Martha's Marvellous Munchies

The Texas summer has kicked in and it's HOT here. We have succumbed to the lure of the air conditioning and are learning to go out only in the early morning or after dark. Heat-combating gadgets like hand-held misters or insulated bottle holders are suddenly looking very attractive. And sunscreen - well, anyone remember the song ? However, the hot weather does provide opportunities for doing some fun things. In Sundance Square, downtown, there is a free movie showing every Thursday, and last week we took our lawn chairs down and watched Young Frankenstein. It's a decidedly bizarre black-and-white film about the grandson of the original Baron von Frankenstein, who, despite initial opposition, becomes determined to carry on his ancestor's work and create life from death. This with every cliche in the book, including sexy blonde assistant, abundant thunder and lightning and an Igor whose hump mysteriously moves from one side of his back to the other. The lawn chairs got an

Red and green. Not the garish colours of plastic Christmas decorations. But the soft, weathered, burnt-sienna red of rock worn into peaks and troughs by countless years of rain and wind. And the contrasting clumps of ever-changing greens from bushes, trees, cacti and grass, each clinging to their own little foothold. This was Caprock Canyon. And we were right in the middle of it all. It had taken four hours to drive here. Four hours of long straight roads across flat bare countryside, passing through half-forgotten towns with their ramshackle shop fronts. Now we pitched our tent in the tiny campsite and soaked in the silence. Caprock Canyon is a sudden sharp schism in the landscape, jolting you in just a few miles from the homely farmlands to jagged edges of tortured sandstone. It’s the edge of a great plateau stretching across the landscape, and the sudden storms and ever-blowing winds have had their way with the exposed rocks for thousands of years. But all that violence seems far

Well, it's been a while... we've been doing stuff, but just bits and pieces that I haven't quite got around to putting in blog form. The Memorial Day weekend (which is the same as the late May bank holiday in the UK) was pretty fun. On the Saturday we went tubing with an outdoors group we're part of. What's tubing? Well, you get one big inner tube per person - and don't forget a spare for the cooler full of beer and snacks - find a suitable river, plop yourself in and float blissfully downstream. Or that's the theory. The instant our tubes touched the water, a gentle drizzle started. Which progressed to cats, dogs and stair-rods. Then the thunder and lightning began. At that point we had a brief debate about whether we were safer in the middle of a river or on a wet, tree-covered bank, and decided to beach on a sand-bar until things calmed down a bit. After that, it was actually quite a good trip. Here's us at a point where it wasn&