I’m very behind with blogging things. I warn you. So if I keep coming up with things that sound like they were yesterday and fresh in my mind - they ARE fresh in my mind, but they’re also from a few weeks ago. Really, I’m just really slowly ticking them off the ‘things to blog about’ list that sits next to my bed and in the diary in my bag. There is a lot going on right now. Sorry.

ANYWAY.

I now like opera. This may SEEM in direct opposition to a few posts I wrote a few years ago…

… about …

…. ‘opera and why I hate it’ … sorry for pauses, I got really led off there reading other posts from that era. And looking at this photo twenty times. Man, I have to find a way of taking my brain back to the place it was in those couple of years ago.

ANYWAY.

The point is, I used to hate opera. I like the music fine, or some of it - but don’t understand the gravitas and the elitism and the preciousness of it. And the point of paying SO much for the staging and the costumes when, really, the point was that they were singing at each other in situations where normal human beings would never sing. Actually I still don’t understand that.

The point is, I have discovered I quite like opera. Not just the music now, I quite like the production of it. I understand why you might want to get caught up in it, as a story.

Admittedly a really simple story that moves very slowly because you have to say everything nineteen times at varying pitches … but I admit, there is a story there. And I kind of like it. I kind of like opera. But only - and, you know, it’s a slow process, baby steps - if you can have hot dogs at the same time.

So basically: there was a simulcast of Tosca at the Giants baseball stadium. It was free, and you could take a picnic and (if you registered early) sit in the infield. And if you didn’t register, or did and were late, you could sit in the normal baseball seats and go and buy baseball game food. And watch the opera. And you could huddle there under blankets and fleeces (because it’s cold here in the summer)(yes, I know). And if you needed the loo, you could just wander off whenever. And if you wanted to eat hot dogs and chicken tenders and garlic fries and drink a whole bunch of mediocre Ballpark wine, you could do that too.

But the funny thing was, even with these distractions, I got involved in the story of the opera. In fact, I probably got more involved than I would have if I’d felt like I was under an obligation to stay quiet and proper and posh and quiet.

I liked it. I understood it. more than that, I understood why I should like it. And I like opera. Kind of. I mean, I like it in ball parks.

Actually, because we could talk (very quietly, obvs) during the performance, I understood for the first time why, when it’s staged, it’s so often formal and nostalgic and wooden: because of the physical demands of singing mean you have to stand up very straight, and in particular positions, in order to hit those notes and at that volume. That was interesting.

But I also just liked it. Loved it, in some bits, though I didn’t know why. When something dramatic happened, I can’t remember what, I gasped and put my hand over my mouth and said “Oh NO!”, which is an unusually excitable reaction to opera, for me. And then, when something had happened that I wasn’t sure of, I suddenly realised I was weeping.

Not just feeling sad. Actually Weeping.
The lead character (Tosca, the fat lady previously discussed) was sad about something and the song she sang was so sad that the whole audience in the baseball park - about 30,000 from the look of them - fell completely and utterly silent. And there were seagulls swooping overhead and the darkness of the bay behind the screen and it was just so quiet and so lovely, and I wasn’t quite sure why this fat lady was so sad at this particular point but she was, and I wept. A lot. I wasn’t quite sure what it was I was weeping about … but I wept.

And then.when she finished, I looked around at some of my other not-usually-opera-fans around me, and they were wiping their eyes.

It was a beautiful, casual, wonderful thing.

I tried to get a video to record the scale and atmosphere of the event …

And I would have got a lot further with that if by beloved wasn’t a complete dick.

But yes. Opera.

Not as bad as I previously mentioned.
Yes, this one in particular happened to end (ricidulously suddenly) with the cliched fat lady singing - but let me state for the record: the OTHER fat lady (me) survived.

But only with the help of garlic fries.

Well, they’re not good for EVERYONE, and sometimes, not for the people involved. But they’re good for some people. Or, you know, me.

There’s that moment where someone too busy texting walks straight into small piece of poo on the pavement. Or shouting loudly on their mobile phone on the train when a fly shoots through the window and straight into their throat.

And it’s nothing wrong with THEM, really, or with what they’re doing. It’s abot the way I feel about the what they’re doing. And how the what affects everyone else..

ANYWAY:

Best of all are the people I saw the other day: three guys helping their friend, Fourth Guy, push a car down the road. It was a beautiful thing.

Well, the team work thing? That was beautiful.

But the thing was.

They were all dressed in the modern gangsta costume of a huge white t-shirt and a pair of oversixed jeans. The kind of jeans that - apparently - are cool if you’ve inherited them from your older brother who can’t wear them because he’s gone to prison, and people can tell that, because they’re very large, so you have to hold them up when you walk.

Believe me when I say all four young men were rocking the full ‘my brother passed on these clothes, they;re eight times too big for me, I’m going to wear them even if i have to keep my fingers firmly gripped around my beltloops at alltimes’ look

And the good thing was:

When, in the middle of a busy San Franciscan street, pushing a car whose starter was having some problem down the middle of the road, the four boys, already with trousers around their thighs, pushed; hands too busy to hold their waistbands.

People I saw at LEAST two pairs of low-slung gangstapants fall to the ground. And that was in the fifty metres in front of my house.

Men, pushing this car
you look hard; hanging so loose…
trousers: they fall down.

My telly is, in many ways, the epitome of California. Not content with simply giving a service and letting me decide how I feel about that service on my own terms, it is determined that I should have a nice day while doing it.

Plug in anything, or switch something on, and it pops up with a happy little message.

A new external device is connected
Do you want to enjoy this?

Enjoy it?
How do you know I want to enjoy it? How do I know I’m going to enjoy it? It might be terrible. I wish to USE it, certainly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Let’s not start wildly attributing emotional judgments to things without a few introductory conversations and a general sense of where this whole relationship is going first, hmn?

It doesn’t get any better when you press ‘yes’, of course.

“Select the input source you would like to appreciate” indeed.
It’s just, you know, it’s a machine. It’s asking if I want to connect it to another machine. Why do we have to get all personable and happy about it?

/Britishgrumpyperson

You know how, even though you don’t need to read every sign, you generally know what they say, because you’re so accustomed to the shape of the words? Or used to assuming what they say, because of where they are, so you don’t actually have to read them. You just note something is there, and then your brain fills in the rest?

Because you know a short word next to a long word painted on a garage door will say NO PARKING, or that letters in red in the middle of a road way they’ll probbaly say No Entry, that kind of thing.

Well, there was a sign on a garage door that was driving me nuts - just a few roads away from our house - and I went past it on a bus a few times and, out of the corner of my eye, could see there were lots of words on the door, words that my brain couldn’t rearrange into any shape they knew. But then I’d forget to look out for it at the right point the next time, and the same thing would happen again and again and again.

Anyway, after a few weeks, I saw it, and remembered it instantly, because it was phrased really oddly and it took me a couple of seconds to work out why. It said (almost exactly this, I think)

Old warehouse driveway
Car is missing! What happened?
The sound of towing.

Yes. Someone has written a bloody haiku to explain that if you block their access, they’ll get your car removed.

Oh San Francisco.
You are so very random.
And also awesome.

I went on a bit of a tin rampage. I’ve always had a thing about old tins - old every day product tins for gravy or spices or medicines or sweets. Just a complete sucker for them. The lettering the fact they are useful and impermanent things cased in these very colourful, very permanent metal objects - I love them a lot. It’s something about the mixture of the boring everyday thing and the longlasting, special remainder.

So i got extra super excited when I found a tin toy at the flea market. It was the girl’s equivalent of a tin toy car or a toy tin army, as far as I could see. It was a tiny fridge. And it was extremely cute. On the next table at the same stall, I found an oven.

I loved them both. But, after asking how much one was, and receiving a bad answer, and after discussion with my beloved about the stupid things we should be saving money for, just in case … I walked away.

I walked away and wandered up and down the rows of amazing stalls (occasionally stopping to buy other tins, when they were cheap. I got a gorgeous little mailbox and a tin globe money bank, as well as some pharmaceutical things) - but I couldn’t stop thinking about my kitchen appliances.

The thing was, I’d had this idea about getting three box frames - and maybe three flat frames for the boxes, and then putting them, icon-like, in the kitchen. And once I’d thought of it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a gorgeous little house design idea. Especially once we go back to the UK. It will be not only a reminder of the place, but a reminder of the culture and the Dream and blah blah blah.

Anyway. So after more than an hour, after wandering several rows, and oohing and ahhing at a bunch of things, we had to go home in time for The Apprentice in the UK… and I ran back to the stall. Just to get pictures of the boxes so I could find them cheaper on eBay. And I did that (and found a sink as well, on another part of the table) and I returned to my beloved, and he told me to go back and buy them, whatever the price, because he could tell I was going to be sad if I didn’t.

Reader: I bought them.

And I LOVE THEM.

And, actually, I looked them up on ebay later, and i got them far cheaper than I could have otherwise. So Hells Yes. I win.
Tin wins.

I didn’t get the lamp, but I got these, and I Love these.
Yay.

I have been, I mean. Sowwy. I have three days in any given week where I can do me-blogging without feeling like I should be doing something else. And when those days get filled with other fun things, like real life, or going away, or lovely people coming to visit - and then I have NO days. And then with lots of things going on and stuff up in the air and … well, other reasons I’ll explain another time (No, before you ask, I’m not pregnant. I swear, you lot are worse than my mother for guessing at that. And one of you IS my mother) sometimes it’s hard to tie my brain down in one place.

So I’ll get on that, because it will help, perhaps, if I do.

But in the meantime, having two brilliant houseguests at the weekend, I got to go out and do lots of my favourite tour guide things rather than sitting at home and staring at a flashing cursor, which I do a LOT.

And that? That was brilliant, because I’m getting to really really love this city, and trying to learn more about it every day, thanks to a stack of city history books and guides and local writers and things. And frankly? Tailoring routes and itineraries to perfectly suit the personalities and capabilities and interests and energy levels of all my favourite people is more fun than anything else I can think of. If I could have a job just doing that, please? That would be the best thing ever. Thanks.

Anyway. There’s more to say on that another time. And if I have some more time at some time, there will be much more to say about it. Tonnes.

What I came here tonight to say was
a) I’m not dead, I was just being vewy vewy quiet. Sowwy. But
b) one of the things we did with our friends was to go to Alameda Flea Market - which is one of my favourite places ever in the world and may soon be the root of my financial destruction, but never mind - where I wll tell you about the things I DID buy in my very next post … but my point, my POINT (I had one, I did, it’s not compulsory in blogging but I really honestly did) was that I wanted to share my utter, utter dismay that My Beloved wouldn’t agree to my buying this:

He said that, as a lamp purchase, it was “a sackable offence”.

I have been feelng aggrieved about this ever since. Becuse I think we can all agree that this lamp, right, is AWESOME.

That is all. (For today)