Back to My Bubble

Every now and then a wave of nostalgia and sentimentality falls over the household and we have a craving for all things British.

Naturally this mood recently coincided with the departure of daughter No 1 back to England which left us feeling bereft and at a loose end.  Lucky her – she gets to go back to England – unlucky us, we just have to stay here in California and suffer….

Yes I know it’s totally irrational and stupid.  The temperature has been in the 80’s all week; we’ve had wall to wall sunshine.  I don’t have to go to work; I can please myself how I fill my day; and yet my days seem empty and worthless. I’ve read all the British magazines my daughter brought out with her at Christmas and we’ve nearly eaten all the Cadbury's dairy milk.  Even watching Downton Abbey on the comemercial free Masterpiece Theatre TV channel hasn't helped.

I’m homesick.

No matter how much I’ve become accustomed to the American way of life; this will never feel like home.  There’s too much here I don’t like and too much I’ve left behind.

I don’t like being asked if I can spare a couple of cents or a dollar every time I walk down the street into town.  I don’t like seeing people climbing into skips, scavenging and foraging in bins for plastic bottles to exchange for meager amounts of cash at the re-cycling point.  I don’t like seeing elderly men and women huddled  in doorways surrounded by their life's belongings packed into a shopping cart. I don’t like being accosted at crosswalks by seemingly respectably dressed men and women who ask if I’ve seen the light and tell me I wont get to heaven unless I repent all my sins.  What sins? I haven’t sinned.

I want to be able to walk into a shop and browse in my own time without being pounced upon by effusive sales “associates” who insist on telling me their name along with their latest offers and act like they want to be my new best friend.

I have this craving for a “normal” life where I get home from work and start preparing the evening meal watching The Weakest Link; where I can chat to my neighbours as I trim the front hedge or water the pot plants by my front door.  Just mundane, everyday stuff that I don’t do anymore. 

I want to walk to the village post office and exchange a few pleasantries with the staff who always ask me how I am; not because they have to but because they genuinely want to know.

I want to stop as I stroll home and chat to the friendly elderly couple who live at the end of the road;  I want to stroke my cat who will be sat patiently waiting for me on the mat outside the back door; I want a  night out gossiping with my girlfriends; I want to sit by a roaring fire in an English pub;  I want to meet my old work colleagues for a cake, a coffee and a chat;  I want walk up and down the aisles of Sainsbury’s filling my trolley with products that I know and love, pausing to catch up with a couple of old friends I bump into that I haven’t seen for a while.That just doesn’t happen here.

And I suppose it's because I'm in this morose "all things British must be good" mood that I found myself defending Ricky Gervais after the Golden Globes.  I 'm not  a particular fan of Ricky Gervais,  but he’s like the packet of Paxo we saw on the shelf in the “English Shop” in Santa Monica.  My husband got very excited at the sight of the Paxo Sage and Onion stuffing and said we had to buy it to have with our Christmas dinner.  Well that was just pointless because our daughter was with us for Christmas and she's a vegetarian and we’d already decided we were going to have fish.  I suppose we could  have had the Paxo with the fish but well we bought it because it was British and it reminded us of home.  Not because we liked it.

So I stuck up for Ricky Gervais amongst my new American friends who had found him rude and not at all funny and couldn’t understand why he had even been selected to present the Golden Globes. I tried to explain, as politely as I could, that Ricky, bless him, was just voicing opinions that everyone thinks but nobody here is actually brave enough to say, in his own sweet sardonic way. After all, the Golden Globe producers would never have asked him to host the show if they didn't want him to be a tiny bit controversal now would they?!

Cynicism, irony, sarcasm - totally wasted! They really just don't get it out here, but you see, to me Ricky represented that packet of Paxo.  Funny how these things we never even liked before have now become so dear…..

The Body Beautiful

So New Year, New Blog, New Me. Well I’ve done the new blog bit – my posts about the Rose Parade and Mammoth were glowing with positivity; now it’s time for the new me so I’ve joined the rest of the new year resolutionists and headed off to the gym, as I do every January.

As I’ve said before, I find it admirable that so many Californians do what they can to look after themselves and keep fit and healthy.  I know a lot of this is because they don’t want to have to pay their medical bills; but there is of course another motive.  Californians are not just fighting off  infections and the after affects of a hedonistic lifestyle, there are a lot of people here who are trying to turn back time – I’m talking the anti-aging process.

None of us wants to get old.  In my head I’m still a teenager but unfortunately that message hasn’t reached the rest of my body.  I do as much as I can to halt the tide; I try to eat a healthy diet, I moisturize and I dye my hair.  I’ve always dyed my hair, I used to be blonde to hide the mouse brown now I’m blonde to hide the grey.  Just lately my husband has started to comment that if I can dye my hair, why shouldn’t he? He’s starting to feel like he’s the only grey in the office.  Well I like his speckled grey hair - I think it’s very distinguishing.  The problem is you don’t see that many men his age over here with grey hair.  You see a lot of men his age with beautifully coiffured and very obviously dyed dark hair, and I’m pretty sure if he turned up at work tomorrow with  hair the colour of coal not one of his colleagues would bat an eyelid.  His American colleagues that is – his English workmates would be rolling around on the floor laughing. 

So what’s wrong with a bit of male grooming?  All the TV presenters are at it.  And as for the female TV presenters –  well groomed would be a bit of an understatement - how can you take the news seriously when you have anchor woman Barbie handing over to on the spot reporter Sindy - oh and then back to you Ken for the weather!! Where are all the old people?

They’re in clinics in Beverly Hills under the surgeon’s knife.  You really do see some very odd looking people out here – and some very dis-proportionate body shapes.  What's wrong with looking how nature intended. Soon there won’t be any real people left.  The American media is very good at projecting this image that can make you feel totally inadequate in every department.  How can the average person live up to this bombardment of Hollywood style perfection – the perfect figure; the perfect hair; the perfect teeth. 

What’s the problem with natural beauty? Could it be that there's no money to be made from it?

Of course the trouble with living in California is that the weather encourages this outdoor lifestyle which isn’t actually that good for you.  We all want a tan but we don’t want the lines and wrinkles that go with it, and we definitely don’t want skin cancer.  Even Botox can’t get rid of that.  And no amount of surgery, or lotions and potions which flood onto the market out here can actually make you younger – yes you might look 10 years younger than you really are; yes, it may, briefly, make you feel 10 years younger, but it’s what’s inside that really counts – and I don’t mean how much silicon has been put in or fat that’s been sucked out.  Unless they can come up with a procedure for re-generating your internal organs (and I’m pretty sure there’s some surgeon up in Beverly Hills working on that one right now) unfortunately if you were born 40 years ago; you’re still 40.

I might as well get off that treadmill now.

Mammoth

It was time for another road trip.  Daughter No 1 was visiting from England and it was a good couple of months since we last ventured out of LA – so we booked a cabin and headed up to Mammoth Mountain.

Road trips are one of my favourite things about living in the US.  40 something years of living in the UK and we rarely travelled anywhere further than two hours away. Here, if somewhere is two hours away it's on your doorstep - people will think nothing of driving two hours just to get the weekly shop at a Costco.  A few weeks ago we drove an hour and a bit just to have waffles for breakfast - we're so American!

So back to Mammoth - 350 miles from LA and 8000 ft up, it's one of American's premier ski resorts.  It's a six hour drive from LA and once you get out of the city, the roads are quiet and traffic free. Road trips are great for seeing small town America, although on this trip we drove through the back of beyond passing through one street towns that looked like hell on earth in the torrential rain. As we got higher up the rain  turned into snow and the snow turned into a blizzard - not a great deal of fun and positively hairy when we got to the part of the road where the snow chains had to go on

But we made it! 10 ft high drifts on either side of the road with only roof tops and tree tops visible under a  pure white fluffy blanket; stepping out of the car and sinking into 2ft of soft powdery snow! At one point we did actually wonder (hope!) if we might get snowed in, but the blizzard stopped, the sun came out and it was time to head up to the ski-lifts!

I’m not a skier – I’ve tried it but it seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of fun.  I take the camera; take a good book, watch the others ski down a couple of runs and then retreat to the café for a hot chocolate.  Of course if this was Europe I’d have been asking for a tot of rum with my cocoa, and we’d have been coming down off the slopes at the end of the day for a steaming hot gluhwein, but despite the difference in the après-ski atmosphere, Mammoth was still great fun.  It was all a bit dead and quiet by 9.00 pm most nights but we’ve lived over here long enough now to know that that’s when most Americans head off to bed; and when you’re ski-ing you do need to be up that mountain early to beat the queues for the lift.  

The ski chalet was positively luxurious, equipped with every home comfort that we pseudo Americans have now come to expect – three bathrooms, queen beds, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, microwave, coffee machine (how did we ever manage all those holidays in a caravan in France with a two ring burner and bunk beds), flat screen TV’s in every bedroom….

Flatscreen TV’s – now there’s a thing.  When I was choosing our accommodation, and I’m very particular and check everything that’s ever been written on Trip Advisor before I book, it was very noticeable that a lot of Americans would comment that their accommodation was not up to standard because it didn’t have a flat screen TV in every room…. What is it with America and this obsession with watching TV?  Apart from the fact that there's nothing on TV but mindless drivel, you’re on vacation – it’s quality family time – you get out a pack of cards or have a game of Scrabble or Monopoly….

Several rounds of Scattergories and a jigsaw puzzle later, our break in Mammoth was over.  All too soon it was time to pack away the salopettes and head back to LA where it had rained continuously for the last 5 days (glad we missed that one!!)  Fortunately our chalet did have underground parking (and this is where those hours of research pay off) so we didn't have to dig the car out of  10 ft of snow and drive along with a 2ft top box of compacted ice.

We've promised ourselves a trip back to Mammoth in the summer so we can actually see what the place looks like naked so to speak - meanwhile - here's a few pictures of it with its clothes on. Definitely one of my favourite places so far.

 

A Brief Survival Guide

Now that my posts are published on Ex-Pat  Blog, I realize my merry ramblings maybe coming under scrutiny from people who are genuinely thinking of, just about to, or have actually re-located to America. Therefore it might be time for sharing my top tips on surviving life in the US.

Before I start just remember I’m in LA and everyone tells me California is very different from other parts of America, and in addition, I’m a “corporate wife”; I’m only here because of my husband’s job so what I say, or think, may not necessarily strike a cord with everybody.

Research -  Find out as much as you can before you come; use the internet; books, magazines; anything you can lay your hands on that might give you a realistic picture of what to expect.  Watching American TV shows and movies doesn’t count!  Read blogs written by real people who have already made the move – read my blog! Books and corporate manuals can certainly provide you with a lot of facts but they are often written by people who have been born, bred and raised here.  It doesn’t give you quite the same perspective! Forewarned is forearmed.  Be Prepared.

Financial Security – Don’t even think about coming to the US unless you are financially secure.  Yes fast food and gas are comparatively cheap and plentiful – but other necessities are not - housing; utilities; education. 20 years of steady UK mortgage payments, a black bank account and a regular salary counts for nothing out here; it takes at least six months to get credit history.  Bear in mind you will have to pay for everything up front and don’t forget sales tax - it’s never included on the price tag! Nor are tips and gratuities!

Healthcare - You must have health insurance! The biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is failure to meet medical bills.  There’s enough people living on the streets here already – don’t join them.

Know the Laws of the Land – Every state is different.  Know what state you are in and what’s legal and what’s not. Traffic fines are a good source of revenue; read your Highway Code and abide by it.

Bureaucracy and Paperwork – America thrives on it and just resign yourself to wading through it.  There is no alternative.  Rules is Rules and they ain’t going to change them just for you.

Be Patient – Except when they are behind the steering wheel of a car, Americans seem to operate at a slower pace than their European counterparts.  Learn patience.  The working week is longer here but that doesn’t mean Americans are more productive.  It simply means they have more hours to fill so they make their tasks last. Consider that wait in line as quality time to reflect; meditate and enjoy.

Adapt – Learn to work with what you’ve got.  Trying to replicate your life back home just leads to disappointment and frustration – trust me, I know!!  Sadly Ralphs isn’t Sainsbury’s and they aren’t going to re-stock their entire product range just for me.  Live with it – or in most cases without it.  It’s amazing what you can actually learn to manage without.

Ask Questions – Most Americans love to talk and are only too happy to offer advice and answer your questions.  Whatever you’re looking for they will be able to give you a personal recommendation – be it a school,  restaurant, nail spa or a clinic for colonic irrigation. Don’t be shy – that’s an alien concept here.  If in doubt – ask - no matter how stupid it sounds; most Americans are so darn polite they’d never let on even if they did think your question totally moronic.

Promote Yourself – nobody is going to come knocking at your door begging to be your new best buddy.  If you want a social life you have to get out there and find it.  Do grasp every hand of friendship offered because you never know where it might lead – and if the worse comes to worse and you need to extricate yourself from an awkward social situation, simply mentioning symptoms typical of highly infectious illness will probably do the trick!

Stay Positive – There will be days when you don’t want to get up out of bed.  You will be homesick – it’s inevitable.  Deep down inside you know it’s all for the greater good and things will get better. List all the things you want to do whilst you are here and use your time wisely. Don’t waste the opportunity. On the other hand, if you need to wallow in sentimentality about your home country every now and then, do! It’s your heritage, it’s where you grew up, keep in touch. I’d be lost without my PC, Skype and BBC America.  California is a hotpotch of nationalities; over 220 languages are spoken in LA.  If you need to seek out the comforts of people who speak the same language (and understand the same jokes)  – do.  Everyone else here does.

And finally, whether your move here is permanent or just for the short term, give yourself time to settle in. I  reckon it takes at least 12 months for the “culture shock” to wear off and accustomisation, acclimatisation and tolerance levels to kick in.  Even now I still have dark days when the whole country will just drive me to distraction; but that's when I retreat back into my bubble and spend the day sat on the sofa with endless cups of tea watching re-runs of Inspector Morse and Dr Who.

What you make of America is going to be very dependent upon where you are from, what you left behind and what you are looking for. Nothing ventured nothing gained. Good luck!!

The Rose Parade

Well I was going to start the new year with a post entitled New Year, New Blog, New Me.  It was going to focus on all the positives about life in the US as both my husband and daughter repeatedly tell me that my blog is nothing but tirade of sarcastic negativity.  Well now there’s no need, because I have just returned from witnessing the Pasadena Rose Parade and I am positively buzzing with positivity!!

The annual Pasadena Rose Parade, for those not in the know, is held every year on New Year’s Day (unless New Year’s Day is a Sunday in which case it’s held on the Monday…)…anyway, it is the epitome of true Americana; a two hour parade along a five mile route through the streets of Pasadena.  There are High School marching bands, college marching bands; cheerleaders; flag wavers; decorated ponies;  decorated carriages; cowboys, Indians, Mexican dancers, Hawaiian dancers; a smiley-smiley “Rose Queen” and her “Royal Court” of smiley-smiley Rose princesses; and most spectacular of all are the decorated floats; huge moving structures dressed from top to toe in a magnificent assortment of fresh flowers.  

 The floats here are nothing like any float you will have seen back home.  If like me, you’re from a small English village where the highlight of the social year was the annual carnival – a couple of lorries with handmade decorations and cardboard scenery, designed and manned by the local boy scouts or the brownie troop, lead by a 20 piece Salvation Army band – then the Rose Parade will quite simply blow your mind away! Think perhaps Notting Hill carnival combined with Jersey’s Battle of the Flowers and then think – well this is America, and imagine something about 100 times bigger. There’s nothing amateur about these floats – the most spectacular ones are there to promote America’s largest corporations….the US Bank, Kaiser Permanente (health insurance), and of course  my favourite American institutions – the pharmaceutical companies.

It’s a huge event, broadcast live across the whole of America.  School and college bands compete to take part - it's an honour and a privilege to be chosen.  This is what America does best and before you can stop yourself, you’re sat there, surrounded by your new fellow countrymen, clapping, cheering and yelling “yeeha” and “good job” and “God bless America” along the rest of them….

And after the parade comes the Rose Bowl football game between two leading college teams.   The Rose Bowl stadium holds over 100,000 people; so Pasadena is buzzing with an overload of people in the run up to New Year.  The rival fans exchange friendly banter but there appears to be no trouble; no fighting; no drunken behavior – this is college football and it all appears very clean cut..

The Rose Parade is a national institution but even more amazing than the parade itself, is the makeshift camps that are set up along the route on New Year’s  Eve.  Apparently any time after noon on New Year’s Eve you can pop your chair down on the pavement, or mark a spot in tape or chalk and stake your claim.  Nobody will steal your chair; or pinch your place…..can you imagine that in the UK? Whole families will set up camp “come on kids, time for the annual camping holiday on the streets of Pasadena”  But forget the tent, just bring the blow up mattress, the sleeping bags, the cool box, the BBQ, oh and the TV of course, plus the generator……

Yes we spotted  a family sat round a 40” flat screen TV on the pavement as we walked down Colorado Boulevard which is main street Pasadena, and although there are always plenty of people sleeping out rough in Pasadena any night of the week, at least on New Year’s Eve they get lots of company. There is a obviously a great sense of camaraderie amongst the makeshift fires and BBQ’s, and what culinary delights did we see being whipped up on one grill? Barbequed cheesey wotsits.  Yes dad was threading cheesey wotsits onto a kebab stick and popping them onto the grill…yum, must try that one at home…..

But back to the parade.  After an hour of all that clapping and cheering, and patriotism, you just start to feel, well, seen one flag-waver, seen them all and it’s all starting to wear a bit thin.  Fortunately one of the floats did break down right in front of us and we had the added excitement of the white suited officials (and don’t think white suit as in boiler suit, think white suit as in John Travolta….) flapping around, waving clipboards, grabbing walkie talkies before the strategically placed AAA tow truck was able to push its way through the crowds to the rescue….

 Forty seven floats, 22 bands and 22 equestrian entries later, it was finally over and you know you never want to see another marching band again in your life.  Until next year that is – I’ve already marked my my spot on the sidewalk …….