If you can’t do it, give up.............Sigmund Freud

7am, Saturday, July 31

Meet the Cohens Day

Couldn’t sleep. Am in a state of nervous excitement. We’re meeting Ted and Nancy for lunch; somewhere over the bridge in Marin country, I think. R&D, our chauffeurs, will soon be here. They will take us to a train station or ferry terminal. Have decided to ditch my sandals for the day. They are a bit unsightly. Though Ted is probably also part of the sandal-wearing tendency I somehow want to blend in today. Do you know what I mean? The trouble is that when you wear sandals for too long your feet expand and shoe-wearing becomes uncomfortable. (Doh! We know that. This is becoming desperate. Get on with it! Ed) Excuses, excuses! You see: I am a petit bourgeois at heart. I CAN do respectability.

But getting back to the fawn brogues for a moment. I told that story badly. For me they were a little giveaway sign that exposes the sort of super-reality that can overlay life here; rather like the moment in The Truman Show when the character played by Jim Carrey realises he is being manipulated and controlled. I’m always returning to films as a point of reference. And I know that’s pretty crass but movies set up their powerful versions of reality, against which you can measure the actual thing. Jane, on the other hand, often compares things to familiar experiences. So “it’s just like Milton Keynes” or “reminds me of Siena/Southampton/Whitby, the time you lost your shoe on the way to Snowdon” etc.

But my bowl of muesli and blueberries calls – except they don’t call it muesli here! Must GET READY! Wish me luck! Hope to get some pictures, even videos, up here if my technical manager can oblige!

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.......... Sigmund Freud

Friday, July 30

Not much happened today. Mr Research and Ms Development gave us a day off. So we set off late and went on the tram/train/Muni I think it’s called. I never know how we’re going to get anywhere. I leave it all to Jane, who’s good at map-reading and following guidebooks. Jane went to the big modern art museum, I went to the cartoon museum. She is always keen on the landmark sites. I feel I’ve seen a lot of modern art – in London or in reproduction – and I don’t gain much by looking at another Picasso, Warhol or Calder. I thought the cartoon museum would cover the great American cartoonists – from Peter Arno to Saul Steinberg – but it was limited to comic cartoon strips. A bit of a letdown.

We met for lunch at a big beer hall place near by where we both had a plate of clams and chorizo at about $12 each with pleasant non-gassy and hoppy beer. Next to us were two men whom I took to be San Francisco advertising executives; they spoke with the pleasant rising intonation we are getting used to. One of them wore fawn brogue shoes of the type you never see nowadays outside London clubs. Fawn is actually a buttoned-down Brooks Brothers touch, but even so that should have been a clue because as soon as we started talking they introduced themselves as fellow Britons who just wanted to talk about “home”.

Our best sightseeing so far was at the Dolores Mission, one of the first Spanish settlements and full of interesting history by the early days of the city of St Francis. The building adjoining the church went back to the 17^th century and the churchyard was full of gravestones bearing the names if Irishmen.

That’s about it. Tomorrow is a big day. It is going to be exciting. It is Meet the Cohens day. Jane wondered what to wear. Should she put on a summer dress? R, ever practical, said: dress to the weather. Ted and Nancy, we look forward to meeting you!

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity......... Sigmund Freud

It’s 6.30am on a damp, grey Friday, July 30, 2010, and I’m perching on Austin’s bar stool in his kitchen in this wonderful city of St Francis. They are both early risers and I hear him and old White Fang rummaging around next door.

But I’m not going to leave it any more. I’m going to tell you about where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and the weather and all that. We’re on holiday and this is a travel blog and you’ll want to know all sorts of things like that.

But first, a little digression. The graceful and beautiful D, the soul of discretion and a person of sense and sensibility, told me yesterday that if I want to make a stock comic figure of our inhouse corporate legal eagle, otherwise known as our host and landlord, I should disguise his name. He knows I’m tapping away at something and he could ego-google himself, find his name and a good reason to not like how he is portrayed, and then sue me for everything I’ve got. They’re hot on things like that here. Thanks D! So I’m going to call him Morris O’Leyland instead. Did you know that if you write a name so: A-U-S-T-I-N, it confuses the search engines and they just give up? Well, that may be an urban myth but it might come in handy one day.

Incidentally, I tried a spot of ego-googling myself with Travels with Jane but the blog didn’t turn up. Travels with a donkey did, of course, travels with a refrigerator, travels with Moldavian striptease artists and so on. But no Travels with my Jane. Poor show, Google! Not so almighty and all-listening after all!

Morris, by the way, calls his wi-fi network WatchingtheWatchers. Solid bloke Morris!

Another thing is that I keep missing things. R&D point out wildlife and I look – and it’s gone. See, he says, there’s a diving pelican. I turn round but the pelican has disappeared from view. Or, hey, a blue jay, a humming bird, a turkey vulture! Same thing, I strain to see them, but then a flutter of wings in the sky and I never do.

But next moment I do see something. A snake looking like a lace on a football boot in Manchester United colours appears on the path ahead. Remembering Jane’s meeting with a python in Brazil I manfully interpose myself between reptile and her. Immediately moving into David Attenborough mode I whip out my Leica-lens camera and try to focus. But the snake, which up to then had been moving at a snail’s pace, suddenly bolts and disappears behind a clump of dry grass. “Must have been a kamerashi,” says D – who’s also a bit of a wit in that very gentle Californian way. [kamerashi=camera-shy! Geddit?]

But let’s move on and I shall now go into sequential mode like proper diarists should. Sequential? Long word that and I don’t quite know what it means but it sounds sort of right. And we’ll try the historic present and that will help to push it along.

Right. We’ve done The Arrival.

So, Day 2, Tuesday, July 27

R&D meet us at a diner in the Noe Valley area and we tuck into the American Big Breakfast – hash browns, bread chunks, hominy grit, huge eggs, melting cheese and ketchup pouring over pink slabs of ham and crisp fries. But this being California it just isn’t like that. Toast, the diner where we eat, is actually full of very elegant and thin people nibbling at little plates of fruit.

We climb into the Golden Eagle, R&D’s battered old Volvo, and head for the Twin Peaks – nothing to do with the David Lynch drama by the way – a hill overlooking the bay that is normally draped in low-lying mist. We get a view that reminds us of Rio seen from the Sugar Loaf.

Next, the Golden Gate Park. A lot of it is not park at all, more wild like heathland – a place full of unexpected trees and shrubs. Then we climb a magnificent modern building clad in rusting sheets of iron. It’s the De Young museum and from the tenth floor, surrounded by plate glass, we have another panoramic view. I begin to like it here.

To the sea and then the high spot of today is our picnic. R&D take us to a secluded spot overlooking the Golden Gate bridge. It seems miles from anywhere. Below us the strong currents of the sea and minutes later we see a school of small dolphins circling slowly. Quite magical.

We drive through Presidio, a sort of Bishop’s Avenue in the sun come Truman Show nirvana. But we don’t see Sharon Stone, who lives there. She’s probably shopping, we say. We do however see some very smart dogs and thir walkers. Could they be hers, we wonder.

An ice-cream, at Dolores Park. Yummmm!

Home. Mobile network crashes,. We are due to meet R&D at 8 but we can’t get through to them. Gnawing frustration. This is what holidays are REALLY like. I want to go home. Jane and I argue. We decide to walk to the Million Fishes in the Mission area. Jane says it’s not far. But it SO is. We get there tired and hungry and still arguing like minor characters in EastEnders.

But then the sun shines. We eat at a lovely little place and are happy again. Thinks.... the restorative power of fod and drink.

Day 3, Wednesday, July 28

Phew!

Hard work this blogging. It’s so cold and damp and foggy that we take the trolley bus down town and we buy a jacket for me and jeans for her. But by 11.30 the sun comes out, the sky clears and it’s perfect. This happens every day but I’m not going to mention it again because it’s boring always talking about the weather.

We sit in the verdant freshness of Yerba Buena. A small park – parklet really – surrounded by beautiful skyscrapers and facing an old church. A group of Japanese drummers are making a magnificent din. I watch a woman go up to the wing mirror of a large limousine and apply make-up to her face. Forty minutes later she is still at it, by now putting lipstick on her eyebrows. I can’t tear myself away. It’s a David Lynch moment.

Rols arrives in the Golden Eagle and we swoop off to Marin County over the Golden Gate bridge and up to the forested hills to Mount Tamalpais. There I do actuallh see turkey vultures. Many of them, in fact. They’re all over the place, their broad wings catching the thermals as they glide round us.

Then a return to Million Fishes where D has put together a delicious soup.

Day 4, Thursday, July 29

We’re really steaming now. Almost up to date. Today is Berkeley day and again R&D bundle us into the car and we’re off an this time we cross the long Bay bridge [have I got that right?].

Berkeley is a revelation. Green and woody, unlike what I had expected, and with a small town feel. Yet with sophisticated and smart shops and restaurants. We lunch at a delightful Chinese fusion place. Later we stroll through a farmers’ market tasting large and perfectly ripe peaches. R&D take us for a walk, past the Indian rock, streets full of lovely old wooden houses and to their old house on Parker street, where we raid the vegetable garden.

The air is sweet, the people are gentle, the sun is warm. Yes, we do like it here!

BEHIND THE SCENES

July 29, Thursday morning, 7.30am.

On the terrace of our B&B in Noe Valley and a chilly fog sits over us

Just checking that last posting. Pretty dire stuff. But I shall do better, I promise.

I have excuses though. Let me lift the lid, take you behind the scenes, walk you through the engine room and explain what all those clanking pistons and copper pipes are about. (Come on, come on, Blogperson! Get on with it!).

When David Livingstone, Mary Kingsley, Vasco de Gama or Amerigo Vespucci interrupted their travels to put down their thoughts for the folks back home they would reach for a reed, a goose quill or whatever. And if the quill wasn’t up to it they’d strangle another goose or cut off a piece of charcoal, and they’d write: “Land on the port bow. Must be America”. And go back to breakfast or plot another course.

With me it’s different. I write from a MacBook that has seen better years. And I’m hardly beyond level 2 in the digital age. I know nothing about Wavepad or the versatility of Audacity or the concept of Cloud. I just open the lid, clear the breadcrumbs away and start typing. And then the emails won’t send and I spend hours gazing at a spinning disc until a window pops up with an incomprehensible question. Or the blog totally disappears.

Since we arrived at SF I’ve been up most mornings at 5.30am, not being able to sleep, bash away for a bit and, after ten minutes, start fuming impotently with Luddite rage. At about 7.30 there emerges the bleary figure of Austin, our landlord or “host”, a corporate lawyer, though neither term is quit right. Anyway he is fast becoming a friend and ever-tolerant technical adviser. And he helps to put me right. But then so does R, who last night installed Snow Leopard on my Mac.

Here goes, I thought. Another learning curve that will be too steep for me. But no, it seems to have done the trick and he shows me the best way to send group emails and he sorts out my blog too. He is my saviour and so is Danielle for bringing us back to life last night with her delicious marrow soup.

Our brown shopping bag from the local worker-owned cooperative organic grocery store sits in front of me. It proclaims proudly that is it closed on LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANGENDER AND QUEER PRIDE DAY. It also happens to be H’s birthday, I shamefully realise. I get an email from her asking if I haven’t forgotten something and she points out that in America you can divorce your parents for less. OK, Hils, go ahead and we’ll sue you for loss of future familial anniversary emoluments or something!

Haven’t I forgotten something? Yes, of course. What have we been actually doing? Where have we been? Where’s the travel bit, I promised? (And there’s been lot of it). Again, I apologise. That will have to wait for my next blog.
All in good time. Just hang in there!

The destination: The Million Fishes Arts Collective, Bryant street, in all its glory

The moment

has arrived

R&D, as I shall call them from now on, are to meet us. We wait nervously by an airport underpass that seems a trifle Third World. We scan the traffic for our first sight of the Golden Eagle. Jane sends a text.

Then at last a fat white van – the Beast – appears and lurches towards us. Hugging and kissing ensue. We clamber in and set out on a broad freeway, barrelling along and all talking at the same time.

Big things happen on your travels and you forget the little things. And the thing I've forgotten is my Brazilian straw hat, left on the pavement (sidewalk please!) at the airport in the excitement. Sportingly, R turns the Beast round. But it's not only the hat that I abandoned. There it is for sure. Next to it is my rucksack containing MBF, the thing I value most, my laptop. And the Department of Home Security hasn't even blown it up. Poor shoe, department!

The Million Fishes artists' collective in the Mission District, where R&D now live, is a truly wondrous establishment. Eclectic would be a posh art critic word for it. But I'll return to it at a later blog with picture. Just to say: it's a place to die for.

R makes us a Californian corn pizza and sleep beckons. They take us to our AirBnB lodging in Noe Valley. We meet the excellent Austin O'Flynn, our landlord and we fall in to bed. But before that we meet his dog, White Fang in the flesh, a lovely old grey mat of a husky, who later tries to get into bed with us. More about Austin and his dog later. Bear with me.

"Hates California, it's cold and it's damp. That's why the lady is a tramp." Thank you Mr MH! You're right – and would love to meet Claire's long lost cousin. But later it will not be damp. The sun will come out and we do love California.

Read the next blog: A hymn to the Golden State.

THE JOURNEY

Vancouver stopover: The journey was not kind to Jane

11.30 BST, Monday, July 26, 2010

Somewhere over

Iceland, I think.

There’ll be internet connection on the Air Canada flight, they said. But there isnt. And this is my first blog and I was hoping to post it from 37,000 feet above the Atlantic.. Now I’ll have to do it after we land at San Francisco – at the first Starbucks I see, if my darling wife will put up with the slight delay as I extract my laptop out of the rucksack and try to pick up the wi-fi.

And there’s no BBC at all on the little screens in front of us. There’s every other TV and radio channel, horror movie, Hollywood movie, kids’ movie, shopping channels – but Aunty Beeb is not among them. Poor show!

Britain is receding behind us, however, so perhaps I should forget my usual habits – The World at One, The Guardian, the walk in the park – and other familiar attachments and recognise that we come from a very small dot on the globe. But old habits die hard!

I’ve read today’s Guardian from head to tail and I do admire what Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder and whistleblower, has done in exposing the horrors and awful chaos of the Afghan war. As a temperamental teller of tales and mischief-maker myself I salute the real thing. Mr Assange has put his head on the line.

12.30 local time,, 2010, July 26

Starbucks,

Vancouver Airport

We all have our story of the US immigration ordeal. This one happens in Canada. After “deplaning”, as it’s called, we walk into an area of the airport to be greeted by an eagle on a shield and big sign that says: “WELCOME TO THE USA”. We’re actually not in the US but never matter. A large man sitting in a glass cubicle motions Jane forward. “Raise your left hand,” he says. I notice that Jane’s cheeks are beginning to colour. I know she is thinking: “I’ve seen presidential inaugurations. I’m going to have to swear an oath or something.” But I know what’s coming. “Press your hands against the glass,” the big man says. Fingerprints. Of course,. Then it’s the other hand. Then the photograph. It is all over very quickly. I follow meekly. But when I’ve been processed I ask the man: “What happens to that information about us?” “It goes somewhere,” he says with a solemn finality. “Where?” I squeak. He looks balefully at me and offers no more information.

Tomorrow:

THE ARRIVAL