Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Well, I wrote about Bats, Bluebonnets and Breakfast Tacos in a previous post, but that only seemed to cover about half of what we actually did in Austin (were we really there only for a weekend?). And we had several more great photos that Graham has been bugging me to post on my blog, so prepare yourselves for an extravaganza of colour, light and image! Austin is known as a great place for live music, which presumably explains the psychadelic guitars left lying around the streets. Here's Graham with a couple of his dream instruments. We visited the Texas State Capitol, built on a grand scale from tons of pink granite and limestone. The state capit o l, you understand, is located in the state capit a l. Don't get confused. Americans definitely tend towards the domes-and-pillars school of architecture for their governmental buildings. I had a feeling this was true, so did a quick search for corroborating evidence and discovered this great site by a ph...

I know... three posts in one day. Bit over the top, isn't it? But this is just a quickie. A guy I know called Anil is part of a band called Mirrorkicks, and they've just put their latest song and video on YouTube - a stop-action Lego extravaganza! Watch and enjoy...

I suppose it must be some kind of growing-up rite: the first time your parents come to stay with you, rather than you descending on them, hoping for some home-cooking and maybe a few clean clothes. Apart from a brief overnight stay in Bristol, this was the first time that I was entertaining Mom and Dad in my own home - and the first time for Graham entertaining his in-laws! All four of us had a really good time. This will be a brief photo tour as much as anything, because we managed to cram a lot of stuff into a mere week. Most of the places that we went to have had previous entries on this blog, anyway, so if you want more pictures of the scenery you can always browse backwards till you find what you're looking for. The first couple of days Graham and I had to work, but Mom and Dad walked to the Botanic Gardens and Modern Art Museum and along the Trinity trails. I had the morning off one day so took them into downtown to see the water gardens and other sights - here...

Know what these words mean? No? Well, nor did I till we went to the Japanese Festival last Sunday at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. They're both musical instruments, and we heard them played by some very talented people in a spectacularly beautiful setting. The koto is a long stringed instrument, which can have 13, 17 or even 22 strings. Fumiko Coburn, a dainty lady with halting English but a great sense of humour, has the 13 string version. As we watched, she tuned it up by inserting wooden bridges under each string, and adjusting them carefully to give the right pitch for each song. She explained that most of the older tunes for koto included a song, whereas the new ones were mostly for koto solo. It was interesting to hear the difference as she played a piece from 400 years ago and one from 4 years ago. In the older tune, the notes dropped singly into the silence, scattered across time and pitch. Like brush strokes in a Japanese painting, each note had its own place...

Bats We waited on the bridge, leaning on the handrail, watching the dying sunlight reflect red on the Austin skyscrapers. All along the road and on the banks of the river others were doing the same, and on the river below three or four tour boats wound lazily to and fro. Waiting. The sun went down. Suddenly there was a flick of something that wasn't a bird. Then another. And then a stream of fluttering black shapes poured out from under the bridge and flew off towards the darkening skyline. If you looked straight down at them, they were merely a blur of speed and a rapid clicking noise, but if you looked out along the river, you could see the cloud of bats forming and swirling and moving on. Ten minutes later it was over, with only a straggler or two as a reminder of the hundreds that had flown. Congress Avenue bridge in Austin is home to a large colony of Mexican free-tailed bats . They breed there during the summer months and there can be up to 1.5 million in August. In ...