Ok, I’m actually stuck in a hotel room in Wine Country (yeah, it’s a hard life, it really is) inbetween lots and lots of guests, people’s birthdays, elections, other worky things and stuff and stuff and planning for NaNoWriMo and stuff.

Um.

Let’s play a game!

Hm.

It’s the ‘let’s think of a game then play that’ game!

No. It’s the word association game!
I say a word.
The the next person in the cricle says the next word. Then we carry on from that word, and then we invite a panel of psychoanalysts in, then we all let our mothers know they should start worrying about us.

I say:
PLUG

Four days later Chuffing heck, you guys are AWESOME. You really do know how to amuse yourselves and I think you’re lovely.
I will go back to trying to entertain you soon.

update Oh, and I’ve closed the comments because it was just brought to such a perfect conclusion by some of the nicest community a blogger could have (that would be you).

It always used to be the phrase from my mother’s generation to mine - she said, sounding ridiculously old all of a sudden just because she couldn’t think of a better opening line - if, perhaps they thought you should have tried harder or done better, or perhaps behaved in some other way that suggested your socks were less than taut:

“Pull your socks up”, they would say.

And you would be able to go on your way knowing that next time you would perform better because your advisor had so succinctly pinpointed the problem (loose socks).

It’s trousers, now.

And believe me, the phrase “PULL YOUR TROUSERS UP” is never far from my lips. It was never far when I lived on the shores of the English channel, and is even more often there now I live on edge of the Pacific ocean. I never say it, though, obviously. Because common wisdom says that people with their trousers halfway down their legs are either mad or very dangerous.

Or having a poo, I suppose.
But you don’t meet many of them on the street. One hopes.

It’s a modern Gangster look. As adopted by old school rap artists and their colleagues, by the truly tough at heart, and by those who really want people to think they’re tough. Even though they’re not. Really. At all.
The teenagers of Hassocks were well into it.

The trousers have to be pulled quite a way down the legs, the waistband (the term ‘waist’ here used in the loosest possible sense: literally) nestling somewhere around the mid-thigh. It’s called sagging. Never say I don’t do research for my blog. I totally looked it up on wikipedia and EVERYTHING. The trousers top off half way up their thigh, but far above, their boxer shorts rise. All the way up to wear they should normally go. around the waist. Where trousers are.

Some say it’s representative of a certain toughness borne out of urban poverty (the “We were so poor I had to wear my big brother’s hand-me-downs and I had to learn to fend for myself” effect. Though on reflection you could probably stick a “motherfucker!” on the end there for good measure, why not) - the other root source is said to be prison clothing, where they take away your belt just in case you hang yourself.

The funny thing is, the boys round here who follow the fashion - and there are many many many - wear belts. They wear belts, which sit around the top of their jeans, at mid thigh-level, not actually doing a job. Just being weight that serves only to pull their jeans further down, which, frankly, is fair enough, because they’re Being Worn WRONG. In order to counter this effect, many young men are forced to walk down the street - limping slightly (as they will, it’s apparently a sign that denotes having simply ginormous balls and a penis the size of a Viennetta, though it’s easily confused with ‘skipping down the street because you’re pretending you’re Strawberry Shortcake in your head and singing the theme from Heidi‘ but, you know, they try not to think about that reading too much) and also HOLDING UP THEIR TROUSERS WITH ONE HAND.

I’m not sure if I can say this strongly enough: If you’re having to hold your trousers up with your hand even though you’re wearing a belt, you are officially Doing It Wrong.

I don’t know if you’re reading this, saggy-boys. This probably isn’t your kind of blog; we don’ share much common ground - I spend a lot of time talking about cultural differences and social observations; you spend a lot of time HOLDING YOUR TROUSERS UP WITH ONE HAND.

Do you see what the difference is there? I’m able to do stuff, because MY trousers are staying up without my direct intervention. It’s like they were MADE to do that.

Of course, people are sometimes wary of these boys with their half-empty attitude to trousers. They feel that they are in some way scary, or threatening, that they are not only intending to demonstrate their toughness/criminality through their clothing, that they may lend action to this later on to demonstrably prove their toughness.

Now answer me this: What the fuck are they going to do to you?
Seriously. Their legs are half bound by heavy denim. What the hell can they POSSIBLY do to harm you or anyone else?

They might have a gun tucked in their waistband, I suppose. But then, by the time they’ve bent all the way down there to get it, you could probably have kneed them in the face. Or at least run away shouting “Hay-elp! HAY-ELP!” like Penelope Pitstop.

What else? Yes, they could steal your handbag, perhaps.
But only with one hand, and then waddle off down the street at a slow to moderate pace, handbag under one arm, other hand gripping their useless knee-belt, while you phone the police. And, maybe, if you can’t get through, phone the police in the next town, who might have to drive fifteen miles or so and then get stuck in a traffic jam and STILL pick him up before he gets to the next block, because the fuckwit’s got a belt around his knees and is running bent double because apparently ‘he doesn’t want them to fall down’.

That’s another thing I don’t quite get, here.
Apparently they’re forced to keep a hand constantly to the ‘waist’ band so their trousers don’t fall down. The boys waiting for a bus at the end of our street, all of them about fourteen or fifteen, with trouser-malfunctions and intense pride in that, pass the time waiting for the bus taking turns ganging up and pulling each others trousers down.
And oh the shame and the laughter and the humiliation when they do.

But. Um. Are your trousers not down already?
I can see your undercrackers. Is that not what people would usually be trying to protect?
Have we suddenly entered a new weird semi-Victorian age where the ankles are, once more, a truly sexual body part to be hidden at all costs? Or is it the knees?

Other than that, I’m a bit stuck as to the threateningness of it - and it IS threatening, apparently, whole cities and states have banned it, see that Wikipedia article I tirelessly looked up (but can’t be arsed to link to again, obv) for reference.

But I just can’t feel threat. The only threat I feel is the threat of not being able to hold it in one day and just blurting out “For the Love of CHRIST you look like an absolute TOOL! Just Pull Your TROUSERS UP! Is it that hard to comprehend how they work?”

And then the look on the moron’s face will turn overcast and stormy, and I will suddenly sense he is going to run after me and commit shennanigans. And I will run away. And then stop and wait for him because he’s trying to hold his trousers up at the same time, poor lamb, and it’s not going to be a fair race otherwise. And then I will run again. And then I will stop again. And then I will run again.
Until I get bored.

Either that or I could just make some leaflets about the mechanics of clothing and pass them out.
I do hope I’m not being culturally insensitive, am I?
Because I’ve encountered trouser-fucktards of all creeds and colours, and I think they’re ALL idiots, please trust me on that.
They’re idiots, every one.

Are you reading, by some fluke? You, with half-mast kecks?
Then yes. Yes, I mean you.
Moron.
Pull your damn trousers up.

I’m sitting here watching Martha Stewart talk about Halloween. My mouth is flapping open at the pure tasteless tastefulness of it all, and the incredible thing is, she’s just not stopping. I’ve tried waiting in the hope that if I just stare it intently enough, it’ll go away; I’ve tried turning over, but something just keeps me switching back and finding that …

… no, no, she’s still there, bibbitting away about making sure your floral arrangements match the fake blood trickling down the side of your mouth, and just how many pumpkins might be too many (answer: none. There is NO such thing as too many carved pumpkins, says Martha)

Things I never knew anyone would want to know, she is telling me:
How to make it look like there’s a frozen ghoul floating in your fruit punch, for example; how to make driveway decorations of gigantic spiders that glow in the dark out of all those polystyrene balls and rave sticks you have hanging about; DIY dry ice for your very own porch (wear gloves!), and how to make your child look like a chicken. How to make all your children look like chickens. How to make yourself look like a chicken, while cooking a chicken for all your children who look like chickens (don’t cook the children!).

I never realised the scale of Halloween in this country - not even slightly - until I came for a press trip to Alabama (last year? Only last year? Pissflaps, but this year has gone fast) and there were ghosts and witches hanging from almost every porch and in almost every window, and the stores that we stopped in had cobwebs on the doors and skeletons hanging off the end of every shelf. Every shelf, meanwhile, was groaning with fun-sized chocolate.

I thought ‘Well, maybe it’s just one of those kooky Southern things, eh?’

And then I moved here.

Two weeks after we arrived, in the middle of September, or so, I first noted that there were more bags of fun-sized confectionary than I would usually expect to see in any serious-sized shop. And then I started noticing orange ornaments and things going ‘BWA-HA-HA’ in quiet, tinny voices when I walked too close to their sensors in the toy aisles in the grocery store.

(I said store under duress there, by the way, but ‘chemist’ sounded wrong - it’s a drugstore, but what kind of chemist would sell laughing gravestones? That’s just tactless. And ’shop’ just sounded like I was trying too hard)

All the social and comedy and cultural events I was thinking of ploughing into now we’re getting more settled are all having their own ‘Spooky Month!’ and every other television station seems to be having its own ‘Thirteen Nights Of Halloween’ (which, strictly speaking - it being the eve or All Hallows and that - is a bit like having the fifteen eves of Christmas, or something. But no one IS speaking strictly, so it doesn’t matter: they are simply having a very jolly time hanging skeletons in doorways and making spiderwebs out of spun sugar and the dripping blood of a murdered bride out of strawberry jam).

Which is all well and good … I mean I absolutely seriously do not understand why such a powerfully Christian country is so skippy and excited about what could so easily appear to a bunch of aliens landing for the first time as a celebration of the occult, but whatever, I understand it’s probably tied up with the Day of the Dead and so many other things, and what the hell, people like it. It’s fun. It’s good fun, and people like it, and I like people enjoying themselves, no matter how weird it might be.

But MY problem is - and let’s not forget this is all about me, shall we? Because it is; it’s my sodding blog, that’s how they work, right? - I’m the most nervous thing since nerves were invented. Halloween is one thing at home: I don’t revel in it or end up at many fancy dress parties, for reasons we’ll come to very shortly. In fact, I’m more scared of Guy Fawkes night five days later because - well, quite apart from the burning human effigies thing - there’s a LOT of banging noises.

But here, I’m terrified of the very thought, because people LIKE to be scared over here, it seems.
They like it a lot. I, on the other hand, don’t.
At all.

____________________

As we found out yet again in Alabama last year. I’d been taken to a restaurant by a river - I’m not sure if any of y’all know the one, it’s owned by the sister of someone famous, apparently, and I was taken there to eat all the blackened shrimp, fried green tomatoes, crab claws and L.A caviar I could stuff in my mouth. And then some more. And some margaritas.

The only thing was that besides the raucous bluegrass band in the restaurant, entertainment was also being provided by a bunch of local schools who’d worked together to make a haunted house in the car park. It was the first weekend in October, after all.

I’d managed to avoid a nasty situation on the way in, when I’d seen a man in full ‘ghost pirate’ regalia walking toward me. There are a few things I can be prepared for, but two things I cannot under any circumstances take are:

a) Jumpy things
(I appreciate that covers most Halloween delights, yes. And most scary movies. And haunted houses. I once went round a whole haunted house ride in a theme park with some friends - not having wanted to appear weak or been a party pooper. When the special in-the-dark photo was printed at the end of the ride, you could see them, one screaming at something on my left, the other jumping at something appearing on my right, with me, wedged in the middle, perfectly serene due to the fact my fingers were wedged into my ears, and my thumbs pressed over my eyes. I’d spent the whole ride like that; from the moment the carriage juddered on the rails to the moment the brakes clanged it to a final stop and the seatbelt released)

2) People in full face masks.
(Can’t stand it. If i can’t read someone’s face, if their eyes are hidden behind gauze or pinholes or whatever, I will freak out at them. No matter whether they are approaching me as some kind of student prank, or their job, or some kind of complex and deep performance art: I will go quite postal in my freaked-out-ness.)

So on the way in the pirate had approached me, I’d managed to back off, look at something else, talk to a member of our party that had wandered off, and generally got away with it while still maintaining a professional air.

On the way out, our hosts told the assembled press (all three of us, I think, at that point) that we would go into the haunted house on the way out. “No, I won’t. I’ll just go look in the shop, if that’s ok?”

“You HAVE to come in, it’s a RIYYYUT!” they squeaked.

My fight or flight started to take the ugly path. “No. Seriously. No.”

“Oh comeahn! It’ll be great to write about?!”

“I’m here for the wildlife, really, and besides, I don’t think anyone wants to read about me screaming obscenities in the face of children for surprising me”

“Oh, we don’t mind a few naughty words! They’ll have heard them all before!”

“Not the ones I’ll be using, they haven’t.”

Eventually they left the tight-upper-lipped party-pooper in the car park where, knowing me, I probably gave up giving-up smoking once more - I’m always doing it on press trips; every bugger smokes - and ran around the outside of the gift hut trying to escape the pirate.

Only once I came face to face with him, while I was standing trying to maintain a professional conversation with some governmental representative of the tourist board and I was saying something about previous trips I’d done and places I’d be interested in going, and asking about where she covered when I noticed her eyes drifting over my shoulder and I turned around …

…. to find the ghostly pirate standing just a couple of feet behind me.

My temperate grown up professional conversation therefore ran “So is your work mainly focussed in the Gulf area at the moment and where do you think … the … whu? ARGH! FUCK! FUCKOFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFFFFFF!” before running away with my heels hitting my bottom and my arms flapping in the air while hot wet fear spurted horizontally from my tear ducts.

Well, it was either that or punch the pirate, and frankly I had no way of knowing there wasn’t a twelve-year-old girl in that suit.

Not that she wouldn’t have deserved it.

______________

By happy happenstance, I happen to be going out with the one man in the world that can give me a perfect excuse for not being the horror-lovin’ Halloweeny.

It’s his birthday, and since while growing up, that meant someone would ALWAYS turn up to your party with a sheet over their head and a bucket to collect sweets, no matter how many times you told them this was YOUR party (“you know, for me, so you can take my presents out of your fucking bucket please, Steve”) since that point he’s not been so into it.
Brilliant!

At home, that merely meant going out to avoid pasty little scallies with a traffic cone on their head banging on the door and shouting ‘Trick or TREAT!’ and demanding money, then walking past pubs (full of unconvincing young men in complex costumes covered in fake blood and young women dressed up as sexy vampires, sexy devils, sexy witches, sexy kittens (?), etc etc) tutting before meeting up with friends somewhere rational and getting drunk.

But here, the whole thing is so prevalent, so insistent, so fun, so HUGE, that I’m not sure I can go out at all without bumping into someone in a scary mask, and then possibly bumping them off.

Which has led to a very awkward conversation to hold with a man who will be so far away from all the friends and family and everything you might want to be near on quite a big birthday.

“Darling, anything you want for your 30th, anything you want to do. Anything at all, we can do that… Apart from going out. You really want to? You do? Ohgod I suppose we can if you REALLY want, but don’t hold me responsible for the consequences…”

He is, to be fair the only man in the world I would do something that scary for, of course.
And if I started punching children out of fear, let it be known that it could have been avoided, and it’s All His Fault.
You can be my witnesses.

_________

And yes, feel free to add these things, particularly masks to the ‘thing I am scared of’ list, anyone who might be keeping a tally. I think that brings us up to about no.87,405.

I can’t sleep, can you tell?

When I worked in Iona, there were a constant stream of perky volunteers with names full of consonants, usually all at once. They had a patient attitude and only a small sigh visible in their smile when you called them ‘Magagagdgrada?‘ for the nineteenth time that day.

So I know the pain suffered by me when the lady on the other side of the desk looks up and says “So this is your chequebook ….OhhhhhhNa?” is absolutely nothing in comparison.

And yet my god it carries the capability of annoying me more than anything else I have yet found in this lovely city. Country, in fact. I’ve been other places, and the problem existed there too:

Only very very occasionally will my name be pronounced ‘Anna’. With the first ‘A’ as in ‘Tan’ or ‘as-it-should-be’.

A lot of the rest of the time, it will get mixed up with a latin Ana or Russian Anya, both of which can be pronounced with a longer ‘Ahhhhhh’ sound at the beginning. Then sometimes, just to mix it up, it gets pronouced ‘Aayna’. You know, like ‘anus’.

The thing that drives me crazy is that if my name was ‘Joanna’ (which it actually is, but they don’t know that) they would have no problem pronouncing it with a little pointy ‘a’. If my names was ‘Hannah’, no one would try to pronounce it ‘Harghhhhnah’. But take away that ‘h’, and suddenly it gets more confusing.

I just feel terrible - because not only are they pronouncing it ‘Arghnah’ or ‘Ohhhhna’ But it’s always always ALWAYS with the question mark on the end, and I feel dreadful that I’m having to give them a name that causes them so much pain having to try and pronounce out loud.

And no, that wouldn’t be a problem if giving them my surname instead wouldn’t be just so much worse. Because I can deal with variations on Anna a lot better than I can the amount of mangling it’s possible to give the name ‘Pickard’. Pick. Ard. PICK-’ard. Not hard. Not, in fact, even ‘ard.

“Muzz Pickud? Pickord?’ Packurrrrrd? Pickd?” They stumble, over and over again.

Which would be fine if you could get through a single conversation without sharing names - but, in a wonderfully service-driven culture, you just can’t. “Can I take a name for that delivery?” “Let me take your name, ma’am, we’ll call you to the counter just as soon as it’s ready” “And who am I speaking to?” “That’ll be 3.50, if I can take a name for this coffee, we’ll shout out when it’s ready …”

So when asked to give a surname I often end up giving My Beloved’s, because although we’re not even slightly married (this comes as close to a perfect reason for doing it as I’ve ever heard)(apart from the fact I love my name and still wouldn’t have his, so that takes that reason away again, I guess) there really isn’t that much you can do to fuck up ‘Johnson’.

And so it could go with the rest of everything. If it pains me so much (and it is just the silliest thing, I know) then why not just his name for all things.

We have tried that. But you’d be amazed - the problem of the accent is that nothing quite works the way it should, no matter how clearly enunciate:
- Taxi drivers have tried to drop us two blocks from home about fifteen times now because apparently there’s something in the way I say ‘Harrison’ that sounds like ‘Howard’ to them.
- And the long confused conversations I’ve had with waiters just because I have the temerity to put a ‘t’ in the middle of ‘water’ are now far, FAR too countless to mention.

So packages arrive for him, furniture comes addresed to him, marked with the name we’ve given in the shop, or online, or wherever.
“BOBBLE JONSON” they says (this one has stuck. Call him it, he loves it)
“Bubbie”
“Butter Johansson”
“Bubble”
“Budd Johns”
“Buddy”
“Bobby”
(To be fair, the most usual is Bobby, and that is no one’s fault but his birth certificate, on which his actual real name is spelt with an i and an e at the end, in a more conventionally girlish manner)

Etc, etc.

It is no big thing, I know - and it is a very lovely thing to have been here so long already and not to have found anything more heinous to be annoyed by. But we do not like to cause so much trouble by insisting on having these difficult names that people tend to trip over so much.

So we have decided that in situations where it does not matter a single tiny bit what the people performing a service think we are called, we should just make something up to make life easier, and stop everyone from getting frustrated or annoyed or anything. It works out much easier.

“Can I take a name for this order, sir?”
“Yes. Call me Rock”
“And I’m Yamaha!”
“Can you just mark it for the attention of Thor?”
“The non-fat thripe-shot is for Yoshi”
“Rusty will pick that up”
“I’m Randy”
“Bunny”
“Hank!”
“Can you just put Romeo on the ticket?”
“Pepper.”
“Mario”
“Sparkle!”

And so it goes on. Buck and Cindy are our favourites, though. They have stuck. Please feel free to suggest names as you go on: they just have to be easy to pronounce and not Utterly ridiculous (My Beloved’s campaign of trying to get everyone everywhere to nickname him ‘The General’ is, for example, going down reasonably badly with delivery companies and coffee baristas everywhere), and I guarantee that someone will be shouting it out in a Pete’s Coffee somewhere in San Francisco in the next week, followed by the quiet giggling of two British people with stupid coffees.

“Buck! Your soy pumpkin espresso-hot-ice-latte!”
“Cheers”
“Cindy! One non-fat triple shot heavy-duty frappsadoodle with sugar-free hazelnut and no foam?”
“Thanks!”
hee heee heee hee
“I love you Buck”
“I love you too, Cindy”

OK - Once I have got these silly things from work out of my head and onto the computer, I will continue with your regular service. In the meantime, a collection of things and stuff that have been interesting to me on the internets this week*.

Jack’s cut and paste haikus were genius.

this story made me really happy.

There was an interesting short piece on a site I’d not come across before about writing about what you know, which was interesting as I went to a seminar on writing from experience the other day (not because I’m interested in writing memoir, I’m not very interesting, but because I’m interested in some of the ethical and confidence ideas around it, and because I was looking into the centre it was held in as a possible place to volunteer, and I was trying to sound it out a bit).

Non-Working Monkey’s been posting nearly every day, have you noticed? I love her.

A news story caught my attention about one of the first FDA approved diet pills. I’d love to try these things one day, just to see whether there is such thing as magic. But maybe not this one. I’m amazed at people’s willingness to say “You know what, I’d rather poo orange grease uncontrollably in my trousers than do this weight loss thing the hard way” though. That’s dedication to the cause (the pooing yourself cause).

A video of Ludacris and Martha Stewart making origami together. It’s just nice.

There’s a cracking little barney - sorry, discussion - going on at Sevitz’s blog. The fact that half the people taking part in the conversation seem to be 2003-era bloggers made me feel like I should do something all old-school and actually bother linking to things for once (I’m so lazy).

So I did.

(more…)

I am not the disappeared.

But I am the currently-pretty-confused. We’ve been working at pretty much full pelt - or trying to - and having a lovely lovely guest, and still trying to acclimatise, and my brain is not keeping up terribly well with it all. The time difference makes working hours quite horrible, actually; and combined with the almost permanent stomach ache and pretty frequent nausea I have been having (not pregnant, no, before any of you lovelies suggest it, just suffering from too much meat, I think)(and no, not a euphemism, just as in too much rich and plentiful food and sugar. My jeans can attest to this) mean that I have not, of late, been much in a blogging way.

I have been in a computer way, for sure: But mainly trying to dedicate time to work, and trying to beat my brain into believing that I am not just here on an extended holiday, but that we have turned our lives upside down in order to do what we both did before, but better.

Sometimes this feels hard. But then I remind myself that we have only been here six weeks, and there is a lot more exploring (and acclimatising) to do.

But I will return tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after, or when I have got the piece of work that’s really pissing me off done and out of my hands again.

But I will be back. I’m just living, and it’s a bit weirdy doing that, right now.
It’s all upside down, you see?
And I don’t appear to have a flight home again.

That’s not a word, is it? It should be shot, if it is.
Anyway…

It was 6.45am, and on the right side of the barriers, the tired flyers were hovering between the departure gates, hoovering up anything resembling breakfast.

“Can I have a BLT please?” I asked the man with the moustache and the hairnet.
“No. No BLT. No sandwich. No sandwich now.” He said, helpfully, and pointed up at the board that said nothing about no serving sandwiches at any particular time, but had them cheerfully advertised along with the classic Big American Breakfast items. “What you wants?”

I looked down at the alien streaky bacon, the four types of sausage, the piles of yellow matter, the other things I can’t remember right now, and the three kinds of potato.

“Hash browns and sausage” said the woman in front of me, forthright and clear.
“I’ll have what she’s having” I parroted, pleased for someone else to make a decision.
“Choo want egg?” The man asked the lady in front of me.
“Gaaahd no,” she exhaled.
“Choo want egg?” he asked me.
“Nono. No, thanks. No.” And actually because I didn’t want egg this time, I wasn’t just copying, honest. It looked like a little pile of catsick that had been sitting under a food lamp for an hour.

We shuffled along the line.

“No eggs, huh?” Said my queue companion.
“Yep. No eggs” I said, which is frankly witty repartee for me at that time of the day.
“Yip. Them eggs look funny” She said.
“Yup” I said. Wondering how long it took for the person two people ahead to pay and hurry the fucking line up already.

a pause

“I wooden eat those if you paid me.” She said, as she paid for her breakfast box.
“Mm-hm, you’re right there” I said, starting to think that if I’d only skipped the whole line, and collected enough napkins and condiment sachets from the condiment bar, I could have fashioned some kind of crude sandwich out of them anyway. Possibly with more flavour.

“They some baaaaaaad eggs,” she said, turning away with her first meal, full of no eggs, away from me (with no eggs) both of us pleased to have masterfully circumnavigated eggs, but both of us with only no eggs in common.

“Yes” I said. “Those eggs? I wouldn’t touch them with a shitty stick.”

Aaaaaaaaaand the air around me chilled to below the temperature that makes brass monkeys look worried. The cashier reached under the counter, either for a panic button or a gun, it was hard to tell. The lady in front of me, poor hungry traveller, almost dropped her eggless feast. The passengers behind me backed off as if I’d had a beard and an accent or something.

“A shitty stick? You know? I wouldn’t touch them with a shitty stick? Like the phrase?”

Apparently that’s not a phrase in this country.

The other thing I would like to mention about my hotel room is the fact that there is a phone by the bed, one by the sofa (yes, yes, big room, whatever) too, and I find this the most disturbing: a phone right next to the toilet.

Is talking on the bog something that is socially acceptable?

Do people ACTUALLY hold conversations with their nearest and dearest or (ohmygod) work while having a poo? Because it wasn’t place next to the bath, not next to the sink: It was right next to the toilet, at sitting-down level, right where it could be used for only that and nothing else.

I. Am. Disgusted.

Seriously, does this open the door to the idea that I might have spoken to one of my associates or colleagues while they were in poo-baby labour? Might that intense concentration I heard in their voice not have been about the idea I was proposing after all?! Shocking! Vile!

Please, someone, tell me, WHY would you have a phone in there? It’s in case you’re prolapsing and need to call an ambulance, right? Because you wouldn’t countenance talking to anyone you LIKED while laying a brown egg, would you? REALLY?

Hello.

I have SUCH delights hiding in the word documents and the notepads and the nooks and crannies of my computer, you wouldn’t believe’em.

But still, life takes such strange turns that it’s difficult to finish them when there is time, and difficult to finish them when there isn’t time (because there isn’t time, the cue’s in the name)

Currently, however, from my position of a hotel room on the seventh floor, eating pretzels and looking out over another new skyline, I just wanted to ask, in a PURELY HYPOTHETICAL WAY:

If you happened to be speaking to m night shyamalan tomorrow, what might you most want to ask him, do you think?

My beloved told me that San Francisco was a city of micro-climates.
I read several books on the matter that explained how, and why, San Francisco was a city of microclimates.
I even went so far as explaining to my mother (and others) in deeply knowledgeable-sounding tones that San Francisco (they should understand) is what you might call “a city of microclimates”.

Sometimes I speak to people at home and they ask if it is cold and foggy, as they have heard San Francisco is, and I say ‘Microclimates!’ and then we move on to another topic very quickly before they have to go through me struggling to explain complex meteorological phenomena once more.

“So what, Anna” I hear you ask, “might that mean? What ARE microclimates? What does it all MEAN.”

Well, darling reader - it means that there are climates, but they are very very little!

Um. And that’s it! I think!

It’s because the city of San Francisco is on a promontory with the cold North Pacific on one side and a nice warm sheltered bay on the other side, and very big hills right in the middle of the city. Therefore while one side of the city might be cold and foggy and grey, another bit might be windy, and another bit again might be bright and sunny and hot.

I, of course, demanded we live in the sunbelt for SAD reasons. This is apparently the hottest time of the year, but even so; the sun has shone, hot and hard, every single day. It’s good. I like it.

But that’s only consistent in my part of town. And knowing about microclimates in theory is a very different thing to experiencing them in practice. They said that weather in one part of the city is no indication of weather on the other side: And fuck me, they weren’t kidding about. The first time I crossed the city without expecting it. I came out of the house wearing light clothes, sunglasses, flip flops and a thin layer of sweat. We climbed on a Muni-tram thing, which clunked and crunked it’s way through tunnels, down streets and up hills. I’d noticed the clouds hanging over the top of the hill earlier in the day, but hadn’t really connected.

As we headed over the hump, the people outside suddenly started wearing fleeces and overcoats. Flip-flops and sandals were replaced by trainers and boots. Someone walked past swinging an umbrella.

On the Muni, people opened their bags and brought out layers of clothing they’d had concealed within. These people are clever, and should probably write instructional books.
I would totally read those.

By the time we got to the other side of the city, I had goosepimples on my arms. We stepped down and went for a walk on the beach, shivering and cold, puzzled by the complete change in season brought about by a twenty minute public transport ride.

I am not used to weather being changeable by the city block. It is weird.