Friday Five: Iso Puzzles

We ordered a new table a while ago, and it arrived on the day that the government banned gatherings of more than two people and prevented us from welcoming folk to our house to share meals and laughter. So we might as well put it to use as a puzzle board until the restrictions are lifted. 

The Painted Ladies, San Francisco

I did the easy bits, and left the gradations in colour of the sky to Him Outdoors.

I was surprised to learn that not everyone does puzzles the same way - some people don't do the edges first. This knowledge has confounded me completely.

Portland Head Light

This one was lent to us by The Luminosity and it was quite tough, but (although there were lots of similarities in the pieces), I couldn't be cross because... well, just look at their fluffy faces emerging!

Lena, Linus and Luke

Another pack of borrowed pieces - from Doctor Kay and the Design Diva - this has fantastic shapes, which are wonderfully easy to slot into place. The laser-cut wooden pieces are very satisfying to touch and arrange into the picture, and the puzzle incorporates several 'whimsy' pieces. These pieces are apparently a historical link to the Victorian puzzle-making past; as the name suggests, the original Victorian puzzle cutters added the individual pieces on a whim and so the term 'whimsy' was born. I broke with my usual method to finish areas first, before completing the edges. I didn't like that. 

Picture frame in the water

Motorcar and butler in the sky

Elephant in the walls

Dolphin in the gondola

St Mark's Square

We also borrowed this last one from Original Gravity. It has no edge pieces. That was challenging for my OCD puzzle building method. The picture on the front is not quite the same as the completed image. And there are five extra pieces. Some people are sadists, pure and simple - can you have a pure and simple sadist? Yes, they design puzzles like this one. 

Take a Coffee Break

The extra five pieces

Special chewed-by-the-dog pieces

Road trip: San Francisco – Oakhurst

We have breakfast with Our Gracious Hostess at Stacks – American diners for breakfast are such a treat for me! I love the eggs, the pancakes, the waffles and the endless cups of black filter coffee. I have huevos rancheros which are delicious – I’m getting my fix of Mexican foods.

We call into a Barnes and Noble (not so counter my principles in their own country) for a new diary and another book that I’m pretty sure I don’t need. There is an entire industry here – part of me loves it (books are beautiful) while part of me is slightly saddened at the thought of middle-aged women (the major book market) using bookmarks, catalogues and inspirational quotes to fill their otherwise empty lives. And yes, I am part of that demographic.

Setting off on our adventures, the first thing we encounter is a child abduction notice on the freeway with the make of the car and licence plate numbers up on the overhead signs. We drive from San Francisco through to Yosemite noticing oddities along the way such as Halloween decorations, which are everywhere – this is clearly a very big deal here. Pumpkin patches support giant, mutant pumpkins.

American radio plays a variety of music: one channel plays an homage to New Kids on the Block; another plays Linken Park and other X-Games music. There is jazz, blues, classics (which appears to be The Beatles and Chicago), Spanish fiesta music (which sounds like Captain Pugwash), climb-every-mountain anthems, and a lot of country. Just like the television – so many channels; same old shite. Quantity does not equal quality.

Every pick-up in town is parked outside Cost Less Liquors. Other shops include House of Beef Steakhouse, Whiskey River Saloon, Feed and Seed, Long’s Drugs – Drive Thru Pharmacy (if you’re too ill to get out of the car, should you really be driving?), Buckston’s Western Gear (get your Stetsons and spurs here), Claim Jumper Outpost (‘free soda with fill up’), Tie Dye Jerky – elk or buffalo. All of these are to be found at Big Oak Flat, elevation 3,000ft, population 200.

Just past the Mark Twain/Brent Hart trail is 49 acres of barren scrubland for sale – it probably comes with free rattlesnakes. There are trailer parks (sorry, mobile home camps) and motel rooms for $49.95 next to a ‘gentleman’s club’. Nice. I’d be surprised to see a gentleman here at Chinese Camp.

A town advertises itself with the draw cards of food, espresso, clean bathrooms and raft trips. Groveland features the red earth and saloon doors of gold mining towns, complete with the Iron Door General Store. The roads are supported by an Adopt-a-Highway programme, which makes sure the road verges are kept litter-free. Sponsors include Dave and Son Automotive, Buck and Bunny, and the Coronary Improvement Programme.

We check into a motel in Oakhurst – the Yosemite Inn is ‘the last hotel in town’ and boasts ‘free HBO and breakfast.’ We walk to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, clinging to the side of the road as lorries hurtle past – this is obviously not a walking area. The food is okay (I discover tamales are stodgy corn-flour steamed nastiness) but I have a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale which is very tasty. It is a light gold colour with lazy bubbles and a decent head at first which quickly dissolves into a dishwater scum. It leaves a sediment behind but tastes perfectly balanced between bitter hops and sweet malt.

Day tripping, San Francisco

Parking in San Francisco is an (expensive) experience. At the one parking lot we find with a space (that isn’t reserved for the disabled), the bloke takes our keys and our money, says he will park it, and to come back by 5.45pm. I am a little bit dubious and ask a young woman (who has just done exactly that) if this is normal procedure. I use my best English accent to say, “We don’t do this where I’m from”.

She laughs and is very garrulous – she’s not from round here either and she thought it was weird when she first arrived, but she parks here every day and there’s no problem. “I know these guys and they’re really trustworthy.” Having cautioned us to remove any valuables from the car if we are worried about them and telling us to have a nice day (and she actually sound like she means it!), she walks off clutching her oversized coffee cup.

Breakfast on Pier 33 consists of ‘breakfast sandwiches’ – scrambled eggs, tomato, bacon, and mushroom with ‘applejack’ cheese on an English muffin which is twice the size of any muffin I ever saw in England. This fortifies us for our trip to Alcatraz (see previous two posts).

Back in San Francisco we set out to explore the city but we are feeling peckish and try to find food. You wouldn’t think this would be so hard, but it seems that everyone just grabs and goes in the city. There are places where you can sit for lunch, but they are all Starbucks, and I’m not going there! We walk through the financial and shopping districts, through Union Square surrounded by Tiffany’s, Gucci, Prada and all the big names.

Finally we find Louis, an American diner. Him Outdoors has a big burger and chips while I have a bay shrimp salad. American diners are frozen in the fifties with the juke boxes, stylish cars, vinyl booths, neon lights, and Marilyn Monroe and James Dean prints – from the decade where they proved consumerism was king and they ruled the world.

We walk through town to find Haight Ashbury. We find Haight Street and walk past cafes and rainbow shops with names like ‘Love and Haight’. There is some peacenik graffiti and people with long hair, kaftans, beads and sandals, but mainly it looks like any student area. The houses were once gorgeous villas with bay windows, turrets and steps up to the doorway, painted in elegant colours. Now they seem to be rundown and subdivided. Maybe there is more to this area that we don’t see, but I was expecting something different (maybe more momentous) and am a bit disappointed.

Racing back through town, we realise this is further than we thought, so we get marching so as to be back in time to pick up the car keys from the parking lot. We pause briefly at the top of Alamo Park to take in a view of the city with those elegant wooden villas in the front and the skyscrapers of commerce behind. Later I discover that this particular aspect has been photographed so often it has come to be known as Postcard Row.

Our quickest route takes us back through Tenderloin – a fairly unsavoury district known for its drugs and gunshots. The windows of the houses have bars on them, and the teenagers on BMX bikes discuss on their mobile phones to which tunnel they are heading – what will they do when they get there, I wonder? When two men in sharp suits emerge from a BMW we quicken our pace. It’s no worse than Hulme, but it’s just a question of what you get used to.

Once through this district, Him Outdoors runs back to the car to make sure he arrives on time. The attendant is all locked up but he is waiting, waving the keys and laughing, ‘That’s alright – I was waiting for ya!’ Meanwhile I negotiate the end-of-workers, the down-and-outers, and the plain nutters who mumble and laugh to themselves, dressed in several layers and listening to a transistor turned up loud. Transients have moved on from plastic bags – now it seems they push their meagre belongings around in shopping trolleys.

Welcome to Alcatraz - Part 2

The prison officers on Alcatraz had escape response plans locked in a safe in the control room to counteract any contingency. The control room gives me the creeps. The place would generally have been very quiet but when the phone rang, it would have filled them with dread. The officers lived on the island with their wives and children – there was a grocery store and a bowling alley, and it was only twelve minutes to San Francisco – but the kids could hear the prisoners ‘letting off steam’ when they got riotous.

These men lived here for a long time and they got used to routine and rules. The prisoners got a rulebook when they arrived. If they abided by these it was much better than if they didn’t (the isolation cells were very unpleasant). The two I like:

• #5 ‘You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else that you get is a privilege’ (Every parent should have this handbook)
  
  
• #30 ‘Loud talking, shouting, whistling, singing or other unnecessary noises are not permitted.’

There is a sunny area on C Block which was the most desirable area in the prison. Inmates played bridge, painted oil colours, listened to the radio, played draughts and dominoes, and even crocheted – one prisoner, whose mother taught him, taught the rest of the prisoners; a great example of skills being passed on.

They had a music hour when prisoners played any instrument they had – guitars; harmonicas; trombones (one guy played three notes repeatedly for an hour – how annoying would that be?!) – or rattling their tin cups on lieu of any other instrument. They could take out books from their library (which contained 15,000 books – heavy readers read between 75 and 100 books a year), and the most popular titles included the philosophy of Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel.

They could hear the sounds floating across the harbour from parties at the San Francisco Yacht Club (particularly at New Year); they could see the delights of the town from the exercise yard. It must almost have been an extra torment to ‘look at what you could have won.’ They called the areas of the cell block names such as Seedy Street, Times Square, Broadway, or Michigan Avenue – maybe to be ironic, or to give it a sense of connection to the outside.

Alcatraz was never integrated – Mexicans, Indians, Hispanics and whites were all put together, but blacks were segregated – apparently more for their own protection from the rednecks. Over 1,500 men served time in Alcatraz but in 1963 Kennedy ordered it closed. The mentality had moved from punishment to rehabilitation, but one prisoner who was released was worried that he was too different – he envied others who seemed to have purpose and moved too fast.


Outside the Blue Angels were flying overhead, practicing for an air show at the weekend. They are like the Red Arrows, but blue (obviously) and they’re not part of the Royal Air Force. They were swooping, twisting, flying in formation, buzzing the island and turning on and off their vapour trails. It was impressive stuff and the freedom of flight provided the ultimate contrast to the island incarceration.

Welcome to Alcatraz - Part 1

The sky is blue, the sun is shining merrily and all seems right with the bright, clear world as we board our boat to Alcatraz. If you lived here, you might want to visit when the mist and fog rolls in from the Pacific Ocean for a contrast and an eerie sense of atmosphere, but for a first-timer, the weather couldn’t be more perfect.

Arriving at the island, a sign announcing United States Penitentiary has been doctored to read ‘Indians Welcome, Indian Land’. I thought this was just a piece of graffito, but it turns out that Native Americans have occupied Alcatraz three times – the most effective beginning on November 20th 1969 and lasting for 19 months.

The Welcome to Alcatraz Island booklet explains, “Echoing the 1626 purchase of Manhattan Island, the Indians of All Tribes offered to buy Alcatraz from the federal government for $24 in beads, colored cloth and other trade goods. In The Proclamation to the Great White Father and all His People they noted that Alcatraz reminded them of an Indian reservation because, among other things, ‘it is isolated from modern facilities, the soil is rocky and unproductive, and the land does not support game’.”

We walk around the island – many areas are cordoned off to protect the seabirds. Some areas are rubble or burned – after the Indian occupation the government’s General Services Administration began bulldozing buildings, but this was stopped in 1972 when Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate Nation Recreation Area.

There are gardens and plants flourishing which seems incongruous in such a hostile environment, but there are no rodents or other mammals to eat the vegetation. Before it was a prison, Alcatraz was a fort and then a military guard – the military planted things to keep the island’s new soil (especially imported from Angel Island) from sliding away. Later, garden privileges were highly sought after by the prisoners at Alcatraz.

I really like the lighthouse (that’s another one bagged!) which was the first on the Pacific Coast and has been in operation since 1854. From the top of ‘the rock’, there are great views over the harbour, back towards San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge.

The audio tour is excellent, narrated by several of the prison guards and a handful of former inmates – one of whom came back to take a tour, just to see the warden’s house. Of course, the inmates believed in the escape-proof myth; the combination of tides and temperature made the water so treacherous. One of the inmates said, ‘Everything I want is a mile and a half away and I can’t get to it.’ But when they had been locked up for 15 years without visits or letters, what did they have to lose?

The audio tour describes many attempted escapes. Perhaps the most dramatic was that of the men who dug out of their cells with spoons and left heads made up of soap and hair on their pillows, which fell off when the officers touched them. These escapees were never found but presumed dead.

The officers claimed their days were boring, although a little eerie when patrolling the cells after lights out (9.30pm) with the sound of tears, grinding teeth, tossing and turning. The only guns were on the gun alley, not on the floor – even so, many officers were shot when an escape plan went wrong.

Even kitchenware was a murder weapon; three men got killed with kitchen knives (with a sound rather graphically described as ‘popslap’). The canteen or dining room was potentially the most dangerous place in the prison. The prisoners got (in addition to a roof over their heads) three meals a day – they were palatable, healthy, attractively served, and often spaghetti. Just in case the prisoners got sick of spaghetti, there were canisters of tear gas on hand.

Travels and Tribulations 4

Now that things are sort of back to normal and the holiday period is over, I shall break up the working week with continued reminisces of our overseas trip. And we are now up to the good ole U S of A...

A long day of flying starts at 3am when we get up to leave the hotel and head for the airport. Being in enforced proximity to people is horrible; you see how selfish, rude and insular most people are. I get constantly irritated by them. Oscar was right, as ever. Hell really is other people.

Unbelievably we collect our luggage, get through customs and pick up a hire car with no problems at all. San Francisco is an infinitely friendlier airport than LAX. I swear they play good cop; bad cop – San Francisco is, ‘Welcome to America; enjoy your stay’ – LAX is, ‘what do you want, alien; don’t step out of line; when are you going home?’

We pick up our 2l-engined, big-boot-spaced ‘small car’ (everything is, of course, bigger in America, even the toilet rolls – as Him Outdoors observed) and set off. Except, we have no map, no money and no cell phone reception. I can’t phone my friend (Our Gracious Hostess) with whom we’re meant to be staying for directions as arranged, so we just get on the freeway and head south.

Despite an overheating car, we do quite well, managing to pull off the freeway at Redwoods and, thanks to some friendly car wax salesmen, an ATM at a petrol station, a hurriedly-purchased map and some dubious navigation, we arrive at Our Gracious Hosts’ place in the late afternoon.

We wander about in a jetlagged haze admiring the Halloween decorations (pumpkins and black cats everywhere!) and eating grapes on the patio overlooking their little lake. Their house features a sort of courtyard surrounding a nut tree. As I peer out of the windows, I see squirrels digging holes (black ones as well as greys – the blacks are sleeker with less fluffy tails and actually look quite rat-like).

A deer comes down to the lake to eat the grass and shake its long floppy ears. Our Gracious Hostess says they’re all pests as they nibble the roses and all other plants. I’m sure they are, but they’re so cute! ‘I’ve seen cuter things,’ she says laconically. She is not alone in this viewpoint.

Our Gracious Hostess keeps prodding us awake and won’t let us fall asleep until Our Gracious Host comes home with Mexican takeaways. When he goes back out to play football, we gratefully collapse into bed in the guest wing.