RETURNING BY POPULAR DEMAND

 Well thank you all so much for visiting, after my last, rather self-pitying post.  By your hits, I'm inspired to continue.

Gardening soon - but first . . . a post mortem on our amazing American trip.  And if any of it seems negative, that is absolutely NOT intended.  I'd go back and carry on hoofing round that great country in a moment.  And if I were invited to live in San Francisco, I think I'd go.

Now then, ahem,
After a longish trip to any country, it takes time to distil memories of all the experiences and bundle them into a general impression.  So when friends ask 'how was America' the answer is usually a lame retort such as 'fantastic' or 'wonderful' or 'fascinating.'

Cables holding up Brooklyn Bridge.  You can walk over the bridge, but expect to be run down by bicycles.  Click on pix to enlarge.  (There may be a 'pictures only post,' later, when I've sorted the fancy ones.)

 Surprising as it may seem, travel often reinforces prejudices, so you have to force yourself to keep re-opening your mind.  Bumbling along in a series of trains, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, I found myself searching for people, places, attitudes and ambiences that would enable me to say, 'Aha – this is truly America.'   That didn't happen.

 At times, I could hardly believe this was the same country as the one I lived in for four years, back in the 1960s.  I wanted to read the runes, take the pulse, measure progress and note significant changes.  But getting a grip on such a vast and diverse nation is more challenging than knitting a sweater with spaghetti noodles and I came away as perplexed as I was enlightened. 

There's so much paradox!  On the one hand, the United States presents a model of democracy and governance, along with a robust judicial system, that sets a shining example to the world.  On the other, health cover for a substantial portion of the population is hopelessly inadequate.  Libraries, some of the universities – especially one's alma mater Cornell – and museums are among the finest on earth, and yet I was told that some 30 million Americans lack basic literacy skills.  Can it be that many? 

Then there's capital punishment – a barbarous and brutal practice, to most people in Europe. And what about those bizarre gun laws? And the suspiciously hefty influence on government from fundamentalist religions and from big business. That must be a worry.

 A poster in Sonoma, California.  The obvious solution is to have oodles of both.

 You won't want to be bored with too much detail and anyway, this blog is supposed to dwell on gardenish things.   But before returning to rants about cooking apples, badger bashing and other blights, here's a goodie basket of 'impressions' whose flavours still linger on the palate.  I'll give you ten, picked at random...

1.  I love the way good American restaurants take breakfast as seriously as dinner.  Well-made pancakes, maple syrup, thin, crisp streaky bacon, genuinely fresh orange juice and as much excellent coffee as you can take all help to make the day's first meal as pleasurable and sociable as posh wining and dining.  British breakfasts, even when the food is good, tend to accompanied by brutish monosyllables and slurps of coffee..

2.  The Presidential Election is neck and neck.  And yet those who most desperately need a Democrat government, not to mention a healthy dose liberalism, seem the least likely to vote for Obama.  Even the word 'liberal', to the uneducated, is synonymous with Marxist.  Talk about turkeys giving a thumbs up for Christmas!

3.  As in Europe, everything seems to be made in China.

 Retired bikers in Colorado.

4.  Detroit is still churning out the most frightful vehicles – pick-up trucks the size of furniture lorries, SUV's of spectacular vulgarity and still quite a few big, smoochy things which look more suitable for sleeping in, rather than driving.

5.   When your train trundles gently through the mid-West, from Chicago to Denver, you realise what a huge country this is.  But it's surprising to see how few people actually live out of town.  There isn't the dotting of villages that you'd see in, say, Hampshire or Champagne.

6.  America has a staggering diversity of oaks, some evergreen, others deciduous; some less than a metre high, others huge; some with long, pointy acorns, others with snub-noses.  Oaks are a significant landscape feature across the country.

 A tasteful restaurant sign in Silverton, Colorado.

7. Tipping – possibly America's worst vice.  In the 1960s, one tipped waiters etc. roughly 10% of the bill.  Today, you're expected to cough up 20%.  In some restaurants, they helpfully add the gratuity to your bill without asking, as an item at the bottom, but when you pay, your bill will not only list the gratuity but will also leave space for you to add another tip on top of the gratuity.  A TAXI DRIVER will sit in his cab without moving so much as an eyelash to help, while you struggle with your luggage, but he will still expect a tip.  Tips, across the nation, blew our travel budget to pieces.

8. Americans fly an awful lot of flags.  They're everywhere - a bit excessive, but perhaps we should wave ours a little more - and I mean the Union Flag, not that blue thing with a ring of stars.

9. The scenic regions of this continent - the Rockies, the High Plains, the woods in West Virginia and above all, the Californian Sierra Nevada are all movingly beautiful.  See the Grand Canyon if you like – and it sure is impressive – but so much of America is infinitely more lovely and nearly as grand.  And the Mississippi River, which I've now seen at both ends, so to speak, is awfully big.

10.  I think I really have left my heart in San Francisco.  Of all cities, it's the one in which I feel most relaxed, inspired and contented – excluding Fishermans' Wharf.

A squirrel in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

I'm listening to Rossini's Stabat Mater

On this day in 1985  I swept a chimney which had begun to smoke badly, possibly because of jackdaw nests in the flue.  An enormous pile of twigs, string and other 'jackdaw' treasures came tumbling down - enough to fill a large wheelbarrow.  My diary says 'I lit an experimental fire after clearing up – it went beautifully with not a trace of smoke anywhere.'  And to think we'd paid to have a chimney sweep in.  No wonder I bought my own rods and brushes and took over the task myself.

This week's film was La Haine – a masterpiece made in the 1990s by Mathieu Kassovitz about fear and loathing in the Paris suburbs. Brilliantly shot, slickly acted and immaculately edited, it's all the better for a second viewing and is one of the privileged DVDs to be stored, not in our general DVD heap but on THE SHELVES, in our telly room.  (To have a place on THE SHELVES is quite something.  Bergman's Seventh Seal, Welles's Citizen Kane and of course Casablanca are also on THE SHELVES.

Oh dear – another hideously long blog.  Thanks so much, if you managed to get this far!

CHASING A CALIFORNIA SISTER

Well, folks, I think we're getting close to the end of the line in more than one sense.

The PG and I fly home tomorrow morning at some hideous hour so future blog posts – if there are any more – will be back to the usual rants about the exasperations of British gardening, the countryside and whatever else seems of import.

I say 'if there are any more' because readership has slumped alarmingly, since we left the UK.  A total of 43 of you have checked out the last post.  That's a ten-fold drop on earlier, UK-based posts and is the first one that has failed to invite a single comment.  So we'll see how things go, over the next few weeks.  Perhaps I should do more reading, less writing and give everyone a break.

Meadows bordering the Merced River at Yosemite, in the Sierra Nevada.  The colours and background, apart from the mountain, looked exactly as they do in the film Bambi. The trees are mostly ponderosa pine, incense cedar and live (evergreen) oak.  (Click on pics to enlarge.)

Meanwhile, I promised to mention our last big event which was to hike for three days in the Yosemite National Park.  

The forest in Tuolumne County - part of the Yosemite National Park. The big sequoias grow in this area

The Sierra Nevada is a spectacularly beautiful mountain range and the Yosemite National Park has some of the stateliest peaks, grandest rock formations and the most interesting wildlife.  We admired the big sequoias, though the trees are not as massive as I expected, and are certainly not looking in the best of health.  But the forest in which they grow is magnificent.  Sugar pines and Douglas firs grow huge, here and wherever there's a glade or a low-lying spot, lupins, rudbeckias, irises, Veratrum, Smilacina and lots of other familiar American herbaceous species flourish.

The view from near Columbia Rock, below Yosemite Falls.  The sheer rock faces, lining the valleys give the scenery more grandeur than the Alps, in places. 

We stayed at Yosemite Lodge, conveniently close to the fabled Yosemite Falls which, inconveniently, dried up shortly before our arrival.  The whole earth, round here is dry and thirsty.  We climbed the steep ascent to Columbia Rock, close to the top of the dry falls, exhausted but triumphant, at the top.  We trailed to Mirror Lake which has dried up to a sandy beach and doesn't reflect at all, let alone act like a Mirror.

And we wandered along part of the Merced River, passing through meadows which are exactly like the animated drawings in the Walt Disney film Bambi.  We even spotted a doe and her two part-grown fawns, grazing an hour or so before sunset.

A mule deer, near Yosemite Village.  These animals are used to people but further away from human settlements, they're far more wary

Star wildlife species, for us, were the ravens, mule deer, California ground squirrels, acorn wood peckers, a canyon wren and a ravishingly beautiful butterfly like a European white admiral, but with extra colours, called a California Sister.  I think we've also seen the closely related Arizona Sister, too.  You can find these insects here .

Since traipsing about in Yosemite, we've been in San Francisco, eating, going to the California Academy of Sciences, and eating, going shopping for Ghirardelli's chocolate for favoured relatives, and eating, visiting the de Young Art Galleries, and eating, exploring the magnificent Golden Gate Park, and eating, travelling out to the Sonoma and Napa valleys to sample the wines, and eating.  My belts have bust and I think I need to go shopping for a bra.

While the sun sets, at Yosemite, the taller peaks light up like the rising moon, even though darkness has fallen below them.  The effect is eerie but movingly beautiful.

I'm listening to Tony Bennett singing I Left my Heart in San Francisco.  Cheezy, I know, but it sort of fits.

Can't think of a film this week - too depressed about terrible bloggins stats.

This time next month, Silvertreedaze will have had a re-vamp.  It will either live or die.  Meanwhile, I'm off to enjoy my last decent dry martini and to tuck into a farewell San Francisco dinner.

If you've read this far, I love you!  Tell your friends that this blog is quite fun, at times.  Oh, go on! Be a sport!  You know you want to, really!

TARNISHED TINSEL

Hullo from across the Atlantic!

In every trip – even one as exciting, fulfilling and pleasurable as this – there's a low point.  Usually, that first discordant note jars at the point in one's travels when the thrill of arrival has worn off, but when the prospect of going home and sleeping in one's own familiar bed is still too far away to relish.

Trains, in the US tend to be old, shabby and slow - the most comfortable way to see it all.

This trip has been different. The high points have towered so mightily that one has tended to view everything with starry-eyed wonder.  We have immersed ourselves in American history, delved into the fascinating system of US governance, browsed a Founding Father's 18th century Library, gazed across millions of acres of maize and soya, growing in one of the world's biggest and most productive bread baskets - the plains of the mid-West.

We have crossed the mighty Mississippi, close to the Great Lakes; slummed for a night in Chicago where we visited the site of the Valentine's Day Massacre; and traversed some of America's most rugged, awe-inspiring and moving landscapes including the Rockies, the high sierras of Colorado, Utah and Arizona and the Grand Canyon.  

And we have crossed the Mojave Desert to arrive at the low point.  

Los Angeles itself is not a city, as such, but a disturbing dream.  As our shabby Amtrak train crawled through well-watered, neat and appealing suburbs, we could see the yellow-brown pall of pollution marking where the conurbation lay.  Hundreds of elegant, leggy, black-necked stilts and other wading birds were feeding in concreted water courses and along the arid tracks and there were fascinating desert plants clinging to life.  But despite these natural attractions, it seemed clear that Los Angeles was to be 'got through' rather than enjoyed.  

 The incomparable Bogey, reduced to dabbling in wet cement.  Why?

And as soon as we had disembarked, our guide seemed hell-bent in getting us away from Los Angeles itself and into Hollywood.  There's a simple, catch-all word to sum up Hollywood – 'horrible.'  Our guide droned on about films, film stars, property values, and great traditions.  We were dragged out of our bus to see the disfigured concrete paving, outside the grotesque 'Chinese Theatre' where stars pushed hands, feet or other parts of their anatomies into the setting cement.  And we were driven through Beverly Hills which seemed little more than a pretentious suburb with high hedges hiding nasty-looking houses.  Apparently Marilyn Monroe bought one in secret, to escape to when the public were being too adoring.  I wonder why no one suggested that to get away, she could have bought a cottage in Alaska for a fraction the price.

The RMS Queen Mary, at Long Beach.  Majestic from afar, but close-to, she's shabby, flaky and sad.


Thank goodness, our stay in Los Angeles lasted less than 24 hours, much of which was spent aboard the once glorious, now sadly delapidated and abused RMS Queen Mary, the liner (NOT cruise ship) in which I travelled to New York from Southampton in September 1964.


But now we're in wonderful, glorious, delicious San Francisco and have also just had an AMAZINGLY delightful sojourn in the Sierra Nevada.  More on that, soon.

 A San Francisco cable car like this, pulled by underground moving cables, is clanking by as I write this caption.

 Dahlias grow this tall, in the San Francisco Botanic Garden.  Note the correct plant-viewing gear, ie, shorts and stupid hat.

The Golden Gate bridge, painted International Orange which makes it look as though they've done the primer but forgotten to add a top coat.

Not seals – as stated in the some of the publicity blurb – but sea lions, slummocking at Fisherman's Wharf.  San Francisco is almost totally delightful.  But Fisherman's Wharf is vile – a  milling throng of slack-bellied gawping tourists, me included – bewildered by the astronomical prices and dismal quality of the food on offer there.  It's such a shame because you can find superb restaurants to suit all pockets, in this city, often in delightful surroundings. But Fishermans' Wharf is somewhere to keep away from.

I'm listening to clanking cable  cars, outside our hotel window near Union Square.

This time next week I'll be home, tweeting, writing newspaper copy and trying desperately to catch up in the poor, neglected garden

This week's film mench should be Bullit, since we've walked the road where part of the famous chase took place.  But we're also two minutes walk from Union Square where Coppola's masterwork The Conversation was set.

More soon, from the Sierra Nevada where I flirted with an Arizona Lady and trod the meadow where Bambi lost his mother.  Cue tears & happy childhood dreams!

Toodle-ooh, my lovelies. 

IN LOVE WITH A DARK-EYED JUNCO

What ho, my hearties!  And the usual, inevitable apology for being disgustingly late with postings about our perambulations across the big, wide USA.

We've hit the Pacific and thus, have completed our overland coast to coast journey.  It's been bumpy, slow, varied and wonderful.  The weather has been kind, Amtrak – one of America's more creaky institutions – has delivered us safely and we are now basking in California sun

There's no time for a detailed blog – the San Francisco cable car awaits – but I hope the picture captions will say enough, for now.  I may write a detailed story and can assure you it will be a ripping yarn, but that will be for sale, possibly, as an iPad-friendly book.

Meanwhile, click on piccies for a bigger view.

Washington DC.  Seems so long ago, now, but early in our holiday we wandered from memorial to memorial, looking at monuments to America's greatest sons and daughters.  This is part of the F. D. Roosevelt memorial, showing men in the Depression, waiting in dole queues.

If you're a gardener, Thomas Jefferson has to be your favourite Founding Father.  We browsed the books in his library - an eclectic collection from philosophy, politics and science to horticulture and agriculture.  Here, the PG is dwarfed by the massive classic columns in the Jefferson Memorial.

In the Rocky Mountains, scenery is never more beautiful than in early fall, when the aspens change hue from dull green to bright gold and in some spots, burning amber.  Here in Colorado, they contrast superbly with blue Colorado spruce, Picea pungens near the spectacular Red Mountain Pass between Grand Junction and Silverton.

The rattletrap steam train, ancient and creaky but still in working order, takes us from Silverton to Durango, a journey which takes three and a half hours through spectacular scenery.  This ain't the fens!

The Barringer Meteor Crater, near Winslow,  Arizona.  You can find details of this amazing geological event here.

The impact of the meteor would have been equivalent to a 20 megaton nuclear bomb and hurled massive rocks and debris up over the sides of the impact crater.  This is sandstone, at the rim which was originally below ground at the point of impact.

Growing close to the crater, one of my favourite American wildflowers, Castilleja or Indian Paintbrush. These plants, related to yellow rattle and foxgloves, are hemiparasites, sustaining themselves partly on host plants, so are impossible, virtually, to cultivate in gardens outside America.

Despite being apparently barren, the desert teams with life.  This is, I think, a Collared Lizard. 

Monument valley - setting for so many Western films and subject of so many travel posters.  It is virtually impossible to portray even a hint of its majestic beauty. They all rave about the Grand Canyon, saying that it might  move you to tears but for me, these rock formations were the most dramatic, beautiful and, for some reason, remarkably moving.  If I were a primitive man, instead of a de-sensitised, hedonistic, over-pampered modern one, I'd probably feel that big, big deities made this place their home.  There is a Valhalla of sorts wherever you look.  A mighty and literally awe-full place and it's apt that it's situated within and Indian reserve.

And finally, the PG's masterly shot of the Grand Canyon, taken through the window of a deHavilland Twin Otter aircraft at a rather uncomfortably low altitude.

More soon.

I'm listening to the PG, nagging me to catch a San Francisco cable car.

This time last year we were not in the USA.

Today's film has to be Stagecoach, starring John Wayne.  He couldn't act - and walked as if he'd recently had a small, personal accident, but the scenery in the film was as good in black and white as it is in the picture above, of Monument Valley.

Bye bye - more soon, posssibly!

By the way - if you don't know what a Dark Eyed Junco is, look it up!

YO DAT WORLD!

Good morrow, good friends!  And welcome to the United States of America, and to Gotham City, known in some circles as New York.

Thought you'd like a familiar piccy to begin with  – shot by the PG on a Circle Line tour of the Hudson River, Staten Island and so on.  She must suffer terribly from aching arms, poor dear!  We admired her while being transported on a Circle Line Tour of the harbour, Hudson River and Staten Island.  It's the best way to see the city skylines but when I was here in the 1960s, the piers all along Manhattan were full of large passenger liners.  The Cunard Queens did a weekly shuttle.  But now, it's largely a tourist area with some wharves left to rot and others occupied USS Intrepid, a WW2 aircraft carrier and on one quay, a Concorde is parked.

I promised to report on whether New Yorkers are as rude today as they were when I lived in this state in the 1960s.  I didn't expect to provide a clear answer but can tell you now, after extensive study of shop workers, dog walkers, shoppers, restaurateurs and general passersby that they are not.  Not rude at all.  In fact I believe, now, that London is up there in the world's leading cities for rudeness and that NY has transformed over the past 44 years.  (44!!)

We've had a wonderful three days, here and take the train to Washington today.  A full day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a day touring the city with a group part of yesterday visiting the site of the appalling destruction of the World Trade Centre.

Central Park, 850 acres of greenery, forged out of the schist rock which makes up the island of Manhattan.  It's been hot and dry, here, but the greens are still restful and the park is popular.

We were staying in Upper West Side Manhattan, close to the park on Broadway and 75th. so were able to walk through the greenery to the Met.  The collection is staggering, so here's an edited extract from my diary:

What an experience.  So much to see and so many reactions.  A few special memories stick.  The perfection of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture, the fakeness and crapness of Andy Warhol’s shallow prints, the complexity of compelling weirdness of Jackson Pollack, the simple beauty of Miriam Schapiro’s  huge Barcelona Fan and the cleverness - let’s not say gimmickry - of Anish Kapoor’s reflecting le

We spent time in the  Roman, modern art downstairs and then American section, before lunch, looking at the classic American style developing after Europe’s love affair with all things Greek or Roman.  And noted the contrast between simple Shaker style interiors and those of wealthy tycoons of the 19th and early 20th Century industrial booms.  And we looked at far too many disturbing creations by Tiffany - not my fave at all, though I like the dogwood stained glass. And as for irises - the famous ones by Van Gogh, glass ones by Tiffany and an uncomfortable close-up of an iris, by Gorgia O’ Keefe which resembles a lady's most intimate sanctuary.

Then, the Moderns.  They’re all there, from pre-impressionists to nutty splodgers.  I loved the two Hockneys, the usual suspects Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, Cezanne and so on are there in spades, and with magnificent examples from each.  I hated the Warhols but was almost moved, surprisingly, by the Jackson Pollocks.  They look like abstracts but there’s so much to see in them.  Weeping figures, eyes, simple squiggles which describe something human.  

 Barcelona Fan by Miriam Schapiro

The PG studies Manship's bears. 

Barbara Hepworth at the Met.  Oval Form with Strings and Colour.

Our last day was spent at the World trade centre.  We took the subway to Brooklyn and walked over Brooklyn Bridge back to the bottom end of Manhattan.  That, in itself, is a delightful experience, apart from the noise of the traffic.  The distant views are cris-crossed with cables supporting the bridge, creating pleasing geometric patterns.  But you cannot wander off the narrow pedestrian track because cyclists crossing the bridge take no prisoners.

The PGs Shot of Brooklyn Bridge looking across at lower Manhattan

At the 9/11 Memorial Garden, we were frisked and subjected to Airport style security before being allowed into the open space where the massive buildings had stood before the attack.  The area is planted with native White Swamp Oaks, a common endemic in the Easten USA with straight trunks, rough bark, handsome, lobed leaves and plump acorns.

Where the buildings stood are square pits.  Each is now the site of a sort of inverted fountain - massive 30ft waterfalls, run down all four sides into a pool deep below.  Along the rims of the fountain are wide sills, made of bronze and carved with the names of almost 3,000 victims of the Al Quaida attack.

The stark simplicity of this site is deeply moving but also strangely uplifting.  There's a note of steady defiance about the lack of adornment and the absence of any trace of mawkish sentiment.  And there's also a sense, with the young oaks, the cascading water and the open landscape, of rebirth and a new beginning.

Cascading water falls thirty feet, in the inverted fountains of the 9/11 Memorial Garden.  Here is where the building stood and where so many people, about their business, were so wantonly struck down.

But we won't finish on a sad note.  On a hoarding, near the Memorial Garden, some wag had written the words below.  That, in a way, sums up the spirit among a good many people over here.  You get up, you look out, you greet the world and you get on with it, regardless.

I'm sitting on Penn Station, listening, not to Musak but to a Mozart Piano Concerto. Lovely!

This time last week I was frantically trying to finish outstanding copy before flying over the Atlantic.

No film this week.  So instead, on away blogs.  Notes of my all time faves.  Today Casablanca - the finest commercial film ever made with the greatest story structure, the best possible casting and -- well, let's not go on about it.  It's just a great film and that's that.  'Here's looking at you, Kid'  Oh, and yesterday, we drove past Laren Bacall's apartment!  Not that she was in Casablanca but she was married to Bogey.

PERIPEREGRINATION JITTERS

What a simply delicious September some of us are having.  Golden, dewy morns, a touch of mist,
new autumn flowers opening almost every day and warm, balmy afternoons.  Enjoy them while you can.

Lovelies in my garden include Aster asperula which, unlike most autumn daisies, has beautiful, broad leaves as well as sparse but large, soft blue flowers. It's good to team with Schizostylis coccinea 'Major.'   

Pick of the bunch for us, though, has been Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivanii.  None of my plants is a named variety - they're all self-sown seedlings - but what performers! These are proper 'black-eyed Susans' with chocolate centres, durable, egg-yolk ray florets and good standing power.  Few autumn perennials have benefited as much as they, from the wet summer.  

 Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivanii on 6th September in our autumn border.

No time for gardening. 
The PG and I will cross the Atlantic, next week, to travel across the United States.  It's a big trip and more to the point, the first we've taken, in decades,  purely for pleasure.  Work of one kind or another has influenced almost everything we've done overseas, for the last 30 years.  But this trip is, essentially, a jolly.

I'm not telling you our itinerary – you'll have to watch that unfold – but I can reveal that Washington, Chicago and San Francisco are on our route though, alas, New Orleans, Charleston and Seattle are not.

The U.S. Presidential Election campaigns will add political spice.  But they probably won't prevent me from being baffled about how American politics actually work.  We'll see, first hand, the effects of the worst drought since the 1930s, in the Mid-West, and will try to understand its devastating effect on people who earn their living from agriculture.   And in parts of California, there's a potentially deadly mouse-borne virus which may, or may not change our plans.

We will also be spending a night on  RMS Queen Mary, at Long Beach, Ca.  She is not a cruise ship but rather, an ocean liner.  It won't be my first time aboard her.  As I write these words, on 7th September, I recall that on the same date in 1964, I was crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary and would return, four years later, on her sister Cunarder RMS Queen Elizabeth.  More on her in a week or three.

There'll be some strange, quirky and hopefully, entertaining dispatches, on the blog, so watch this space.

Just now, though, we're in a pother and a dither over what to take and what to leave.  It will be hot in some places but cold in others.  And in September it can freeze overnight but swelter at midday.  What's more, we'll be tramping along mountain tracks one day, and poncing about in fancy city venues the next.  And we've imposed a  rule on ourselves that each must be able to carry all our own luggage, so cabin trunks are out and porters only employed when we're desperate.  (Expect a rant, in forthcoming issues, about America and the Tipping Culture!)

One of our fences, expertly wired and beautifully furnished with burgeoning climbers – not! The shadows are pretty, though!

We'll travelling mainly by train – no internal flights.  But every time I think of that, my mind fills, not with sensible clothing lists, but with images of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, in Some Like it Hot.  Or of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye singing Snow!, with George Clooney's Aunt Rosemary and owner of the world's most waspish waist, Vera Ellen.  What a crime that Vera Ellen was not given equal star status with Crosby, Kaye and Clooney in that deliciously cloying festive extravaganza White Christmas!

And thank heavens for iPads!
Usually, on long trips, we take enough books to fill a cabin trunk - a Dickens or three, some poetry, field guides on birds, flora and mammals, travel guides, real ale guides, restaurant guides and so on.  But for this trip, just The Birds of North America in print and Audubon Field guide Apps for the rest.

I've never read a word of G. K. Chesterton – perhaps a bad omission, so for £1.99 I downloaded his complete works.  And for good measure, added complete works of DH Lawrence and Joseph Conrad, both of whom are overdue for re-reading.  And to think that as well as being weightless and fitting within the iPad, this huge volume of literature has cost me only £5.97!


I'm Listening to Schubert's Der Winterreise sung by the sadly missed and incomparable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.  He died earlier this year.

This week's film was Ralph Fiennes' adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus.  Not my favourite play, even on stage, but the first part of this film wasn't even Shakespeare.  It began like a Hollywood-style action movie, geared for unhealthy adolescent minds and concentrating on killing as noisily and as graphically as possible.  But after half an hour, and with amazing performances from Vanessa Redgrave and Fiennes himself, the remnants of the original play, and a glimmer of Shakespeare's genius showed through.

COMING SOON...  Heathrow security, jetlag, a dip in the Hudson and a report on whether New Yorkers are as rude as Londoners, these days. 

Bye bye.

A SUPRANORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED SOON.

An elephant hawk moth, Deilephila elpenor,  outside my back door in July. It's resting on Lonicera japonica 'Halliana'

Good morrow, good people, good cheer! 

Sorry, sorry, sorry!  I'm SO sorry!!!!

The more observant among you will have spotted an appalling lack in postings, lately and I'm told that the worst thing anybody can do, with a blog, is to let it go dormant.  So the unforgivable sin has now been committed and I suspect it will need hard work, lots of excoriating rants and scads of jolly piccies to win back your favour.

There are three good reasons, for the gap and I'll list them without boring you;

1. Mother.

2. Indolence, spinelessness, lack of virtuous industry and general weakness of character on my part.

3. A serious frontlog with my work, exacerbated by a bevvy of surprise commissions.

'What the heck,' you'll be asking, 'is a 'frontlog?'   Well, if you write two weekly columns totalling, roughly 3,600 words as well as regular monthly pieces it's pretty important to keep up with the deadlines.  Editors sulk, so, if you're late with your copy.

But if you decide that it would be a great idea to celebrate 40 years of marriage by spending 32 days abroad, you suddenly have two months worth of copy to file in a month.  'So?' I hear you say, 'what's the harm in a little extra work?'

'No harm at all,' I reply, in this enjoyable but hypothetical conversation we're having, 'except that Sod's Law has come into play and there has been a mini-maelstrom of extra assignments. And a self-employed hack whose boss is a complete and utter bastard – always has been –never dares refuse a thing.

So bizarrely, I've been writing November copy, juggling deadlines and unlike James Alexander Sinclair, who juggles with staggering dexterity, I've been close to dropping my little leather balls all over the floor.

As for the other reasons:  indolence or, that musically descriptive word 'sloth' – we say it with a long 'O' in Britain, sounding even lazier and more slobbish – is still the deadly sin of which, I'm perhaps most guilty.  (At my age, lust is largely just a fond memory.)  And Mother is, well, Mother.

So please accept my apologies, for not providing regular, sparkly postings.  And please be ready for  a grand relaunch very, very soon.

I'm listening to Brahms Sextet in G Major Op. 36.

The most recent film was Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.  Sorry, but after all the wild elation and excitement of the reviewers I had high expectations but was rather disappointed.  It's a bleak piece, quite well acted - if you can call it acting - and all shot in the most depressing manner possible, mostly at night, in one of Anatolia's less appealing districts.  There was rather a stink of the Nouvelle Vague about it – a style that brought to cinema what Hirst and Emin have brought to 'fine art.'  Discuss! 

This time last year I was writing regular posts.  I promise to return to form.  Please be patient.