Tuesday afternoon – take John Cuthell’s hire car down to Charletson city centre.  Walk down King Street in brilliant sunshine.


Struck by weird European echoes through the town mixed up with memories of Fremantle.  As we approach the battery and the harbour the houses get older, rising on stilts with their Hugenot windows, palms in the gardens, porches and rocking chairs, confederate memorabilia of the “great unpleasantness” (what they call the civil war down here), rainbow coloured stucco dream houses, with the painful southern bliss evident everywhere you look.


The townsfolk we encounter are unfailingly polite and keen to advise…
Eventually reach the harbour and glimpse Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.  See sailing ships and an aircraft carrier off in the distance. Old and new wars.


Take hundreds of photos.
Back up at the visitor center is an account of the slave trade and where these houses came from (along with many in England of course, so many great houses were built on profits from this). I realize I am at one of the other points of the slave triangle. Only have to collect west Africa and I will have the set to add to Charleston and Liverpool  (and Bristol and London).


But it really is beautiful here.  This is the “painful southern bliss” that Kurt Wagner writes about…
Head back to the Embassy Suites via Wal Mart where John buys himself supplies for breakfast.  Into the room and rest for a while, then there’s the Hawaiian Shirt reception.  Talk with nice people from Midwestern universities but then all the 20th birthday celebration for SITE leave me a little out in the cold – I don’t really know any of these people. Eventually meeting with one or two other friends the evening gets a little better.


Head down into Charleston again afterwards with four really nice New Yorkers, ex Columbia State  – and Judith from the ESRC play series a few years ago.  It’s a nice combination of people and we have a good time and a nice meal and then head back to out respective hotels.  Again struck by massive portions (should be used to it by now surely!).