I love baseball!!!

I mean, I have newly discovered that I love baseball. Perhaps ‘love’ is a bit strong. I have newly discoved it to be less of a complete confounding mystery than most of the sports I have grown up around and am supposed to know about.

Also, I have discovered it is one of the only sports in the world My Beloved is not a magical boy expert about. He is a boyxpert about football, the proper one, and to some extent, about that Hand-egg game that Americans call football, and about rugby and about cricket and … (um. Shitsticks, I’ve run out of sports) … and About Other Sports that might generally be used to end this Sentence.

But baseball he is not so familiar with. This is good.

This means I can sit watching a game and talking and figuring out what happens, and who is meant to be doing what, and when things are starting to make sense in my head, I can ask questions about them and receive an answer that includes the words “I think so” rather than receiving an answer that ends with “… OBVIOUSLY. Duh…” (because surely EVERYONE should know the answer to such an obvious question).

So, because we are coming to it both relatively clueless, and because we currently live ten minutes walk from the enormous Giants stadium, which perches on the edge of the city, overlooking the bay in VERY scenic fashion; it is now my favourite game.

Also because it mainly seems to be an excuse for eating. So you arrive, and you find the general area where your seats are, and then you look around at the eating possibilities, because you are hungry.

When I have been to the football before - and it may not be a universal truth, just my experience - you seemed to be able to purchase pies. And also some burgers, and some Cornish pasties. Which did the job, and was just fine.

But it wouldn’t do here, I don’t think. So you arrive, and check where your seats are, then maybe check what you can get before you go to them. You can get a burger if you want, yes.

Or a turkey burger, or a veggie (garden) burger. Or fried chicken, or chicken tenders, with a choice of two dipping sauces, and with fries. Or garlic fries, if you would prefer. Further down the same counter, you could get pizza in slices, or 10-inch individual pizzas of five different types. Or, at the stand around the side from that, you can get a burrito, or quesadillas, or tacos - chicken, fish, steak, you know, the basics. And a margarita, while you’re there: but really only if it’s an afternoon game, all that ice too cold for evening games at the moment.

Which makes it sound like you couldn’t get the stuff you might expect, like hot dogs. Which would be insane. The hot dogs were between the popcorn stand and the local wine stand, and opposite two other hot dog stands. And this is only in one small part of the stadium.

So of course you can get hot dogs. you can get Giants dogs and Polish Dogs and four other kinds of dogs, which you can then add extra relish to on a stand nearby. And then, once you have your food, you go and sit down. Oh yes, you might want a beer. Or a light beer. Or one of nine kinds of fizzy pop.

So. Then, you go and sit down, and you eat your food, and you watch the game, which you have already missed some of while trying to decide what you want to eat. I will explain the game in a minute. Oh no, wait, I can now: It’s basically like rounders, but with extra made-up rules. And strategy. And things.

And then the people start walking up and down the aisles shouting ‘PEANUTS!’ and ‘CRACKERJACK!’ (”ooh, I could crush a grape….”) and selling ice cream, corn dogs (a hot dog dipped in corn bread batter and deep fried on a stick, as far as I can tell? Is that right?), and bags of candy floss, and something we couldn’t identify called ‘dabs’, I think. And hot chocolate, and coffee, and water, and more fizzy pop.

And the game’s, like, three hours long, so what are you going to do, sit there and starve? Nooooo, you must do eating. So eat you do. And all of it. Not really. You would die.

So.

Baseball is good. I will explain the rules another time, when I have more of a handle on them, but it seems relatively simple (until you start looking at the scorecard of the person next to you, which makes your brain implode). There are some men, and they take turns hitting a ball with a stick and running around in circles.
Other men catch the ball.

I am in awe of the ball catchers, but that’s probably because I tend to run away shouting ‘Not in the face! Not in the face!’ if a hard, fast-flying leather ball comes flying toward me. This is why I’m not a baseball player. That and other reasons.

We have decided that our team is the Giants, which is lucky because they’re the San Francisco team and that makes everything a lot easier.

That is not the only reason, though. That would be too easy. We are also supporting them because
a) They have nicer uniforms than everyone else.
b) I like the colour orange.
c) Some of their players are pleasantly pudgy, and we do love a sport that the fat are welcome to play and
d) One of the team is called ‘Merkin’. That’s his actual first name. No, really, it is.

So, we will be going to see The Giants, because they are now ‘my team’. This means I get to shout things in support, along with all the other supporters.

I did quite well at this, the other day, in fact. I not only shouted at the right time, I shouted because I could tell it was the right time from what just happened on the pitch (um. pitch?) and not just because everyone else started shouting.

Admittedly I wasn’t shouting the same thing. It was in the same spirit, and with the same intent - but to be honest I still sound stupid shouting American encouragements in my accent, so I shouted things that wouldn’tsound so strange, like “COME ON, CHAPS!” and “GO ON MY SON. HAVE IT!” and “THAT’S THE SPIRIT!” and “JOLLY GOOD SHOW!” and such.

Which I’m sure worked just the same, encouragement-wise.

So yes. I am now a MASSIVE baseball fan. One of the biggest. Ask me anything. Anything mainly about food, I mean. Your actual ’stuff about baseball’ I may have to come back to you in a few games time, with.

But other than THAT - other than knowing all the rules and which are the good players and how the leagues work and everything, I am totally set up and completely on top of the little white ball.
Go Giants! Hurrah!

Hullooo!

I have a project to present to you. Mainly if you’re Scottish and living abroad, or of Scottish ancestry. I’ve been asked to take this to friends who might be in some way Scots-connected in my local San Francisco area, but to be honest, I only know one Scot, (and I’ve lost your email address, Rod) so I thought this might be the quickest way.

There’s a lovely artist I know by the name of Steve Raws, who creates things with enormous letters and colossal words. They’re very beautiful. So. He’s doing this gigantic banner of a Burns poem, that will be displayed in Edinburgh. All the information is here.

The way that Steve works is that he encourages people to get involved, and so is touring Scotland getting people to paint giant letters, which will then get worked into the banner. But he’d really really like contributions from Scots overseas as well, so if you are one, or know of any, can you pass this along? Or at least the link to the blog about the banner?

You can also open a PDF of instructions here.

It’s a really fun thing - paint a big letter, scan it, send it, be involved in a global project - and I’m proud to be a part of it: I just didn’t know enough people here to actually be of any use.

But I know enough people in my little internet corner. So if you want to be involved, or know of anyone that might, please please do. You don’t need any special equipment, just a piece of paper and some way of colouring it in (and as the instructions explain, you don’t even need that).

Hurrah! Thank you!

The other day, on the street, someone insulted me.

In fact, even more unusually, someone made a comment about the way I was dressed.

They called me trampy, if you must know, which would, usually, have upset me a great deal.

What had I ever done to them? I would ask myself. I wasn’t wearing anything bad - I was wearing some jeans and a long top and a cardigan and a light scarf: the kind of multilayered thing that everyone seems to wear here (because of the crazy weather, you see. I’ve really given up on the idea of looking neat and sleek and matching everything exactly) (That sounds like I had ever adopted that as an idea in the first place, which is blatently not the case, I’ve always looked a bit like someone emptied a lucky dip bag over my head in the dark, but that’s what you get for being not very good at girly things. Where was I?) Oh, yes, me and my very very thin skin. And need for everyone to like me. But mainly that skin issue. Like tissue, it is. Metaphorical tissue. Metaphorical tissues are reeally bad for blowing your nose, by the way.

ANYWAY.

Why did I look trampy, I asked myself, worriedly? I checked in a nearby mirror. Yes, my sunglasses were slightly large and cheap, yes, my scarf was slightly brightly coloured. You could see only a TINY bit of cleavage - the attitude to cleavage here is weird, but we should talk about that another time - and my hair was just tied back, which hardly seemed trampy at all.

And all of this was going on in a very rapid, very worried progression in my head: what had I done? Why did they hate me? How could I make it better? Should I apologise? Change my wardrobe? Think carefully about what I could wear in future so as not to upset people by looking this way? Why didn’t he like me? What had I done?
I have the thinniest skin in the world.

And then suddenly, I took a step back and I said: You know what, Anna?
That man: perhaps he we shoudln’t take his advice on what to wear.
Perhaps He isn’t the best opinon-gage on taste, and appropriate occasionwear.

And not ONLY because he’s wearing a four heavy overcoats at once, sunglasses with one lens missing, and a women’s wig (and wearing it backwards, the ponytail sprouting over his mumbling face, at that) and pushing a trolley full of chopped up doll parts through the Tenderloin.

No, not because of that. Though that might possibly have had something to do with it: But because I should just consider whether I requested or desired his sartorial judgement, and whether, therefore, his opinion really needed to have that much impact on the rest of my day.

No, I decided.
No, it didn’t. I am stronger than that.

“Whatever, Buddy! What EVER! At least my trampy wig’s on straight!” I shouted.

Of course, by this point he’d been out of sight for 45 minutes, and I only ended up alarming the cats.

But still: me and my impressively thicker skin, right?
Well done me!

Seriously, I’m thinking of renaming this kind of post ‘This Guy Thursday’ and just posting a picture of him every single week. Because I think he’s brilliant.

He was just this ordinary man, on an ordinary bike, having an ordinary conversation with another one of his ordinary friends, driving an ordinary car. On an ordinary day in a very nice, ordinary neighbourhood of San Francisco.

But there was something slightly out of the ordinary about him. I wonder if you can spot what it was from this photo:

Yes, that’s right.
He had a beard!

Oh, and he also had a feathery hat.
And I love him, and I think we should all give him a round of applause. He is the spirit of San Francisco.

Before I start: yes, I know. What right do I have to complain, I get to live in California, blah blah blah … and yes, thank you, that is a good argument, and well made, thank you for your input.

I do try not to complain very much because when I do, it tends to provoke that kind of reaction and rightly so.

But sometimes I cannot help it. I was complaining to a very good friend today, in fact. “Mark” I said, because that is his name, and that is how I address him once we have moved through the formal greeting stages of instant messaging etiquette, “Mark, I am too hot. The sun is shining very brightly and there isn’t a cloud in the sky nor a gust of wind, and it is far too hot.”

And he said something like: “Oh really, and are your diamond shoes too tight, too?”

Which was, now I think about it, entirely the correct response.

Because I love sunshine: live off it, in fact, and have spent many years of general depression being exacerbated by lack of sun. And so I should be very grateful and not complain at all … but then. I am British. It is my nature to complain.
And I’m so very good at it. We all are.

So, when the temperature rose to about 32C today, and inside my flat, which has a genius design of one whole wall of south facing windows and no air-conditioning (which I have never had anyway, but appreciate is quite good for hot people, but terrible for Teh Environment) and no other windows, so no possibility of a cross-breeze at all, it felt hotter. Quite a lot hotter. This, apparently is normal for San Francisco, where houses don’t have air conditioning ‘because it is too cold and wet in San Francisco, so we don’t need it’.
Insert hollow laughter here. And sweating.
Hollow laughter and sweatin.

Then the fact that sweaty wrists against the hot metal of a laptop (itself struggling against overheating) is one of my least favourite things in the whole wide world?…

Yeah, I did some complaining.

So did my flowers.

However; I am very grateful to live here, and it is very nice and I love it very much and I wouldn’t be without the sunshine again for all the tea in Yorkshire.

(But if someone could just cast a magic spell that would magically make my flat about twenty degrees cooler, I would be very happy to hear it)

(P.S. I have tried putting a fan and a bowl of ice in front of the window like they do in the movies, but that turned out to be bollocks).

As a member of the San Francisco modern art museum (a-he-he-hem, get me, etc) I do like to think that ALL of the art in it is partially mine. I like to think that one day, should I happen to fancy taking one of my pieces of art and displaying it at home for a while, they would be completely fine with that.

Although because I am only the lowest level of member (having realised it would be cheaper to join than it would to pay for us and all the visitors we have had at various points, by quite a long way) it would probably have to be quite a small piece of art. One of the lesser Van Goghs, perhaps. And because we have a dual membership, it would probably have to be half of one of those. but I’m sure I would get to choose which half, because they seem nice.

But I know that they’ll be fine with me having one, because I am a member, so everything is technically a bit mine, anyway.

Which is why I would like, really, to know that my personal possessions were being better protected. Perhaps by large burly people with mean-looking faces and, I don’t, know, guns, probably.

They are not.

They are, from the looks of things, being protected by the least scary guards I have ever seen in my life. They are quite frail. And have some mobility problems. And don’t like shouting, or sounding authoritative. I haven’t get checked on the guns thing, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t gottem.

Take for example, the security guard in the photography galleries, when faced with the ever-odious problem of a twat on his mobile phone while we were there last Friday.

It rang, loudly. Some digitised version of a jaunty early classical number. With a samba beat, from the sounds of it. It rang in the next room along.

One ring. The security guard in the gallery in which we were standing sprung into action.
Being about 90 years old, and with multiple hearing aid devices plugged into each ear, springing into action meant juddering into movement, which at least reassured us that she wasn’t a dead person gone into rigor mortis in a standing position; or, more likely, an exhibit. She took a step toward the next gallery, and the noise, a businesslike look on her face.

The phone rang again.
She shuffled another step forward.

The phone rang again, loudly.
She shuffled forward and step.

The phone rang AGAIN, and this time was answered by a loud cowboyesque voice.
“YELLO?! Oh! HEY!”

Our fearless art-protector moved toward the villain. By this point, with the speed of a tortoise with a gammy knee, our fearless culture warrior had moved about four feet. She was about a third of the way across one room: there was a whole other room to go.

“HEY YEAH! I’M ON THA TURD FLAW!” Shouted the cowboy. I took a couple of steps across to see through to the next room. He was actually wearing a big black hat. The big baddie.

Captain Snailwalker, outraged at his choice to carry on the conversation, had taken a sudden turn of urgency: She was now moving at the speed of golden syrup rolling off a slightly slanted cold spoon rather than a completely level one, as previously.

‘WHATCHOO DOIN? JUST HANGIN OUT IN THE GIFT SHAAAP?’ he said, having clearly decided that this was the perfect time and place to shoot the shit about relative location, details, digestive problems etc. He carried on shouting about the difference between being downstairs and being upstairs and whether the person downstairs should come up or whether he, upstairs, might go down.

Interestingly, the same might have been achieved by just walking over to the balcony of that particular room and shouting at the same volume to wherever his conversationee happened to be.
It’s a very open building.

We were sitting on a bench and watching the progress of The Queen of Zombie Security by this point. We’d had time to discuss it, decide that that was what we were going to do, sit down and place bets on whether she’d get there by the time he was off the phone. She was just over half way there by this point.

He, meanwhile, didn’t seem to notice that the slowest human torpedo ever created was heading toward him - slowly, but inevitably creeping toward him. Like death.

Clearly no fan of speaking in an inappropriately loud voice in an art gallery, she now started to try and combat the man doing exactly that by speaking in an inordinately quiet one.

“essussee sto’talkin peas.” she whispered, quietly. We could just about hear her mumbling from the edge of other room.

The cowboy paid no heed, and carried on shouting. She shuffled forward.
‘essusee! essusee!’

She was now mere steps from the man. Only a couple of metres more - which would easily be covered in, perhaps, a good three minutes, at her speed - and Boy he was going to be in TROUBLE.

“EssUSSEE, sto’talkin peas!” we heard her hissing almost directly in front of the man.
“OH! I’M SORRY MA’AM, I DIDN’T REALISE!” said the cowboy, and spent thirty seconds signing off with his correspondent two floors down.

Satisfied, she turned slowly around, and started coming back our way.

It was, we decided, the perfect time to carry out that heist we’ve been planning all this time (and especially because everything in there at least partially belongs to me, obviously) - so My Beloved should start taking things from the walls that caught his fancy, and I would start finding things we didn’t like so much, or were to heavy to take, and just licking them. Because seriously: what was the worst that could happen?

But then as she came shuffling back to her place we realised that we would not be pilfering and art-licking today. After all, that’s probably what they wanted us to do. Why else would you recruit the army of the undead to perform you security detail, unless you were trying to lure in the master criminals for a major sting operation.

It is a brilliant plan. Brilliant.

I commend my employees at the museum for thinking of it, and for endevouring to keep my art - if not my peaceful art-enjoying experience - safe in such a winsomely devious fashion.

Bravo, mon petit curators! Bravo!
(I get to say bravo, you see, because I am a member of an art gallery. I also get to use a tiny fork when I eat donuts, and to occasionally click at waiting staff. It’s all in the membership information)
Bravo!

I am learning Spanish! I am, even more Californianally, learning Spanish IN THE GYM.

Only by podcasty thing, I mean. I don’t actually have a personal fitness and vocabulary coach who will encourage me through twenty minutes cardio then order me to drop and give them twenty plural conjugated verbs (with correct gender-specific definite articles) . I’ve got headphones.

Anyway, I’m learning Spanish. Please don’t take this as an opportunity to try talking to me in Spanish in the comment box because:
a) I am only taking my Spanish aurally/orally at the moment. Sorry, that sounds rude. It isn’t.
b) I am rubbish.

I am probably more rubbish because I don’t necessarily repeat my phrases out loud as often as I should, mainly because I’m in a gym, usually with a few people and as oddball as they might be - and trust me, I’m getting to know the characters: the guy who spends 80% of his time on the crosstrainer looking behind him to check out his own bottom in the mirror; the woman who clutches her forehead to her calves after half an hour on the bike, which is both impressive (as she’s about 70), and slightly offputting (as she refuses to wear anything but a highlegged leotard and tan support tights while working out), and many others, who I will tell you about another time.

And also because I find the choices of phrases annoying. The way their conversations go is not the way I think that conversations should always (logically) go. In one particularly annoying example, the gentle and charming instructor was discussing countries of origin with his young assistant.

“I am from England” she said.
“I am ALSO from England” he said. This was useful, in that he had introduced the word ‘also’ for the first time, but less so in that he didn’t carry on to provide the Spanish for the next logical step in the converation:
“Well, should we just speak in English then, yeah?”
Which I felt was sadly lacking.

So I don’t listen and repeat as much as I should.

But when the gym session is finished, I practice on My Beloved.

He says he doesn’t really need Spanish lessons, because he learnt it in school. He says that he can get a reminder of the basics, and then once I start getting to things he didn’t learn in school (more than fifteen years ago, please note), he will take up the lessons.

What this means in practice, of course, is that he knows the phrase for ‘Is there a bank near here?’ - and from some variations on that phrase. And basically sod all else.

Which mean that our post-lesson lessons - my repitition session, his reminder - usually go like this (but in Spanish):

ME: “Hello, how are you”
HIM: “I am good thank you”
(ME IN ENGLISH: now you ask me)
HIM: “How are you?”
ME: “I am Very Good thank you. How are You-if-I-am-Speaking-to-someone-in-a-formal-setting?”
HIM: “What?”
(ME IN ENGLISH: just say fine thank you)
HIM: “Fine thank you”
ME: “What is your name?”
HIM: “Is there a bank near here?”
ME: “Nonono - My name is Anna: What is YOUR name?”
HIM: “Ah! My name is El Belovedo!”
ME: “I am enchanted to meet you”
HIM: “Um. Is there a bank near here?”
ME: “I am from England”
HIM: “Yes”
ME: “Where do you come from? England?”
HIM: “Is there a bank near here?”
ME: “GAH!”
HIM: “Where is the bank?”

Etc.

Interestingly, pretty much the only thing I come out of these lessons remembering is the phrase for ‘Is there a bank near here?’, which I didn’t know before and which hasn’t, weirdly, come up in the lesson plan so far.

I don’t know what we’re going to do, when we do get round to going to Mexico, but at this rate I feel proud that we’ll be able to get mugged just as often as we want.
Hurrah!

Or, in this case: Whole Pig’s Face/Plastic bag.

Perhaps there was some greater significance to it. Perhaps the word ‘HEAD’ in the mural above is a clue to some deeper mystery (it certainly reminded me of an Edmund Crispin mystery I read ages ago, but can’t remember the name of, though that seems a little bit of an obscure reference for an alleyway in the heart of the Mission). Perhaps it is a protest. Perhaps it was dinner.

Perhaps it just was, what it was:
Just a pig’s face in an alley:

Whatever: it’s not the thing I was expecting to find that day.

I have seen hell, and it sells processed cheese and lawnmowers. And it is next to a motorway, and has a carpark the size of the moon. And before you know it, it will suck you in and you will walk out with a debt and a bag and a confused look on your face.

If you have not been to Walmart, I would certainly recommend you go. Once. Or, if you cannot get to a large one: a supersupersuperstore, I think they may be called, you could just spend an hour sitting in your fridge thinking about how magical would be if your fridge was 700,000 times as large and sold sofas.

The thing was, before we went to it, I could have sworn I’d already been - because it’s such universal shorthand for evil sprawling superstoreness that even if I hadn’t actually been to one, I thought I knew what it was like. I didn’t. Or not really. I was imagining the biggest shop my imagination could hold. It turns out that that shop is NOTHING: naaaaaatheeeeeeeeng compared to what it actually turned out to be like.

But we first decided to go because … actually, it’s really boring, it was on the way back from somewhere we had to be, and we heard they sold cheap housewares: we ran in, grabbed a bin, paid and skipped out as fast as we could. This is my normal method for shopping. It’s a ram raid approach.

But when there are other people involved, you cannot do that.
We have recently had a lot of guests (thus the quietness - as previously mentioned, over and over again in a ‘but I’m BUSY’ kind of whining tone) - and it is important to take them places they want to go; And if they have heard about the enormous cheap shopping trees that grow in this wondrous land, and wish to go there and feast on their fruit, THAT is where you must take them.

So we went back to Walmart, so they could buy some clothes. And some CDs. And some snackfood to take back to their colleagues and friends. And some trinkets. Meanwhile, while they were doing that, we could get some stuff we’d been meaning to get. What stuff? Any stuff At ALL - because that’s what they sell.

Imagine the biggest supermarket you’ve ever been in. Imagining it? Ok.
Now imagine a really big chemist, and stick that on the side. And an HMV. And a garden centre, and a sports equipment shop, and a Woolworths (RIP, Woolies), and goodness knows what else.
And stick them all together, in square acres of aisles and shelves stretching over your head, taller then the reach of your arms, and each joining on to the next set of aisles, selling something else. And the next. And the next.

And then take some people who DO like shopping, like our lovely guests.
And some people who don’t. Like us.

_________________________________

After a certain amount of time, you could have found us, pale and weak, somewhere between the 16 aisles of shoes and the tennis-court-sized maze of electrical goods. Every now and again we could see one or another of our guests, clutching brightly coloured goods, surfacing for air at the end of an aisle, looking around, sniffing the section and identifying the rest of their pack before diving back in. It was like otter-spotting, if otters fished for discount vests.

He leant on the handle of the trolley, and I leant on the wire front, twisting my fingers through the mesh.

“I could take the trolley and do the grocery shop for the week.”
“If you take the trolley, where will we put all the things they’re buying”
“Well, we can’t just stand here”
“Can you see somewhere else?”
“Is there a gun section?”
“I should think so.”
…
“No, we’re not going to stand there. You just want to tut at people.”
“No, I want to shoot people”
“…”
“I want everyone to die. How long have we been here?”
“38 minutes”
“Uuuuuuuuurgh”

Eventually we tossed a coin, and I went off to find some cat food. I remembered, vaguely, that I’d seen some kind of pet section, somewhere off to the right as we’d come in. As far as I could remember, that was through children’s clothing; Junior Miss clothing; ladies clothing; and euphemistically-titled-fat-ladies-clothing; through cosmetics, jewellery, ironing boards and shelves, through fabrics and car care, down through the DIY and tool section, and just to the left of hairbrushes and such.

I wandered off.

It was weirdly quiet in there.

People walked, unspeaking, barely glancing at things around them, silently glding through the aisles and only stopping to scoop something brightly coloured into the giant wheeled consumer-vats in front of them.

I wasn’t like that, I told myself, as I wandered through the shop, wishing I’d brought better walking shoes. I was totally and utterly different from these people. Because I was completely aware of it all, and observing it from a lofty, intellectual position, I was other: different: I would never be sucked into this world.

____________

Twenty minutes later I arrived back at the trolley, with a laden basket.

“Anna, what is this?”
“Cat food!”
“And this?”
“It is cat toys?”
“No no. That accounts for this little corner of the basket. What is in the rest of the basket?”
“…”
“Anna?”

“An instruction book with eight free hooks, three pattern books and four super-sized balls of brightly coloured wool”

“Um?…”

“I took up crochet.”

“Between here and the pet food section…”
“Yes. I crochet now. Suck it. Right. Where is the vodka aisle?”
“Hopefully not on the other side of the guns?…”

 
I am a sucker.

(By the way, if anyone knows of any handy online guides to crochet - maybe video ones - or knows of a beginners crochet club or class in San Francisco, that would be brilliant. I’ve got as far as balling the wool, and this instruction book appears to be written in Maths, and I’m too scared to go back to try and find a better one, as I’ll probably come out with a ride-on lawnmower. And I don’t even have a lawn.)

I have, from my window, a great view.

It is not a particularly San Franciscan view in some ways; there are no picturesque painted clapperboard houses or sweeping views over the Bay.

But there is an enormous freeway, and some other lanes of traffic besides; and a dead end street with some kind of factory at the end of it, and a garage, and some low-key industrial looking buildings. And those are things that are in San Francisco too (as well as lots of other places), so that will do for now.

Today I was mainly trying to work, but, while gazing thoughtfully between important thoughts, and not-very important thoughts - kept getting distracted by things outside the window.

There was:

- A police chase, involving two cars racing. One of whom had - we heard later, from the extremely informative homeless guy at the bus stop - knocked a motorcyclist off his bike, and it was like BAM, man, but the dude looked ok, like, he got up, and he was like WOAH, and the car was like VROOM, and it was insane and have you got eighty cents?

- Not one but TWO young men popping around the corner on their way down the street, one walking the dog, one walking his girlfriend - who decided that it was the perfect place to unteather their boynozzle, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of wee. Which was nice. I didn’t wave, as they didn’t look up and see there was someone not getting her work done on the other side of the road. But I might have done if they’d looked, in the hope that they might wave back. They looked to be wearing quite porous shoes, both of them.

- Another person, also in the alley, but this time running down it, followed by a large happy dog, pusing what looked like an empty, possibly stolen, hospital gurney. I have no idea what happened to him. He completely disappeared: which is interesting as it’s a dead and street. Maybe it was a magic gurney.

- A middle-aged businessman on a the kind of push-scooter I last used when I was 6.

- Another police car, this time pulling over someone who had clearly been going too fast coming off the motorway and needed to be told off. This happens a lot. And you know, because you hear the police car going WOO!, and then the police officer shouting over the car’s loudspeaker, and saying ‘Mhmll over mlmlmleft, pls’ in increasingly grumpy tones as the driver doesn’t appear to understand what they’re saying. Which frankly is fair enough, since they mainly seem to speak gibberish. I look forward to talking to a police officer one day and finding out if they all talk as if they have something large and chewy in their mouths.

(And speaking of which - this was a quiet day at the - ahem - private gentleman’s club down the road, but I’ll tell you about that another day)

- Some kind of troubadour with an accordion.

- A nice moon.

I do wish I had the right brain in my head at the moment. Someone seems to have stolen it and replaced it with my procastinatey-brain. And it certainly doesn’t help that there’s so much urban drama out there.

Well, urban drama and nice moons. And unintelligible po-pos. They don’t speak like that on Law and Order, you know. maybe that’s because they’re detectives. Maybe that’s part of the detective exam: “Can you say pull over to the left without sounding like the Elephant man eating a sponge: Yes/No”.

Maybe I’m still a little overtired and procrastinatey.
Yes, that’ll be it.
Bed.

We were walking down to the beach. I was very impressed by this one cafe and it’s wholehearted, all-inclusive customer satisfaction plan.

Because lets face it, anyone can PROVIDE food.
Many others may offer some kind of guarantee.
But how many …

… will offer to service your food?

I mean, it is good and I would have loved to take advantage of it; there’s a sandwich I have with a shonky ignition and I’ve been meaning to get it looked at, but I think it might be just out of service plan.

When moving abroad, was that I’d miss the people I love too much.
I talk to them more, see them on video more, and, with an amazing and heart-swelling regularity over the last months - I have had the pleasure of seeing them more than I might hope to in a year. Friends from work, friends from the interwebs, family of mine, and family of my beloved’s. We have been blessed by lovely visitors and the chance to share our new city with them, and in the doing so, I have learnt TONNES of things to bore you with about the place I now live.

And bore you with them I now can.
Because for the moment, people have retreated to the other end of IM windows and video chat pop-ups and phone lines and lots of lovely words in emails - so still nearby in many ways - and we are implementing the strict living-here and working-here routines that we haven’t been so good at keeping to when there were so many fun people to entertain.

Which means I’m back to my lovely blog. Or that’s the plan. And it’s a strict, strict plan.
Hello again.
Hugs her corner of the internet, tightly.