Hi and thanks to all of you who sent enquiries as to out well being during Hurricane Ike which turned out to be Hurricane Macavity for us. We were deeply touched by your concern.

Down on the Galveston coast however the Weather Channel reporter did appear to prove to her colleague in Clute Texas that metaphorically her hurricane dad was much bigger than his dad. And it was extremely sad to see where he had wreaked his havoc since we have walked most of what many of you will have seen chewed up on the news.

And so to the Hippy, California beach bumming, park rangers of Yorkshire (think that covers it all).

Getting there



Roisin left her onions in the hotel room



It’s that bridge again


You may be getting a sense of déjà vous?


Yes it’s a dog in sunglasses and a hat


The skyline from the water




The Painted Ladies (again but with SF skyline too)


And so to



What can you say



To the top right hand corner if you look closely you can just see the road



I got carried away all the time



Then you get closer



Then you wonder what the Bridal Veil Falls are like in spring



House hunting again lead us to these, the green box is a bear locker. The tent had its own Colditz style single lightbulb and that was the single electrical item in there.

When we got up the following morning one had clearly tried to get into the hire car as there were paw marks and once again I missed the raccoon.


That same rock at sunset

The wildlife



And dad



Stage left Julie Andrews relocated to Yosemite valley



On our way to Vernal Falls


First stage done on the path

4087

Then at the bottom of the path



Somewhere over the


600 steps later that same “pasture”



And the view over the edge


The signs say under no circumstances should you swim in the Emerald Lake…because your feet will shrivel and your ruby slippers will fall off and then the rest of you will shrivel and then you will become a Munchkin and once your colour changes someone will have to write another trumped up musical about your mis-spent youth.



But then the good fairy will make you into this


So that when you slip on the steps and head for the gap in the 3 and half foot fence on the way back down the fall path you don’t think you’re gonna die, you will just fly into the rainbow spray; the slightly torn ligaments on your right ankle and the bunion on your left foot that you bashed on a rock, not to mention the lump in your throat and the heartbeat of 3000 revs per second will be figments of your over excited imagination.

Not content to scare myself witless at the top of one, we went to look across the top of them all....at sunset.



And you know where we stayed well it's down there somewhere:



And so to some tree hugging to restore the equilibrium – Mariposa Sequoia Grove, home of a few little trees. How to hug this though?



They regenerate themselves by spontaneously combusting..think this one went a bit far


Another clue to their scale?



I know I’m no giant



Apparently it was done so they could get a coach and horses through…did they not see it some time before they got to that bit of the road building exercise…was it covered in red Indian tape or something?



Heading for the coast – weird landscape


The sea …yahoo. Sorry but we miss it a lot in Texas



I wanted to stay here



Brr



The babes of Monterey


The evening



Monterey historic canning district and not a patty slapper in sight



The mist



The artistic seaweed


Makes a change after the usual word I associate with Bull……



The same point as the night before



The sea life



The surf



The Old Spice Man


Then down to that famous snowbound Japanese tea garden......Carmel California.



Weyo weyo wee waa waa waa ....how could he, his poncho, mayoral chain of office, jauntily tilted cowboy hat and Clyde not be there???? Still I was ready to ambush should he and his Colt 45 reveal themselves...



And did they dare go in



Don't believe the one in the middle flexing her muscles, she chickened out since the last time she went in the sea with waves that big and strong she had to have gravel tweezered out of her backside...

But you can't keep brave girls and boys down



Then down through Big Sur for which I have no pics yet as I had to rely on another camera as my batteries had gone flat. Good job really we would never have got to our next destination which was Morro beach. But Big Sur is just stunning, We had 2/3rds of the drive in fog though. During that time some aliens dropped a teepee style settlement near the whale viewing point, along with a camp leader who doubled in the coffee bar on the roadside.

- The sound of someone whistling "If I had a talking picture of you"
- Please can we have two coffees and a hot chocolate

The cap and glasses looks up and in the voice of jack Nicholson uttering "Here's Johnny"

- Yeah I think I can do that for ya ...hehehehehe (sniggers like Muttley). Starts to whistle "If I had a talking picture of you again" which then becomes a doobie doobie doobie version,

- I listen to that on Pappies 78's

Second Muttley snigger

- Wouldya be wanting cream for your coffee?

Mutley again

Then we see his hands for the first time...never seen a bar of soap..only axle grease from the first Ford car ever produced

- Er yes please.

- An I'll set to making the chocolate..

Queue Mutley

Opens up the powdered chocolate and holds it upside down...

- hehehehehe my my must be damp

...and reaches in with hand to loosen powder..Fortunately Roisin is not there to see that bit and we assume that boiling water will kill whatever off..

- Wouldya be wanting squirdy cream on that?

- Can we check what sort of cream first? (pretending she has an allergy so we can check the sell by date...it's ok)...

UTTERLY FUTILE as he wipes the spoon on the same towel used to remove an excess of axle grease.

- Well thanks for being patient an 'all. Come and see us again - double Muttley

And we were that fazed by it all Riona left the knapsack out of the car and P drove over it!

The MIST again



US maps are rubbish



At last Santa Monica



And the Pier



The original Muscle Beach...flexi girl 1



Flexi Girl 2



Rory of the rings


Asymmetric acrobats



Asymmetric asthmatics



And to round off (only gymnasts will get that one)



And so to Venice Beach



This year's must wear



We passed on this realty



The New Muscle beach from the front



The Back



Ken Dodd's Tickling Stick in another life



Here in



You will not believe that this woman took pictures of.....



Jack Nicholson's hands and feet



And his sun lounge



Dr Phils House


Joan Collin's Back passage....



Nancy Reagan's bush....es



Ok so it's not exactly "Hello" magazine but everyone had gone to Seaside for the day, and anyway what did P take pictures of?



And



Oh ok and a grown up picture, Manns Chinese Theatre



Then we all went home ...knowing we had well and truly

Country Rose take me home

We had this feeling that from May onwards the summer would shoot by and before the Smith & Wesson could be reloaded it would be September. And so it has been I am starting this blog on the eve of the topic of the next blog. So I will forgo the Wagner Ring Cycle approach and add just a few stories to the pictures.

Oh the title by the way is because like I have been singing "Eating Trifle" by the Jam for years, P has been singing "Country Rose Take me Home" ...and we didn't even get to West Virginia. Anyway..

Jamestown earlier than the Pilgrim Fathers and evidence there is competition amongst heritage trade to be the “oldest”.

Given the potential dental bills (See previous blog) our choice of real estate has taken a down turn

But once he has paid for the first crown maybe we could consider



And I am making the effort with more hard wearing outfits

But if we default at the dentist, here is our escape vehicle..only 140 days back to Blighty

How big?

Then this man came and said he was from the Dentist and if we didn't pay up he could do this


And while he completed the "thirdy toooooooo separaate operashuns" it takes to re-load the darn thing we high tailed it to Williamsburg only to be met by the big boys dental debt collection service



And our own firing squad



We went in search of a last supper......

Ye Oldy ENGLISH Towny Pubby

Enter authentic female maidservant with guitar (her lute was in for repair).

In a quite well spoken voice with just the odd twang:

“I am gonna sing for you (a very English pronunciation of you, mind) a song which is based on the fact that beer came down in prarce because the prarce of barley dropped and the man is very happy. And you see they used these coins called ayngels and French crowns so you see the beer came down from an ayngel to a French crown because barley goes into beer you know”

Clearing of throat…

Ye oldy worldy strumming of the strings and from the lily white throat of said minstrel bursts the voice of ……………
…HILDA BAKER

“Oh happeeeeeee I am for beer has come down from the prarce of an ayayayayayayayayngel to a FRRRRRRench Crowowowowowowowown

“Joyne in everybody”

But only if your Arthur Mullard surely?

S to P - Don't laugh, don't look at me, look away, look away, drink ye oldy English fruity punchy not noticing ye oldy english honey beeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyee into the bargain.

And so to our punishment for mocking…

- missing a black bear as we commenced the Skyline Drive through the Shenandoahs, also known as the Blue Ridge Mountains.

- having a dead camera battery as a raccoon sauntered past me outside the restaurant kitchen, whistling and sporting his swag bag and burglar mask

- the very same raccoon that wandered into our room looking for diamonds or cookies muttering “Evenin” to P in a jaunty cockney burglar accent. P almost answered him, then thought he was a cat and finally did a Lee Evans shuffle of his feet so the Norman Stanley Fletcher of the Shenandoahs disappeared while I was juggling the camera.

But we got these





Set against the backdrop of






The forests were almost deserted



This is a reflection in the water I was not looking upward



And the flora and the fauna










I shudder to think...

We did some climbing



...if you can't say a anything nice don't say anything at all!



The front is a bit of an improvement


and when we got to the top



Some pottering in waterfalls







And some running away when we were suddenly reminded where we were




P was not allowed to run he had to take the pictures while Roisin went in search of a portable defibrillator for me (I am terrified of snakes). She resorted to mixing up some of the strange fauna I showed you earlier and feeding it to me via a jam sandwich. My heart slowed to normal about 1 hour later.

And as the sun sets over the Shenandoahs





Remind me to tell you some time about the theatre director from DC who found the smell of skunk a huge turn on.....

"Girl" drowns happy in Yorkshire sweetie factory

Ok so this blog is being written before the next local Texas story crops up which may be within the next 5 minutes, headlined “Texas dentist drills for oil in Brit’s head”. P has been forced to visit a local dentist to check out a loose crown (I told my friends his crown had slipped…). While completing the question on the encyclopaedic registration form, “Do you still have your wisdom teeth, if so why?” he answered “WHY NOT?”

I may see you all permanently much quicker than planned.

I had meant to follow up much quicker after NYC but thought it prudent for you to recover from that monumental offering. To warm you up here is a short snapshot from those other hotbeds of internationalism ……Hull, Cardiff and Whitby.

You all seem remarkably buoyant given the price of fish, butter and whippet food and the shutting of 30 pubs a week (is that true?). This phenomenon has not hit the good old Wellington and various “residents” who have now taken up a PhD in physics and most specifically the thesis title “Cripes! Has 6 months really passed since we were last supping a Kriek - an analysis of where time goes when one is not paying attention” .

My hedge has attempted to redress the stratospheric imbalance caused by the destruction of the rain forest and the redcurrants appear to have thrived better than when tended. And a number of my closely cherished family myths were dashed:

1 During a visit to The Deep my mum revealed that they too had kept a tank full of jellyfish as kids when I had thought they had a green budgie called Joey and a 4 minute mile chicken called Christmas Lunch.

2 My mum used to be a nurse and all the time she had been a frustrated urban and river regeneration planner – declaring from the café in The Deep – that it was disgusting that they were doing nothing with all that water (The River Humber)

3 Mum again - That it was very nice that we all came to see her and spend time with her but sometimes she wished we’d all “Just Sod Off” – a phrase she never used to use.

4 My children only half appreciated the puddings I gave them as kids – they broke into hysterical laughter when I discovered and then developed a guilty conscience over the fact that they I appeared to have been force feeding them ginger pudding and custard for YEARS.



I hope those of you that remember the photographs of them I used during student records demonstrations have just fallen off your chairs...but please don't say haven't they grown because that was a phrase my parents friends used of me when factually I never HAD or DID!

But I'm not bitter...

A day in Whitby in the rain and stopping off at Fimber tea shack with the bikers reminded me of why I am so sure that I am English and despite petrol prices and lack of sunshine…



What do you call a collection of Morris men on a Whitby beach.....



A Morris Major.....Sorry

It was just unfortunate that P texted when he did to ask if I was eating fish and chips since he had said before I left the US that if I did I couldn’t come back to Texas. In for a penny in for a pound I also let slip about the Yorkshire curd cheesecake.

Oh and the shortage of sherbert pips, sherbert lemons, spearmint chews, midget gems and wine gums is all my fault sorry. Well you have to do something on humungous road trips.

And then it was to Cardiff with an evening drive down and some cloud formations and skies as good as Texas



And to moving Roisin from one flat to another on the one day it was like a Texas summer and she had omitted to tell me that the new place was 4 flights up. During this time I:

- cornered a skunk smelling bath mat in between 2 bin bags

- sent Rentokil into liquidation by buying their entire stack of rat poison

- performed the “strength twang and twist test” on the piece of string and screw suspending the shower curtain rail

- tested out the light which had been sellotaped to the ceiling at an angle perfect to illuminate the dartboard the previous occupants had left

- checked Roisin's means of escape in the event of a fire which is, to slide down one roof onto the roof of the building below. Failing that, she could see if her Imelda Marcos collection of shoes would dampen the flames long enough for the firemen checking out the fire fighting practices in the LAP DANCING club across the road, to hear the screams.

- Went to a pub that out the back had a Bedouin tent with red chaser lights.........well I think I did



Ah, here is P, what price the penalty for sarcasm on official forms …….

- a completely essential crown replacement $3,000, if he is not to look like Knobby Stiles until Xmas

- WOW Mr Dentist has never seen fillings that big and there is decay so crowns would be better $3,000 each ………

- And the incidentals….

And I cannot bring myself to calculate the total

Yours having just fused the calculator with bitter tears while trying to work out what 20% would be of the total I can’t bring myself to tote……

P.S. I wonder if I could sell my blog to a publisher

PPS it was lovely to see "Y'all" even mum who “nobody appreciates anyway”

PPPS Bryan have you got the builders in yet? I expect a reproduction of Buckingham Palace at Xmas.