Have Laptop, Will Travel

So we were in this bar, Harrah's on the Las Vegas Strip, partaking of dollar bottles of beer, when in walks this bloke. Six foot four, huge, handsome and wearing a Stetson. There was a moment when my entire body went limp and my brain started screaming A cowboy! A cowboy! in a really hysterical way.

He came and stood next to us at the bar and Hubs, being a yakky Yorkshireman, started talking to him. His opening line was, "My wife told all her friends she was going to kiss the first real cowboy she saw." The cowboy looked a little startled, as well he might, and said we'd have to ask his wife.

His wife was lovely (she liked AbFab, ya can't go far wrong with anyone who likes AbFab). We shared a few drinks as The Cowboy and Hubs discovered they both liked country music and western films, and even Elvis came over to say hello. No, really, Elvis. I touched Elvis (and he didn't mind... well I think he was drunk, but even so).

We went for chicken wings in Hooters with the cowboy and his wife, and then to Dixies, a country and western bar with a live band.

I don't dance. I never dance. I just sit in a corner somewhere tapping my foot in a really meaningful way, or sometimes there's shoulder shaking involved if the music's of the shoulder shaking variety, but there's never any actual dancing involved. But there I danced, it was that kind of place. I was also, of course, a bit bladdered and a lot jet-lagged.

A word here about jet lag. It's crap. C-R-A-P. You're either awake or crashing into a coma, there's no in-between bit, no warning, you just flop and hope you don't kill yourself. My face looks like it's been squeezed out like a dishcloth and thrown from a great distance back onto my cheekbones. It's a terrible, terrible thang.

What isn't terrible over here in Big Country is the weather. Sun, heat and blue skies. Oh bliss. It did throw a thunderstorm as we passed through a place called Chloride - 'the ghost town that refuses to die' - which just increased my paranoia that the sky wants to kill us (having been struck by the sparky stuff a couple of months ago), but other than that it's glorious.

We're out of Vegas now and on our 10 day road trip. The scenery is breathtaking, the people incredibly friendly, and everything is just so big. We're loving it. We've even Gone Native (or 'Gone Country' for all you Alan Jackson fans out there), driving around in our convertible with the top down, wearing Stetsons and listening to country music.

"Where y'from?" people ask us.

"Birmingham," we say.

"Alabama?"

"No, England."

"Uh huh."

We are giving serious consideration to not coming home.

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday
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