Does this make you want to eat it?

The view of San Francisco from Alcatraz

Return from Alacatraz

Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death.....................e e cummings

We had been told we would love our visit to Alcatraz. And we did. It was a blowy morning but with clear skies and warmer than it had been. We climbed up to the cell house where the audio tour was to begin. On a curve of the rocky and unkempt path where large gulls were jealously guarding something, Jane said that if only the National Trust were running this island they would have a comfortable little teahouse at this spot where visitors could tuck in to scones and cream. I objected to this idea and started to wonder if there should be teahouses and Exit Through the Shop signs in other monstrous places such as old slavery markets, or the Bastille or the Tower of London, or other Gates of Hell – where you could buy lavender soap and souvenir shackles. Does every horror have to be sanitised, to be turned into entertainment, to be reduced to the everyday?

The audio tour was impressive with a range of voices and sound effects mixing the dramatic with the informative. The real voices of former inmates and prison guards were often used, the square cakes of soap in the shower block were real, the bleak, claustrophobic cells chilling. But the message was relentless: justice was done here, the system may have been harsh but it was fair, the prisoners were irredeemable and that was why they were here, the guards always acted correctly. I felt something was missing: the cruelty was not there, the inmates and guards were reduced to ciphers in pre-ordained roles, inhumanity had been brushed away.

Oh dear, I don’t think this works very well. Perhaps I can’t do serious. What I mean is something like: Alcatraz and other places like it are such monstrous blots on the human landscape that we should never accept or pardon them.

We took a Muni tram back to the Mission area where we were to meet R&D for a Mexican restaurant dinner. We sat near the back of the carriage and soon six black youths, probably in their early teens, moved in behind us. Two of them, already high on something, started rolling cigarettes and rapping rapidly to each other. A young Mexican who had been sitting not far from them moved away to join another Mexican standing farther up the carriage. I tried to catch the words of the black youths but could not make them out. Was there menace about or was that our imagining? I turned to face them. One of the youths looked at me, opened his mouth wide and smiled showing a perfect row of gold teeth.

We saw R&D at an intersection, then R was greeting a passing friend and his attractive mother. They seem to know everyone in San Francisco. In the restaurant D starts a-hugging and a-kissing somebody else. D disappears suddenly and then reappears to say we cannot go before the mariachi man has played. The mariachi player then serenades us. Is this how it is?

Now we wait for R to turn up and do what I promised. Remember? Those pictures? He’s not a bad lad, though. Not a bad lad at all, though I say it myself. Ugly as sin, of course, not a patch on his father. Still, we can’t all be Mother Teresa.

Then we pick up our hire car and we will be let loose on American roads – like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hooper NOT. But scary. We will be heading for Bodega Bay, where Hitchcock shot The Birds.

And the great aunts will have to wait. They have waited 80 years for us, so it won’t hurt them at all if they hold on for another three days. On our journey to Yosemite on Friday we shall call in at 1309 Santa Cara Avenue, Alameda, I promise

Tomorrow I will give you lists. You like lists? I will give you two lists. One will be of things I like here. The other list will be of things I like less. That list will be much shorter than the first list, I promise, but it might be more interesting. You don’t like lists? That’s tough. Because I shall give you lists. Two of them.