Sorry, there was more to say about New England - still is - but with the visiting family thing to boot there was, more excitingly, places to go and things to see. So for the last week I have mainly been here, looking at this:

And things like this.
My jaw, as you can imagine, was almost constantly scraping the pavement. Insanely beautiful. Insane.

I am in New England for a few days, where my beloved is going to a conference, and I am tagging along for a few days of chilly scenery, some intensive writing time, and because I have always heard people banging on about the autumn leaves and thought it was something I should see.

The chilly scenery is good. The writing would be going better if I didn’t have the whole of the internet to distract me (note to self: next time, I need a B&B with a nice view and no sodding wifi), and the leaves are unexpectedly brilliant. I was expecting to be a bit jaded and cityish and unimpressed, but they’re just too amazingly colourful for that.

Literally, and without exaggeration, for once, I have to admit that the trees of New England are pretty insanely beautiful. So there.

And - and I know I haven’t told you about my great state-collecting plan yet, but I will do soon - I’ve now collected all of the New England states. Vermont was slightly further out of our way than we had imagined, but a quick 9-hour round-trip sorted that out.

I have also done some hiking, although because My Beloved has mainly been conferencing, I have been hiking alone. Hiking alone isn’t as fun. There is a disappointing lack of anyone to shout “I thought YOU knew which way we were supposed to be fucking going.” when you get lost, and then no one to high five when you get unlost again. You endup having to self-high-five, which isn’t very dignified and just looks a bit like clapping gone wrong.

Weirdly, however, I have been here three days already and have not had a Clam Chowder. Or Lobster. Or,a s they would say here, Chowdah. And Lobstah.

That’s what they say. And they’d probably say Annah too, if anyone could remember to call me that.

But no. In our Bed and Breakfast I am, apparently, Anne. Bed & Breakfasts are done differently here, much more like staying with someone than just staying somewhere, and we all have to have communal breakfasts and make polite chit chat, which I am never very good at, and far worse at first thing in the morning.

So far, most breakfasts have gone like this:
Propriatress: “Morning, Bobbie. Morning Anne”
Me: “Anna.”
Propriatress: “Can I get you some juice, Anne?”
Me: “It’s Anna”
Propriatress: “Right, I’ll just be out with that. Lesley, have you met Bobbie and Anne?”
Me: “Anna”
Lesley: “No”
Propriatress: “Lesley, this is Bobbie, Bobbie, Lesley. And this is Anne”
Me: “Anna”
Lesley: “Hello Bobbie. Hello Anne”
Me: “Anna”

Up until this morning at breakfast, when the crazy B&B propriatress called me Anna by mistake, then said “Oh I’m sorry, it’s Anne, of course”, and then walked out of the room while I was trying to correct her.

She came back, I got my courage up, and next time she said the Anne word, I told her that no, she’d been right the first time, it WAS Anna after all - and she looked at me like I was making things up.

“Oh…” She said, looking at me like someone who might go around sneakily changing their name when a person wasn’t looking “…are you sure?”

Reader: I was somewhat lost for words.

I was on my way to the airport to pick up my newest batch of lovely visitors (if I go quiet, you can always pretty much because I have visitors. Oh, well, OR my life has been thrown into light disarray and I’m feeling too unsure about things to write about fun stuff. But usually please assume it is the visitors thing, that is a lot nicer.

Anyway, I was on the way to the airport to pick up soem lovely visitors, and I was distracted at the airport by this:

Which is just brilliant.

Because it takes a familiar warning phrase, and somehow manages to change it into something that is not only useless as a piece of advice, it also looks like it makes something dangerous, which is surely the opposite of what a piece of signage should do.

So in London we’re used to the London Underground person intoning ‘Mind the gap’ in polite tones that carry some sense of gravitas (as well as good schooling, obvs) and make us aware that we should be mindful of this thing. We should mind it.

I can see why they would change that in America - watching out for something is probably a lot more familiar a phrase than being mindful of it, and I’m not sure, but think the phrase ‘Mind the gap!’ spoken to an American would tend to provoke the response “Mind it? No, I don’t mind it at all” (and, depending on the American, they might go on to express the gap’s constitutional right to be as gappy as it so chose to be. OR presume you meant the clothing chain and say that they didn’t mind them, but rarely shopped there).

So watch out for the gap would be fine … but it’s probably too long. Shortening it to ‘Watch the Gap’ would, then, seem to make sense… Except when it’s then interpreted like this sign.

The person on the sign would seem to be watching the gap. Watching it doing what it does: watching it with great focus and intent. Just watching it. Like one would watch a television. Not watching OUT for it. Not being watchful of it. Just watching it. Just having a bit of a watch. Watchy watchy watchy.

Now, call me crazy, but I’m not sure this is the most effective way of getting on a train.
Particularly when they seem to be advocating that the optimum was to get the best view of the aforementioned gap is by sticking your head as far into the Yellow (or “Danger”) Zone as possible.

The more I look at this picture, the more I’m convinced it must be guerrilla art of some kind, because it sure as hell isn’t travel advice.

Whatever it is, I love it very much.

Because I’m sick of losing all my best thoughts to 140 characters on Twitter, so I’ve decided to try and have a 140 word thought at least once a day on my blog.

There are two approaches to insects in this household. No, wait, there are four.

1) Fear (Him: Spiders, me: flying things like moths)
2) Release (if one can be arsed, it is the loving way, after all)
3) Play
4) Eat

The difference between the cats is the best thing to watch,

Squirrel, a powerful, muscled and big cat, spots any intruding bug. She will chase it, and bat it, with a sharp, heavy claw; leave it; watch it crawl, or fly, off … then start again.

Ten minutes later, Widget - runt of the litter and still small, ungraceful and special - will notice what Squirrel is doing. When Squirrel is not looking, she will walk up to Squigg’s amazing live hunting toy, open her mouth, and eat it. Whole.

Done! Game over.

I love them both. So much.

Because I’m sick of losing all my best thoughts to 140 characters on Twitter, so I’ve decided to try and have a 140 word thought at least once a day on my blog.

Dear Mrs Reverse Charge Lady,

Sorry for being grumpy. I know it is your job to phone people, ask if they’ll accept charges, take payment and patch the call through. I realise you must have to speak to grumpy people loads: people are in stressful situations when they speak to you - like, say, having family who have missed a connecting flight and are stuck on a payphone in Atlanta.

So I’m sorry to snap. But while you must constantly have to deal with stupid names, have you ever, EVER met someone called “Ponald” before? Or was it “Punald”, you thought he said, and then threatened to hang up when I didn’t know what who you meant?

Ponald!? Really? Like Ponald Puck, right? That popular hockey mascot? Tut.

Anyway, I’m sorry. Not much, but I am.
Ponald, indeed.

Kisses,
Anna.

I am sitting and waiting and assiduously checking the window for raindrops, and there aren’t any.

And I know that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, because you would probably imagine that quite a lot of the time it isn’t raining in quite a lot of places, and seeing as I live in California, it generally isn’t raining here quite a lot, and it isn’t raining quite a lot practically all the time.

Fog, we do. In my new ‘hood half way up the mountain on the sunny side of the city, the fog sometimes rolls over the top of the hill and sits heavily on my house - other times you see it rolling over the tops and dispersing over the bay. This is a weird, weird city for weather. Don’t worry, I’ll do some kind of visual explanation sometime using napkins and peppergrinders and cats and such.

Anyway. Tonight, I have reason to believe it will rain.

Mainly because there have been doomladen news reports in the breaks of every big show saying “RAIN! RAIN! There’s going to be a STORM!” (’But how bad will it be? And will YOUR house get washed out to sea? Join us at 10, because we’re not going to tell you anything before then!’)

And, while I am of course worried about anyone’s house getting washed out to sea (not mine, as we all know it is made of cardboard so it will just go a bit wet and floppy, which is possibly worse) I am quite excited, because I haven’t seen any rain in a while.

Yes, yes, I know, there are much worse problems to have, and trust me, I’m not complaining. But it’s weird the things you miss. I miss occasionally having a big old rainstorm. Last month there was a thunderstorm but, predictably, San Francisco had to do it all weird and special, and it while it thundered so much we all thought the sky was falling, the sky fell not very much. I think there was what at home I would politely call a bit of drizzle, and a single small puddle appeared outside my house.

But tonight, we should be getting rain.
Any moment now.
Or, you know, two hours ago or something. They promised me rain, and damnit, I WANT my rain.

Because the clouds gathered and everyone got very grumpy, and you know what you need, when all these things happen, is to have some rain. Rain will break the tension. Rain makes everyone feel better. Rain makes everyone feel like sitting inside and watching the rain fall and knowing nothing bad happens when it rains.
Or not much, anyway.

Rain always makes me feel like I can curl up and not worry about anything bad happening around my house. I sleep well when it rains, better than any of the rest of the time. There are reasons this happens, and maybe another time … all I want right now is for it to rain.

Meanwhile, the cats are curled up in a little furry white, brown and grey yin yang, grooming each other in the cutest way possible and … no … wait, it’s just turned into a tooth and clawball. It’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes when they do everything silently, be it loving or fighting.

I’ll finish the cat update post I’ve been adding things to. That’s what I should do first this week.
Sorry, this was going to be a post that went somewhere, and now I’m just writing a public to-do list.

There is, however a lot to do. But, as ever when it’s things I can’t talk about on here, the very fact that there are things too up in the air to talk about mean that I don’t feel like I can say anything at all.
All I can do is sit here and mither and blather and babble and just wait for the rain to fall.

It isn’t falling yet.
I keep checking the radars and the local news sites - the ones who have been all “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IT’S COMING, LIVE IN FEAR!!!” all day, and still. Nothing.

A little water falling from the sky, is that too much to ask? I don’t want it to rain all winter; I don’t even want it to rain all week, I’ve got family coming (in can rain all next week when I’m out of town, though. Is that uncharitable?).

Half past midnight. Still not raining. Said there was 90% chance of precipitation at 10pm, and look at us here, now, dry as a nun’s chuff.

Sooner or later it will rain. And yet here I am, determined to sit up for it, wanting to actually see it happen, like it’s going to arrive with flags and streamers and fireworks. And not just be some water falling from the sky.

I shouldn’t even publish this, I shouldn’t think. It’s terrible for anyone else, this ‘diary of a place where it is not raining’. Yes, and next week, we will have a six-hour liveblog of no tornado, how would that be?

Never mind. I have to stick something up here. If I keep being quiet because I’m trying not to jinx the universe by saying the wrong thing, I will never get anything done at all.

Not that anything’s getting done at all.
It is all the same.
Nothing is new.
There is no rain.

I’d like some rain.
And I’d like some British sausages, while we’re about it. Lancashire preferably, but Cumberland would also do.

I’m not homesick, honest.
I’d just like some rain every now and again.
Or, as I was promised some: every now.

1.30am update
Still not bloody raining.

8am
Oh holy hell, someone’s upended the ocean on my house.
Um… Can it stop raining now?

There is a game that we play in my house called ‘Guess the headline punchline’.

I record an awful lot of television, and a huge amount of it are things that end just before the news.
But broadcasters here are sneaky, they nip in just before the end of the last programme, just in case you’re thinking of nipping out for a cup of tea or daring to go for a wee, and trail what they’re about to tell you in the news.

And, as is the way of television here, they have to make it sound URGENT and DRAMATIC and UNMISSABLE, because otherwise they know damned well what’s going to happen: you’re going to go and find some news that is. Or maybe some other television about people falling in love with other people but being unable to tell them for years at a time (this, in essence, accounts for 78% of American drama. And, now I think of it, comedy. And sci-fi).

In fact, they do this in the middle of advert breaks as well, a dramatic trail trying to work you up into a newswatching frenzy. Something so tantalizing, so urgent, that you can barely concentrate on your actual television programme anymore, so eager are you to get to the news after it.

The worst example I can remember of this - and I mean the absolute worst, in a moral, ethical way as well as a ’so-bad-it’s-memorable’ - was the time they popped up in the middle of the ad break of some popular drama saying “A sexual attacker is targeting women in the local area wearing particular items of clothing…”

And I think you might imagine where this is going, but wait for it …. wait for the kicker …

“Tune in at 10 to find out which items those are”

Seriously.
Because it’s all about getting information into the public arena for the sake of everybody’s safety (as long as it gives you a rating bump in the overnights).

However, the thing we usually experience the most (because, as I say, I record everything so I can zip through with no adverts) is the bit right at the end, where they try and snatch the audience who haven’t quite noticed the credits are rolling yet by introducing their headline and footage straight over it.

And they always have the same technique, here. They lead in with a ‘Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the kitchen…’ type statement, and then BAM! They hit you with some unexpected twist. Or, you know, not that unexpected, because it’s the news, after all. They’re not going to show you a picture of a man who looks like a murderer and then suddenly, unexpectedly hit you with the fact your hair looks nice (although it does, have you don’t something new to it?).

Unfortunately, my recording device always manages to cut it off just after the tantalising lead in and just before the punchline that might actually inform you what the story is about, which is what leads us to conjecture, almost every single time, about what the payoff might be meant to be, in one of our nightly rounds of the game called ‘Guess The Headline Punchline’ (alternatively titled “Hey! Let’s undermine the probably quite tragic news story!” but come on, they MADE us do it)

“It looks like any day in the sleepy suburbs of ONE Bay Area town” - a voice might say, intentionally leaving it vague so you wonder whether it’s one too near you, but then … BEEP. The TV recorder snaps off.

“…But this afternoon, all the street furniture turned into giant SPIDERS!” one of us will shout.
“… and that’s because everyone FROM this suburb is currently in YOUR suburb, outside your house, silently waiting” the other will intone, newsanchorishly.
“Ooooh, that’s good.”

“Neighbours thought THIS man was a friendly neighbourhood father of two who’d always volunteer for the grill at the neighbourhood cookoff” [NB: this man will ALWAYS look like he killed and ate his mother] “But then they found out…” BEEP, the TV recorder will snap, with its unerring timing.

“…. he killed and ate his mother”
“Nah, too obvious. … that he was the King of All Badgers.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“The morning commute through THIS downtown Bart station was running like clockwork…”
[footage of a crowd walking through turnstiles, then suddenly dispersing and heading fast in different directions]
“…. UNTIL…” … beep

“…I FARTED.”
“Ha ha haha. What, the anchorwoman? That’s a good one.”
“What? No, I farted, I was just warning you. What are we watching?”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway.

There was another one on the television this evening.

“From the outside” says the anchor woman in a voice that would put many of the gravelly voiced men who work on big Hollywood trailers to shame. Sorry, I’ll let them start from the beginning again.

“From the OUTSIDE … it looked like any other house in the Sunset district”

Then, suddenly, a darker tone of voice “But…”
And there was an image of a basement or garage of a house in which someone was growing weed. A huge amount of weed.
“”But on the INSIDE….”
Just at the greatest moment, the recording snapped off.

Of course, that one was just too easy.

“…it ALSO looked like any other house in the Sunset District”, we both said at once.

Because come on. It’s San Fran-bloody-cisco.
That was clearly what the headline should have been, even if it wasn’t strictly news.

It will be surpassed soon enough with the next one, but for the moment it is currently, at least, my second favourite personal news moment ever. It’s certainly in the top ten. (I still habitually use the phrase “Big Dirty Oyster”. Then have to explain it. That will always be number one).

One of my friends has stopped blogging. You may know of her, she goes under the name of Petite Anglaise. Or, post-anonymously, by her proper real life name, Catherine.

Cath has stopped blogging because … well, you can read about ‘why because’ on her post about it, here. And it’s all perfectly reasonable, and completely understandable, and the same kind of reasons (though magnified) that a lot of people start blogging about personal things and then stop. Privacy, time, life moving on, there are lots of reasons people start personal blogs - and lots of reasons they stop.

I’m a bit sad that Cath has stopped blogging for very selfish reasons: I love the way she writes, love reading her posts, and will miss being able to catch up noncommittally when I’m being too lazy to be a proper friend and write an email saying “Hello, how are you, what’s going on?” (What?! Don’t look at me like that, it’s one of the perks of blogging and we all know it).

I’m also a bit sad about Cath stopping blogging because it’s been picked up by several newspapers.
Not that that in itself is bad: this fact alone is fine and good and reasonable - she is a popular and talented writer and will be missed and, more than that, she has an extremely good book out that I encourage you to both a) buy and b) read.
So it’s not really about that. It’s about what happens now.

With the limited understanding I have of how features desks work, I have a strong sinking feeling that lazy features editors and comment writers out there are soon going to start requesting badly researched pieces about how this closing of one chapter in one person’s life is representative of ALL PERSONAL BLOGGING BEING OFFICIALLY DEAD.

So as a note to any lazy features editors: It isn’t.
Cath was particularly good at it, but one person stopping doing something just because they feel like it does not the death of a movement make.

I’ve had this blog for more than eight years. I can run out of fingers naming people who have been doing it as long or longer or around the same time who still do it now.

I don’t know the stats. I don’t want to. The shifting nature of the net means they don’t often mean what they think you mean anyway (the huge ‘boom in blogging’ was quite often people setting one up, posting one ‘hello?’ post and then never touching it again, after all). And yes, people start, and stop, and maybe there are less now than at one time.

But that doesn’t mean it’s ‘dead’, before you start typing your magnificent reflection on the passing of a movement. People blog, and they’re still blogging. On their personal blogs. That are not, in any way, dying.

People do this because it’s just what they do. Because they enjoy it, and other people enjoy them enjoying it. Not because they’re hoping to reach some mystical goal - another common media perception, that people would only do this because they hope to gain financially or famewise from it. The people who start with that intention, in my experience, are the ones who don’t attain it. The people who have ended up creating a career or a book deal out of their blogs meanwhile (and I count myself among them, not with book deal, but with a steady income, rooted in this blog) are generally ones who have started because they felt like it and wanted to tell stories and enjoyed it so much that they carried on doing it and then someone suddenly, generally unexpectedly, offered to pay them for it.

But that isn’t WHY. And it’s a mistake to see as the goal - which it often is in articles on the subject. It’s also often noted that professional writers are confused, suspicious, wary and dismissive of these bloggers and their wayward amateurish ways. Now, I can only speak for myself (a professional writer) when I say this is not at all true. We professional writers don’t feel like that - but then, as a blogger, I suppose I would say that.

That’s another lazy thing I expect to see in the articles that will follow in the coming weeks about that Death of Blogging we should all be expecting to be advised about right about now. The sense that these bloggers have somehow been threatening ‘real’ writers, columnists, novelists etc and that now these crazy hobbyists are quitting the game, the field is clear for the “professionals” to take back the ground.

Tish-tosh-nonsense, excuse my language. These are real writers. The blogs I read, the writers I enjoy, are often a lot more astute, witty, fresh and erudite than things I read in sunday supplements and feature pages of daily newspapers (apart from one particular daily newspaper, which is unfailingly brilliant but will go unnamed for reasons of unbiased comment *cou-guardian-gh*). Without the relentless tinkering of editors and subs, people’s voices come out clearly on their blogs, they tell stories openly, honestly, with immediacy, and with their love of words shining through. And all that aside, many of the blogs I read ARE by professional writers, so where does that argument go then?

This is - let me make clear one more time - absolutely not an attack on Cath or any coverage of her blog. I love her very dearly (please consider that in your comments) and am proud of her as a blogger and as a friend (a friend I wouldn’t know without blogging, what is more).

This is just my rant about the fact that I know, I just know that some pointless person out there is working up a feature about how personal blogs used to be all the rage and now, because of Facebook and Twitter and using my lovely Petite as an example The Hobby of Personal Blogging is now DEAD. DEEEEEEAAAAD!

It isn’t. That’s all. It just isn’t. Yes, because of twitter, and facebook, and real life interrupting, people may not have as much time as they used to to do it: but it’s still very much alive, and very much worth reading.

I love the blogs I read. And I love the writers that write them. And if I read one word in the British press in the next few weeks declaring something that is very much alive to be dead, I shall lamp somebody. Because it’s just not.

So as a helpful aide memoire (that was my tribute to PA.com, RIP):

MEMO TO LAZY FEATURE EDS/WRITERS
1) One prominent blogger stopping blogging doesn’t mean the death of ALL blogging, you tools. No matter how lovely she is.
2) There’s a lot of internet. Try looking at it before making sweeping statements.
3) Making dour pronouncements about amateurs trying to take over from the accredited professionals and properly trained writers just sounds pathetic. The fact you all went to the same university college/alumni parties doesn’t actually make you better writers or columnists than people who spent their time doing something more interesting instead.
4) A community of enthusiasts doing something because they love it is eminently more interesting than badly-researched piece trying to do them down. Stick THAT in your professional pipe and smoke it.
5) Blogging isn’t dead. It isn’t even half as poorly-sick as the dead tree industry. Sorry. It’s just not.

Now, if anyone wants me to write this up for their deadtreemobile, I will be available for the normal rates. Also, does anyone want this book I’ve written? I’m kidding.