THERE was a hot, wet blanket of heat in Houston. "Mmmm, sure is good to be home," said a Texan man, uncoiling himself and breathing in all humidity as if it were pure oxygen.
He had his suit carrier slung over his shoulder, just as his ancestors carried saddles, and he wore the same kind of boots. He wasn't wearing a big hat, but then he was coming from New York, where they are inclined to snigger at that sort of thing.
I wondered would he say "y'all" if engaged in chat. Maybe it was like wondering did Irish people start talking about the little people, but I tried it anyway.
"Is it always as hot as this in April?" I asked, knowing as I do, how to get a really sparkling conversation going with anyone.
"Ma'am," he said. Really and truly, he said ma'am.
"Ma'am y'all are lucky to come to our beautiful state this time of the year it can get real hot later. Now I know y'all are going to love Texas."
He was straight out of central casting, but so were they all, homesick Texans who couldn't wait to get back to where they were from. You would envy them in a way, like the Scottish who start getting light headed when they approach the border going north on a train, or Cork people who start adjusting their hats and their attitudes shortly after Clonmel on the N8. feel wistful about this massive sense of place.
Anyway, Houston in the beautiful humid weather was unfathomable. There is a huge road well, more a 10 lane highway really around it called the Loop and you either live inside the Loop or outside it, but it seems to me that wherever you live, you have to get back on the Loop again to get anywhere else.
My memories of Houston have a lot to do with joining the Loop or leaving it temporarily and joining it again and thanking the heavens above that we hadn't contemplated renting a car, because if've had we would still be there, circling forever.
And without exception every person I met was utterly charming, with an almost pathological anxiety to make sure that I loved Texas in general and Houston in particular, so it would have appeared a little churlish to mention how odd the Loop was, and how strange that there seemed to be clusters of skyscrapers here and there but no real centre. So I didn't mention it and, coward that I am, waited until I was back home before I speculated about it at all.
THE reason I was in Texas at all was an invitation from the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.
It was a fund raising evening for the various projects that the foundation helps in the fight against the terrifying statistic of 90 million adults in the United States who lack the basic literacy skills they need to function well in the workplace, and in particular the depressing fact that illiteracy is so often passed from one generation to the next.
Five authors were invited to read for to minutes each on the stage of a theatre in the Wortham Centre.
The theory was that wealthy and generous Texans would pay huge amounts for this to support the charity, to meet the Bushes, to listen to the authors and chat with them and eat what was described as a light supper afterwards.
The theory turned out to work very well and they raised three quarters of a million dollars in that one night.
And it has to be said that if that was the Texan notion of a light supper then, enthusiastic eater as I am, I think I would be knocked senseless on seeing something they would consider a substantial meal.
IT was a marvellous day. First the authors and their spouses were invited to lunch at George and Barbara Bush's house in Houston. This was so that we could all get to know each other and hopefully like each other before it began.
I was afraid to ask about Millie the dog when I went in because when I met her last I was not a confirmed animal lover as I am now, and probably treated her a bit casually. Now, being much more sensitive, I wouldn't ask how she was in case she was no longer in this world. But no, she sat there on the best sofa, floppy and soppy and marvellous and greeting everyone as a friend.
George Bush said that she was a wonderful guard dog in that she would lick any burglar to death and welcome them one by one into the house. He also said it was an amazing country where a dog could earn more for her memoirs and contribute more to family literacy than the president of the United States, but then, since the money went to a good cause he couldn't begrudge it.
There was a roar of conversation at lunch and everything on earth was discussed, from the kinds of grace before meals people say, to how you met your husband, to Margaret Thatcher, the future of Hong Kong, the nature of Hollywood, how to remember names, the Jackie Kennedy auction, and then on to the running order for the speeches that evening and suddenly everyone got a bad attack of nerves.
It was hear telling in the extreme to see Mary Tyler Moore, Sidney Sheldon, Michael Crichton and Richard North Patterson all in the grip of the same panic. Had we chosen the right bits to read? Were the people paying too much money to listen? Would we be able to talk to 1,400 people in a theatre? Was there any possibility that we might not see the stairs to leave the stage, or would we fall headlong into the audience?
Sidney Sheldon said he was old, I said I was lame, Mary Tyler Moore said she was half blind when there were bright lights, Richard North Patterson said he was better at talking than reading, Michael Crichton said he was reading an essay he had written, not an extract.
George and Barbara Bush, who must be used to people becoming temporarily unhinged before functions, talked cheerfully over all this hysteria as if it weren't happening at all. Very gradually the panic died down and we all ate our strawberries and went back to the hotel to rest.
IT was hot and damp outside but beautifully cool inside when we left for the theatre. When I saw the lines of young people ready to organise valet parking for the expected crowds, I got another small attack of nerves. But it was too late to run. I would have had to deal with Barbara Bush, her husband, who still carries a lot of clout, and her son who is governor of Texas. It was easier to stay.
There was a bit of a rehearsal and we all thought we could manage the stairs. Then we were brought to the reception.
I wish I knew about clothes and jewellery, I really do. I was wearing my two good brooches and 90 per cent of the people I spoke to commented on them, knowing exactly what they were. The women seemed to be alive with jewels and huge hair dos.
I admired one woman's hair and she said "That's Texas for you we have big hair to match our big hips."
She said that because she was actually shaped like a narrow pencil. But I let it pass.
People would give you their card to call them if ever you were in Texas again. I am not, I hope, unduly impressed by such things but a lot of these people did seem to be heads of oil companies or banks.
Some of them had been to Ireland, and some of them had it on their long term agenda. They ate elegant canapes, except for one woman who said she never did because there was no way you could eat and retain the careful lip line she had spent so long achieving. She spoke to me confidentially as if I were her oldest friend and I sort of felt we had been at school together trying to struggle into girdles over the years.
And Governor George Bush and his wife Laura were there lending support, and he made jokes on stage about how the same thing was happening to him as had happened to his old man that everyone knew his wife and not him. He said he was 49 and his mother was still telling him what to do, and that he had once announced this and a cowboy with a big hat had shouted. "Well boy, y'all better listen to your Momma d'ya hear?"
And then it was all over. We had done our bits and nobody fell down the stairs from the stage and we got stuck into a light supper and Mary Tyler Moore is my new best friend and Barbara Bush told me marvellous stories about Raisa Gorbachev. And just towards the end of supper I heard expresident Bush asking his son, the governor, who lives in Austin, Texas. "Do you two want a bed with us tonight?" And the governor said. "Yes please, Dad, if that's all right." George Bush senior said. "Hey, that would be great. Your Mom and I'd love that we can talk about tonight."
I don't know what they all talked about, but I hope they knew it was a huge success, and that as well as raising all that money people had enjoyed it.
I could hear little groups talking as they were waiting for the parking valets to drive around the huge cars. It had been a good night they said, they remembered what everyone wore and they all had bags of goodies to take home. They were all prepared to drive on and off the Loop in the dark, hot, damp night. They were glamorous and good tempered. They had had a good evening and were prepared to admit it.
We stayed two more days, and saw what I think were most of the sights of Houston and even went as far as Galveston down on the coast. It was very hot and there was a lot of highway.
At Hobby Airport at the departure gate a man was making a phone call. "That's all right," he was saying. "Only four and a half days and then I'll be back in Texas." Not back with you, or back at home or with the kids but back in Texas.
It's that kind of place.