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Week Fifty: All Along the Foggy Coast
We hit the road again, this time for a trip down the romantic Californian coast; we were celebrating two years since our wedding. We left the hazy Davis sunlight behind and stepped into the whispering fog of Monterey Bay. We queued up beside excitable children with their excitable parents for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, possibly the most well-known collection of marine life in the world (other than the actual Ocean, of course). We saw a great white shark, several hammerheads, a couple of giant octopuses, and some really ugly eels. We really enjoyed the playful antics of the sea otters; before we knew it, we'd been there almost four hours. We dined at the Jack London pub in the pretty town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, the clean and chain-store-free town where Clint Eastwood was formerly mayor. We ate until we were full, and I had a local Carmel wheat beer (it's important to go local). We fell asleep early, and woke up to bright sunshine, whihc turned into intermittent grey patches of fog as we drove along the 17-mile drive down to the golf course at Pebble Beach, passing the much-photographed 'lone cypress' tree that has perched at the Ocean's edge for three-hundred years. We stopped by the Carmel Mission, on the centuries-old Camino Real (King's Highway, along Route 101), a glowing reminder that quite a lot of California's European settlement began way before the Gold Rush, and that more than just Spanish names remain. We came across a large group of cyclists, who had gathered en masse to take the spectacularly Californian road that we were about to embark upon: Highway 1, along Big Sur. We were not disappointed; Big Sur rises high above the Pacific, and drops to crashing waves below. We drove through patches of fog that swept in like an army of ghosts (though I noticed that at times it looked more like a fake special effect than real fog), and through incredibly colourful sunshine, as the wild crags threatened to push us off the edge and out of America. We ate wraps and grapes on the beach at Pfeiffer, watching dogs play in tide pools and waves thunder against giant rocks, producing great cinematic displays of power. We saw Pelicans and Cormorants, large Gulls and sleeping Elephant Seals, lying among the ruins of driftwood and seaweed. We reached Cambria by late afternoon, and had a romantic meal at the Brambles, beneath a painting of Venice, the city where we got engaged. We left the Ocean the next day, but not before visiting Hearst Castle, the unbelievably opulent former home of William Randolph Hearst. We were guided through immense, grand rooms filled with Hearst's massive collection of European art, mostly dating from the medieval and renaissance periods, mostly from the Mediterranean. We weren't allowed to touch the marble pillars by the Neptune pool, which features original sculptures dating back to Imperial Rome; there is even a statue from ancient Egypt, far from home, watching the Californian sunset. We drove inland to Paso Robles, stopping at a winery for a little local tasting, before making the long journey back home. We didn't want to come back to the Valley; the lure of the Sea is too strong for us. We uploaded our photos, and reluctantly got back to our real and busy lives. |
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15.9.06 01:10 |
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but does he know ossie like we know ossie?
I am not the only Spurs fan in Davis. This came as quite a surprise. I went to a local locale today to have lunch and watch, on TV, the second half of Tottenham's triumphant return to European football. We played in our new chocolate and gold shirts, the first time Spurs have worn brown in over a century (insert obscure/childish joke here). Anyway there was a guy there wearing a retro navy blue top with the cockerel logo above small embroidered letters that read "Wembley 1961". He was American, a very nice fellow, and he told me that he had just become a Tottenham supporter very recently. Apparently having watched the World Cup he decided he needed to follow a Premiership side. Why Spurs? Well, he said, he didn't want to follow Man United, or chelsea, and certainly not Arsenal (I nodded approvingly at the last one). So it came down to a choice between Liverpool and Tottenham. Spurs won him over, as Liverpool were 'too provincial'. Besides, he said, he wanted to follow a team that at least had a good chance of winning something. Now I've been Spurs all my life. Yid Army through and through. But when he said that I not only fell off my chair, I nearly fell off the continent. I was elated at the fact that we can even now attract new supporters, but I had to suppress my gloomy-Spurs-fan nature and exasperation; usually being a Spurs fan is something you are born into, you don't necessarily choose it. I didn't want to put him off THFC. So I welcomed him to the club, told him he's following a team that's on the up (we'll forget those three defeats, we're still above Arsenal). He'd heard all about the big north London rivalry, so I impressed upon him (like an old wise monk initiating the youngling into whatever it is monks initiate people into) that if he wishes to follow the Path of the Lane he must understand one thing above all others. That it is not enough merely to dislike Arsenal, you have to really hate them, you have to celebrate their defeats just as much as you'd celebrate a Spurs win. It's like Yin and Yang, you see. Or Jol and Weng. However, I said, I don't want you to think that Spurs/Arsenal is that deadly a rivalry, there are worse. Celtic and Rangers do spring to mind, of course, but I'm thinking of Luton and Watford. Ouch. I tell you what though, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one asking for the Spurs matches to be shown in the pub. |
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15.9.06 08:41 |
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take me to the sea
fineliner pen, and the california coast; a hammerhead at the monterey bay aquarium; the bay at monterey; the lone cypress on 17-mile drive (or 'lone pine' as one fellow brit called it); pfeiffer beach, on the big sur stretch of coast; a sea anenome at monterey aquarium ("either you're with me or you're my anenome", as king george would say); and finally, the mission at carmel. Snapshots of our trip.
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16.9.06 07:07 |
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bike trouble?
watercolour pencil, fineliner pen, the failing evening light. nails by tam, davis; they cut hair too, or so they claim. as you can imagine i've never been in there. I might go in one day and ask what type of nail I need to hang pictures on the wall. I tell you what though, as I was sitting on the pavement opposite, sketching beside my bike, a VW van pulled up in front of me, right in front so I couldn't see what I was drawing. there was a couple inside, and they asked me if I was having bike trouble. Obviously I looked like I was, sitting next to the bike with a sketchbook and paintbrush in my hand, with coloured pencils and other random and mostly unused art material strewn on the tarmac around me. They must have thought I was doing it all wrong, that a bike cannot be fixed with a paintbrush. "No, no I'm fine," I said, gesturing that I was drawing. "Are you sure?" the guy insisted, his wife looking on in pity, "You're not changing your tyre or anything?" I said no, and motioned that they were, you know, kind of in the way actually. I still don;t think they believed I was drawing, and will probably be telling other couples at dinner parties for years about the english guy who was trying to fix his bike with watercolour pencils and refused their help, while stuck in the middle of nowhere (about two blocks from downtown). I need harry potter's invisibility cloak. |
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18.9.06 08:20 |
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misty morning, monterey
watercolour, plus a bit of belle and sebastian. mrs pete again. 17 mile drive. whispering, wandering fog. people taking photos of a famous tree they had not heard of until that morning when they paid the money to drive past houses of people who you'd think were rich enough. all will be revealed when we turn to the answers page. |
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19.9.06 07:35 |
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Week Fifty-One: What D'You Gotta Do to Get a Drink Round Here?
Last Friday I popped into the local Safeway (yes, they still have Safeway over here, not a Morrison's in sight) to get my reward for a tiring and stressful week, some fresh soup and a couple of beers. I got to the checkout (I mean, the register), and was asked if I was over 21. I don't always get asked this; it's a good while since I looked that youthful. However on this occasion I was actually refused my two beers, not because I looked too young, not because I didn't have government-issued ID, but because - and only because - my ID didn't have a written phsyical description on it. "You what?" I asked, utterly non-plussed. After all, my ID - a Permanent Resident Card - has my photo clearly printed on it. It has my name, my fingerprint, my age (surely the most imporant bit) and a special biometric chip containing who knows what. If you ran this card through a Homeland Security check it would probably tell you my GCSE results. "No, it needs a physical description on it, or we can't accept it," came the cashier's uncompromising response. I half expected her to say, "computer says no," and cough on me. I asked to see the manager. He even admitted he thought I was over 21, but said that the store couldn't sell me beer if I didn't have an ID with a physical description on it. "But I've bought beer here loads of times!" I pleaded, my fake Hugh Grant Brit accent morphing slowly back into my very real Grant Mitchell London accent. The manager, who also looked younger than me, did not care, saying that it was the law and that if they sold me beer they would be prosecuted. Not only that, but every other time I'd bought beer there had been illegal. Even though I had a federal government ID card that not only proves my age but is good enough for me to get onto an aeroplane with. I told him it was discrimination against non-Californians, and people who do not hold driving licenses. He told me to look up the law. I did. Sure enough, it says that the ID needed to prove your age needs a written description of the person. The list of 'acceptable' IDs included State-issued ID cards, California driving licenses and military ID cards. It did not include Permanent Resident ID cards or Passports (the only offical ID card most British visitors have). However, neither did the list of unacceptable forms of identification (which include such things as work ID cards and photo-less driving licenses). But the most interesting thing was that I discovered that it is not illegal to sell someone who is over 21 alcohol. It is illegal if someone is under 21, but not over. Safeway would not have been breaking the law by selling me beer, particulary as the manager acknowledged I was over 21. Many stores and bars have policies that mean they check the ID of everyone under thirty. Many take it further and card everyone that simply looks under thirty (you're supposed to be flattered, not offended, apparently). And others still have a policy of carding everybody under forty. Forty! Most Americans accept this. They don't really care, they know that they're just doing their job and it's no skin off of their nose. Because I'm from a different culture I find it a little ridiculous most of the time, but as I've never been refused in a year of living here, it's not been that big an issue. But to be refused two beers by someone who barely looks over 21 themself, because of a fairly minor technicality? Because they don't recognise Permanent Resident Cards and Passports as identification? It does discriminate against non-Californians. You'd expect a tourist to have a passport; you wouldn't expect them to have a California driver's license. The Safeway incident showed a complete lack of judgement on the part of the store, and an interpretation of the law that was based on no common sense. Yet to be fair, in a college town, all they are doing is covering themselves. They are so fearful of legal retribution that they would forfeit selling beer to thirty-year old Brits. The local Police put enormous amounts of pressure on them. It is the American mix of law and drinking that has made them so. Some think that the stringent drinking laws of the United States are a relic of the Prohibiton era. It may be part of the traditionally puritan nature of the American nation. A quick look at the list of minimum drinking ages around the world puts the US at the top, alongside places like Egypt and Malaysia. Britain's own recently-repealed licensing laws date from World War I, when pubs were told to close early so that munitions workers didn't come to the factory with a hangover. Most places ban drinking the drinking of any alcohol outside (boosting sales of brown paper-bags). Some counties (in states such as Oregon) are designated 'dry counties', places where the sale of alcohol is actually illegal. Davis itself was 'dry' until fairly recently; until the 1980s it was not available to buy anywhere outside the bars, due to a three-mile exclusion zone around the university campus. I shouldn't be so surprised, I suppose. Next week will be the first anniversary of my arrival in this strange Land of the 'Free'. I wonder if I'll be allowed a glass of champagne to celebrate. "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -Benjamin Franklin |
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20.9.06 07:37 |
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earth, wind and fire
The night before last was really something. I was awoken at 2am (I'd been having a dream about me playing a gig that was booked for me - in front of only one paying spectator, but all the same - and I hadn't learnt or even written any songs for it; I needed an excuse, really) by the pounding of the wind against our building, along with the trees struggling to form a resistance movement against this surprise invasion. It was like the Big Bad Wolf had come to town. I hardly slept the rest of the night, as the heavy wind blasted through the valley, accompanied by intermittent police sirens - broken power lines, no doubt, I thought at the time. When we awoke, we were without electricity, and the wind was still raging. There were, however, no clouds in the sky; this was not the typical storm that you'd imagine with such winds, this was more like the Mistral, that famous Provencal wind that, according to Peter Mayle, blew old ladies into the street. There was a smoky haze, however, which was caused by the fires that had broken out in the dry grass. The high winds had caused these small fires to explode and multiply; there were even grass fires not too far from our own house, making it impossible for us to drive out of south Davis to go to work. It was chaos outside - circles of leaves were being blown across the roads like packs of wild dogs, while branches and garbage cans lay strewn about. You could smell the larger fires elsewhere in Yolo County on every breeze, and we realised that we are essentially living in a large tinder-box, and we're not expecting any rain until, well, about January. Fire-trucks were driving the wrong way down the freeway in an effort to reach new blazes, workers were arriving late for work with their own stories of the madness. Trees that I had once sat beneath were lying dead, split open by the brute force of nature. And now the winds have stopped. For now. Hopefully it blew away the west-nile-infected mosquitoes, but I tell you what, it marks the start of autumn (or fall), and meant that I finally got to wear my beloved black polo-neck jumper again. Hmm, I might even wear a scarf. |
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23.9.06 17:19 |
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a burnt oaker at the farmer's market
watercolour, sketchbook, about an hour or so ago; davis farmer's market, full of people voting no on measure whatever, buying fruit veg and watermelons, enjoying the september air. I hid behind my bike for safety. There was a local christian group of youths putting on a performance of the life of st patrick, or summink, or nuffink, no, but yeh, shuddup i aint not never done it or nuffink. I wish it were like that but it wasn't. It was very 'christian' ('oh well we're not really a church, we're y'know a fun place to chill and find out about jesus' one said to a prospective member afterwards). There were sons and daughters of hippies with big cars; one kid had really bad long hair in a pony-tail, bragging to his mum about being given a zero-sugar drink. Even the dogs would only chew organic free-range bones. This is not burnt oak market, let me tell you. I'm a long way from home now. |
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23.9.06 22:33 |
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364 days...365...
Phew...tomorrow (the 27th) marks exactly one year since we made the cross-Atlantic (and cross-American) jump. A year since leaving Britannia. Flipping hell. It's gone...quickly...I think. Difficult to tell. That was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, leaving my family and friends behind. Whew...
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27.9.06 06:20 |
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Week Fifty-Two: A Year in the US of "Eh?"
I often wondered this past year how I would feel at the end of it, how I would sum up my first year living, as James Brown once famously remarked before Apollo Creed and Ivan Drago, in America. Would I be all Uncle Sammed and Spangled with Stars, or would I be all stewing with homesickness, huddled in front of the TV watching DVDs of British shows and following the BBC news with vigilance? Well, lately I've certainly been in the second category, and I doubt I'll ever be in the first; trumpeting patriotism was never for me even back home. So I ask myself, how has a year in California changed me? I began the year by throwing a pumpkin. This rite of passage allowed me to get into the minds of small-town ruralitarian America, and I've been in there ever since, in a way. Davis, with its middle-brow community and progressive-greenist outlook, is not necessarily a typical town, but it tries very hard to be how people imagine such places. I've become a cyclist, but haven't yet succumbed to the American love of the automobile, and have as yet never had a driving lesson (something that sooner or later will have to be remedied, if we are to stay in the States for good). I haven't gone organic, in fact I am sad to say I eat much more fast junk food here than in London, simply because it's so readily available. Of course, I don't go down the pub anywhere near like I did in London, mainly because my old (and greatly missed) friends are not here, but also because the culture here is too different. Buying alcohol is an ordeal in itself, but the relaxing local pub just isn't there, it's all sports bars or 'bar and grill'. So this much has changed: I almost never go out to the pub. Which for one thing means no more falling asleep on the Night Bus and waking up in darkest Essex. I feel lucky that I came to an interesting State. California has so many different landscapes and places to visit, and it's the place eveyone always wants to come to from other places. It's green, yellow, gold, blue; right now, in the wine country, it is orange and burgundy, as the Harvest season kicks in, and the smell of wine-grapes floats on the mist. I juts couldn't imagine we'd have moved if it had been to somewhere like Nebraska or Idaho (I'm sure they have thier attractions, but give me California). But I still miss that proximity to the diversity of Europe; the languages, the cultures, the people, the cities. It took me a while to become a 'European', and I am loath to give that up readily. I am, as noted in the recent beer / safeway incident, still having trouble accepting the idiosyncracies of the culutre here, such as the very un-European parcity in holiday time. And don't even mention the War. I find that my blood is made to boil every time I listen to Mr Bush and his buddies appear on the telescreen chipping away reality like the Ministers of Truth, a feeling that may be amplified because I'm in liberal peace-preferring California. Nevertheless, I am not unhappy here. I have a good job, live in a nice friendly town and am lucky enough to have the most excellent and wonderful wife. I complain about most places I've lived. My love affair with London, the city I know intimately, whose history I have studied closely, whose streets I have guided camera-snappy tourists around in blistering rain and pouring sun, well, it soured gradually as I discovered that living in smaller places might be better than enduring the Underground, and when it attacked me and scarred me I felt I couldn't stay; yet I came back, and though I found a new love for the city, I think I discovered I needed to be somewhere with several million fewer people; but London is a part of my family, and always will be. I complained about life in Aix, the red tape of the French, the lunchtime closing, but it remains one of the places I'd live again the most. I certaily complained about Charleroi, in Belgium, the endless grey sky, the doomed-to-failure shadow on every building, the rotten shells of a dying heavy industry, but it will always be in the heart of Pete, as will the taste of her beers and the warmth of her people. However much I complain about California, it is already a part of me, and whether we stay or whether we go, to Europe or Canada or anywhere, little corners of Davis will stay inside me forever. So after a year, how do I feel? The breeze is picking up, the blue skies are slowly being peppered with invading October clouds, the summer heat is evaporating, and I'm already nostalgic for previous times in Davis, such as when I was jobless and sad, strumming my elctro-acoustic and drawing faces on eggs and potatoes. This past week has been probably the busiest and stressful of the past fifty-two, and I can't pretend that a night in a London pub with my closest amigos would not have helped. But I know that, truthfully, my time here has just begun, that while part of my soul will always remain on Greenwich Mean Time, the rest of me, the part that is living and experiencing, is out here on the edge of America, in the land of my wife, and that's good enough for me. I began the year by throwing a pumpkin; I'm absolutely not ending it by throwing in the towel. |
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28.9.06 04:13 |
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