In case you don’t recognise me, I’m the one in the hat and cowboy costume in the picture taken in Albuquerque, New Mexico in August this year.

The first stage of my recent study leave, or sabbatical, was mainly holiday in the United Sates. The trip began in San Francisco, then to New Mexico, followed by a third week in Chicago.

San Francisco is a place I loved, and had visited before, but Chicago and New Mexico were new destinations for me. I loved Albuquerque and Santa Fe, which are two very contacting places. Albuquerque is quite deprived in a number of ways, with many of the challenges that American cities face in terms of patchy social care. With a very large Latino population, the people of New Mexico tend to be politically liberal, with the current administration being much criticised and openly ridiculed in many places in a way that quite surprised me in terms of how candid thai was.