Beginning of the end...

This post feels like the last chapter of "Lord of the Rings".  You know, when the hobbits have defeated the forces of evil and they all pack up and go home?  It is just as long a journey over the Misty Mountains and whatnot, but it all gets skimmed over pretty quickly on the way back because the story is finished really.  There's a bit of a subplot with Saruman in the Shire, in the book at least: Peter Jackson, more recently known for padding out a short book into three long films, even cuts that bit out in his final edit, much to Christopher Lee's chagrin.

That's what this week has been really, a long journey home which I want to skim over as quickly as possible (and obviously I'll be annoyed if I get home to find a Saruman-like figure has taken over my house).  Here's the edited highlights:

Sunday: 8 hour train journey to Boston.  Sat next to a man who was barely able to walk due to medical negligence; he was unable to sue his doctors because the hospital was a charity and apparently you can't sue charities for more than a certain amount in the USA.  Went to a very high church Advent Carol Service that evening, pleasant enough music but needed more drums and flags.  I managed to resist the urge to stick my hands in the air during "Lo, he comes".  Saw Cheers bar.

Monday: Worked in Boston office.  Didn't see much of Boston, there wasn't time.  I would have liked to have gone to the famous tea party as I am gasping for a decent cuppa, but I don't think they do them now they've gone all independent.  Their loss.

Tuesday: Travelled to New Haven Connecticut.  Met a client for a drink and a chat.  Travelling through New England the song going through my head was of course "New England" by Kirsty McColl.  When the phone didn't ring, I knew it wasn't you...  Travelled on to New York and met a feisty old lady from Yonkers on the train (who sounds like she ought to be in a limerick with house chestnuts).  Had Kosher Pizza for tea in a room where almost everybody else wore a black homburg (very nice).

Wednesday: did New York in a day.  Walked the High-line, travelled on the Staten Island ferry, saw the Statue of Liberty, visited Ground Zero, rode the subway, cycled in Central Park.  Then caught the train to New Jersey where I now am: yet another hotel, serving same old food, charging through nose for Wi-Fi.  Surprisingly the song in my head today was never Frank Sinatra, I must have got him out of my system in Chicago.  No, it was a combination of (1) Ella Fitzgerald turning Manhattan into an isle of joy (she was clearly never accosted by a man dressed as Mickey Mouse whilst fighting through crowds of shoppers), (2) Lullaby of Broadway (didn't seem particularly soothing to me, mind), (3) Billy Joel singing about the Staten Island Ferry on the Cold Spring Harbor album and mainly (4) I'm leaving tomorrow by Jimmy Somerville (not, as my daughter once did, to be confused with Jimmy Saville).  In the absence of a map or a decent sense of direction I also clung to a musical mantra "the Bronx is up and the Battery's down". 

Ground Zero (or the 9/11 Memorial) is worth a mention.  The site is not finished yet, so there is a lot of fencing and scaffolding around parts of it, and access to the memorial itself is via a lengthy security screening process, not unlike airport check-in.  The Memorial consists of two square pools of cascading water, each the size and shape of one of the original two towers  (nothing to do with Lord of the Rings this time, please keep up).  The sheer scale of it is impressive, and the shockingly high number of names carved around the sides of the pools really brings home the scale of the tragedy.  So I was genuinely moved, and yet at the same time I didn't like the place much.  You may think I have no business forming such an opinion, and you may be right, but to me it seems odd to commemorate people who fell to their deaths from such a great height with a cascading water feature, especially when the water falls with quite some force into the pool, and when each pool is continuously pouring water down a great central opening that gives the impression of being bottomless.  It was like a giant plug hole sucking all the water down, which frankly gave me the chills.  I don't think it's a comforting place for grieving relatives to visit, more like the set for a modern production of Don Giovanni.

So I really am leaving tomorrow, as the song says, I've had all I can take.  Meeting more colleagues in our New Jersey office tomorrow morning and then catching a plane.  Here are some final thoughts on America then:

(1) I still don't know why they all wear vests.

(2) I never want to see non-dairy creamer ever again.  Of all the food horrors here (and there are many) it is one of the worst.  Incidentally, here on the east coast they say "skim milk", but in California always seem to say "fat free".  In neither place do they make it available in hotel rooms!

(3) I've decided that my favourite Americanism is "drip coffee" - it is succinct and readily understood, we should adopt it in the UK.

(4) I realised this week that I cannot remember a time when I didn't know that the World Dryer Corporation was based in Berkeley Illinois.  I have obviously been reading whilst drying my hands all my life.  I still prefer Dysons.

(5) The sound of African American women arguing is one of the least attractive sounds in the world.  Lord knows why it seems to feature on Daytime TV so much in the UK. 

(6) Apparently the reason the Americans have not adopted chip and pin technology is down to the banks who are afraid it will discourage use of credit cards which would mean less profit for them.  Instead retailers require a signature which is never ever checked against the card itself.

(7) I now have a preferred bedroom temperature - it is precisely 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

Open letter to the guys who run these hotel chains:

I thought you would appreciate some feedback, so here are my modest requirements for a hotel.

(1) Comfortable bed with feather pillows (or a choice of pillows including feather).   Duvet not blankets, no top sheet (just change the duvet cover for each guest).  I need to regulate my temperature by sticking a foot out.

(2) TV should have instructions and some kind of guide so you can tell what is on.  Include a wide range of good channels, not just the free rubbish ones.

(3) Coffee making facilities should come as standard.  A kettle and teabags would be even better, but only if you can get good teabags (imported from UK).

(4) I want proper keys with proper locks, each attached to a large leather tag with a number and the hotel's address so they can be posted back if left behind, just like we had in the seventies.  Plastic key cards should be avoided, particularly if they are likely to unprogram themselves if they are put in a pocket with a mobile phone.  How sophisticated do you expect us to be at maintaining complete mobile phone separation throughout the day?  It would be nice to stay in an hotel for once without having to go down to reception to have my key card redone.  (And any door entry system that gives the guest an electric shock every time the door is locked?  Not good.  You know who you are.)

(5) Minibars should be half full at most: this is because I won't ever drink anything from it (it was drilled into me from such a young age that I should never touch the minibar in hotel rooms that it is now completely taboo for me, along with using the telephone).  It is also to leave room in the fridge for any milk or other foods I want to store there so I can avoid paying full price in the restaurant.  Come to think of it - you should be providing the milk, sachets of non-dairy creamer may be acceptable for Americans, but some of us have standards.  "Half and half" sounds like a compromise, because it is.

(6) Wifi should just be free, even the fast speeds.  I don't expect to pay extra for hot water or bed sheets, nor should I pay for WiFi, this is the twenty-first century.  Pricing structures should not be based on that innkeeper from Les Mis.  It's funny on stage, but not in real life.

(7) There should be at least two accessible sockets for charging phones and computers.  See earlier comments about the century we are living in.  Rummaging behind the TV is not acceptable.  Note also that if you are going to provide an iron (and you should) there needs to be a socket for it, preferably near where the ironing board is kept.

(8) Useless decorative bed cushions.  Surely you could check the sex of the people making reservations and instruct housekeeping to only put these out for women?  Men don't like them, fact.  They only have to be dumped on the floor before the bed can be used.

(9) There should be a strong overhead light which is easily switched on and off from the bed.  Yes, subtle lighting is all very well, lamps and illuminated headboards and what have you, but when it is time to pack up and go we need to be able to see clearly that we haven't left a pair of pants behind.

(10) We need a return to the days when every hotel room had a desk drawer of stationary.  Not because we are going to write letters, but because the envelopes are handy for keeping receipts in for when we do our expense claims back home.

(Long) Weekend 13: Mr Jones goes to Washington

The only city in America which I had visited prior to this year's trip was Washington DC, when I came for a conference last year.  So I already knew. I liked it, which is one of the reasons I came back here for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

I realise I am starting to divide America into places I like and places I don't, on the basis of very short visits and first impressions.  Perhaps I am turning into my mother who famously while cruising dismissed an entire country (I think it was Vietnam) as not worth a visit after visiting it for about 6 hours. I shall try to avoid too many snap judgements.

Anyway Washington was definitely on the favoured list, and I was looking forward to three days visiting some of the sights I hadn't been to previously.  I'd already seen the White House (smaller than you think), the Lincoln Memorial (bigger than you think) and walked the Mall taking in the National Museum of the American Indian (very interesting).  So this time I decided to focus on things I hadn't seen before.

My first stop had to be a laundry: two weeks of travel with just one suitcase had always meant I would run out of underpants around now.  Having phoned to check they were open on Thanksgiving, I caught the Metro out to a laundry offering a "wash and fold" service and left my clothes before catching a different train to Arlington cemetery (which I am going to post about separately).

I love the Washington metro.  All the stations consist of large single "caverns" with high vaulted ceilings, curved like hobbit holes built of concrete blocks, and within these caverns run two or sometimes three levels of trains and platforms on overlapping mezzanines.  It all feels beautifully open.  The ticketing system is slightly confusing, and potentially unfriendly to foreigners (once again the machines required a US billing address zip code before they would accept a credit card), but with a bit of effort I mastered it.

I visited some of the monuments I had never made it to previously: the Martin Luther King Jr.  memorial, and the impressive FDR Memorial, which consists of a mini landscaped sculpture park marking many of the great man's achievements.  I also visited the Museum of American History, and saw the original "Star Spangled Banner", the very flag which inspired the National Anthem by surviving the British attack on Baltimore in 1814.

So what can I say about Washington DC?

(1) Franklin D Roosevelt's achievements are celebrated as part of history, but I cannot imagine that any president could get elected on the basis of his politics today.  I am sure the Tea Party Republicans would call him a socialist, would probably try to use the fact he was in a wheelchair against him, would bring the government to a standstill rather than allow him to use public money to combat poverty and unemployment as he did in the 1930s.  It is strange to see statutes of homeless people as part of the FDR memorial when the homeless people on the street of Washington DC today seem much worse off.  It feels like modern America wants to believe that the war on extreme poverty has been won, that this victory is one of its historic achievements, but maintains this aspect of its mythology by ignoring what is going on now.

 (2) Nevertheless, it is hard not to be impressed here by what the USA has become in a relatively short space of time.  Sometimes the British mock the Americans for their "lack of history", however I actually quite envy their discrete and relatively uncomplex origins story, it means it can be presented in a way that people can understand and feel part of, and it can be pretty moving too.  I was impressed by the original flag that inspired the poem, "the Star-Spangled Banner" (the tune being an old  English one).  The museum even made a virtue out of the fact that "every generation reinterprets the anthem in its own style", which is a far more charitable view of the phenomenon which I have previously observed and commented on.

(3) The American museum was quite selective in what it said about Britain.  For instance we were mentioned quite extensively when we were the bad guys, but elsewhere we were subtly glossed over.  For example, a display on modern American culture mentioned Archie Bunker as an iconic TV character in a show that tackled prejudice head-on, without mentioning that it was a rip-off of our own Alf Garnett.  And the discovery of DNA was apparently down to a US scientist without mention of his UK collaborators or Cambridge university.

(4) I learned that Lincoln's famous "emancipation proclamation" only freed the slaves in those southern states which had seceded, but there were in fact three states which remained part of the Union where slavery remained until after the Civil War was won.  The African American section of the museum was particularly interesting, and there is a new museum of African American history being built at the moment.

Arlington National Cemetery

When I came to DC last year, I had the idea that Arlington was some way from the city.  Mainly because it was in Virginia and I didn't realise that the Virginia border was a few hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, and also because the city maps have an arrow on the very edge pointing out to Arlington with no indication of distance, in a "there be dragons" kind of way.  This time I decided I would make the effort to visit and was pleasantly surprised to discover it took little or no effort at all!

I find war cemeteries very moving.  I have visited the WW1 graves in France and Belgium, the WW2 cemetery in Leningrad (as it then was) and the American War Cemetery in Madingley, Cambs.  There is something incredible about rows of military graves, a poignant reminder of the cost of war.

Arlington is a bit different to what I expected: it is a National Cemetery rather than a War Graves site, so not everybody buried there was killed in battle.  Americans who served in the military and died much later are entitled to be buried with their fallen comrades, and so are their spouses and dependent children.  There are even graves of children lying beside vacant plots reserved for their military parents who are as yet still alive.

The history of Arlington is itself fascinating - it was a country house of a member of George Washington's family who married General Robert E Lee.  He left the property when he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and the house was comandeered by the Union government.  It was used as a graveyard out of necessity during the civil war.  Much later the Supreme Court ruled that Lee's family were the rightful owners of the land, but instead of exhuming all the graves as was his right, the owner sold it to the US Government for a significant sum to be the National Cemetery.

The most famous parts of the huge cemetery are the graves of the Unknown Soldier and the graves of JFK and his family.  I had never known before that the Kennedys had lost two children, who are also buried with them, including a son who died at only a few days old a few weeks before his father was assassinated.  Jackie K suffered in more ways than I had realised.

What I found most interesting is that in some sections of the cemetery the relatives were allowed to choose their own headstone and in others the headstones are all uniform.  When I have visited war graves previously, I liked the idea of uniformity, it seems particularly poignant that all victims of war are made equal in death, and to look out at row upon row of identical stones all representing young men who never got the chance to grow old is especially moving.  I read somewhere that the British War Graves commission insisted on uniformity against some opposition, and yet now it seems so clearly the right decision.  I am less sure when it comes to Arlington, is there as much logic to having identical stones for the war casualty, the old man who died fifty years later, and the still born baby whose father is still serving?  You can't look across at a sea of white stones and think "wow, every single one was a young man killed in Vietnam" (or wherever).  Still, on balance I prefer the simplicity of identical headstones.  The older section with different stones is less impressive, it looks like some people are competing for attention on the basis of their wealth or rank, which is perhaps the American way but for me it detracts from the sacrifice the soldiers made.

The strangest thing of all from a European perspective is the complete lack of poppies.  Some symbols just don't make it across the pond I guess.

Los Angeles

 

My road trip ended with a lunch date in Santa Monica with an old friend.  I liked Santa Monica, it is an LA suburb by the sea, with an old wooden pier (currently being repaired), old fairground rides, and a beautiful sandy beach.  After my lunch date I went for a wander along the front, watched the crazy LA people doing yoga on the beach and roller-skating, and then came back along the sand, even having a little paddle on the way.  It felt like a chilled kind of place.

After that I drove to my hotel to check in.  LA is a huge sprawling citywith no real centre as such, just lots of districts connected by a network of extremely busy freeways.  I found the hotel slightly irritating: it is one of those hotels that looks luxurious - all carpets and bellhops - but actually feels very ordinary when you are actually in your room, and wants to charge you extra for stuff that a good hotel ought to include as standard (like coffee making facilities and wi-fi).  The car-parking was $30 per night, and there really was no choice but to pay it.

On Monday I went into the office which was right opposite the hotel (chosen for that very reason).  It was good to meet LA tax colleagues for lunch.  After that I was supposed to catch the train to San Diego at 4pm, but discovered that President Obama was due in town, which would mean lots of street closures making it difficult for me to get to the train station on the other side of town.  However one of my colleagues was driving down to San Diego, and it suited him to take me, because there is a separate lane on many Californian freeways reserved for cars with 2 or more passengers which can shave an hour off the journey.  So I was chauffeured to my hotel in San Diego in pretty quick time (2.5 hours).

I preferred San Diego to Los Angeles.  It seems more livable somehow.  The hotel was in the downtown area, less fancy than the LA hotel but more welcoming.  I met up with a colleague I had previously met in Palo Alto for dinner.  Next day I got a taxi to the San Diego office - another lengthy journey across town, and met more colleagues.  We had sushimi for lunch which was a new experience for me (having previously tried and enjoyed Japanese food I had never dared try raw fish before but I was glad I did).  Then I got into another taxi (well technically the same taxi as the driver from the morning had become my friend and agreed to come back for me), rushed back to the railway station in good time, and managed to change my ticket to an earlier train that was just leaving for LA.

The train journey was a strange experience.  The train broke down in San Diego station and was delayed, eventually leaving minus half the carriages.  Some of the standard class carriages were arbitrarily redesignated as business class, and half the passengers  asked to move.  The carriage I was in was split down the middle, so that all seats beyond mine were cleared and reserved for business class customers who were booked onto the train.  I sat next to a red flag marked "No Entry" which stuck out into the aisle and threaten to poke out the eyes of unsuspecting passengers who tried to pass into the forbidden zone.  When we first set out there was plenty of space, but the train got increasingly full, and the passengers were irritated to find half an empty carriage which they weren't allowed to enter.  Eventually there was something of a revolution and the passengers surged into the empty seats.  When the conductor came back he was really quite rude to them all, but didn't force them to move.  However one of the passengers was an elderly German gentleman who wouldn't shut up about the poor service.  In Germany if the trains are late you get a refund and an apology apparently.  He was particularly effronted by the red flag.  I was glad I'd caught the earlier train, heaven knows what time the one I was originally booked on arrived.

Once back in LA, I returned to the first hotel, and rested in anticipation of a long flight the next day.  I was most gratified to discover I could get my case to less than 50 lbs, which was a weight off my mind if you'll pardon the pun.  The following morning I collected my car from the hotel car-park and chatted in Italian to the hotel receptionist, who waived part of my parking fee.  Allowing plenty of time I drove to Los Angeles airport with about three hours to spare.  I left the car with Budget car rental (aka those robbing bastards) and checked in.

 

LA airport is the most boring I have ever been in, worse than Paris Orly.  I did see a movie star, well sort of: the guy who plays Sam the shape-shifting bartender in True Blood walked past me.  But I wasn't impressed.  The flight was absolutely jammed, and the seats not terribly comfortable, but at least I ended up 1700 miles closer to my family than I was before.

So what have I realised about Southern California?

(1) I don't like LA much.  I am not impressed by celebrity or glitz, I had no desire to do a tour of the homes of the rich and pointless, or see their names written on concrete slabs.  I didn't have much time, and it was probably a mistake to try to visit both cities in such a short space of time, but LA seems like a playground for the privileged few and a penance for everyone else with its traffic and pressure.  I can't be certain though that my view isn't coloured by my general ennui and longing for home: maybe if I had gone at the beginning I would have embraced it with the same enthusiasm I had for Austin?  Somehow I doubt it.

(2) I might actually like San Diego if I went back and gave it a chance, but I am not planning on making another trip any time soon. Sorry San Diegans, but I am sure you'll cope.

(3) According to the German passenger, the Japanese railways will provide you with a late note to give your employer if the train is late.  The mind boggles at the thought of a society where employes are expected to provide notes like schoolchildren, and the authority of a train conductor will satisfy an employer.

(4) American students travel vast distances by train for Thanksgiving.  Some of the kids on my train were travelling to Seattle by train, a journey of 36 hours.  Presumably plane fares must be significantly higher than train for anybody to put themselves through that.

(5) Being nice to people works.  Whether it is the taxi-driver who wants to chat and then picks you up later, or the receptionist who wants to speak his own language, a bit of human interaction goes a long way.  Service industries seem very formalised in the US, and people working in them get a pretty raw deal, but it is easy to get them onside by treating them as individual human beings.

Weekend 12: Roadtrip!

 

The plan was always to leave Palo Alto for the last time by car on Saturday morning, but thanks to the dreadful cold I was awake at 4am.  Unable to get back to sleep, I was on the road by 5am. I drove the direct route to Monterey in the dark (because I had already driven up the stretch of coast road north of Monterey when we were coming back from our whale watching trip) and arrived there for breakfast at 6.30am.  By then it was getting light, and I set off down the coastal highway 1 towards LA.

We don't really have an expression for "roadtrip" in Britain.  I guess this is because it basically seems to refer to a journey deliberately taken by car for pleasure in circumstances where it might be considered more practical to take the plane.  I don't think we ever do that in the UK.  I might in theory have the choice between flying to Exeter or driving down to see my parents, but the decision to drive is always down to cost, never because the M5 is a particularly attractive road that everybody ought to drive down at least once in their lives.  To put it another way, any car journey of which the very thought makes your heart sink cannot be a roadtrip.

I allowed myself a day and a half to get to LA, because the scenic route can take 12 hours to drive, but almost everybody I have spoken to about things to do here has said that driving the one is a must.

The section of Highway 1 between Monterey and Pismo is beautiful, and very quiet first thing in the morning.  It was more rugged than I had expected and even bleak in parts, it actually reminded me of the coast in north west Ireland, or even north Wales (until the sun warmed the place up).  It also reminded me of the Amalfi coast in places, although it was much quieter, and due to a complete lack of buses and mopeds was much less stressful. I did actually ask myself whether it was in fact any more beautiful than some of the other coastal roads I had driven on previously.  Clearly it beat the A55 to Queensferry, but Amalfi?  I came to the conclusion that the ocean is a particularly big deal here, because so many Americans come to California having never seen the sea.  Hard for us Brits to imagine, but there must even now be kids in the Midwest for whom the first glimpse of the ocean (whether Pacific or Atlantic) will be an incredible experience, and who never get to visit Blackpool, Llandudno or Scarborough.

 I made such good time that by 10am I had reached Hearst Castle where I decided to stop.  Hearst Castle is a curious place, built on a hill top on a huge estate by newspaper magnate, William Hearst, in the early part of the twentieth century.  It is a mixture of historical styles and incorporates original features from older European buildings which he acquired on his travels.  The tour is presented as the story of "our" visits as weekend houseguests in the 1920s, and ends with a film showing how the young William was deeply affected by his visits to Europe as a child and was moved to build his dream incorporating the ideas he met there.  Things is, I can't decide whether I liked it.    Is it just a dreadful old pastiche built by a man without taste who loved to surround himself with celebrities?  Is he to be admired for designing his entire dining room around sixteenth century seats taken from a European abbey and hanging the flags of the Sienese contrade around his hall?    Maybe I am just a terrible snob.  I've had the opportunity to see sixteenth century monks' seats in thirteenth century cathedrals, and Sienese flags in Siena, and most Americans in the 1920s wouldn't have been able to, so I shouldn't begrudge them the chance to see them in this setting.  Clearly the tour organisers expected us to admire his determination and vision, but somehow I couldn't understand how that made him a hero.  They didn't actually explain who got the invitations to the house party, but presumably all the guests were selected from among the élite, nobody suggested that he was providing any kind of public service.  In any case, it was a fascinating place to visit, and the indoor swimming pool was truly magnificent.  The tour guide was very entertaining and friendly.  But it seemed a little bit too uncritical, too much of an homage to somebody I suspect was more multi-faceted.  I couldn't imagine our own National Trust presenting an historical property in such a Disneyfied way.

By the time I had finished at Hearst, I was pretty tired, but determined to make good progress towards LA.  Thankfully the driving was pretty easy all day Saturday, open roads, mainly quiet, and I reached a small town called Lompoc which had many cheap motels, one of which I checked into.  I thought motels were always run by disinterested men in vests who watched black and white TV all day and gave you keys without looking you in the eye, but that apparently is just in the movies.  It was truly basic, but clean and for $45 a night you can't complain.

On Sunday I set off early again, thanks to my cold.  For the next stage of my journey the scenic route 1 and the boring old freeway came together, and I unfortunately missed the turning where they split again, meaning I was stuck on the busy road all the way to Los Angeles.  So I never got to drive through Malibu, which was a shame because I had wanted to see if it was like on the Malibu adverts ("Do you want this fish?").  I did however get to stop for breakfast in Santa Barbara.

So what did I learn on my roadtrip?

(1) Where the speed limits are "radar controlled" according to the road signs, that does not mean there is a man somewhere seeing all the cars as bleeps beneath a rotating arm on some screen and able to launch missile strikes on those who offend.  Apparently it means that there may be policemen with handheld speed guns.  There are no roadside speeding cameras in the USA, apart from in Arizona of all places.

(2) William Hearst was the model for Citizen Kane (as is widely known) but was misrepresented as a reclusive figure and was very angry about the film which he tried to block.

(3) As soon as I visited Santa Barbara I couldn't get the theme tune for the soap opera of the same name out of my head.  For some reason the theme tune for the French version.  (Santa Barbara, qui me diras, pourquoi?).  I have absolutely no idea why that tune stays with me when I can't remember ever actually watching Santa Barbara in France, or indeed in any other country.  I remember noticing in Italy 20 years ago that the theme tune was different again over there, so I must have heard the French one when I was a teenager.

(4) Dionne Warwick was right, LA IS a great big freeway (and a traffic jam most of the time).  However the song which finally displaced the French TV theme tune was "I am I said" by Neil Diamond ("LA's fine, the sun shines most the time, and the feeling is laid back.").  He was right about the sun, not so sure about it being laid back.  He also captured so well the sense of belonging in one place and living in another: Mr Diamond, you are a legend.

So farewell then Palo Alto...

My last week in Palo Alto felt a bit strange: I agreed to move into a colleague's house and dogsit while she was on holiday, so I had to vacate my apartment sooner than expected and sort out my packing whilst living between two addresses.  At the same time I developed  a horrible cold which kept me awake most nights, and got sucked into a big and urgent project for a client that demanded a lot of my time.  Nevertheless by Friday I had all my stuff sorted, most of my luggage was boxed up and collected by the shipping company, and I had said goodbye to almost everybody.  I managed to make it to my Wednesday night Italian speakers' group for the last time, and ended up having one last pizza at Vesta, although it wasn't up to their usual standard, too much finocchio in the sausage.

If I am honest I couldn't wait to leave Palo Alto.  I have had such good times there, but I have also been so terribly homesick, I was beginning to feel like I hated the place and everyone in it, which is far from being the case.  I just think I needed to leave in order to remember how much I really like it, if that makes any sense.  It was not to be a final departure from the USA - there are two more weeks until I am finally home - but leaving PA felt like a huge step towards home. 

It felt strange leaving my flat for the last time.  I left behind some stuff I can't take home: clothes airer from IKEA, bottle of toilet cleaner and brush, packet of filter papers for the coffee machine. I hope they get left for the next tenant and aren't simply thrown away because they aren't on the official inventory.  I hate waste.  I had a box full of unopened tins and groceries which I donated to the food bank (whether their clients use British style malt vinegar remains to be seen), and left some of my homemade frozen pasta sauce in my friend's freezer (which she'll probably throw away when she gets back from her holiday).

I still have many unanswered questions with just two weeks to go:

(1) Why do Americans call cider "hard cider" but the hard shoulder they just call the "shoulder"?  

(2) Why don't they sell orange squash or any kind of dilutable cordial?  I know they like their freshly squeezed, but surely hot orange is a medical requirement for anyone with a cold?

(3) Why does the car park under our office have two large bales of straw in the corner?  Does anybody ride their horse to work or are they putting on a Nativity Play?

(4) How can Panda Express state that its mission is to provide a quality authentic Asian dining experience but not sell any Chinese tea, or indeed any drink which isn't cold and fizzy?

Hopefully as I continue my mini-tour of the USA I will find answers to these and other questions!

Weekend 11: Happy Thanksgiving!

The more trans-atlantic of you will be aware that last weekend was NOT Thanksgiving, however because I was unable to return to my favourite US city, Seattle WA for actual Thanksgiving, my new friends and colleagues invited me to stay with them for an early Thanksgiving. This is however technically my second Thanksgiving in Seattle, because last time I was there happened to be Canadian Thanksgiving. It is also the only trip I have taken purely for pleasure with no work component at all (and hence done on the cheap as much as possible to stop Mrs Jones getting cross with me).

I stayed in my friends' home on Bainbridge Island, which is a 30 minute ferry journey away from downtown Seattle. It is accessible by a bridge at its northern tip, but that would then require a 2½ hour drive around a peninsula to get into Seattle itself. So it is handy for Seattle commuters and yet feels like a world away. It is beautiful, peaceful, damp and green, with lots of space and trees, and bald eagles (although our three attempts to see eagles failed each time). I was made very welcome and had a great time.

I wasn't sure whether there were any particular traditions around Thanksgiving that I needed to understand. I had seen "Addams Family Values", so I knew it was something to do with the pilgrim fathers receiving a turkey from the indians and repaying them by taking the whole country. I also knew it was the date when that kid in Sleepless in Seattle rings Doctor Marsha's radio show and sets in motion the events which lead to Meg Ryan kissing Tom Hanks on the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day, so it felt like an appropriate place to be celebrating it. But the main tradition appears to be over-eating, and in this case eating a selection of dishes derived from different family traditions. Apparently it is important to include cranberries somewhere in the meal, and in this case we had tinned cranberries in jelly on the table as a kind of revolting-looking after-thought which nobody dared to eat. The main focus of the meal is of course a turkey, which we ate with a delicious homemade stuffing that I hope to replicate at home this Christmas.  Apparently not everybody has gravy with it, but I volunteered to make it as part of my contribution to proceedings.

I wasn't sure whether we were supposed to be thankful for specific things, or whether we were supposed to show our gratitude in particular ways, but we didn't. I was just grateful to have been invited because it was such a lovely relaxing weekend.

So what have I learnt from this delightful experience?

(1) My pastry making skills are better than I had thought - my homemade English-style mince pies went down very well.

(2) My gravy however needs more work: I should have skimmed the fat off the meat juices before adding the flour, then it might not have had the consistency of porridge.  Tasted good though.

(3) You can have too much of a good thing, particularly nibbles when there is an entire roast turkey to follow.  Sausage puffs (made from processed sausage and processed cheese) are very moreish but I'd have been better to eat fewer.

(4) Lots of apparently innocent country songs are really quite dirty when you actually listen to the lyrics.

(5) You get a lot more house for your buck if you move from the San Francisco Bay Area to somewhere like Seattle.

(6) Thanksgiving TV isn't like Christmas TV in the UK: I know this wasn't the real Thanksgiving, but apparently they normally just watch sport?  How depressing would that be on Christmas Day.

Basketball and bagels

On the final evening of my brief Chicago trip,  I was invited to watch the Chicago Bulls play the Cleveland Cavaliers at basketball from my firm's corporate box.  I had high hopes for the evening, not least because I reckoned basketball was a sport even I couldn't fail to understand: you score by throwing the ball through a hoop, right?  I was also told that it flowed more than baseball and football.

Well I did enjoy the game.  I met some very interesting and entertaining clients and colleagues, the food in the executive box was very good, especially the desert trolley, and by the end I was getting into the game which got pretty close by the end before ending in decisive victory for the bulls.  I don't think I will be attending basketball games regularly in the future but it was a good experience, and one to tick off my bucket list, (should I ever complete my main list and start on my supplemental list of "experiences to which I wouldn't be entirely averse if they didn't clash with something good on the telly").

 

Corporate sports entertaining is rather bewildering to me.  You take somebody to watch a sporting event, pay significant amounts of money for good seats, and then people spend the time talking rather than watching the game.  So for somebody like me who wouldn't normally choose to watch any sport unless my children were playing in it, is odd to be find myself slightly irritated by people wanting to talk to me when I am trying to follow the events on the court.  I actually understand Roy Keane's disdain for the "prawn sandwich eaters" - if you're going to watch sport, then watch it!

Basketball is a bit more flowing, but is still broken up by division into quarters and by the teams calling "time out".  I had thought that time out was something invented by Super Nanny or some other child care expert seeking an alternative to the good slap that so many children so badly need nowadays, but apparently it is yet another expression with its origins in American sport.  The breaks in play are filled with dancing cheer-leaders, musical interludes, free T-shirts falling into the crowd on parachutes, free T-shirts being fired into the crowd from special cannons operated by employees of McDonalds, and a cartoon race between a cup of coffee, a bagel and a doughnut, the winner of which entitles those holding the appropriate ticket to claim the winning item at participating branches of Dunkin Donuts.  This last event sounds naff, but I was quite hoarse cheering for that bagel.

I still have some unanswered questions about American sport:

(1) Why in this enlightened age do they still think it is acceptable to have scantily clad women dancing around in support of the male sportsmen?

(2) Why is there a peculiar link between sport and a college education?  Large screens giving players' stats included the fact that one individual had a degree in communication studies from some minor university somewhere - why should we care?  I know sport scholarships can be a way into education for people from poorer backgrounds, but it seems a wasteful way of going about things, paying for somebody who is primarily a professional sportsman to take a Mickey Mouse degree.  It would make more sense to me to train the talented sportsmen to play sport, and fund scholarships for poor clever kids?  I could not imagine turning up for drinks in my tutor's rooms at Cambridge to discover that John Terry had started my course on a soccer scholarship.  (And that's not snobbery by the way, I would feel just the same about a posh scumbag.)

(3) Why does nobody sing (with the notable exception referred to below)?  It is a sad fact of British life that one of the few places that many people, especially men, feel comfortable singing is in a sports stadium.  But in America they don't even seem to have that.  The chants in basketball are basically the same as they are in baseball (see my earlier post), unimaginative, lacking spontaneity.  Even when they played  a bit of "Chicago, Chicago" by Frank Sinatra nobody joined in apart from me.

(4) Why are they so unfair to the away team?  There are almost no away fans, so the visiting team are pretty much on their own.  Whenever the Bulls were awarded a penalty they were cheered, whenever the Cavaliers took a penalty, all the Bulls fans behind the basket made distracting noises by bashing together special yellow plastic tubes provided by the home team.  I can't understand why anybody thinks this lack of sportsmanship is either acceptable or entertaining for the home fans. 

(5) Who builds a sports stadium with no public transport links in the roughest part of town?  Madness.

(6) And WHY do they murder their own national anthem in such cold blood?  They seem to invite different people to sing it for each game, and are too patriotic to notice that most of their singing is flatter than the proverbial witch's tit.  Being "Veterans Day" (and for supporting their own military and ex-military you cannot fault the Americans, even though they seem totally lacking in the paper flower department) they invited a close harmony group of military personnel to take their turn at massacring what ought to be called the Star Strangled Banner.  Imagine a karaoke impression of Whitney Houston crossed with Wet Wet Wet - lots of poorly executed vocal gymnastics.  And the further they stray from the actual tune into the realms of pure ego, the more the crowd love it and cheer!  Why am I the only person wincing?  Does patriotism make them tone deaf?  Compare with Last Night of the Proms where the audience seem willing to join in and keep to the tune.

Weekend 10: Windy City

Well it finally happened - I've arrived in a new US city and it hasn't become my new favourite.  Which is not a criticism of Chicago, it's a great place, but my perspective seems to have shifted as my secondment draws to an end, I am becoming resentful of time spent away from home, and tired of novelty.

Frank Sinatra famously sang that "Chicago is my kind of town", but then again he was basically a gangster so that's hardly surprising. (I expect there is an Al Capone tour you can do here, and that might have been interesting, particularly after seeing the prison island where Capone ended up just last week.)  Sinatra also gave Chicago the nickname "toddling town" which apparently means a town you can walk slowly home in after a few drinks, although I am not sure it is necessarily more true of here than anywhere else (and there are certainly places you wouldn't want to dawdle in).  No, for me the musical reference to Chicago which rings truest is Doris Day's "Just flew in from the Windy City", a song in which, for all the city's attractions, Chicago cannot compete with her hometown, and that is pretty much how I feel about almost everywhere in the USA at the moment.

I arrived on Saturday afternoon after an early start and a long flight.  I spent Saturday afternoon wandering round the main shopping street, the so-called Magnificent Mile.  It's like Blackpool's Golden Mile without the hen parties, or Edinburgh's Royal Mile without the bloody great castle towering over the skyline.  In short it is lots of people spending money on stuff, which may seem magnificent to some people but as far as I am concerned is just a means to an end (in this case acquiring some cufflinks as cheaply as possible as I had forgotten to pack any).  Still, any shopping experience where the retail outlets are separated by outdoors is better than an enclosed mall, which I detest.

On Sunday I had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel and demonstrated the new assertiveness I have picked up over here when I sent back my "frittata of the day" on the grounds that it was "a bit dry".  This frittata was not fried as the name suggests (well, it does if you speak Italian, the rest of you will either have to take my word for it or sign up for night school classes), rather it was oven baked in an iron skillet, which was blamed for the leathery texture.  We compromised, and they made me an omelette containing the same ingredients as the frittata of the day (which happened to be cheese, ham and onion).  This was a marked improvement, as well as being closer to what I expected a frittata to be in the first place, and I was so pleased with the bravery I had demonstrated in sending the food back that I left the generous 20% tip that I always leave because apparently it's expected and if you don't the server starves in a garret.

The hotel itself was not great.  I have taken to getting my hotels booked via the UK, because the travell agent which our firm uses in the UK will pay the costs up front, whereas any hotels booked for me in the USA have to be paid for by me and then the cost reclaimed.  So it wasn't my choice, nor the hotel recommended by my US colleagues.  But at the end of the day a bed is a bed, and at least the nightclub was only audible on Saturday night.  I've avoided a repeat of the breakfast fiasco by buying cereal from a supermarket and squeezing a bottle of milk into my "lavishly stocked minibar", no doubt the chambermaid now thinks I am mean or eccentric.

I spent the rest of Sunday wandering round Chicago's Art Institute, which is a huge gallery famous in particular for its collection of French impressionists.  It has two very famous pictures, American Gothic and Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte.  I always get irritated at the crowds around famous pictures in galleries, especially when you want to sit back and take in the whole picture but can't because idiots keep walking in front of you to take photographs on a mobile phone.  I really can't see the point of photographing works of art when photographs of those same works of art are so readily available on the internet (see for example the hyperlinks I created above using Google).  It is not as though somebody is going to go through your snaps and say "I love the way you've captured the light bouncing off the brush strokes", your version isn't going to be better than the one in the gift shop.  Perhaps they are worried that they may become forgetful in old age and need their own photo of the Mona Lisa to prove the've actually been to the Louvre?

But despite my irritations, I loved the gallery.  It is huge, and has so many beautiful paintings.  I felt quite moved by some of them, particularly one called "The Lark" by Jules Bréton, and the Rodin portraits.  Maybe prolonged separation from my family makes me liable to cry more readily?  I spent several hours there, walked for what seemed like hours around the miles of rooms, before meeting up with a colleague for an enjoyable dinner.

So what have I learned from my Chicago trip?

(1) There are a lot of homeless people begging on the streets here, and it is bitterly cold compared to California.  I felt quite helpless in the face of so much poverty and inequality.

(2) As with so many cities, the transport systems are designed for people who already know how to use them.  The machine selling railway tickets would only take a credit card where that associated billing address had a US Zip Code - hardly a warm international welcome!  But I feel I have got the hang of it now and the city seems well served by the train network.

(3) Even here there are loads of Spanish speakers and evidence of tex-mex influence on food.  One thing that has annoyed me more than anything else in this country is the number of people who have repeated comments about how bad the food is in England.  I am not sure what they base this on - coach tours maybe - but I have to ask if they are shopping in the same supermarkets as I am over here, because they really need to get real about themselves!

(4) The Grande Jatte picture was the subject of a Stephen Sondheim musical called "Sunday in the Park with George".  But I'm more of a Doris Day fan.

Weekend 9: Balloon / Alcatraz

The second weekend of Jill's visit began with a trip to Sinoma which included a balloon flight over the beautiful wine country.  We really enjoyed it, but it doesn't make for particularly interesting blogging.  Once again the trip itself was made more enjoyable by the opportunities to talk to ordinary Americans, in this case over breakfast afterwards and in the coach.

One lady we met had recently battled cancer, and told me the most extreme example of the bizarre Californian law I have already mentioned requiring anything potentially carcinogenic to be labelled.  Cancer patients going for radiotherapy are greeted with official notices warning them that radiation can cause cancer...  

On Sunday we had our final excursion, a boat trip to Alcatraz Island, the former penal colony.  This was really interesting , and well presented using audio sets and headphones.  There was also a live phone-in from a former inmate (now retired and living in Florida) who seemed to regret nothing apart from being caught and still hated the guards.  They apparently have reunions occasionally and he is looking forward to coming back for the anniversary of the prison's closure next year.

By the end of the weekend there was a slight change of tone: although Jill stayed with me until Wednesday morning, I felt a definite sense of "back to school", and wished I was going home with her.   I have focused on Jill's visit for so long, looking forward to it and planning things to do with her.  It has been something of a watershed, and all of a sudden I find myself two-thirds of the way through my secondment, counting my remaining time in days rather than months, and with no weekends unaccounted for.  I hope it doesn't appear that I have lost my enthusiasm for this great country, but having tasted family life again, I am now ready to go home and feel as though I am facing the next few weeks with no appetite for learning new things.

One thing I have discovered about myself, or at least my wife has pointed it out, is that when I drive on the right I get my "left" and "right" mixed up.  I don't have any problem with driving safely here, just in communicating directions whilst driving. It is as though my brain associates the expression "turn right" with turning across the lane of traffic, so that I say "left" when I mean "right".  Weird, huh?

Halloween

Every year people in England complain about Halloween.  Trick or treating is a recent import from the US (they say); it encourages scroats to come out and demand money by threatening tricks, it is displacing native traditions like penny for the guy etc etc.

I know a lot of Christians have theological objections to "celebrating evil" at Halloween and try to subvert it with alternative "light parties".  I sympathise with them up to a point but this aspect of Halloween isn't a big deal as far as I am  concerned, I am quite happy to mock the bogeymen we fear  and don't see that as celebrating darkness itself.  I would draw the line at dressing myself or a child as a devil mind you, that would make me very uncomfortable, but vampires and ghosts are OK. 

So I was quite glad of an opportunity to experience a proper American Halloween: we dressed up and joined the family of a colleague who went out trick or treating with all three young children in costume.  Here's what I discovered:

(1) Halloween is a season here, not just a day.  Just as Christmas seems to start on 1 December for many people in the UK nowadays, Halloween starts on 1 October, and is marked by decorating houses and shops for an extended period of time.

(2) It is embedded into the culture much more widely than in England (no surprise there).

(3) On 31 October almost all the kids in the neighbourhood go trick or treating at the same time: the streets are quite busy.  People indicate they are up for a visit by decorating their houses, expect to be called on, and come prepared with sweets to hand out.  It reminded me very much of the scenes in ET.

(4) Costumes are not always scary, in fact many kids dress up as superheroes or Disney princesses.  Our own costumes involved masks which we didn't wear because the kids were too scared!  A shame because mine was V for Vendetta, an attempt to bridge the cultural divide with a reference to Guy Fawkes.

(5) It involves an awful lot of candy being given out, more than anyone can or should eat.  Most of it gets binned.  Some people really go to town; one local family whose house was decorated in a particularly elaborate fashion was giving out wine to the adults as well. 

So it appears that those people who say that something which is fun and culturally relevant in the USA has become something less pleasant in the UK may be right.  However it wasn't all roses.  For one thing any event involving over-excited small children and chocolate is only ever going to end in either tantrums or vomit.  And it doesn't seem much fun for the adults who just traipse around watching their kids (or in some places, apparently, drive their offspring from house to house!). In that respect Bonfire a Night is much more fun: burning stuff is fun for all ages, and adults can enjoy mulled wine around the fire, much more relaxing once the sparklers are all safely in a bucket of cold water.  So I had a lot of sympathy for the householders who were giving out wine, it would improve the tradition considerably in my view if it involved visiting neighbours and sharing adult hospitality, a bit like Hogmanay.

I also detected some attitudes similar to British ones.  We were trick or treating in a nice middle class area, but I heard some people saying that in some other areas the trick or treaters sometimes demand money.  There were also concerns about the age of the kids: five year olds in costume are cute at 6.30, teenagers at 10pm (whose tricks may be unpleasant) may be considered a nuisance or even a threat.  Most of the kids we met said "Happy Halloween" rather than "Trick or Treat", maybe this reduces the threat?  I did hear that in some areas the local councils had limited the hours for trick or treaters to prevent nuisance callers late at night.  Seems a bit unfair to me, if you make a big deal out of Halloween every year, you've got to expect teenagers to want to join in too.

But overall Halloween in the US did seem better, because more people buy into it.  Perhaps all it would take to make it work in the UK would be a shared understanding of its rules and values.  So maybe the people who complain and refuse to answer the door are a big part of the problem about which they complain?  However traditions have to grow naturally, we can't force Brits to celebrate Halloween like the Yanks any more than we can make them embrace bull-fighting or sumo wrestling.  I guess ultimately I blame the media for bombarding us with images from US TV, and the shops for trying to sell us US style Halloween products, it's their fault that we are stuck with a half-hearted imitation of an American institution.  Personally I have missed Bonfire Night this year and don't feel Halloween was anything like as much fun.

It happened in Monterey (and Half Moon Bay)

We had a quiet day on Tuesday, visiting the sleepy seaside town of Half Moon Bay.  It was the first time I had actually seen the Pacific Ocean (as opposed to the San Francisco Bay).  

We saw a lot more ocean on Wednesday when we went whale watching in Monterey.  This was amazing.  We took a boat about an hour beyond Monterey and ended up surrounded by at least fifty humpback whales feeding on anchovies by diving up and down.  Normally it would be exciting to see dolphins and sea-lions, but when you've seen whales the dolphins you pass on the way back to shore seem a bit passé.  We then drove home via a section of the famous coastal highway, taking in more Pacific scenery before turning back in land and returning to Palo Alto via the hills that separate the coast from the San Francisco peninsula.

So what have I learnt?

(1) It is much harder to be entertaining in a blog when you are having loads of fun: nobody wants to read about how great my holiday is!

(2) When whales exhale through their blow holes they spray out fine water droplets which can refract sunlight and make little rainbows over the whale's head.  I knew that the Italians call a whale a "balena" and a rainbow a "baleno", but I had never made the connection before.

(3) You can't photograph whales with a normal camera, you need an enormous device that screams "Freudian over-compensation".  I felt very rebellious by not even trying to compete, I just watched the whales and tried to ignore the fact that everybody else on the boat was apparently a paparazzo or somebody who prefers to see the world through a lens.

(4) Whale breath has a distinctive smell, a sort of cross between fish and the tanning chemicals that pollute the Arno (if that means anything to you!)

(5) Monterey (along with the rest of California) used to be part of Mexico, so perhaps Sinatra wasn't wrong when he sang about Monterey in old Mexico.

(6) There is a Californian town called "Seaside", which I believe is actually by the seaside.  That's what I love about Americans - they say things exactly how they see them.

Such a perfect day...

Monday was such a perfect day, which is ironic as it was also the day we heard about Lou Reed's death.  I have to confess that this tragic news didn't spoil my day at all.  Sorry Lou.

One off the highlights of our week was a Segway tour of San Francisco.  Segways are like electric two wheeled chariots that are balanced electronically, and ridden stood upright.  Initially apprehensive, we had a fantastic time once the tour guide had explained how to control them and given us a lesson.  The tour itself couldn't of course cover the entire city, it would have been terrifying to attempt the steep hills, but we went along the quayside, got great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and got a chance to whizz around an empty pier.  There was a perfect balance between tour guiding and letting us have fun on the segways themselves. After 3 glorious hours we had to give up our chariots, then we had lunch on Fisherman's Wharf and saw the seal-lion colony on Pier 39, before driving over the Golden Gate Bridge and up to Muir Forest to see Californian redwoods (my theory being that a bit of countryside in the afternoon would be more relaxing as there'll be other opportunities to see the City later in the week).

So, what did we learn from our Segwaying experience?

(1) We want one (each), they are such great fun, and cheaper than a car.

(2) They are treated like bicycles under Californian law but are apparently illegal to use on either roads or pavements in the UK.  So maybe we won't get one after all.  Yet.

(3) The expression "sugar daddy" comes from Adolph Spreckels, a millionaire sugar factory owner from San Francisco whose much younger wife called him "daddy".  We never found out what his children called him, but it sounds like a family with issues.

(4) Americans pronounce debris "debb-riss" (to rhyme with "kiss").  At least our tour guide did, but maybe she was just young and ignorant.  She also asked the other two members of our tour party, a father and son from Sweden, where the son's mother was, which struck me as incredibly forward, and fraught with risk (suppose she'd just died, or eloped with her son's best friend?)

(5) We think we saw Mark Zuckerberg coming out of a fish restaurant, but it might not have been him.

Weekend 8: Conjugal Visit

In their generosity my employers decided that I would be more productive if my lovely wife came to visit me, so last weekend was spent (a) checking that Consuela, my faithful fortnightly Hispanic cleaner, had removed all incriminating evidence of my batchelor lifestyle, and then (b) collecting the aforementioned spouse from the airport.  She has come for ten whole days, and I am taking a week off work to engage in a programme of fun activities, some of which I will relate in future posts.  The rest of the weekend itself however was devoted to "chilling".

So what have I learnt?

(1) The time between a plane landing and a loved one arriving through the gate is a lot longer than you think, especially when the loved one in question is somebody you've been missing for weeks.

(2) Palo Alto is full of restauranty type places which I have never visited because I didn't want to eat alone.

(3) The bed in my apartment is a lot less comfortable when it is supporting the weight of two people, but I don't care.

(4) None of the programmes recorded on my DVR are woman friendly viewing.

Weekend 7: Barbecue Bus Adventure

Weekend 7 involved a fair amount of wine.  Many of my weekends here have done so, to be honest.  But this was special because it involved not only drinking but a visit to Napa where most of the Californian vineyards are.

One of the San Francisco partners, relatively new to the firm, very kindly hosted a barbecue at his weekend house in Napa, north of San Francisco, for all associates and their other halves from both the San Francisco and Palo Alto offices.  Two buses were arranged ("coaches" here are people who wear tracksuits), one from each office, to take us up to Napa on a Saturday afternoon.

But first came Friday, which began as a pleasant evening of eating takeaway pizza with a colleague and her family.  Looking back my mistake was perhaps bringing my ipad to show her daughter some more family photos (she'd previously shown an interest) because it was a short jump from family photos to you-tube videos, and from there to loud music and drunken dancing.  By the next morning we were all feeling pretty rough, and one four year old was particularly keen for me to return because I was apparently a personal friend of Taylor Swift.  (I'm not, by the way, in case you were wondering, I just met her once at Justin Bieber's house.)

So by the time I arrived back at the office on Saturday to board the "fun bus", I was not at my most alert.  Unfortunately, as it turned out, neither was the bus driver.  She looked the part, with a mannish looking cap, but in the cut throat world of professional bus driving that is not enough.

The first problem was that loads of people decided to either skip the barbecue or drive themselves, so the coach only had six passengers.  The second problem was that the San Francisco bus had been cancelled through lack of demand, so our bus was rerouted via the City Centre to collect just two additional people.

The bus was late in leaving and took three hours to get from Palo Alto to Napa, arriving at 3.30pm.  The barbecue was at a house on the appropriately named "Money Street", an address which demonstrates the subtlety and modesty for which Americans are famous.  Unfortunately the bus driver passed the house where the barbecue was being held and then tried to turn round in the drive of a house further down the street.  After making a complete circuit of the turning circle in the front garden, she attempted to do a hard right between two concrete posts, forgetting that she was in a bus rather than a Ford Fiesta, and contrived to wedge the bus fast between the two posts.  Because we were kind and the driver was on the verge of tears we resisted the urge to photograph the bus, and walked back to the party, which was lovely - good food, good company, good wine, but sadly brief, because the bus was due to depart at 6.30pm.  So we had had a three hour journey there, a three hour party and now had a further three hour journey to lok forward to.

Meanwhile our driver had been shouted at by the occupants of the house whose drive she was now blocking, and thanks to a tow truck driver managed to extricate her bus from the driveway and turn it back in the right direction.

Our kind host agreed however to letting us take some of the opened but undrunk bottles of wine with us for the coach.  We did not however take account of the fact that our emotional driver, keen for her day from hell to end, was heavy on both gas and brake, resulting in a less than smooth ride.  Although we would have liked to sleep on the bus, we couldn't because we each had to hold these full but open bottles of wine very carefully all the way back to ensure they didn't spill.

So what did I learn this weekend?

(1) Red wine gives you a terrible hangover, but sometimes it is definitely worth it.

(2) Never take more wine than you can drink if the bottles are already open.

(3) Napa is gorgeous and well worth a visit, although better to go for more than three hours.

(4)  If a German lady starts talking about her dirndl, it might sound like dildo, but is actually something completely different.  If you are going to mention what you thought she said, make sure she has had plenty of wine first.

Random Triggers

Not a post about gun control, but about the strange ways my mind responds to certain words in American English.

I have already mentioned that "San José" and "downtown" start me humming Dionne Warwick and Petula Clarke respectively, and that is hardly surprising to anybody who knows me and the way my mind makes connections to random song lyrics.  But there is so much other weird stuff hidden in my sub-conscious that is being released by the words I see and hear in America.

For instance the first time I saw a car labelled "California Highway Patrol" I was immediately taken back to my earliest childhood.  I don't think I ever watched an entire episode of CHiPs, I was about 3, but I do remember the plastic action figures, although I am sure I never had one.  I expect Michael Macari over the road had one, what with his Dad being a famous footballer (back in the days when famous footballers lived in normal 1930s houses in Sale instead of Alderley Edge.)
 

There are several words that take me straight back to Sesame Street: "trash can" because of Oscar the grouch, "mailman" and "neighborhood" (when pronounced in an American accent) because of that ridiculous song "Who are the people in the neighborhood?", and of course uevos rancheros, because Maria made it for Big Bird.  Am I the only person who remembers this kind of stuff and files it away to be triggered by the sound of US English?

Even the names of some of the States themselves, and some US cities trigger weird and random mental pictures.  Some don't of course, California, DC, Florida, New York appear so frequently in popular culture that I had a slightly more nuanced view even before I came.  But some of the others trigger a single association:

Oklahoma - the musical (obviously)

Kansas - Judy Garland in black and white (unlike Oz)

Maine - Stephen King and Jessica Fletcher

Arkansas - Hilary Clinton, and Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell singing "A Little Girl from Little Rock"

Ohio - Glee club

Idaho -narcolepsy 
Dallas - Dallas
Denver - Dynasty
Dakota - Doris Day singing about the Black Hills

(Rereading that list, it is probably the gayest list of US State associations ever.  Thank goodness Stephen King's in there.)  Chicago, perhaps suprisingly, doesn't make me think of Chicago the musical, the mental picture that comes to mind more readily is the car chase at the end of the Blues Brothers.  The weirdest association of all is Tulsa: I don't even know where it is, but I know Gene Pitney was 24 hours away from it.  (Which probably covers a huge area, I wonder if anybody has ever drawn a circle on a map showing all the places that are 24 hours from Tulsa?)

One final observation about the whole "you say tomato but I say tomato" debate (other than the fact that everybody, everywhere, as far as I am aware, pronounces potato to rhyme with an American tomato, even Dan Quayle who famously couldn't spell it.)  You don't necessarily know what is peculiarly British until you say it and an American comments (or misunderstands).  For example, Americans consider "bits and bobs" to be a quaint British expression, only use "diary" to mean a journal (like Adrian Mole) but not a calendar of appointments, only rent cars, never hire them, etc.  I had a pretty good idea of some of the things they said, but I never knew all the things they didn't.  I could be saying all kinds of weird stuff, and they might just be too polite to mention it.

 

Weekend 6: Seattle = California in a coat

I have recently returned from a great weekend in Seattle.  I know I am beginning to sound like Michael McIntyre - every city I visit is my new favourite - but I do like Seattle!  Could be because it is a north west city with a reputation for rain, much like my beloved Manchester?  Possibly, but it was also another city where I felt I could live as well as enjoy a visit.

The climate did have something to do with it.  It didn't actually rain much if at all while I was there, it was in fact glorious sunshine for part of the weekend, but there was a proper damp chill to the air, it felt like a real October for the first time since I have been in the USA.  I actually got to wear a coat, which is very handy when you have loads of stuff in your pockets.  And it is so green - there are trees everywhere, dripping with moisture and smelling fresh.

I stayed in a fabulous B&B called the Gatewood, which was family run and had just four guest bedrooms.  It was a traditional wooden house, built against a hill, with a balcony around the entrance level on the first floor. (Which is to say the first floor above the ground floor, I haven't gone native to that extent just yet).  The inside was warm and comfortable with wooden beams and soft chairs, the bedroom was cool, but with a thick soft duvet.  I slept better in a cooler climate than I have in weeks in California.

On Friday night I wandered out after arrival to find something to eat, and managed to get quite lost.  I felt quite alone and homesick at first, missing the familiarity of California as well as my family back in England.  Eventually however I discovered a supermarket where I could buy a sandwich, and once fed and watered began to feel more positive.  On Saturday I knew I had to finish some slides for a presentation I was giving on Tuesday, so I headed into town to visit our Seattle office.  I decided I would get a bus and a water taxi from West Seattle where the B&B was based, to Downtown (which I am learning to say without even thinking about Petula, although I don't always quite manage it).

Finding the bus was a struggle.  Public transport here is not wonderful.  I got a Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto one evening last week and realised that it is impossible to see the names of the stations in the dark as you pull in, which makes it difficult not to miss your stop.  But that is nothing compared to the lack of information about the bus shuttle connecting to the water taxi.  I walked a couple of miles towards the main road where I was told I would find it, past bus stops that announced the shuttle was free but gave no indication of whether it actually stopped there (it didn't) or when.  Eventually, by asking everybody I could find, I was pointed towards a stop where a shuttle bus was waiting.  The driver was incomprehensible, and pretty rude to some passengers.  I only arrived half way through a confusing conversation, but as far as I could tell he was explaining that some of the passengers had got on to a bus going in the wrong direction and they should have waited on the other side of the road, however there was only one bus (him) and it was a circular route, so the only advantage of waiting on the correct side of the road would have been to wait longer to board exactly the same bus rather than sitting on it while it made a bit of a loop.

So I got chatting to three young people on the bus, and one mentioned that he had stayed in the Lake District for a year.  It turned out that he had been to Capenwray, the Bible school which sent a group of young people to our local church to run a week long mission last year.  It was great to meet somebody with whom I felt such an immediate connection, even though he had not actually been in the group that came to Sale.  I rode with the three of them to the waterside, where the water taxi ticketing system was even more incomprehensible than the bus system, and eventually the four of us made it onto the water taxi.

I should say that a Seattle water taxi is nothing like a Venetian water taxi (the only other place I have ever heard the term used) and is certainly not a gondola (the mind boggles!), if anything it is more like a water bus (vaporetto perhaps) but it most closely resembles a small passenger ferry.  It is public transport run to a timetable, and probably slower than the normal buses that run between West Seattle and Downtown (via a road bridge).  It does however provide an impressive view of the city as you approach from the water, and I would recommend it to anybody visiting Seattle.

Once in Downtown, I decided to walk to the office.  Seattle is built on an approximate grid system, with some very straight streets running up some pretty steep hills, very much like San Francisco.  The comparisons don't stop there, it feels very much like San Francisco too with its liberal attitudes, bohemian feel and young vibe.  However the climate is much more like Manchester, which felt like a plus to me.

I was blessed on this trip by the foresight of a colleague in Seattle, who was looking out for me because she is English even though we had not yet met.  This guardian angel not only found me the B&B, but also sent me a visitor's pass to allow me access to the office at the weekend "just in case", and taxi vouchers meaning I could get around and charge my travel to the firm's account.  She also gave me the wise advice not to pay to go up the Space Needle because the office was higher and had a better view.  As it turned out, the office pass was an absolute boon, because I could not only check out in advance where I would be on Monday, but also had somewhere to finish the work I had to do on Saturday, somewhere on the 70th floor with a fabulous view over the water and across to the hills.

After finishing my slides (and feeling a lot happier about the presentation) I followed a friend's recommendation and went on a tour of the Seattle underground.  This was probably the most amusing, entertaining and informative historical tour I have ever been on.  It turns out that when the oldest part of Seattle burnt down in the nineteenth century, the local council took advantage of the opportunity to raise the level of the streets which were very prone to flooding with raw sewage.  But because they could not agree on who should bear the full cost of this, they raised up the level of the actual roadways by building retaining walls down each side, putting the traffic one storey above the pavement, and forcing local people to cross the road using ladders.  (Who'd have thought that an argument about American government finance would lead to a situation of such total absurdity?).  Eventually they resolved the disagreement and put beams across the gap between the buildings and the retaining wall of the raised up streets to support a new sidewalk, turning the upstairs of the existing buildings into the downstairs, and the ground floor into a basement, and creating a network of tunnels under the pavements.

On Sunday I met some Seattle colleagues for brunch, although by the time we got fed it was more like lunch.  The original choice of restaurant kept us waiting so long we decamped to the Mexican one next door, so it was tortillas for me again, but it didn't matter, it was just good to relax with friends.  After that my guardian angel took me on a tour of the famous Seattle fish market, and then across to the EMP museum by mono-rail to see exhibitions of science fiction icons and popular culture.  I finished the day wandering the park around the EMP museum, watching small children getting soaked by a very entertaining water musical feature, and then visiting a gallery of glass sculptures.

So apart from discovering that I love yet another American city, what else have I learned?

(1) Forks is a real place, about four hours away from Seattle.  I have yet to discover whether Bon Temps also exists.  I am pretty sure that vampires don't actually exist in either place.

(2) Seattle is named after a local Red Indian chief.

(3) The street grid system which is so common over here is in fact two grid systems in Seattle, one at 45º to the other, and this is due to disagreement between two of the city's founding fathers who owned different parts of the land.  I have been wondering why roads are laid out in this grid pattern regardless of the gradient, but I suppose I have been approaching the question all wrong: why would you choose to lay out a city in any other way if you were starting from scratch?

(4) I like to watch small children falling over and being soaked by fountains of cold water.  Does this make me a bad person? 

(5) There is a famously colourful wall in Seattle covered in different pieces of chewing gum.  I didn't however add to it.

(6) American young people can be terribly polite, and on at least two occasions this weekend called me "sir".  I actually quite like this, but I hope it doesn't mean they think I am old.

(7) It is widely known that Americans call jam "jelly" and jelly "jello"', but who'd have imagined the consequences for a popular fictional character?  Over here Roger Hargreaves' Mr Jelly is known as Mr Nervous.

(8) It is possible to write about Seattle without using the word "sleepless", but I've just blown it.