Last week we had the first proper rain we’ve had since I moved to San Francisco in July. The lack of rain was notable – the closest we had got was fog so heavy that it was verging on drizzle. Then last Tuesday the skies opened and we had several months all in one go – record-breaking rain, apparently.
Fortunately, the Indian summer has returned and the past few days have been filled with blue skies and glorious sunshine. Since most of July and August were cold and foggy, I’m quite keen that the sunshine sticks around for at least the rest of the month.
My in-laws are back from their trip to the East Coast and last night we went to the San Francisco Symphony at the Davies Symphony Hall. The theme was music from Disney, to celebrate the opening of the Walt Disney Family Museum, which I mentioned last post. It was a lot of fun to dress up and the music was wonderful. There were quite a few squirming children in the audience – I can see the temptation because it’s Disney but how many kids like symphonies, really? Fortunately only the well-behaved ones remained behind after the intermission.
The instrumental music included the William Tell overture, classical music from Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty and Grieg’s “March of the Dwarfs” from Snow White. We also had a soprano sing “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” from Cinderella, “Some Day my Prince will Come” from Snow White, “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins and “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio. I enjoyed the orchestral music more than the singing, especially the “March of the Dwarfs” and the “Sorceror’s Apprentice” from Fantasia. I did really love “Feed the Birds” though – it made me feel like I was back in London. (Although if you tried feeding pigeons at St Paul’s these days, you would be moved on by the City of London police pretty quickly).
My in-laws are visiting from Australia for a few weeks. They’ve spent the past week in San Francisco with us and they are off to New York tomorrow. When they return, we may do some travelling with them on the West Coast but that is yet to be decided. My father-in-law is spending his 70th birthday here and we have booked to have dinner at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco, which should be fun.
Having guests from out of town was the perfect excuse to do some tourist stuff that we hadn’t got around to yet. Alcatraz was high on the agenda. For me, it was just a matter of ticking it off the list and I didn’t have great hopes for it being particularly interesting. Who cared which cell was Al Capone’s? I was pleasantly surprised!
We had a gloriously sunny day, with temperatures in the mid to high 20s (celcius). Hubby and I took the trails around the island, while his parents rode the courtesy train up the hill to the prison block.
I found the extent of the decay fascinating. The prison was abandoned in 1962 and, although the cell block itself is in good condition, virtually every other building on the island was a ruin. Everything seemed to have concrete cancer and many of the buildings were shells with no rooves or windows. Past the parade ground, which is now a nesting site for gulls, there were piles of demolished concrete and steel that was rapidly being buried with plant growth.
Hubby and I took a quick detour along the Agave Trail from the parade ground down to the waterfront. Agave is the plant that they make tequila from – it’s commonly described as a cactus but apparently it’s actually related to lily and amaryllis. We had stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge and back to San Francisco.
After we had finished exploring the island, hubby and I returned to the cell block for the audio tour. We started downstairs with the shower block and then started the tour upstairs where the cells were. Audio tours are often mediocre but this was awesome – the thing that really marked it apart was that it used extracts from interviews with real prison guards and former prisoners. I actually cried when I heard a prisoner and his sister describing how she had been told as a child that her brother was dead, found out as an adult that this wasn’t true, and came to visit him.
The cells were tiny, consisting of a narrow bed, a toilet and sink. Some of them had personal effects in them, like musical instruments, paintings or library books. We also saw the isolation cells where the most recalcitrant prisoners were held in solitary confinement. And yes, we saw Al Capone’s cell – interesting not because the cell was distinctive but because he was held in the ‘hard core’ area, not the general cells. The tour told us all about the various escape attempts and the near riot in the dining hall when spaghetti was served again.
Alcatraz started life as a military fortification, then became a prison. It’s been empty since 1962 but was “reclaimed” by native American land rights campaigners several times. It’s currently a national park.
Many people who live in San Francisco have never been to Alcatraz, dismissing it as a tourist trap. I think they are missing out.
Now that autumn is officially here, San Francisco is finally having its summer. The infamous San Francisco fog rolls in and keeps the city cool and overcast for most of June, July and August, even while the rest of the Bay Area is roasting. Apparently an Indian summer in September and October is quite typical and that is what we are enjoying now.
San Franciscans love to talk about the weather or, more accurately, the climate. I’ve found it only takes a passing pleasantry about the weather on my part to elicit a detailed description of the micro-climate of the San Francisco peninsula and the meteorological phenomenon that causes the fog. And I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the Mark Twain quote about how the warmest winter he ever spent was the summer in San Francisco. Apparently he didn’t even say it!
I have found people in San Francisco extremely friendly. There is a real neighbourliness here that we never felt in London or even Sydney. I’ve been here just over two months and I know half a dozen of the neighbours already. We’ve had dinner with the couple next door and plan to have them around to our place soon. And we’re having a “block party” at the end of October where our section of street gets closed to traffic and everyone brings a potluck dish.
We have had a few visitors already. Our friend Jules (originally a Sydneysider but we know him from London) was in town for a couple of nights on his crazy world trip – he passed through San Francisco en route from Seattle to Las Vegas but is soon heading south to Mexico and Central and South America. Now we have Jack’s parents staying with us for a few weeks. They arrived on Saturday and they are staying in the spare room for now, though they are going to New York next week and plan to do a bit of travel in the US and maybe Canada. Jack’s father will be celebrating his 70th birthday here in San Francisco with us and we have booked to go to a nice restaurant.
In other news, I finally got my employment authorisation card so I can now look for jobs or freelance work. Woo hoo!
In the month before I left the UK for San Francisco, I went up to Scotland for work followed by some pleasure travel through the Highlands. I spent a few days visiting my uncle Jeff and aunt Judith and my cousin Jenny came down from Glasgow.
Jeff and Judith are now living in a mobile home next to their cottage up the glen (valley) from Inveraray, while they get building works done on the cottage. The work was three-quarters complete when I was there and it’s going to be very nice, with a lovely big kitchen and more bedrooms, but still keeping the charm of the old cottage.
Jenny (left) and I went for a hill walk directly behind the cottage on the first full day I was there. We didn’t go to the mountain peak a bit to our left, but went to the highest point in a straight line behind the cottage. We saw a family of red deer (sadly, I didn’t have my zoom lens with me so the photograph fails to do it justice), which was very exciting. It was pretty steep going and a lot of it was really scrambling or climbing rather than hiking but it was lots of fun. We called Judith when we reached the top so she could see our silhouettes waving from the ridge line. At the top the ground was flat and boggy – the treacherous peat bog sucked Jenny down to her knees at one point! It was pretty though, scattered with fluffy white bog cotton flowers and patches of red moss and 100 metres or so in from the ridge line, there’s a beautiful little freshwater tarn (lake).
Red deer
The tarn
While I was at the cottage, I also found time to go chanterelle-hunting with Judith (slim pickings though as we were a few weeks early and it had been quite dry) and hang out with my uncle Jeff and talk about the meaning of life. We had my other uncle Steven and Jenny’s cousin (and my friend) Andrew come to dinner on the Saturday night and Jenny and I drove back to Glasgow with Andrew. I stayed at Andrew’s place that night, then it was back to London by train on Sunday, and into the US Embassy for my visa appointment the following day.
I’m in a weird limbo right now. The wedding and honeymoon is behind me and the move to San Francisco is ahead of me. My husband has already moved Stateside but I am stuck in London waiting for an appointment at the US Embassy to get my visa. We had already given notice on our flat in Whitechapel and I moved out at the end of May. I am now staying with friends in north London and I also plan to travel.
The last couple of weeks I have been hanging out with my friend Emme, her partner Jon and their lovely French sheepdog (Briard) Ivy. I celebrated my birthday by going walking in a nearby park with Emme and Ivy and taking photographs of all the lovely buttercups and puddle ducks. England is beautiful in summer! In the afternoon I made a orange and poppyseed birthday cake (which turned out a little soft in the middle but was still scrumptious). Then in the evening I did a fish cookery workshop at Food at 52 with my friend Dominique.
Otherwise, I have been doing a bit of freelance work and trying to reduce my belongings down to a sensible amount for the trans-Atlantic flight. (We shipped most of the household stuff and gave a bunch to charity but I still seem to have quite a lot left over). It’s been quite a chilled time for me, not entirely without its stresses, but I haven’t ventured into London or socialised overly much. I did go to an event on China 20 years after the Tiananmen massacre at the Frontline Club on 1 June with a couple of journalist friends. I also caught up with my friends Ben and Lyndsay who have been visiting from Australia last weekend – we had dinner at The Narrow Boat, a lovely pub on the canal in Angel-Islington. Last night Emme’s friend Jen came over for a games night, which was also lots of fun!
I’ve always lived in central London – Clapham, West Hampstead and Whitechapel. Three very different areas but all in zone 2. My friends live on the outskirts in a pretty little cottage, with rolling countryside out the back door. This definitely has its advantages – you can go for lovely walks or runs and the other day I saw a hedgehog on the footpath on the way home from the station. It’s not as easy to get out and about though and this week my own laziness has been compounded by a Tube strike.
I’m about to get moving again though. Next Monday, I am getting the sleeper train to Aberdeen and then the ferry to Orkney. It’s for a story – I can’t tell you much more than that right now but obviously I’ll share once I can. When I’m done in Orkney, I’m going to travel down the west coast of Scotland to see my relatives in Inveraray and Glasgow. I come back to London just in time for my visa appointment.
Before I leave the country, I also want to go to see my aunt Michele and her family in Cardiff, my friend Misty in Dublin and my friend Jann in Amsterdam. I’m also REALLY, REALLY looking forward to the San Francisco adventure and seeing my lovely husband again.
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I know that I have been neglecting this blog. I am not sure that my friends and family are still reading it, except for those of you with RSS readers. But you can always follow me at my travel and food blog Roaming Tales, on Twitter or Facebook or Friend Feed (which you can customise if you don’t want to see all my tweets, for example).
My husband has sent me a letter: “I hope to send for you soon. Some people in the west have ’struck it rich’ as they say out here, and many others live off the gold dust from their claims.”
What did you get up for New Year’s Eve? Painting the town red or just a quiet one at home?
The boy and I joined my mate Steven and some of his friends for a big night out. We went to the Promised Land club night at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. It’s been ages since I’ve been out dancing and I really enjoyed it. I’m feeling a bit tired today but not too badly at all.
We started the night at Steven’s flat in West London for nibbles and drinks. Steven and his girlfriend Jill and housemates had cooked up a storm with homemade Macaroni Cheese, lasagne and pizza. I cracked open a lovely bottle of Champagne that our friend Misty gave us for our engagement party. It was good to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a while – literally over a decade, in the case of Billy and Fiona – and meet a few new people as well. I thought it was a really good crowd.
We left for the club about 10pm but by the time we actually made our way to the dance floor, it was already twenty minutes to midnight. The music was meant to be House from the summer of 1987/1988. I must be pretty out of the loop with the dance music scene as the music sounded current to me – though the big, yellow smiley faces on the big screen certainly dated it.
We had a very easy run home on the Tube (which was running through the night for New Year’s Eve) and even got a seat. Woo hoo!
Today I’m doing a little bit of housekeeping and planning for the new year, and maybe a bit of writing, and I’ll have an early night. Here’s to 2009! May it be a happy and prosperous year for all of us.
Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo – I’ve managed to blog every single day in November. It’s certainly not been as hard as NaNoWriMo last year!
Have you enjoyed the extra blogging? I can’t promise to keep it up at this rate but it’s been fun and has helped me recover my blogging mojo, so hopefully I’ll be around a bit more.
I have friends coming to lunch today and house guests arriving tonight. I’ll keep this brief as I need to get the lamb in the oven – not the Jamie Oliver version this time since it’s quite boozy and our friends are bringing their kids.
I have two other blog posts today as well:
A post on unusual vegetables featuring pics of Romanesco cauliflour on The Gooseberry Fool.
I’m playing Miranda in an amateur production of The Tempest on Tuesday night. Today was the first dress rehearsal and we have another run-through on Monday night.
We are performing at the Candid Arts Trust in Angel-Islington, which is an atmospheric room filled with ready-made props like red velvet thrones and melted candlesticks.
The play has been substantially cut – total running time is under an hour and a half and we will actually be doing two performances on Tuesday night since we can only accommodate an audience of 35 at one time. We are not doing a straight interpretation but in keeping with the magical essence of the play we are doing an Artaud-style interpretation where we are trying to give the audience more of an immersive experience. The main character Prospero, who is my father in the play, is played by three different people sharing a magical cloak and we also have the parts of the sprites and monsters – Ariel and Caliban – shared. Some of the scenes such as the opening shipwreck scene will be interactive – though we are trying not to go over the top because we don’t want to completely lose the audience!
I’m really looking forward to it. Don’t get me wrong – it’s amateur, we’ve officially only had two hours a week for 10 weeks to rehearse, and I’m not expecting the world of it. But I think it’s coming together really nicely and is something a bit different to the stodgy Shakespeare productions that are sadly all too common. I play a reasonably straight character but it’s fun reacting to the different characters and scenarios – I absolutely adore my fellow thespians’ creation of Caliban, not to mention my favourite scene of all where two of the shipwrecked mariners are drunk.
I’m not sure whether the 7pm or 9pm production will be better. The 9pm performance will be more rehearsed but then again, the opening night of a show is traditionally better than the second night. I have my fiancé and two other friends coming to the early performance and I have two spare tickets for the 9pm show if anyone is up for it. It’s a little experimental and interactive but in a fun way, not in a threatening, pretentious kind of way! Tickets are £8 each and I could probably get tickets to the early show instead if that’s preferred.
