Gulf. Fill your car.’ Eyebrows were raised, I can tell you.

That warning was for Hurricane Dolly who, after causing half an hour of anxiety, turned out to be curving gently away towards Mexico. It brushed the distant tip of the other end of Texas as it made landfall, nearly 300 miles away and we had three days of lush, hot sub-tropical rain as a result. But even before the first fat drops fell we had forgotten all about Dolly. We were busy, again, doing all the hectic, hitting-the-ground-running sort of stuff that had to get done. Then, just as we were celebrating how we had got everything sorted before Laura was due to start work (today), someone (alright Caroline, you!) whispered that a Tropical Depression had unexpectedly turned into a Tropical Storm off of the Louisiana coast. That was Sunday night. The speed with which this new storm has blown up seems to have surprised everyone: it’s now Monday afternoon and the whole state is on the alert.

Or is it?

It’s difficult for me to tell how seriously people are taking the situation and this is my biggest problem. Because I am new here I have no way of effectively gauging what’s going on. All I know for certain is that I am supposed to be prepared and I’m fairly sure I’m not. Other than that it’s all mixed messages. The Governor of Texas pre-emptively declares an emergency, but the Mayor of Galveston (the coastal town that is really going to get smacked full-on) says there’s no need to evacuate. The Mayor of Houston says we should put out our trash as normal in the morning, but that we shouldn’t think about turning up for jury service. It’s a tad confusing.

I check the online advice (and there is a lot of that) but it appears to try to cater for all eventualities. One update includes this gloomy forecast:

"Residents should prepare for tropical storm force winds. Wind speeds are forecast to be highest near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Mobile homes in the path of the strongest winds will experience moderate damage. Houses of poor to average construction will have damage to shingles, siding, and gutters. Some windows will be blown out. Unfastened outdoor items of light to moderate weight will become airborne, causing additional damage and possible injury. Many large tree branches will be snapped, with rotting small to medium sized trees uprooted. Dozens of power lines will be blown down with the high likelihood of local power outages."

That sounds alright doesn’t it? Or is that bad? Is my house of poor to average construction? Can a house catch shingles? It is disappointingly easy to get hysterical. Do I really need to stockpile 3 gallons of water per person per day? Am I supposed to board up all the windows, or is that overkill? Apparently I need to be able to turn off the house’s water, electricity and gas supplies. Hell, I’ve only lived here a week – I haven’t even worked out what all the light switches do yet.

More bells and whistles than the Moscow State CircusYes, total reassurance can be yours for sixty bucks. Plus tax.

In the end, I decided I needed some water and a battery-powered radio at least. Back in Best Buys (such a lovely shop) I freak out a little and end up spending $60 on a radio that takes AAs, but also has a rechargeable lithium battery and a crank handle. It also has a torch, a siren and an endorsement from the Red Cross. Which has got to be good, yeah?

But, out and about, people seem calm and unperturbed. In the supermarket someone actually sniggered when they saw me heaving 2.5 gallon water containers into my trolley. So am I over-reacting or not?

Perhaps I need more information? Well actually, probably not, no. There are leaflets in the supermarket; email and text alerts to subscribe to; hourly TV and radio news bulletins and specially extended weather reports; and there are pages and pages and pages of internet briefings, charts, warnings, blogs, radar scans and so forth and so on, forever. The boffins are out in force. Chief Meteorologist for Channel 11 News Gene Norman (formerly of NASA) soberly makes the point that the most likely scenario is that Edouard won’t become a hurricane. He pivots and hands over to special guest analyst Doctor Frank (formerly head of the National Weather Service, with 40 years of studying hurricanes) who, in a croaking, avuncular drawl, adds that there are eerie parallels to Alicia in 1983 – the last major Hurricane to hit Houston, it stayed innocuous until the last few hours before strengthening madly and making a dash for Downtown.

Gene and  Frank tell it how it might be.

“This probably won’t happen again,” says Dr Frank. “I’m not saying it will, it probably won’t. But it did that time. And it might this time. Or it might not. But it might.”

Great. So this is my preparedness: I have enough drinking water to flood the house myself if I have to and a radio that could probably survive a nuclear explosion. In the meantime I am gorging on weather reports until I am scared silly.

Then I go outside and talk to real people who are not panicking and I get some sort of momentary, vicarious reassurance. Jim, my new neighbour, who looks uncannily like Billy Bob Thornton and has a handshake that I’m not going to forget in a hurry, has seen it all before, having lived in Houston for 23 years (so he missed Alicia then, I think to myself). He is not running scared.

The major problem with a storm like this, he tells me, is the storm surge that affects the coastal region. That won’t trouble us. Flooding inland is not uncommon and our street was hit badly by Hurricane Alison in 2001 when half an entire year’s average rainfall fell in 24 hours. But even then, my house (and his) remained untouched – coincidentally they occupy the highest land for some distance, although the entire neighbourhood seems flat as a pancake – and the drainage has been dramatically improved since then.

My best guess (as a rank outsider) is that the news networks and the authorities are terrified of underplaying the risk, appearing too casual, or just massively mishandling the situation. There are precedents. Last year Humberto gave the city a nasty surprise and in 2005 Hurricane Rita prompted a botched evacuation of Houston that left hundreds of thousands of people stranded on the freeway without food, water or petrol, just weeks after Katrina had smashed into New Orleans. If Rita hadn't changed course it would have been carnage.

All day, the sky has been a serene cloudless blue. No sign or hint of trouble. Just now I took the trash out (as instructed) and great purple puffballs of cloud had sprouted ominously overhead; the air was thick and sticky. There is an awfulness in knowing that it is coming, of having to wait for the first banks of tremendous tropical rain to lash down. But the storm will come and it will pass and by this time tomorrow we will be laughing about it. Probably.

By November (the end of hurricane season) I’ll be much better at this. The trick seems to be to be prepared for all possible outcomes, and to be able to cope with fast-changing and unpredictable situations. I might not be ready this time, but should Edouard and I ever cross paths again, I won’t have an excuse.

And that’s not as unlikely as you might think - turns out this year’s list of names will be reused in 2014.

I said I knew too much.

Texas Test Drive

It’s been nearly a week and a half since we arrived in Houston and we are scraping the bottom of our To-Do list: we’ve negotiated the flight, re-set the kids’ body clocks, set Amazon.com alight with electrical purchases and emptied the nearest IKEA warehouse of furnishings and fittings. We staggered from Best Buys (like Dixons, but nicer and staffed by humans) laden with goodies and leaving beautiful, half-believing smiles in our wake. We have filled in registration forms, signed up for TV, dealt with plumbers and, of course, spent three days assembling all the furniture. I even built a castle for the boys out of all the delivery boxes (pictures to follow). We are officially up and running – the household is viable.

But we don’t yet have a car. Well, actually we don’t have two cars. There’s no way round it: Laura needs one to get to work, I need one for school runs. In the UK, where driving is almost always necessary, we were very lucky indeed to be able to walk to work or school. Here, driving seems to be held in the sort of regard that Neil Armstrong might have had for his space suit. Drive-Through ATMs and pharmacies? Is it laziness or convenience? The same could be said of automatic transmission, but on these straight, interminable roads there’s no point in a racing change. There is an illicit thrill to be had in turning right on a red light however.

The Freeway is a different kettle of fish. There are lots of them to begin with: great swooping arches of yellowing-concrete that weave exaggerated curves about each other, dipping and rising like roller-coasters. The M4, it ain’t.

But actually driving on the Freeway is more different again. Firstly, there are no rules. It takes a few minutes to get used to this, but once you do it sort of makes sense as long as you concentrate, have excellent rear-visibility and are very lucky. It’s a free-for-all: five lanes of undertaking, carving-up and near-misses, the only saving grace being that nobody is doing much above 55 miles an hour. The real danger, the unnecessary complication, is that there are exits every half-mile or so and, with no designated over-taking lane, no way of predicting whether you’re supposed to be on the far-left or far-right to make the slip road. The signing of these exits is very, ah, short-termist and it’s not at all uncommon to find oneself having to charge across five lanes of broiling traffic at the last minute. Indicating is for wusses.

My plan is that I will not use the Freeway unless it is a matter of life or death and it is heartening that there is often a largely ignored alternative route. There was one yesterday on the way to the car shop meaning that we didn’t have to traverse The Loop (as the 610, the inner orbital is known). I say car shop, but that doesn’t do justice to CarMax. It looked more like a small airport than a supermarket, with an enormous white building in the middle of a sea of parked cars. The salespeople all wear matching outfits and, once you have done some preliminary searches on the bank of monitors inside, one of them will take you around the lot on a golf cart to review your selections.

Our problem, or rather Timothy’s problem (he being the poor guy lumbered with selling us two cars), was that we didn’t really have any idea what we wanted. We thought we should get a decent family car for me, and some sort of runaround for Laura, but the American market is not really geared up for us. The choice, apart from a smattering of Volkswagens and Volvos, was Japanese or Domestic. “Small” meant 2.4 litre engines and twenty miles to the gallon was considered pretty good. Timothy would show us car after car with increasing exasperation.

“Haven’t you got anything a bit more compact?” we would say.

What the hell is that? A typical American car...

“That is compact!” he’d exclaim, waving his hands at some behemoth or other.

Still, we reached a point where we’d found two cars that might have been a suitable compromise, a Volkswagen Passat and a Dodge Caliber, and I took them both out for a test drive. They were both dull. The Passat was at least good and dull but I felt like I was driving a Werther’s Original. The Caliber had the forced snarling looks of the last batch of MGs but was tinny and unremarkable on the road. So we were back to square one. Another hurdle we just can’t vault is that American cars are extremely ugly and almost totally lacking in charisma. We saw dull sedan after dull sedan and a part of me wanted to cry. The Japanese ones look better, tend to have better fuel-economy and are more reliable, but were still aimed at the same market.

The RAV4. Nice.

At this point, the golf cart was looking like the best option but, in the end, and almost on a whim, I took out a Toyota RAV4. It was about a hundred years old and had more miles on the clock than I’ve had lager beers, but it was roomy, practical and fun to drive. Laura had a turn whilst I babysat the boys in the showroom’s soft play area – she liked it too. Suddenly, it looked like were going to choose a car.

But there’s too much choice. There are four or five branches of CarMax in the metropolitan Houston area alone, and the website (www.carmax.com) allows you to search the nationwide inventory. Within minutes we were looking at the same car – a year newer or a grand cheaper – in Georgia or Maryland. There’s a transfer fee of course but we’re back off to CarMax this afternoon to see if we can’t nail it, in which case some guy is going to be hauling us a RAV4 all the way from Fort Lauderdale or some such – a mere 1,164 miles.

This land may be pleasant, but it sure ain’t green.