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.

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year everybody.

So, did you make any New Year resolutions? That's what my sister asked when she phoned me this morning. I don't really 'do' New Year resolutions, which I think disappointed her somewhat. She, incidentally, has resolved to wear more perfume. That's one of the best New Year's resolutions I've ever heard!

I would like to get my novel finished. I am about five full days' writing away from finishing the first draft after this stint over the holidays, so I think that should be highly achievable. I don't want to put undue pressure on myself, however. I have Him Outdoors for that.

I also aim to do more with photography. This is a little bit vague, I realise, which can be the problem with New Year's resolutions. I have a friend who once resolved to 'be nicer to people'. I'm not entirely convinced that she achieved this aim, as I don't know what her benchmark was. I have another friend who makes a resolution to give up smoking every year. He doesn't smoke, so he says he will always feel a sense of achievement.

Perhaps I need some goal to aim for with the photography. We bought me a camera over the holiday period and I have been practicing with various settings. So far I have got lots of photos of the cat. I haven't read the section on how to download them from the memory card yet though (I hate reading instructions) so they remain in the camera for now.

I have also resolved not to use phrases like 'credit crunch' and talk about things I know nothing about. If I'm interested, I will do some reading around the subject. If not, I will just shut up and avoid conversations with people who know equally little but have seen an item on the news and so are aping all the latest soundbites with nothing fresh to add of their own.

Neither am I going to read women's magazines about how someone is too thin/not thin enough/ pregnant/ engaged/ divorced. Those magazines are entirely aimed at making real women feel inadequate and I won't allow myself to feel like that just because I haven't got a multi-million dollar house and husband, cosmetic surgery, my own design label, and an array of adopted children from impoverished nations.

Finally, I would like to see Liverpool lift the Premier League Trophy. I can't do much about that apart from offer my wholehearted support. It's all yours, boys. I'm pretty sure you can't make New Year's Resolutions on the behalf of others, so maybe it's more like a New Year's Wish then.

We're four days into the year already, so many resolutions will be broken by now. A study by psychologists at the University of Hertfordshire (previously Hatfield Poly) of more than 3,000 people who made New Year's resolutions, found that only 12% achieved their goals. Who are these people, and would you trust them? If they can't even keep a promise to themselves, how can they expected to keep one to anyone else? Perhaps that's a question that should be asked of prospective employees or partners. It could save a lot of heartache. Just for the record, Him Outdoors doesn't make them either.

If you have made resolutions of your own, I hope you achieve them, or at least have a lot of fun trying.

Books read in September

The following are short reviews of the books that I read in September. The marks I have given them in the brackets are out of five.

Over the Wide and Trackless Sea - Megan Hutching (3.4)

New Zealand’s European women are the focus of this book, and it seems they shared many hardships, including long journeys, hard work, death of children and natural disasters. Their stories personalise the experience and there are many similarities in their accounts, told through diaries, letters and memoirs. It is also interesting to see that feelings of homesickness and displacement are the same ones that affect immigrants today. Megan Hutching writes in a straightforward style without any elegant interpretation or embellishments which makes incidents seem even starker.

It is very hard to know what women thought. Their tales are usually told through men; they were at the mercy of their husband or father, and they were hardly mentioned by other people. They seldom wrote about their feelings or personal information although they do provide domestic information about household routines.

The eleven women in the book have varied lives and Hutchings describes details that colour each of their lives; sheep farming; whaling; gum-digging; genteel life in politics and suffrage; missionary work; fossicking for gold along West Coast beaches; and housekeeping.

The book has large print and is easy to race through, suggesting it might be aimed at old ladies or amateur historians. It is a good starting point for anyone wanting to write a play or short story about any of these women and there is an extensive bibliography for further information.

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (4.3)

This novel is based upon a great concept and it is a thrill to read; a sort of dystopia in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale with an emphasis on the possibility of cloning people so that they will be able to donate organs and offer people the chance to have children with enhanced characteristics. It is set in an alternate contemporary Britain where things are eerily similar but different.

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are pupils at Halisham, an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. They are told that they are special and it is important for them to keep themselves well and ‘healthy inside’. They know nothing of the outside world and they form intense friendships and harbour little secrets, for which they feel guilty. This is believable because their world is so convincing and claustrophobic – evoking memories of schooldays best forgotten.

Kathy, now aged thirty-one, narrates the story with hindsight. She wonders throughout whether they could have guessed what was coming, dropping oblique hints and enigmatic asides. Information is drip-fed to the reader, which means the conclusion isn’t the shattering solution of a mystery, as this has already been revealed. Consequently, the novel is not exactly a thriller and it feels slightly unsatisfactory at the end. It is a sort of science fiction but very human. The relationship between Kathy, Tommy and Ruth is well depicted as they grow from puzzled children to confused young adults. The reader grows with them, making discoveries about their life at the same time as they do.

It starts to drag towards the end, however, and the conclusion is unsatisfactory Many questions remain unanswered which is a little frustrating, but the lasting impression is bleak. The overwhelming feeling is one of regret and it challenges the reader to do something vital; to prove that you are not simply a clone, programmed for a destiny beyond your control. And therein lies its power.

Venice - Jan Morris (4.7)

This biography of a city has historical and geographical information thrown in. It is not chronological (although there is a timeline at the end) but the seemingly random thoughts and observations are expertly corralled. Jan Morris writes with affection and obviously enjoyed living there, investing the city with a character of her own – Morris refers to Venice as ‘she’ throughout. Venice was the place where East meets West; a continental cosmopolitan trading port on the water with a unique place in history – both real and imagined.

He/she (the book was originally written by James Morris, but reprinted when she was Jan with a new foreword) writes of the people; the islands; the canals; the bridges; the boats; the buildings. The one thing he doesn’t write about is the food – “It’s not a gourmet city” – and it is refreshing to read a book about Italy that isn’t full of gastro porn. In fact there are no pictures at all, and although an illustrated guide might be nice, the words are enough.

He explains the fascination and the appeal of Venice through the sights and the sounds and the incomparable light. From the opening paragraphs, Morris writes with warmth, reverence and affection. To read his words is to fall in the love with the city as he has done. For the first-time traveller or the repeat visitor, this is an excellent introduction or memento of a unique city, and a wonderful piece of writing in its own right.

The Food Taster - Peter Elbling (3.7)

This faux memoir of Ugo diFonte, who becomes the food taster for a powerful Renaissance Duke, is part fairytale, part history and totally immersed in the art of storytelling. He is a simple man whose unpretentious attitude makes the book an amusing read; although light on historical detail, it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t.

Unable to prevent his mother from hanging herself, Ugo is the unfavoured son, driven from home by the cruelty of his father and brother, Vittore. He finally finds fortune in the home of Duke Frederico, where he raises his daughter, Miranda. She is the apple of his eye but, just like Prospero (in one of many Shakespearean similarities), he attempts to protect her by preventing true love.

Ugo is earthy, artistic and passionate with a love of cooking. The Renaissance food is rich and sumptuous, including spit-roasted quails, capons in lemon sauce, and calves’ brains, with lots of recipes at the back. At times his rants on food verge on gastro-porn.

He is a fabulously unreliable narrator, partly due to his increasing drug dependency, and also because he listens to gossip and tells tales, embellishing the truth to make it more interesting. He admits to being tantalised by the power of a good narrative, and learns the power of oratory, noting that the substance of the story is not as important as the artifice.

Fear of magic and witches form a backdrop to the novel, as do suspicion, deception, the Inquisition and various forms of torture. Ugo leaps from one escapade to the next and extricates himself from many a life-threatening situation while preserving his daughter’s dignity. There is always room for sardonic humour, however, and just as a pompously written menu can conceal an inedible dish, Peter Elbling demonstrates that the simplest story can be enveloped in the richest prose.

What Happen Then, Mr Bones? - Charlotte Randall (4)

This novel about the Montague family has a backwards-in-time storyline. This can be a bit disconcerting, but it is the point of difference of the novel and is mentioned at the very start, so you can’t say you weren’t warned. There is a list of characters at the beginning – in order of appearance – and their relationship to each other which helps us to keep track. The family is traced from modern Petone to 1650 Oxford, incorporating recurring themes of medicine, ageing, death, love and infidelity. After waking up on a dissecting table, Anne Green changes her name to Valentine and writes her memoirs which are handed down through the family; some of whom are interested while others are not.

In her distinctive style, the author directly addresses the reader. We have the benefit of hindsight and modern knowledge, plus we know what happens later in the story. This is deliberate artifice but encourages the reader to experience the characters’ experiences with a measure of dramatic irony. It breaks all literary conventions and draws the reader in with confidences and confessions. It is all written in present tense as if the same observer was present at all events.

Life and our expectations of such are continually changing. It changes when we grow up and when children arrive on the scene. It changes again when we grow old. Ngaio Halifax, Susan’s mother-in-law begins a scrapbook of her memories, but she doesn’t really know why. The history of countries change and New Zealand certainly altered with immigration and colonialism. History is served with a generous side portion of cynicism, humour and wit as the voice of the people mingles with the history of mishap. It is told in asides, as it affects but is not central to the main protagonists’ lives.

What Happen Then, Mr Bones? is an interesting novel, not afraid to tackle big themes (art; religion; history; fear of birth and death; magic; medicine; natural remedies and prayer; the eternal contest between faith and science) from a quirky irreverent angle and without pretension. This is refreshing in any writer, let alone one from New Zealand, and I will definitely look out for her other novels in future.