Last 4 days

Tuesday 5th June 2007

Back to reality with a bump… I write this in my armchair at home, my laptop on my lap, plugged into the wall via my work
laptop’s power cable.  The attempt to power it via its own cable and a shaver adaptor failed on account of a broken 3 amp fuse, given that the AC/DC adaptor puts out 5 amps.  Oh well, c’est la vie.

We left you in suspense at the end of Part 13, in a scene of domestic bliss and the promise of mischief to come….  Can I
now remember what followed?

Bill, Olivia and Dylan arrived back from Santa Rosa in the late afternoon and we shared the task of emptying the car of
Dylan’s things into the middle of the garage floor.  Dylan then announced that he was going to get a haircut, sounding
just like my father when he explained that he couldn’t bear it when his hair started to tickle his ears, so Mary told me to accompany him to get mine cut as well, a minor personal chore she had been nagging me about since the trip began, on the grounds that I didn’t want a white hairline when I went back to work.  So Dylan drove us to Nick’s Barber Shop, where Nick promptly reduced his bushy bonce to a short back and sides and his colleague applied a lighter touch to my slightly less unruly locks.  I have to admit I did look smarter thereafter.  On the way to the barber, I was amused that Dylan wore his baseball cap and covered it up with his hoodie as we drove the short distance to the barber.  On the way back, his new haircut was on proud display.  How times have changed…  In my day, I’d have been proud of the long hair and ashamed of the newly shorn look.

The evening was time for Bill and Colleen’s Saturday night out, so Mary and I accompanied them to an unpretentious restaurant in downtown Paso Robles, where we had a pleasant meal (I had pasta in garlic, oil and olives, Mary had … Colleen had Prime Rib and Bill had a Turkey and Cheese Melt).  Mary and I washed ours down with a bottle of local red and Bill had a non-alcoholic beer, as he has foresworn the booze these last two years.

Then we took a stroll along the sidewalk to a chocolaterie, where Bill bought vast supplies of dark chocolate, which he
nibbled for the rest of the evening, and thence an ice creamerie, whence we wandered across the main square, which was inhabited by vintage car enthusiasts and their cars, being entertained by an excellent C&W band.  The cars were mostly
 1950s and 1960s models, my favourites being the Chevrolet Impalas with their absurdly wide rear wings, of which I’d had
Corgi models when I was a boy.  They were in various stages of loving restoration, many being decorated on site with “pinstriping”: fine whirling patterns along the bodywork.  This felt like the authentic American Experience, as we passed, licking our ice-creams and chocolae, through the contented crowds with their picnics, beer cans and cokes, politely applauding the snappy guitar work and humorous between songs patter, even though they were sat wrapped in blankets.  We Brits, of course, think all weather over 60 degrees is hot ?

Then we had a long interlude in the video store, where we eventually plumped for a film I’d never heard of, called The
Songcatcher, about a folk musicologist, recently passed over for promotion to professor, visiting her schoolteacher sister up in the Appalachian Mountains, where she discovers these naturally gifted singers with their pristine versions of old English, Irish and Scottish folksongs, passed down orally through generations of singers.  She determines to
record them on paper and on Edison phonograph cylinders but all her work goes up in smoke when two yokels take objection
to her sister’s lesbian relationship with a fellow teacher and set fire to the schoolhouse.  She eventually falls in love herself with one of the rough-hewn locals and they ride off into the sunset to make their fortune as popular entertainers.  The whole film was excellent: music and singing excellent of their type, casting new light for me on such classics as Matty Groves and other songs revived by Fairport Convention, acting and screenplay strong, settings picturesque.

Sunday, we set off on a trip of indeterminate length up the Big Sur coast: indeterminate because we didn’t know whether
we would stay away overnight or return.  As it was, the weather at Monterey was so miserably foggy and cold that we decided to come home to Paso Robles that night.  When we got in, it was clear that Maura, the elder daughter, was back from her hiking trip in Zion, as her hiking gear had been dumped unceremoniously in her bedroom, which Mary and I had been using in her absence.  But I run ahead of myself again.

Our route to the coast took us along California Route 46, through the pretty coastal hills, to Cambria, where we joined
Route 1, heading north along the coast.  As it was lunchtime, we took an early diversion along a coastal access road and
drew into a restaurant’s car park but could find no parking space and, reasoning that service would be too slow in such a packed place, with bikers arriving by the dozen, we abandoned that attempt to get fed and watered.  Shortly after, we stopped at Hearst Castle, recommended by Bill and Colleen as a good place to spend a couple of hours, in the nearest thing that California has to a Stately Home.  It being a public holiday weekend, that officially announces the beginning of summer, it too was packed; and we quailed at the thought of joining one of the conducted tours (of which there are four routes) and of queuing to be served in the canteen, which was offering the usual fare of burgers, pizzas, fries and salads.  Again we fled the crowds and setoff once more up the coastal road, which soon offered a much more interesting diversion: a beach where elephant seals basked and fought.  We spent a while in the company of other watchers, entertained by two bull seals bashing each other repeatedly as they lollopped about in the breakers.  Only David Attenborough was absent …It was just like on the telly.  There was plenty of other activity as well, with some seals making beelines for the sea, some struggling to get out of the way, others flicking sand over themselves, others barking their challenges generally to anyone who would listen, not to mention the one that managed to nose dive into the sand
and spent the next few minutes trying to blow the sand out of its nose.

Onwards and up the cliffs we went, as we followed the coastal road, with its dramatic sweeps round headlands, through
cuttings and round bays or across elegant bridges.  A bank of clouds hovered over the sea, about a mile offshore.  Otherwise the weather was fine and warm, with a cool sea breeze.  We made several stops for views and wildlife observation, which included fights between seagulls and ground squirrels over the scraps that tourists were encouraging them with. Of course, we came across no more eating places until we got to Big Sur itself, a scattered village amid a redwood forest, just inland from the cliffs.  The Henry Miller library, of which Bill had advised me, especially on noting that I was reading Miller’s “The Colossus of Maroussi”, was, unfortunately closed, but there was a notice that there was a concert between 2 and 6pm.  As it was now gone 4pm and we still hadn’t eaten (not to mention there was nowhere to park, even if we had wanted to avail ourselves of the music) we were not to be distracted by that but made a
 ew more fruitless stops at roadside restaurants and, in one case, up a hill to a promised Ocean View.  In each case the
restaurant was shut for the afternoon.  By now, the weather was closing in and getting cooler; but as we came to Carmel,
we spotted a typical out of town shopping centre with diners galore and chose the Black Bear Diner, where I allowed my
eyes to inform my appetite and went for “Bob’s Big Bear Burger”: a ¾ lb beef burger in an enormous bun, complete with
all the trimmings.  Mary took a photo of it when it arrived on the table.  In the photo, it makes even my stomach look small.  I managed to eat it all though, and thoroughly enjoyed it.   Mary had a more modest “Young Bob’s Burger”.

Refuelled and ready for the fray, we then drove on to Monterey, where the weather had really closed in.  We took a quick
look at the beach but didn’t much fancy it and stopped in a Starbucks, principally to recharge my phone so that I could
advise Bill that we were returning that evening, but where we also indulged in a coffee and a cake.  The phone charged
OK but when I tried dialing Bill, I got a message stating that the number as dialed was not obtainable.  It transpired
 hat when I stored it, I missed off the final digit.  Ho hum.  Nevertheless, we decided to head back to Paso Robles
anyway, and took the local road east towards Salinas, where we picked up the 101 and headed south down the freeway, arriving at Paso Robles to an empty house, albeit with plentiful signs of recent habitation, such as Maura’s gear and lights on all over the place.  Mary also advised me that her migraine had finally gone.  Somewhat alarmingly, it had lasted all of the day, which is unusual.

We weren’t home long before they all turned up and another pleasant evening was passed, regaling them with the tale of
our adventures, listening to music and watching the TV.  Bill has a good supply of Bill Maher Shows on DVD, which kept us amused at nights.  Bill Maher is a comedian of left wing tendencies, though some strikingly conservative views on such things as corporal punishment, if his jokes are anything to go by.  He has some good swipes at George Bush and the Iraq war and gets some uncomfortable victims to be the butts of his jokes, defending the indefensible.  We  both enjoyed these shows, which were strikingly intelligent and daring for American TV.

Monday was the Memorial Day public holiday, on which we followed Bill’s advice and explored the local hills, following a route through the vineyards towards Morro Bay, which is dominated by a Gibraltar-like rock.  The semblance is in its domination of the local scenery and its general shape rather than its size, which is a bit pathetic in comparison, but it was a pleasant site and we enjoyed a lunchtime breakfast in a homely café and a stroll alongthe harbour front, past various restaurants and fishing boats, not to mention indulging Mary’s shopping tendencies inthe local gift shop.  On the way back, we followed Route 1 South to San Luis Obispo, past the Seven Sisters, extinctvolcanoes that line the route.  As we approached Paso Robles, Mary mentioned that she wanted to visit a dollar shop toget some hair bands but as usual I ignored her and drove straight back to Bill’s place.

When we got in, we were greeted by a starving Mr Bill and his three kids, who were all desperately awaiting our arrival,
as we had promised to take them out for a thank you meal.  Colleen couldn’t join us as she was manning a soup kitchen in
town, but we got her a take-out (or meal to go as they call them).  We ate at Cool Hand Luke’s, another steak joint, where I had a juicy rib-eye steak with garlic and mushrooms.  Unfortunately, this steak fought back later in the evening, making me bloated and unpleasant to be around … Bill, it transpired, was more a gentleman than he would probably like to be thought of as, and took Mary to the Dollar Shop, which had closed early for Memorial Day, so we ended up in Target, walking around with a Starbucks and investigating their stock of CDs.  Mary made me ashamed by purchasing a set of 3 Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals CDs, fine punishment for continually ignoring her wishes. Back home, Bill and I had a good chat about music and life in general. Mary spent the evening burning CDs, either mine for Bill, or ones that Bill had for sale, but couldnot part with when push came to shove.

That was our last day in Paso Robles.  We left at about 12:30, during Bill’s lunch hour, which he enlivened by bringing us some super tacos from the local Mexican takeway, “the one the real Mexicans use”.  Bill gave me a mighty hug as he left, though he denied that it was a bear hug: he’d been especially gentle in view of my back problem.  I’d hate to get a real bear hug! Mary got a nice man sized hug.

We then followed the advised route south to Santa Barbara, leaving the 101 whenever we could to follow the slower but
more interesting Route 1, which meanders through farmland and towns along the way.  Santa Barbara itself was the highlight of this journey, a delightfully pretty little town, the first really picturesque town we’d seen since Jackson Hole.  Here we got the last room available in the Days Inn and visited the local Mission, one of 27 between San Diego and San Francisco, that are connected by ye olde El Camino Real Historic Route.  This was surrounded by chalk paintings done over the weekend by various locals, sponsored by worthy local businesses.  Mary took lots of pictures of these; then we explored the Mission itself.  Having missed the guided tours, we were able to make a small donation to a monk and guide ourselves through the museum, watch a brief video about the history of the place and walk through the peaceful cemetery.  The Mission lived up to its billing, Bill and other locals having advised us to visit various Missions up and down the coast during our stay – but this was the first and only one we managed.

We completed our visit to Santa Barbara in style by dining at the first restaurant we found on the seafront, an Italian restaurant with fine wine and food.  I had halibut, Mary had salmon, washed down with an excellent Californian Pinot
Noir, and followed by “G and G” for Mary and a wonderful peaty Talisker for me.  It reminded me of Bowmore and Laphroaig
(whose name escaped me at the time), the two Islay malts with which I’m more familiar.  This was a more than worthy substitute for the Sambuca that I had originally chosen but was unavailable, as was Mary’s first choice.  So we left, satisfied and mellow and slept well.

In the morning, after a wholesale rearrangement of the contents of all our cases, we set off for the airport, taking the
freeway to Los Angeles (a scary manic road of 5 lanes on each carriageway and suicidal drivers, not to mention the truck with bins on its back - one flew off  and hit the car behind it, causing her to swerve and only just miss us– Bill did warn us), where Connie eventually delivered us to a roundabout under a flyover, within shouting distance of the Budget Rental garage but by no means at it.  “Thank you for choosing Budget” she said politely and irrelevantly, as we then found our own way there by following the road signs.  Shocked at the size of the bill, and noting that it didn’t add up, I queried it and got $1,000 taken off it, with a rather graceless piece of advice that next time I should make sure I understand what I’m signing before I sign it…. They also tried to claim that they had not heard of Triprewards (that we had been collecting at participating motels and which were supposed to be supported by Budget). The shuttle bus driver dropped us off at our terminal and demanded a tip, which I suppose was par for the course, but why I should have tipped
her for doing her job I don’t know.  Well, I gave her a tenner and on we went into the terminal, where a very helpful West Indian check in lady tried to save us an excess baggage charge by advising us how to redistribute our belongings among our luggage; but eventually we gave up and agreed to the $100 excess baggage fee: hardly a surprise given we had 7 months of accumulated belongings with us, despite Mary’s previous Herculean efforts on previous visits to take back two cases full of CDs, books and no-longer-needed items of clothing.

The 10.5 hour flight was alleviated by Air New Zealand’s excellent entertainment system, which supplied movies on demand and, apart from crashing once, necessitating rather a long reboot process, was very reliable.  I watched The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey in a serious, if somewhat demented, role and Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo di Caprio as a cynical Rhodesian mercenary in Sierra Leone, who dies while trying to get away with a big pink diamond, previously found and
hidden by the one decent person in the whole film, a Sierra Leonian whose sole concern throughout the film is to reunite
his war-torn family.  My thanks to Victor Eckstein, one of the partners in New York, for recommending this film, shocking and gruesome though it is in places: one of those films for which the cliché “searing” was invented.  I’d also observed someone watching Black Snake Moan on their set but I couldn’t find it on my system, so then watched Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in the predictable but vaguely amusing and diverting musical comedy “Music and Lyrics”.  Mary watched The Johnny Cash Story and a couple of less memorable but enjoyable films.

The food on the plane wasn’t bad either, and all in all, 10.5 hours went quite painlessly.  We arrived at Heathrow slightly early and were delighted to be able to collect all our bags from the carousel before it had even been announced and even more delighted to be met by our chauffeur, daughter Sara, who delivered us at our doorstep an hour or so later.

We managed to hold off going to bed till about midnight and then slept till 5:00pm on Friday afternoon, when we got up
and went around to Sara’s for an Indian takeaway that we’d promised her and Tony.

Saturday we mostly did unpacking and odds and sods, then went to see a ballet at the Arlington Arts Centre in Mary Hare
School for the Deaf.  This was the first fruit of a resolution I made in New York to take Mary out to more shows and
things.  I’d responded to a flyer from the RSA, an organisation I joined several years ago with the vague and vain intention of doing some useful “networking” but had never, until now, taken advantage of any of its events.  It was alsothe first ballet I’d ever been to.  It was Prokoviev’s Cinderella, performed by the Ballet Russe, who are genuinelyRussian and are, apparently, based in Swansea.  It was quite impressive and graceful, with several amusing pieces ofby-play by the ugly sisters and stepmother.  Mary was most impressed by Prince Charming’s crotch (as were other female members of the audience), which left nothing to the imagination.  Our neighbours in the pews were Michael Rogerson and his wife, Jane.  Michael, a soon to retire partner in London office, failed to recognise me at first but soon recovered, explaining to his wife that I was “in charge of all the IT in the firm – a jolly good chap”.  Flattered by this gross exaggeration of my importance and misapprehension of my role, I didn’t try too hard to disabuse her of the notion.  For my part, I erroneously accused him of living in Ascot, the result of a misapprehension acquired several years ago when I accompanied him on a selling mission to Hartley Wintney, whereas he actually lives, much more prosaically, in Basingstoke.  We finished the evening by attending the reception organised by the RSA, at which we had the opportunity to mingle with the cast and other RSA
members.  I noticed that Michael managed to chat up one of the dancers but Mary and I stuck with other neophytes, a
professional personal coach and her husband who worked in IT.  At first, he threatened to be a crushing bore as he started to waffle on about Prokoviev and his effect on the early twentieth century critics but then he took a more retiring role when his wife joined us.  We chatted amiably for an hour or so and then made our farewells and left, a successful cultural breakthrough achieved with very little pain.

In contrast, Sunday was a visit to our other daughter, Vanessa, her sick husband Sam and her four unruly boys, two cats,
a kitten, a Rottweiler bitch called Rosie, and two waifs and strays who hang around because they have nothing better to
do called Nigel and John. 

 

To my surprise, I have found adapting to driving on the left again, with a manual gear change and a clutch not a problem.  I negotiated all the perils of the A34 and M27 without mishap, contentedly listening to my copy of the compilation CD I had sent to Bill several months ago, and which he had played as he ferried us about Paso Robles on Saturday night.

Monday was back to work and a mountainous inbox that wouldn’t allow me to save any new messages or even enter anything in my calendar.  I’d forgotten all my passwords but at least I had been saved a desk and my laptop was awaiting me.
Mary reported that her day had consisted of dealing with staff issues – a potential unfair dismissal case and a member
of staff aggrieved because her SMP was all wrong, caused by the fact that she had failed to send in time sheets on time,
and a care worker refusing a job because she could not drive across THAT bridge.  The mind boggles.