We are now at Texas A&M, and on a side note I'd like to say how excited I am that my Dad is in town. What are the chances? I live in London, he in New Zealand, and on the one day of my life when I happen to be in College Station, he's in Austin. Awesome.

The main point of this post is the bonfire story, though. I only heard about it this morning. There was a great tradition here of building an enormous bonfire every year - and I mean enormous, the height of a 6-storey building, which took all of the first semester to complete and was then burnt later on in the year.

Anyhow, in 1999 there was a terrible accident and several people died when the bonfire collapsed while it was being built. Crazy. So they don't do it any more, which is a real shame as I'd have liked to see it. Why do accidents have to spoil all the fun?