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 Josie Johnson met us with one or two of her students who drove us to Josie's place. It was a beautiful house on a lake – maybe a flooded quarry – where I went swimming. The weather was great. Bob had the idea that we would publish a book in every city where we did a gig; and we would perform, though not exclusively, from that book. We published 8 books on the tour and performed from each one in the city that bore its name. For some reason there was no book for San José although we did a gig there. The first in the series was:
And here is the flyer for the gig:
While in Miami we also did a workshop for students. Performed some charcoal drawings on the wall outside a senior manager's office. He came out wanting to tell us all off and saw the students and staff gathered round in rapt attention and slunk back into his office. As the flyer says, there was also an exhibition of concrete poems and texts in the university library. In fact the flyer was also the cover for the catalogue for the exhibition. On 26th February we did a video recording session in the university TV studio which became Cobbing and Fencott at the University of Miami.
There was also a visit to Ruth and Marvine Sackner's beautiful house out on the ocean: and their amazing
archive of visual works, art and poetry. Don't know which day that was.
 Left to right: Bob Cobbing, Clive Fencott, Marvin Sackner, George Quasha, and Susan Quasha  Left to right: Bob Cobbing, Marvin Sackner, George Quasha, Susan Quasha and Ruth Sackner Josie lent/gave me a camera to take photos on the way which is how all the photos on this page came to be taken. The photo at the top of this page shows Bob standing at the gate of the Sackner's beautiful house looking up the road ... America is out there: there are (rail)roads to follow.
28th February, 8.47am, overnight train. The taxi driver didn't know there was a train station in Miami and had to find out where it was over the radio. It was nowhere near the centre of town. Took almost all day to get out of Florida. Bob loved long railway journeys, as do I, so we always travelled by train if we could. Diner in the dining car. My first encounter with microwaved food. Microwaving and photocopying seemed to have a lot in common. Shared a table with two older women and talked about the Mason-Dixon line and the difference between the north and south. Decided that, culturally, north in the US equates to south in the UK and south in the US equates to north in the UK. There was a guy rapping in the buffet car that night. I gave him 10 dollars to send me a tape but he never did. Arrived 7.21am the next morning in ...
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