The other nice thing about going to the academy of sciences at night (see post below) is that you can feel free to spend time taking pictures of things without worrying you’re getting in the way of eager young hordes of children beetling about and trying to *learn* things everywhere. The blighters.

Anyway, it was because of this, that I managed to get some nice pictures, and am particularly fond of this one of two treefrogs. One is stuck to the glass, so you can see her undersuckers. And the other one blends in with the leaf. I think they are beautiful.

Later in the evening, after a couple more cocktails, I mainly took out of focus pictures of tropical fish. About seven hundred of them. Man, I loved those fish.

There’s a thing at the California Academy of Sciences - like the Science Museum in London, but not free, and with more butterflies and fish and stuffed animals and an alligator; so, you know, swings and roundabouts, really (there are no swings or roundabouts in either, it was just a thingy of speech. Pattern? Manner? No, wait, I go ask someone. Figure! It’s a figure of speech. I remembered half way through asking My Beloved. Always the way: I turn to him with a pained and angry look on my face, having spent ten minutes trying to pull the word out of my head already, and say ‘What’s the … what’s the WORD?! When you mean the thing that’s a bit like … OOOH! SPORK!’
And then he’s safe to go back to work and I can go back to work and everything’s fine. It’s a good thing I don’t have to share an office. I’m sure proper journalists or writers never do that ever. Am I still in brackets? Yes, I am. I’m in brackets in the middle of a sentence, in fact. I should probably just start the whole paragraph again, but that feels wrong. Hmmm. Ok, lets try this) and really, each has it’s benefits.

Anyway. SO. Every week there’s a night at the Academy of Science Place Thing Building (official name) where they open at night - on a Thursday, if you happen to be in town. And not only is it the only time when the place is completely free of school groups and other forms of children, but it’s 21 and over only, there are bars, a DJ, food, more bars (I’m a bit drunk. Sorry. Look, you get an excuse to go to a museum and get drunk, what would YOU do?), and a good lecture by a local or visiting scientist, if you book ahead - it’s a brilliant idea.

So if you want to talk to a friend, instead of going to a noisy bar, you can wander around with a beer or a cocktail looking at exhibits about near-extinct turtles and sit by a huge tank of tropical fish, and it puts it all in perspective a bit.

So anyway. There was a point to this.

We went, my friend and I. We had a lot to talk about, as ever, so we went and we walked around and looked at things, and sipped on drinks and watched the other grown up grown-ups go by.

We found ourselves by a Foucault Pendulum - some big crazy pendulum that demonstrates, through the clever application of ‘Science’, that the world turns and gravity exists and all of those things.

And we stopped, and looked at the pendulum.

Swing, swing, it went. Swing, swing.

Isn’t that amazing, we said? How the earth turns, and the gravity holds us to it and all of this can be summed up, at least a little, by this pendulum?

Swing, swing, it went. Swing, swing.

There were pegs all around the edge of the circle - propped up at points to demonstrate that as the pendulum swung, the axis on which it swings changes as the earth turns. So they get knocked over as the circle turns. Over the course of 39 hours, or so, all the pegs get knocked over.

We’d just missed a peg we thought.
So we thought we’d stand there till the next.

Swing, swing, the pendulum went. Swing. Swing.

We stood, and we talked. Some people breezed by and may have been trying chatty uppy things, because that’s the kind of place people might do that, but once they saw how dedicated we were to the falling of our peg, they left again.

Swing, swing.
Swing. Swing.

It moved, a fraction of a centimetre every second. I’ve never been so aware of the movement of the earth as I was standing and waiting for the couple of inches between those pegs to pass.

Swingswing. Swing, swing.

We talked, about this, and also about that. Helped some Italian students translate the informative sgn, with hand signals, and pointed some other people toward an official scientific explainer when they wanted to know in detail what we were looking at.

Swing swing. Swing …

OOOH, it’s really close now, we said.

We had attracted the attention of the people gathering nearby, who’d noticed how intent we were on being there for the pegknockingovering.

Swing, swing. Swing. Swing.

Will it be a clean hit, we asked? It’s kind of curved toward the bottom of the pendulum, said the hopeful guy next to us, so it might happen before you think … It might happen at any swing, he said.

Swing swing.

I’d run out of drink fifteen minutes before, but knew what would happen as soon as I went to the bar: the earth would start turning quicker, just to spite me.

But no. We were here, and we were waiting, and we were going to be there to watch the peg fall, whatever happened.

Swing, swing, it went. Swing, swing.
Swing swing. Swing

OOOOH did you see?! It wobbled!

Swing swing, it went.
A dozen of us now, were crowded around one side of the giant pendulum, waiting.
Swing, sw …

tinkle!…

“WHOOOO!” we shouted in an American kind of way. “YEAHHHHH!”, we shouted. A sudden and liberating exclaim that I don’t think any of us were expecting.

We looked around. Some people who maybe hadn’t been there so long looked a little surprised.

“SUCK IT, PEG!”
“Yeah! Go gravity!”
“WOOT!”
we added, for emphasis. And explanation.

“YEAH!”
And then we walked off, quickly, toward the bar and the aquarium.

Museums + Booze might be my favourite sum in the history of sums.

GO PENDULUMS.
[Wait. Pendula?]

update

I have uploaded my video!

But you don’t get to see the peg fall over.
Because You Didn’t WORK for it.
(and yes, by work, I mean stand there gabbing for half an hour while the world turned)
So there.

“Please enter your zip code, followed by the pound key”

Says the automated lady on the other end of the phone, using whole bundles of words that only a few months ago would have had me yelling for My Beloved to “Hey! C’mere! Listen! She said pound key! Zip code! She means HASH KEY and POSTCODE! Hee hee hee!” … because I was (still am, really) amused by such things.

The woman who takes the punched in numbers for my phone top-up still amuses me. But for slightly different reasons. Something which, frankly, seems like the weirdest addition to a automated service … it’s the sound of a robot typing. Which is kind of Zen, because it’s kind of like the sound of one hand clapping, but with typing. And no hands. Just a disembodied voice.

So the woman says “Please. Hold on. I’ll just pro. Cess. That for you.” half way through the call. And then, suddenly you hear a rash of typing, like someone actually having to type some numbers into a computer. And you’re thinking “Come, now, you haven’t got any hands, you’re fooling no one” and you want to mention this to her when she returns … but you can’t, because she wouldn’t hear you. Or worse, she would, and then say “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that …”

That’s the funny thing, though, I’m no longer surprised by talking to robots - but it confuses the hell out of me when they suddenly appear to be something other than what they are. When they suddenly pretend to be human.

My other favourite robot is the one on the airport train - the little train that trundles around on the high up track around the terminals and the parking garages. She says, as you might expect her to say: “Please hold on. Please set baggage trolley break to ‘on’.”

But she says it, you see, in the saddest possible voice. It’s the same tone of voice a mother would use to say “Please stop doing that Tommy. Please. STOP it.” - not too firm, but oh, so sad.

Every time I hear it, and that’s quite ridiculously often - and not because I’m going anywhere - I end up repeating it over and over again for hours afterward, in the same plaintive tone.

“PLEASE hold on” she says. Because if she’s said it once, she’s said it a million times (and she has).

So Yeah. Robots taking on human traits.

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD, I TELL YOU.

No, wait, that wasn’t my point.
It’ll do, though.

The other day, I was in need of a spatula. Which was lucky, because after a very brief scout around the kitchen, i found one.

I know. Great story, right?

The point is, as I sought for the spatula, while singing a song about the spatula in order to persuade it to appear sooner …

(I have a habit of making up very bad songs while doing things as it helps me concentrate and not forget what I was looking for. They are mainly If you really want to know, it kind of went
Spatula, spatula,
la la la.
Um.
La la la …
you were here, in your pot…
yes you were, now you’re not.
Here’s a spoon, here’s a tong!
no - pair of tongs; ‘tong’ was wrong.
Dishwasher? Spatuless …
Fucking kitchen’s a mess.
Ser-yously, where the hell
now that wooden one’s lost as well.
Spatulating-cunting-sod.

And then it descended into a whole bunch of swearwords and really heinous spatula-related suggestions that frankly I shouldn’t put here where my mother can read them (hello!) but that was basically it.)

but my point was:

I was overjoyed when I found it.
It lifts, it flips, it stirs, it cuts:

The spatula, is, I contend, the king of the kitchen.

Think about it: nothing is as versatile, is it? I certainly can’t think of a thing I use as often while cooking.

LET THE DEBATE BEGIN.

It’s: Kitchen IDOL - the nominations for finalists start here.
(spatula is already in the finals. Since you ask)

There are lots of things you can do in San Francisco. It’s well known, in fact, for being a very permissive, open society. Perhaps not compared to how it was in the sixties and early seventies - but compared to a lot of other places - very liberal. Veeeeeeeery liberal. Very very liberal. Veh.

I mean, I’m not saying you can walk down the road with your genitals hanging out. Not every day, anyway. There are high days and holidays for that, after all. But generally, very progressive, very positive, and with an emphasis on what you, as an individual CAN do. Except ….

Except for the botanical gardens.
It was the sign at the gate of the very lovely botanical gardens. Where they would like you not to do quite a lot of things, that inspired me. I’m going to start a collection.

Because this? I mean, this is just an awesome list of things that are not allowed.

It’s like a totem of ‘NO’. A monument of DON’T’.

It is a DON’TUM pole. For the Stoppit tribe. And every generation - or more often, gazing upon this - they think of something else you absolutely no-questions-asked should NOT do (ever), and then add it to the pole in some kind of solemn ceremony.

“From now on, until the sun is eaten by the moonwolf, there will be NO putting feet on the benches. So is it graphically represented: So shall it be.”

You can’t cycle; you can’t skateboard. You cannot … well, at this resolution it looks like they’ve tried to outlaw walking on thick-soled shoes, but trust me if you look quite close up you realise they’re rollerblades. You cannot ride on stupid little scooters, you cannot own a robot dog, no bad football skills and no …

Well, these are the ones that are quite specific to the botanic gardens - the rest could be signs on any public green space determined to stop people having fun.

- Don’t - no, again, looks a bit like setting alight to, it isn’t - don’t pick the flowers.
- Don’t STAMP on the flowers.
- Don’t tickle squirrels under the chin. or perhaps feed them.

 

And, you know - a lot of these might be unnecessary. Cyclists would be annoying on the winding paths hidden by tall plants. Very bad.
- The most fun thing about skateboarders is, I think most people agree, the hope that they might fall off during one of their more showyoffy stunts so you can point and laugh. So also a fine rule.

But here’s the thing: I’m just not sure how many people would go to a botanic garden with the purpose of stamping on plants. And if they DID want to do that, I’m just not totally sure a graphic on a pole would do the job, you know?

And then there’s the other thing - the fact that once you get up to banning nine, ten things - where do you stop? Don’t you then have to draw pictures of EVERYTHING you don’t want to happen, just in case anyone takes the fact something is missing from the sign as tacit agreement that it is therefore ok?

 

So what then? You start making graphics of not only bonfires and alcohol bottles and other normal banned things - but all the other things that wouldn’t be appropriate no matter whether people might ahve though of them or not?
Couples mid-coitus?
People swearing loudly?
Disemboweling yourself?
Out of hours opera singing?
Murder? (no murder! - it would be a great - and applicable - graphic almost anywhere)
Undue criticism of pruning methods?
Sneak sodomy?
Clashing clothing?
Indiscriminate Toiletations?
Impressions of a Mexican wrestler in the rare orchid house?

I wonder about the efficacy of trying to pictuate EVERYTHING you disapprove of, but can’t deny I look forward to seeing the graphics on some of those.

Anyway.

That is only my first for now - I mean, I am a fan of pictures of signage in general, but this is my new quest:

Here in California, land of the oversignage (due to a litigious culture, I assume), I will be collecting DO NOT signs in search of the most HEY YOU! STOP THATs.
If anyone happens to spot any others, anywhere else in the whole wide world, feel free to let me know.

That is something you CAN DO.
For things you CANNOT do, please see a later post.

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.

We’ve joined a tennis club. I find this very funny, so I’m saying it a lot at the moment, because I feel like the phrase ‘We’ve joined a tennis club’ should be spoken by someone called Margot or Tasmin while waving her manicured hand at her husband Geoffrey or Julian and sipping her cosmo.

I don’t explain as often as I should, perhaps, that we have mainly joined a tennis club because
a) We don’t play tennis, we only wanted to use the gym. So …
b) Everyone else is playing tennis, so the gym is always empty. And
c) It was cheap because - God, I love this - because we’re UNDER 35, so we’re eligible for JUNIOR MEMBERSHIP. So
d) When they are using the gym, most of the other members aren’t exactly skipping around in tight lycra trying to pick each other up, you know what I mean? At least not in any way that I want to think about.

So that’s good. And I’m going to the gym regularly again, and that’s brilliant.
But because it’s a tennis club, it’s great, because it’s completely alien to me.

My favourite favourite thing today - and I thought Americans didn’t do passive aggressive as much as we do - was the lady in front of me who was changing her court reservation. She didn’t seem very happy, but she was talking, softly and insistently, trying to get a different playing time that suited her.

“What about 12 tomorrow?”
“Will you hold on to that one for a sec?” she asked the pleasant receptionist, “I just need to phone my friend and check it’s ok.”
“Sure!” said the pleasant receptionist “go right ahead!”
“Thank you!” said the lady, and turned away, while I moved up the counter and handed in my locker key, waiting while they rootled around in the deepest drawer in the world for my membership card. There was a sudden shout behind me.

“Moshi MOSHI! HI, it’s ME”

I jumped.
Sneakily, I looked around, the lady with the reservation was standing looking as cool as a cucumber.

“I’m just at the club, but IT STINKS”

I jumped again.

“They’re recovering the courts and the WHOLE PLACE STINKS and it’s going to make me SICK and so we CAN’T play because I’m just going to DIE if I have to play in this DREADFUL, AWFUL STINK. So I’ve booked an outside court that hopefully won’t SMELL SO BAD”

(And she literally was shouting on these occasional words, I use not my caplock lightly)
(in this instance, I mean. Usually I do. Totally, I KNOW I do)

“so just call me back and let me know if that’s ok. I just didn’t want to DIE of FUME POISONING. Ok love ya, speak later”

She turned around to the receptionist. I was caught, mid-membership card handover, terrified. I took it, quickly, and walked away.

“Ok!” said the lady, nice as pie. “So, I left a message for my friend….”
“Oh, you did?” said the pleasant receptionist.

Yeah. Because she was being Just SO Subtle.

By me, Anna Pickard, aged 31 and a half
and, incidentally, if you’re not that keen on needles, I’d suggest stopping reading now

Oh Acupuncture Acupuncture!
It is really good.
And sometimes it can help you
just like people said it would.

Although it’s pointy needle things
and that might seem quite weird
It’s actually quite relaxing
and almost nothing like you feared.

It’s good for stuffed-up tummies
and people who are sad
you get to lie there in the warm
and think nice thoughts which isn’t bad

At all. You should be careful though
when your pin-pusher says “I’m sure
there was another!” that she checks
extremely well and thoroughly before you’re

Half way home. For if you’re walking down the street
a block or two from where you were
and thinking ‘Wow, my calf muscle!
It’s really stiff. Oh cripes! Oo-er!’

You may roll up your trouser leg
Just to check and find that there:
(now pushed in all the way by jeans)
is that forgotten pin. A hair-

thin piece of metal, sure.
But, you know what? Standing halfway between acupuncturist and home
pulling a needle - even hair thin - now stuck in all the way up to the hilt, out of your calf muscle?

That IS a bit weird.

And you might feel a little bit woozy.

THE END.

But APART from that, I really like acupuncture. It’s really good. I’m going back on Friday.

There’s an ‘Authentic Irish Pub’ just a few blocks up from my house.

We don’t go there much, because … well, because we’re really boring and don’t frequent ever single bar in downtown San Francisco on a weekly basis. But we have been there few times with friends.

It is nice!
And it has authetic Irish beers, and authentic Irish ciders, and on some nights of the week it has authentic Irish musicians, on authentic Irish instruments, playing authentic Irish songs!

And, for those missing the craic-soaked comfort food of home, they appear to have a full authentic Irish menu, too.

It has colcannon.
And a full Irish Breakfast.
And …

And then it has a snacks menu. With authentic Irish snacks.
Like

Traditional Irish Chilli Cheese Chips.
Chips, for the sake of American readers, in the sense of fries.

Fair enough - I’m not one to argue, and am sure that at least one reader will claim it invented in Ireland. Possibly by Bono. You know, like he invented Rhythm and Blues.

Also

Traditional Irish Buffalo Wings
You know, from authentic Irish buffalo.

But my favourite favourite in SO many ways is a twist on the traditional Western US favourite, the

Traditional Old Irish Jalepeno Poppers.

You know what’s Irish about them?

Normal jalepeno poppers are hot-hot-chilli peppers stuffed with melty-cheese, dipped in batter and deep-fried (already sounds like traditional cooking like Nana would make, right? You just wait!) now these - these were made special by

…. being hot-hot-chilli peppers, stuffed with CHEESY MASHED POTATO, battered, and deep fried.

Awesome.

Oh Danny Boy, the Pops, the Pops are callin you.
From chilli mouth, to over toilet bowl
And it’s Be-CAUSE they’ve got potato in them, son,
they’re called Iri-sh,
and that’s the way it is sooooo thereeeeee.

It’s not a great song, I know.
But seriously - you haven’t tried the poppers.
No judgies.