HOLLYWOOD BREAKFAST IN FRISCO

Hollywood café, North Beach

    Hyatt North Beach has no dining room. It does serve expensive room service meals ordered by clicking a cursor on your TV screen .

   There is a Starbucks at one corner,

                BUT ACROSS THE ROAD                 

                                                     HOLLYWOOD CAFE!

is, open from 6.30 to 11.45 a.m. People stand in line even in drenching California fog, waiting to write their name on the waiting list alongside their preference for seating I (inside) O (outside) or E (either).
   The staff wears casual yellow Tshirts and jeans. Some are clearing dishes and wiping tables, others are refilling coffee cups, taking orders and carrying food from the small kitchen. It is remarkably quiet, yet cheerful.

THE MENU,
several pages in a leather folder. reads like a roster of dead film stars.

the James Dean  is bacon, two poached eggs, a bowl of fresh banana, mango, pineapple, oranges. grapes, blueberries; a side plate of fresh toast and as much coffee as you like.

The Clark Gable  is the same but the bacon has been cooked in  some kind of honey sauce.

The Audrey Hepburn is pancakes and syrup with fresh fruit. I did not get around to eating the
Vivien Leigh

The inside pages offer a plethora of sausages, corn cakes, waffles but I was just too busy enjoying James Dean to read any further.

   So if anyone is thinking about returning in 2017 for that billionnaires' shell game on San Francisco Bay, the Hyatt is a nice hotel, clean and hospitable with a swimming pool on the third floor, Fishermans wharf is within walking distance and the Hollywood Café is worth the cost of the trip. Forget about the yachts.

SUNDAY AT CITY LIGHTS

SUNDAY AT CITY LIGHTS

The pretty girl clutching a clipboard approached as I sat in late afternoon sun on Pier 39.

Was I willing to take part in a survey?

What was my main purpose in visiting San Francisco?

 She was about twenty, had attended High School in Berkley and she had never heard of City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac, the Beat poets. Perhaps education is being dumbed down after all.

Next day I rode a number 30 bus up Columbus Avenue from Fishermen’s wharf to Stockton, walked two blocks and there it was - City Lights Bookstore celebrating its sixtieth birthday. People at the traffic lights waited while a Green Street Mortuary Marching Band jazzed by and cafe sitters at sidewalk tables applauded. A jazz ensemble played under a marquee in Jack Kerouac Alley as the world converged on City Lights, which is not a multi storied emporium with sliding doors and regiments of checkout stands. Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a champion of people sized communities and City Lights is in the same three level building it started in. Over sixty years it has become one of the most famous bookstores in the world, but there are no branches anywhere else. If anyone wants to shop in a City Lights bookstore they have to come to San Francisco, although I buy books on line from their newsletter and read about events taking place when City Lights authors go on the road to publicise their books.

I walked up the two front steps through the narrow door, past the check out desk where two pretty girls wearing City Lights T shirts and flowers in their hair were busy zapping bar codes, popping books into paper bags and smiling. The windows beside the entrance held photographs of City Lights and staff over the years.  I slithered through the line of waiting book buyers, was careful not to stumble on the two steps up into the main room which is a maze of shelves full of books I am unlikely to find in Barnes and Noble or Waterstones, certainly not at Paper Plus or Whitcoulls. City Lights encourages dissidence and real talent.

This is the store which was charged with indecency for publishing Howl by Allen Ginsberg. It still stocks it. This is the store that nurtured the Beat poets, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs et al. Up the narrow stairs on the third floor is the area dedicated to the Beats. It has a performance area and aging friends who were students in the fifties tell me of sitting on the floor there, in air hazy with ‘California Green’, listening to young Kerouac, and Ginsberg and others. It is one of the famous places of the Literary world, ranking with Dove Cottage and those daffodils, or Westminster Bridge.

But downstairs the aisles are narrow and on this Sunday it was crowded. Every chair, there were not many, was occupied by somebody reading. Lawrence Ferlinghetti himself strolled through the store, greeting and being greeted. A couple of Ferlinghetti lookalikes sauntered about outside.

 I saw several Ginsberg lookalikes from his bushy beard days, and one William S Burroughs.  At least two people were leading ‘The Dog That Trots Down the Street and Sees Reality, ‘one was a small poodle, the other a mutt whose mother was probably courted by several Labradors, airdales, a spaniel and uncounted collies.

 Ferlinghetti’s gifts to us were on a table at the foot of the stairs, beautiful wall charts of poems from City Lights publications of the past sixty years, not just his own. I chose his “Buddha in the Woodpile”.

Outside on Columbus Avenue people strolled about and I heard just about every language on earth, except Maori. Two French girls exclaimed as they identified poets in the early photos. “Voila! Cést Ginsberg! Vraiment!”  An Islamic man, head-scarfed wife two steps behind, made his way through the throng. I heard French, German, Chinese, American. Irish, Queen’s English.

 Suddenly a fire engine, siren hooting, followed by a paddy wagon pulled up outside the store. Two firemen sauntered inside, moments later they came out leading a scruffy type who climbed into the back of the paddy wagon. Street Theatre?  I could not recall a poem about an incident like this. Maybe it was a recreation of Allen Ginsberg charged with indecency because he wrote ‘Howl!’ and set the poetry world alight.

It was a lovely afternoon. I decided to walk back to my hotel. Columbus Avenue led straight to Fishermen’s Wharf. What could go wrong?

 My stupid sense of direction could. Two hours later I was outside the Bank of America on Montgomery, it was raining, my feet hurt, the light was fading and I could barely decipher the street names on my map.

“You lost?”asked a concerned voice, and there stood one of those angels I keep meeting; tall, tanned, immaculate, he could feature in my next romantic novel, but meantime my next blog should be about the kind teacher of English who had lived in Christchurch for three years, who organised a taxi when there were none around, fed me chocolate and waved goodbye as my taxi sped off. 

JULY FOURTH 2007

 

 

          Plymouth, Massachusetts, population 55,000, calls itself ‘America’s Home Town.’ The pilgrims landed herein 1649, stepping ashore on to Plymouth Rock which lies enshrined under pillars and a cupola in Greek revival style. A replica of the Mayflower is moored in the harbour. Plimouth Plantation is a re-creation of the original settlement where actors play the roles of actual pilgrims, demonstrating the way they lived, what they grew in their gardens, how they dressed and spoke. Plimouth Plantation makes and sells beautiful furniture made with seventeenth century tools. In the restaurant visitors can eat traditional food, lobster, turkey, pumpkin pie, cooked to seventeenth century recipes. There is an active conservation programme gathering and breeding antique plants and animals. New Zealand sent cows and rabbits when we culled them from Enderby Island.

          July 4^th, 2007 began with clear skies. About 9:30 we strolled down to find a shady spot where we could set our folding chairs. Mothers pushed strollers, fathers carried toddlers on their shoulders, families of three or four generations converged on the parade route and by 10.00 a.m. it was lined with people in chairs, children, picnic hampers and American flags. Soft drink vendors pushed carts, souvenir sellers did a brisk trade in flags and balloons.

This was no Hollywood production parade with seventy six trombones and choreographed marchers. It began with sirens and horns as down the road came fifty engines from Plymouth and a dozen adjacent towns; towering behemoths which could hoist firemen to blazes in high places; smaller, specialised vehicles and  finally vintage fire trucks with hoses and running boards. Sirens sounded, bells clanged and firemen tossed candy to the children while spectators cheered and clapped. After the Plymouth parade these fire engines would travel to other nearby towns and lead their parades. 

Next Indian and Harley Davidson motor bikes roared by followed by quieter Yamahas and Hondas, all flying the stars and stripes.  The riders were middle aged with paunches and grizzled beards but their bikes were pristine. Vintage cars followed, from gas guzzling Chryslers and Pontiacs to Model T Fords.

Only then did we see and hear a marching band, trumpets, trombones, sousaphones and drums from Plymouth High School giving the beat for U.S veterans headed by John Talcott 99 years old. As well as being the oldest veteran he was the marshal who through the year had planned and organised this parade. He marched part of the way then rode in a vintage open topped automobile and his sailor uniform still fitted him..

For the next hour we clapped and cheered and laughed as a wonderful parade of American life and history passed, exuberant as a Sousa March. High School marching bands led floats decorated by local firms, trade unions, service clubs, churches and individuals. One truck was hung with saucepans, skillets, pot hole covers, metal gates. A percussionist belted out music on them as he hung in safety harness above the road. Unicyclists tossed candy to children. Beauty Queens sprayed water over spectators to relieve the muggy heat. It was all very informal but great fun. Children dashed about collecting the candies tossed from the floats.  Most of them grabbed and gobbled on the spot but I saw one boy who would dash out, collect brimming handfuls then carefully stow them in a shopping bag on his grand mother’s wheel chair. Over the hour I estimate he collected enough to keep his family in candy until the next July 4^th.

Although the town was bedecked with American flags a lot of flag wavers were also wearing ‘Bring our boys home from Iraq NOW’ badges and nobody seemed to mind.

BRUNCH AT STARBUCKS

 

I had set my glasses on the bedside table beside my Kindle reader and  overnight they vanished. I hunted everywhere, felt through every drawer, every corner, every crevice, they must have fallen down behind the bed and I could not reach my fat hands down far enough to search. Without them I could not see the numbers on the phone or read a menu.

 Julinda at the lobby desk suggested I buy a replacement at Walgreens and the concierge wrote directions in very big writing,

EXIT LEFT

FIRST TURN RIGHT

WALK TWO BLOCKS

WALGREENS ON LEFT

            I followed the directions and found Wallgreens, an enormous market which seemed to sell everything, bananas at $1 each baby goods, toiletries, souvenirs, and every kind of eye glass known to man, rimless, horn rimmed, coloured frame,  sunglasses, driving glasses, ski goggles,. I tried on reading glasses and for $32 bought a pair that put my world into focus.

            Wirh my restored vision I walked out and saw a Starbucks sign next door. I got into line behind three slender young women in breast hugging sweat shirts and jeans with sequins all over the back pockets.  Their main expression to each other was ‘Oh my Gahd, He/she or they didn’t!!!” as we moved slowly towards the counter.

I ordered latte with a breakfast bun, a large cinnamon pin wheel. Simple? No, what size latte did I want;, l, what kind of milk; full cream, fat free or soy?. Did I want my bun warmed, butter or margarine? The young Latino man at the counter could give the police lessons in interrogation.. He wrote my name on a cardboard coffee cup, whizzed my bun through the microwave and waved me on to the coffee area.

 I joined the crowd watching a Scandinavian goddess, high priestess of the coffee machine. Her performance would have looked good on stage with the Bolshoi as she ,ground  coffee, transferred the grounds into a tiny wire basket so gracefully that not a grain was lost. She tamped down the grounds, swung the basket under the appropriate spout on the machine, As the coffee gurgles into a cup with someone’s name on it the ballerina/high priestess poured milk into a jug, offe3red it to the frother, then united coffee  and froth in the paper cup, anointed it with a plastic lid and called the name written on the cup. I was strongly tempted to applaud, shout bravo. Instead I studied the advertising around the walls. with my Walgreen’s glasses.; frappochino showed a gondolier in Venice, a neatly chalked blackboard invited us to a free tasting of brewed clover next Thursday between 2 and 3 p.m.

 The high priestess called my name, I collected my coffee sipped it as I ate my bun sitting at a tiny table in the sun.

Back at the hotel, room maid Peggy had located my glasses. They had fallen into a gap behind the bedhead.

 

 

LUNCH AT FLEUR'S PLACE

Getting there is not easy. Turn seaward from SH1, cross the railway line and drive down the cliff on a winding lane as narrow as the road to salvation. In winter be careful in the car park, it is full of puddles so step carefully. And the wind off the sea tastes of Antrctica. There are no signs or hoarding, everybody knows it is Fleur's place.

She bought an abandoned fish plant on the jetty at Moeraki, added what looks like an old schoolroom from post WW1 days, corrugated iron with sash windows,  and built a restaurant. She had some battles. Bureaucracy did not like her buying her fresh fish from boats coming to her jetty. She fought them because her idea of a harbour side restaurant did not include serving fish that had been packaged and frozen weeks before then transported the length of the South Island. Fleur won., she buys her fish from fishermen who bring it to her jetty.

The abandoned fish plant is now her kitchen, The restaurant has an understated 'Beach combers' theme.with  none of the clanging metal furniture and ersatz decorations rife in tourist spots. Winter sunlight pours through the windows and reflects from scrubbed wooden tables, a variety of very old, sturdy wooden chairs, A wooden staircase that might have been salvaged from a Victorian homestead winds above the bar to a mezzanine floor which opens on to a deck, complete with authentic ship's wheel, and a panorama no billionaire could afford to buy. We sat in the warm and stared through  French doors to Moeraki Bay, North to a hazy outline of Banks Peninsular and East to the Great Southern Ocean.

Fleur brought us that day's menu, freshly written every day. She had only two soles left, but there was plenty of blue cod, caught that morning. Joe decided on scollops, Kim and I had blue cod. While we waited for the main course we nibbled fresh, fresh bread dipping it into a dishes of olive oil with a bay leaf at the bottom, a pesto that had never seen the inside of a jar, and a fish spread.

Our cod fillets were so fresh I could taste the brine. They were wrapped in bacon and served on a bed of very fresh vegetable, broccoli, silver beet, potato. It came with a spoon so we could sup every drop of the mornay sauce. And our cutlery included bone handled desert knives; not plastic, real bone, ivory yellow and warm to the touch.

We did not really need desert, but Kim wanted crème brulee so Joe had chocolate sponge with ice cream and I had cheese, an assortment of tasty blue veins that I could not afford to buy in any supermarket. What we could not finish was packed into a clip top box for me to take home.

The atmosphere was leisurely and quiet, no banging trays, no crashing plates, no shouted orders. The restaurant was busy, but the staff served everybody cheerfully and efficiently. After our superb lunch we drank tea. Tea that was brewed in a china teapot and we poured it into lovely antique bone china teacups. The kind that have 'Royal Worcester' or 'Spode'  on the bottom and my mother's generation kept in a glass fronted cabinet in the sitting room and only used when we had company.

As we were leaving Fleur introduced us to the fisherman who had caught our cod that morning.

I could go on for pages talking about Fleur, whom I respect and admire tremendously. Fleur's Place is a superb little restaurant with genuine character. Fleur herself does not put on an act, she has earned a place in the world by being supremely good at what she does, and by being her own person.




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SNOGGING IN SLOGGIES

SNOGGING IN  SLOGGIES’

 

                Perhaps it was my argument with the train, maybe it was that old shrew Anno Domini creeping up, but suddenly, for no discernible reason I collided with a massive writers block; arthritic fingers, sore joints a mind  full of mush. My beautifully ordered little routines just refused to come out and play, the hour of creative writing first thing in the morning ran under my bed and hid, The editing  scheduled for afternoons cowered in a corner, caterpillars gobbling my winter broccoli reared up and sniggered, my new waterblaster kicked up more grime than it banished. I could not even solve the cryptic crossword.

 So I surrendered to temptation, like an alcoholic falling off the wagon, or a chocoholic at the sweet counter. I read voraciously, anything I could get m y hands on ; loaded my kindle with 99 cent mysteries and romances; haunted the library; skimmed through the Warehouse snatching bargain price books.

Ice Princess by Camilla Blackberg was on the $10 table. Scandinavian whodunits are dark and gritty, many layered but they also show subtle flashes of comic brilliance.

The main character in The Ice Princess is a female detective nearing middle age, the main theme is child abuse and its effects. A minor theme is a developing attraction between the detective and a colleague. She invites him to dinner, spends the afternoon preparing, cleaning her flat cooking the meal .  Everything goes well until they are about to hop into her bed when an appalling thought hits her.

                SHE IS NOT WEARING A LACE THONG!

Here she is with a sexy male and she is clad in her everyday, white cotton sloggies.

I discovered sloggies two years ago in Dublin. They are the most comfortable knickers I have ever worn. When I came home I searched the internet for a source in New Zealand without luck until  I asked at the rather expensive lingerie shop here in Oamaru. They have racks full of them.

I have long passed the age where I am likely to leap into bed with anything more exciting than a good book so I shall continue to wear my sloggies, black, white or flesh coloured, on all occasions. We are quite an exclusive little coterie, Oamaru sloggie wearers; the petrol pump lady; the florist’s mother in law and others, almost like Masons used to be, signalling our membership with a subtle smile of recognition, or the smirk that we wore with our Witches Britches in the seventies, remember?.

And the Ice Princess is a thumping good read.  

LOOK OUT, BIG BROTHER IS ALMOST HERE.

When I retired in 1990 Schools had just about got things right. There was a big move towards Developmental Education, classes were getting smaller, Teachers were being encouraged to keep up to date in their professional training.

 I have been out of the classroom for a long time and my only experience of today's schools has been with a wonderful little country school over at Glenavy and reports from my Grandchildren's parents who have some very valid concerns..

According to this morning's radio a lot of money is about to be spent training parents to 'modify children's classroom behaviour.' Evidently parents in economically deprived areas need help in teaching their children how to behave. If our Government is going to spend money training parents to 'improve children's classroom behaviour.' Is it going to consider:

Bringing back Plunket nurses who can help mothers learn about the feeding and care of young children so that by the time they go to school they are intelligent and physically healthy?

Cutting class sizes so teachers can construct a learning environment geared to the needs of their pupils. Fifteen maximum?

Run courses in child development and educational theory so that parents know what to expect? Mothers especially need to get off the competitive bandwagon and not push their children to perform too far above their age just to bolster their own ego.

But maybe the classrooms need to change rather than the children in them..

There are some classrooms where children's behaviour is an indicator of something amiss. Is the government going to spend money training parents to teach children to 'behave' when they should be looking at fixing the system?

How important is School in the communities where parents are deemed to be in need of training? Somewhere the kids go to while Mum and Dad try to earn a decent wage?

What is the underlying structure of our Education system? There are underlying and unchanging principles about learning that seem to have turned into whipping boys for politicians.

What are the purposes of what is in the School Curriculum? Do we want a population which accepts shoddy conditions without protest? Should we be training school children to obey authority without question? to believe that the rich and powerful are somehow better than we are?

I believe Education is too important to be mucked about with by Politicians. .




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