I had a really happy food moment last week.

We’d been doing the thing you do when someone comes to stay and you really want to show them things but it’s raining - wandering around, leaping from shop doorway to covered walkway to mode of transport. And attempting to make the best of the piss wet weather by pointing at things and saying “See That? No? Oh. Well, that’s REALLY pretty view when it’s not raining. Honest. No, it really is.”

And then we ended up going for lunch at The Cliff House. Because while walking on a beach in a thick cloud, your shoes filling with wet sand is fun … watching other fools do it from a large picture window a hundred feet above while eating lunch is always better.

It’s not the cheapest place in the world. It doesn’t have the best menu. Midweek it’s filled with Ladies who lunch and meetings of the ‘retired self important men who talk too loudly’ society - as well as bedraggled new incomers trying to show their very most loved a good time. But - and it’s a big but - there’s ONE THING that will mean I will be going back to that place every time I feel a bit sad and homesick (it isn’t often, but when it is, it’s more for food than anything)(sorry to my lovely friends and family, but, you know, if you WILL keep coming to visit, how am I ever going to find time to miss you?)

We walked in and sat down.

The waiter, who was singularly terrifying and apparently on castors, glided up to the table when we weren’t looking. When I turned around, having drunk in the beauty of the several miles of view, there was an enormous face inches from mine.

“GOOD AFFFFERNOON?!” the face bellowed, deep from under a moustache somewhere. “IS RAINING”

“Um. yus?” I wasn’t sure how much more clarification was necessary, above and beyond looking like I’d recently been standing in a wind tunnel while an ocean was poured through a sieve on top of me. Because I did. Because I had.

“YES! LOOK IS RAININ!” He said, pointing out of the magnificent window.

“Yis.” I agreed, meekly.

“YES!!!! DRINKS?! that moustache nowhere-near muffled, as a hand floated up and indicated a menu we had been too busy looking at the beach to read.

There were general mumblings of coffee all around, in a quiet British way.

“WHA?!”

“We’re ALL gonna have CAFFEE, please!” I translated, with my almost-six-months of knowing how restaurants in my new home work. For what it is worth, mumbling and bashfulness never, ever work.

- On a side note, also asking for water also never works, in a great majority of places.
Asking for waahder? Yes. that works fine, because US restaurants are lovely and eager to please and want to provide whatever the customer needs. But, because of accents being different (not wrong, mind, just different), they just don’t expect a ‘t’ in the middle of ‘water’.
“Can I just get a glass of water?”
“Orange juice?” someone perky will say, helpfully. Honestly, this is the most frequent understanding.
“No no. Water?” Sometimes I mime water at this point, because I’m an idiot.
“Iced Tea?”
“Water?”
“Root beer?”
I tell you what, forget that. Can I just getta glassa waahder instead?”
“Sure! Be right withya!”
It is one of the only times I will knowledgably and willingly give up my accent. Because god knows it’s hard to get a glass of water without doing so sometimes. -

Anyway. The waiter rolled away again, soundlessly. In his moustache.

He wasn’t the reason I want to go back to the bistro. I should come back to that.
(I’m just enjoying writing because it’s my day off, sorry)

He arrived with the coffees. They tasted like brown water. They weren’t the reason I’m going to be going back whenever I’m homesick either. Just as I was critiquing the strength of the coffee, I turned to look at the restaurant and discovered a large moustachioed face inches from mine, asking if we were ready to order. No one was able to tell where he’d approached from. We ordered. “YES!!! ESSELENT!” came a bellow from whoever was under that lipwig. Again, not the reason I’m going back.

The reason I’m going back EVERY DAMNED TIME I miss particular British food that I can’t cook because my oven’s doesn’t get bloody hot enough.

Three minutes after the coffees arrived, a bus boy arrived with a large basket of Yorkshire puddings, and some butter.

That’s not a large basket of Yorkshire puddings of course. That’s a large basket with a yorkshire and a half left because we were so excited and bemused and - well, aroused is the wrong word, but you know what I mean, right? Doesn’t everyone get slightly over-excited by Yorkshires? - that we’d eaten most of them by the time we thought to take a photo.

They were basically a very plain batter, from what I could taste - baked in a very hot oven; light and fluffy, crispy on the outside, battery on the inside - what the butter was for I have no idea.

“What did you order?” We asked each other.
No one, it transpired, had ordered roast beef.
Gravy didn’t appear to be forthcoming.

They’d just brought Yorkshire puddings. I was in heaven.

You have to understand, I would go for a roast meal, and take less than a nibble of any other component, as long as I could have the Yorkshires. If in need of comfort, I will order anything with Yorkshire puddings and leave everything else on the plate.
Unless it’s good sausages, because that would just be a dreadful dreadful waste. Anyway.

My darling mother refused to believe we’d simply found the North American repository of awesome Yorkshires.

“I’m going to ask the waiter what these are called” she declared.
“No!” I said. They were clearly Yorkshire puddings.
“No, I am. You’ve complained about the lack of them, these are slightly different, I’m going to ask what they …”
“No DON’T!” I begged. For some reason I just wanted them to be Yorkshire puddings.
“Excuse me!” said my wonderful little mother, suddenly perfectly loud enough to be heard by the gliding moustache… “What do you call these?”

“POPOVERS!” he said.

“Oh! Thank you” she said, Britishly. “They’re popovers.”

“They’re bloody Yorkshire Puddings” I said.
“They’re clearly bloody Yorkshires.” I grumped “They’re Yorkshire puddings, look, they just are.”
“I think popovers are something else. I think he meant these are Yorkshires.” I said, in denial, “Can I have yours?”

So: ex-pats of San Francisco - go to the Cliff House - order the cheapest thing you can (most of it isn’t very good.) Then sit and wait for your enormous basket of Yorkshire puddings. Finish them as fast as you can - perhaps put some in your handbag for later (I totally didn’t do that)(No, really, I didn’t: too wet, for a start); and if you’re brave enough, ask for another basket.
And some gravy.
It’s all they’re missing.

Top San Francisco tip for the day, there.

Oh Balldanglings, now I’m hungry…

“If you don’t want to blog, just say so”, said Ian, helpfully - and kindly - in the comments.

And I know that - but it’s nice to hear someone say it. And believe me, if I didn’t. I would just say so, and then I wouldn’t anymore.

But I do. It’s difficult to explain though - I am always wary of sounding like “Oh, poor ME, my life is so HARD now; I got to move to an exciting new city have a loving partner and two cats and I write for a living oh WOE is ME!” - but things have been a bit tough recently. Most markedly in terms of my mood and my confidence, which have been up-and-down and down-down-down, respectively. And frankly, when that happens, ALL I want to do is blog here - because I find it comforting and bolstering to my self-esteem, weirdly.

So I open the computer and I open a ‘write new post’ page, and I click my cursor into the big white space … and then I remember that I’ve got three things pending - or at least that I could get started with - for work. And maybe if I start thinking about them now, then I’ll end up happier with them than last week, or people will like them more, or something good will happen. So I open up three word documents for those. And then I open lots of tabs in my browser to start reading up for one of them. And then another window, and a bunch of tabs for the next. And then I get distracted by twitter, where it’s easier just to put a two sentence vignette and have done. And then my email pings, and I remember that there are a bunch of starred emails, and that nice people have emailed, and I haven’t replied (I know this is the case, and if you’re one of those people, I’m so sorry, I really am, I’ll get to it when you’re least expecting me. Like a ninja). Then I remember that I have to get some pictures from my camera and edit them and put them on flickr, because then it’ll be easier to write a blog post around one of them. And then I remember that there’s another couple of blogs I’m supposed to contribute to, and so I open edit windows up for those too, just in case I get inspired. And I have my portfolio site open too, just to remind me that it’s both been so long since I updated it, it’s going to take a week, and that I’m so unsure of what I’m doing at the moment that I don’t want to put anything on there anyway, but I really should, because I said I would.

And then, THEN - and this is the best bit - I spend the next several hours flicking between ALL of those things and doing NONE of them, because every time I start doing one, I feel bad for not doing one of the others.

Eventually, of course, some of them HAVE to get done: the ones I’m currently being paid for. But not without a whole bucket of anxiety, and the feeling I should have been doing something else, could have done them better etc etc. And there’s a whole second act to that drama once they’ve gone, but that’s not the point right now.

So I do that. And then I open a ‘write a new post’ blank page for that blog post I really, really want to write … and the whole thing starts all over again. And somewhere in there I have to remember to go to the gym, eat, sleep (around four solid hours night at the moment, which is also clearly brilliant)

And if that’s not an awesome organisational system, I don’t know what is.

No, really, I don’t know what is. Otherwise I would be doing it. Really. I mean - I want to write posts on my blog more than anything: it’s the thing that grounds me, and the writing that makes me happiest. And it’s the one I never bloody get to do.

So yes Ian - if I want to stop, I will just say so.

But it’s the one thing I want to do: which is - fucktardishly - why I so often end up saying absolutely nothing at all.

Arg. Etc.
And again, I’m going to try and start rectifying that, this weekend. Again. Just like i always say.
But please don’t doubt my commitment to this blog.

I want to be here.
I’m just shockingly bad at time-management and beating myself up about things.
but I’m reading a book about it.
(And as you can imagine, that gets put into the loop with everything else: brilliant…)

Later: I discover a rich vein of expatriate joy, right where I wasn’t expecting to …
STAY TUNED!
(please)

I’m sorry, I came in here all promises after my little break, and then my little mother came to stay, and I had little more to say. Because I was busily showing my mother around my new city, let alone a country she has never before visited (she likes it! Oh god, the RELIEF! She may come back!). And I cannot possibly make any apology for that, because it is the most important thing in the world.

However, I apologise for my complete radio silence, that was rude.
I will make up for it.

In the meantime:

It is raining so hard, and has been, for so long, that I am starting to develop webbed hands. If that gets worse, I may start typing with my tongue, which will be quite easy as it now seems long enough to catch flies. and other such untruities.

ALSO: I hiccuped so hard I WAS SICK last week.
While completely sober, at that!

There. And people say the blogging of old-school is dead.

Hey! This is one of those posts that’s just pointing you toward someone else’s very good content on the web! You know - like the old days.

So: This is a post by April Winchell on her blog, not only pointing out that there is swearing in President Obama’s pre-president memoir, but that there is an audiobook version of Obama’s memoir. And it’s read by President Obama. Including the sweary bits.

Which is AWESOME.

That is all.

Incidentally, I found this out through twitter, which I used to have as a private feed for close friends and family in a ‘does anyone want to go out for a drink I’m at Farringdon station’ kind of way, but since the way so many people use it has changed, I’ve opened it up to be more of a general train-of-thought miniblog thing. So if you’re on twitter and have tried to connect with me on twitter before and not, you now can if you like. I mean, clearly you don’t have to: but you can. Just sayin.

That is all.

If you are not on twitter, hate twitter, and have no interest in any of this twitter business, then simply join with the American President and say: “This shit’s getting WAY too complicated for me“.

We are on holiday. It is the last night, and we are eating in an unremarkable bar and grill for the sole reason of it being a short tramp down a steep hill from our hotel, and thus meaning that we can both drink booze.

It is quiet, and the middle-aged waitress made a point of greeting us warmly and with some happy surprise when we arrived. We can’t decide if this is because we mistakenly overtipped the first time, or because they’re not used to people eating there twice. We suspect it to be the latter.

But after a day of walking across dunes and paddling in cold ocean and running around trees for no reason, not to mention sitting in the car trying not to have nine concurrent anxiety attacks about flying off cliffs and road-familiar locals driving twice the speed limit and right up your arse, we are happy to eat anything, so a plate of MEAT with a side of ‘No, I’m not sure either’ and an accompanying plate of ‘do you want these?’ is fine. Absolutely fine. As long as it has next to it a glass of local beer or wine or, frankly, home-brewed broccoli-bourbon, whatever - I do not care a jot.

There is a rustle of waterproof coats against warm fuzzy jumpers with patterns of dogs on. It comes from the booth behind us. Two couples sit down and start loudly discussing the weather (cold, but nice) the decor (traditional, with a touch of nostalgic hippy and a dash of surf chic - so a framed piece of tie-dye with a jellyfish painted on it, basically), their holiday, the car, what their kids are probably doing in their absence, the economy, the traffic and a few other things. Very loudly. After all that, they open the menus.

“This chicken sounds nice”
“It’s stuffed with chorizo.”
“Oh. That’s Portuguese, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s Mexican”
“Well, whatever: It’s too spicy for me.”

I sit at the table behind biting my lip. My Beloved looks resigned to forfeiting the rest of a romantic dinner to eavesdropping. Well, I don’t believe it’s eavesdropping when people are shouting, is it? No, it isn’t. Besides, this is the man who quite happily bought a bumper collection of old postcards from a flea market and sat watching the sun go down drinking wine and reading particularly choice ones out loud. People watching is what we likes. And people-listening. Oh. And people-reading. You know what I meant.

I am now looking at him, mouth flapping a little like someone waving a goldfish about, taking sharp little intakes of breath I take when building up to saying something (it is a shyness/confidence thing. I sometimes have to write things in my head first). Although there is a very similar kind of sausage from Portugal, it is with a slightly different name, I think. It would be chourico, perhaps? (Lucy will set me straight, I know it). The chorizo on the menu, and most chorizo, is from Spain. I open my mouth to point this out. He kicks me.

It’s not that I think everyone should know everything. There are plenty of things - I realise new things every day - that I do not know. Today’s thing was about a philosophical argument involving turtles that we shall most likely go into another time.

It is just that schoolgirl impulse of wanting to put my hand up and go “OOH! Me! ME! I know this one! Ask ME!” and correctly rattle off the small piece of trivia I have collected and didn’t know when I would get to use until that moment.

But you can’t do that in real life, because people look at you funny. And, weirdly, don’t like you providing them with the correct answer to the question they’re asking if they haven’t asked you, weren’t talking to you, and might possibly think that if it weren’t for them, you’d be speaking German, you overbearing British smartass.

It probably took My Beloved quite a while to communicate all of that to me once more through the power of staring. But by the time he had finished, they had returned to the subject.

“I quite like the sound of this, apart from that Portuguese stuff”
“The Chorizo? No, no, sweetie. It’s Mexican”
“Actually …” the waitress butted in. My heart swelled with excitement of a possibly knowledgeable interjection. She’d surely shown herself more than proficient at memorising specials of the day - this must have crept in there somewhere?
“… Actually” she said “It’s Italian”
“Well, whatever.” said the first woman. “It’s too spicy for me”.

They managed to ignore pained noise from the table behind them as he kicked me lightly again.

It’s not even that fucking spicy.

Sorry, I went quiet. Funny thing was, you know how I talked a while ago about not feeling able to go on holiday because I felt like, living here, I was meant to feel like I was on holiday all the time? Well, I did. And I was feeling like that.

And then I realised I was actually in danger of going a bit insane. Or slightly more unbalanced than usual, anyway. so I booked a weekend far away in a little inn overlooking the ocean for as soon as I could and as cheaply as I could, and then we went away for three nights, and read books and sat in front of log fires drinking wine and wandered about on beaches taking pictures of driftwood

Because I like driftwood. And taking pictures. I also took pictures of other things.

Oh, and video. Because also the holiday was all about watching little sandpiperish birds running away from waves. Because they are great.

Brilliant.

And also, I decided, once more, that I need to be more committed. To my blog, I mean. I’ve been working too many hours in too flabby a fashion, so I need to tighten up my work routine, and that also means making more time for blogging (on MY blog), because I love it and miss it, and because of other reasons. Time slips by too fast, and when I don’t take comprehensive notes on it, I forget because I have a brain like a sea-colander. A sea-colander with adult-onset ADD.

Anyway. So that is the plan.

But yes. We went on a very little holiday, and it was very quiet, and that was that.

And I will be back tomorrow (and every other day) with something more interesting than that to say.
I hope.