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Published: August 14th 2012
Saturday June 4th 2011 to Tuesday August 14th 2012 To all you muthas who I'll call friends, I'm glad to have you with me, 'cuz here we go again" Ted Nugent They say all good things must come to an end and thinking about it they're quite right. The Canaries’ infamous 1959 Cup run stalled at the semi final stage just one step from the hallowed Twin Towers, Del Boy Trotter tragically slipped into millionaire obscurity after twenty two years of gracing our living room screens and as twelve months rolled by without so much as a whiff of an entry this blog appeared to be sadly heading the same way.
More to do with a self imposed term of procrastination than a desire to put an end to these ramblings of my life in the US of A, I was walking home from the gym one recent evening (walking because some unscrupulous scoundrel had decided that the sight of my trustee two wheeled aluminium steed being left unlocked and unattended was an open invitation for them to saddle up and ride off into the sunset !) when I was suddenly overcome with an insatiable desire to
revive them.
So here I am. Now what's been happening in Matts’ California for the last twelve months ?
Well for starters there’s been a change of abode, a relocation one hundred yards up the street from the beloved one bedroom waterside apartment I thought I'd never leave, a place brimming with wonderful memories, to a three storey, four bedroom million dollar waterside house that will hopefully in time provide the same.
Phil and I had discussed on more than one occasion the notion of pooling our combined rent payments to splash out on leasing something impressive. With a combined pool of three and a half grand a month we mused, we could rent something quite substantial even here in extravagantly priced real estate world of Southern California.
Almost inevitably however the talk remained just that and with two daughters maturing faster than a bucket of stilton and interest rates stooping to an all time low he decided it was time for action, time to take the next responsible step of fatherhood and enter the world of Stateside property investment.
Getting onto the property ladder in Southern California is as expensive as almost anywhere in
Two Weddings and a Funeral.
LA City Hall closure as a result of 'Occupy LA'.the world. In the Long Beach neighborhood of Belmont Shore that I've called home for the last four years you will do well to find anything under a million dollars and so reluctant to start on the bottom rung and no doubt remembering our chats he enquired if I'd consider contributing to the timber framed burden that he'd set his heart upon on in the role of fully paid up boarder.
Negotiations lasted less than a bottle of Coors, the agreement we struck consisting for me at least, of a seemingly equal ratio of pros and cons. Money always talks and for a six hundred dollar, forty per cent cut in my existing monthly rental payment I'd have the ground floor of this sumptuous waterside property all to myself. Well, almost to myself, an architectural gaffe of epic proportions unfortunately seeing to it that two of the four bedrooms, mine and the one earmarked for his youngest daughter Marisa on her stopover nights were situated on my floor.
Aside from meaning my razor and toothbrush would now have to room share alongside various containers of lotions and acne creams this would of course also eliminate any rights I
possessed to lock myself behind closed doors. There’d certainly be no more scooting around in my birthday suit brandishing a feather duster and whilst although far from perfect I reasoned that as for the last four years my front door had been forever open to his girls that this would merely be a case of the status quo being preserved.
After what seemed like months of haggling and anticipation he was finally handed the keys and we moved in at the tail end of September 2011, as a result never really getting much of a chance to sample and appreciate the benefits of balmy alfresco waterside living before the evening chill of winter descended.
The actual move itself wasn’t entirely without drama either, not a result of the logistics of transporting a bed, a couch, a 48” HDTV and a five foot bear down three flights of stairs and one hundred yards up the road but more due to the perhaps understandable reluctance of Dana, Phils’ (now ex) girlfriend to accept the fact that he’d asked a man friend to move in before her.
As a result of this snub tensions in the household rose, a storm
cloud of uneasiness hung perpetually overhead and things at times got ugly, not least when she suggested that I make Skype calls to friends and family from the behind the closed door of my bedroom !. I can’t deny that during the first few months there were numerous times when I regretted the move and longed to be back in my old place but what has once again been proved is that time heals everything, we've been nestled in the midst of a heatwave for the last two weeks and 171 Bayshore Avenue is at last a happy home.
The second significant thing to happen to me during the last twelve months was something that was neither planned nor sought out, a thing that occurred as a direct result of my inability to once and for all rid myself of the curse of the dreaded weed. A girlfriend.
I certainly wasn’t on the look out for one but in the midst of yet another of my usually short lived spells of ‘quitting’ Phil and I were ‘hanging out’ at a Y&T concert waiting for the show to start when I cracked and led him out into the venues
parking lot to, excuse the term of phrase, ‘bum a fag’. I approached the first person to catch my eye, a girl with olive skin and long brown curly locks and asked her if she could spare me a cigarette. Sixteen months later she’s still here.
We talked and as we did so she appeared blatantly disbelieving when informed of my origins, instead suspecting my at times unintelligible brogue to be a similarly crude technique of attempting to chat up a girl that had been systematically adopted by her elder brother many years earlier. His fake English accent she later told me had apparently reaped dividends on many occasion (never did for me mind) and by the time I’d convinced her I was genuine and really from across the pond we’d already agreed to meet up for dinner.
As I say, a girlfriend was the last thing I was looking for, falling for someone even more so. I was perfectly content looking after number one and considering only myself but in Liesl Gaskey I stumbled across a beautiful, friendly and funny girl with no airs or graces and a heart the size of a basketball and I’m pleased to
Two Weddings and a Funeral.
Mr & Mrs White come down to earth. say she’s officially ‘me bird’.
As I write this I am waiting at a crossroads about to enter the next phase of my working life and I’m bursting with equal measures of relief, sadness and apprehension. I’ve written (not to mention complained) in these blogs in the past about my spell in the employ of a particular grocery chain and that time, almost four years, has finally come to an end.
On my final day, Friday 27
th July when the time to go finally came I surprised myself by actually feeling quite sad. I realized I’d made some good friends there and that it wasn’t such a bad place after all.
With my time in the retail trade over I am now back ‘on the bench’ in our Seal Beach office, spending my days sitting online health and safety training courses in preparation for what’s to come. Zzzz. The commute of ten minutes adds almost two hours to my leisure time and I await my next posting with baited breath. I’ve been interviewed over the telephone by BP oil refinery and their decision on whether they want me is supposedly pending sometime this week.
The last
twelve months has seen the usual influx of visitors popping in to the Shore to say hi commencing with a visit from Phils’ sister Anne and hubby Paul and continuing with Matt Pearce at Halloween, a lad who I’d met only four or five times previously who had messaged me with the news he was coming over for a week and wanted a couch to surf on. No problem dude !.
Jamie was next, returning Stateside with me after my surprise Yuletide trip home and Margy followed a couple of months later with her annual three week visit in March, the highlight of which was the ‘road trip’ we took to Monterrey and The Big Sur, the seventy mile stretch of spectacular craggy and unpopulated coastline to the south of San Francisco.
Thelma, Louise, Steinbeck and Kerouac have all contributed to the notion that there’s nothing quite as romantic and awe inspiring as a Californian road trip, especially when the route takes in one of the continents’ most visually stunning scenic routes and the road through Big Sur was by all accounts exactly that, an exhilarating, cliff hugging roller coaster of a ride.
Granted, any romantic thoughts
evoked by the idea of a road trip don’t usually involve taking a glance in the rear view mirror to reveal sight of your mother sat bolt upright in the back seat but even so, picture it, wind ruffling the hair through the open roof with the smell of the wild Ocean permeating from one side and the green pine covered mountains from the other. Perfect. Perfect except for one thing, I despise driving, especially for any distance further afield than the corner shop.
It’s not so much the physical act of operating a vehicle I dislike, more the fact that for purposes of survival 100% concentration is an absolutely necessity and for a self professed ADDer that isn’t good. If truth be told I was dreading the six hour slog north behind the wheel so you can imagine my delight as we packed the last of the provisions into the Jeep when Liesl offered to share the driving, further increasing my elation when she said she’d take the first stint through the concrete jungle of LA.
As we headed up the Five Freeway into open farmland Marg and I indulged in a couple of games of quite
literally travel scrabble, my elation turning to ecstasy three hours later when still showing no signs of fatigue or boredom Liesl expressed her willingness to continue all the way.
Big Sur had been on my bucket list of ‘things to do’ since my arrival in America so it was sod’s law that when we finally reached the small town of Cambria, the unofficial start of the Sur, the weather decided to take a turn for the worse. In the space of ten minutes the winds rose to tempest proportions and dark and thundery storm clouds rolled overhead before promptly delivering a five hour downpour of torrential magnitude.
Getting out of the car to take advantage of the regular vista points that littered the route was out of the question, vision was down to less than 50 yards and the howling winds would most likely have lifted mother up and deposited her in foaming waters of the raging Pacific so consequently we found ourselves crawling into Monterrey itself three hours later having seen little more than the inside of a steamed up windscreen.
Fortunately things thankfully improved for the return drive. The sun eventually shone brightly, the sea
turned blue but as it was unfortunately my turn behind the wheel any opportunities for gazing at the scenery were sadly restricted by a desire to simply stay alive.
The last twelve months have seen me experience for the first time both the joys of a wedding and the sadness of a funeral American style. Well, almost American style as both the weddings were Brits only affairs, colleagues Dan and Lisa who wed in Hawaii and celebrated in Long Beach and Rob and Jen White who exchanged vows in a Vegas wedding chapel attended by just two locals, the rector and the cameraman, myself and a plane load of friends and relatives.
The funeral on the other hand was definitely an all American affair and was concluded in a refreshing manner different to anything I’d witnessed before. Held on a miserably wet day in March to bid farewell to Liesls’ beloved grandma Ida it ended more resembling open mic night at the Horse and Jockey than the somber occasion normally associated with such an event.
I’d only met Ida on a couple of occasions (three if you include the time I went to console Liesl upon being
Two Weddings and a Funeral.
LA Cathedral. Didn't even know they had one. of her grandmas passing and walked in to find Ida still sat in her favourite chair in front of the television, eyes closed patiently awaiting arrival of the ambulance) and could tell from those two meetings and the stories I’d been told that she was a classy woman indeed.
Liesls’ Uncle Tom, a gentle clergyman with a large handle barred moustache that rarely succeeds in hiding the smile beneath opened proceedings with a sincere and solemn eulogy to someone who was, judging by the size of the audience an obviously well loved woman, led us all in singing a couple of hymns and regaled us with a couple of his own personal memories before announcing to the packed church that if anyone else had anything they wanted to add that now was the time.
For a few seconds but for what seemed like an age the hall was engulfed by an uneasy silence before one by one various members of the congregation, some very familiar to the family, some not so trudged up to the pulpit, took hold of the microphone and recounted individual memories of grandma that ensured when we all emerged into the rain half an
hour later that the tear stains on the handkerchiefs had been transformed from those of sorrow into laughter.
As mentioned earlier Liesl and I had met when I had approached her to bum a cigarette and last weekend in a bid to put a stop to that habit once and for all we set off for the half hour drive to Tustin to collect my birthday present from her, a one hour session for us both in the clinic of Orange County hypnotist Bob Foy.
Without ever attempting to fully understanding the concept I’d grown up a total sceptic to the idea of ‘hypnotism’. To the uninitiated cynic like myself a hypnotist was a man dressed in a Tuxedo operating for laughs under the bright lights of a stage by getting people to release their inhibitions and perform party tricks for their amused audience. There was simply no way I'd ever be able to take a large mouthful of onion and lick my lips like it was a crunchy granny smith.
All that changed some years ago when I found myself deviod of all inhibition conducting an invisible orchestra and kung fu fighting an imaginary fly in
front of about two hundred titillated observers at a social evening at the local gym. Having been forced to eat my words from that day forward I acknowledged its existence, I just didn’t know how it could now be expected to control the cravings that took over when I lusted after a cigarette. I was about to find out.
As we’d agreed Liesl went in first and finding myself with an hour to kill I went outside to find a shaded spot under a tree to smoke a fag and read my book. I wasn’t sure exactly why but I was feeling nervous, this going some way to explaining why the single cigarette turned to four over the ensuing hour. I returned to the clinic at 3pm as planned with no inkling of what lay ahead.
When her time was up Liesl emerged from the room beaming from ear to ear appearing as though she’d just stepped off a wild roller coaster ride and was still getting her bearings. I was asked to read and sign (which I signed but didn’t read – I didn’t want to know) a couple of liability forms and then led into a
Two Weddings and a Funeral.
Thanksgiving dinner for 18. small ten foot by eight foot office furnished with just a desk, a chair and a sumptuous leather recliner which I was told to sit in. The walls were simply decorated with just a couple of paintings of boats and a cartoon drawing of a man levitating above another with the words “Am I hypnotized yet”?
Mr Hoy closed the door slowly behind him, sat down behind the desk and started to talk and for the next twenty minutes without once averting his gaze from mine fired question after question in my direction; Did I really want to stop ? How many cigarettes did I smoke ? How long had I smoked ? etc etc.
He explained with deadly seriousness how the process worked, how the brain was split into three sectors; the spiritual sector, the conscious adult sector that knew right from wrong and the five year old child like sub conscious sector that took no notice of reason or common sense and further elaborated that through the power of suggestion and persuasion he was going to influence the sub conscious element, the part that had no concept of right and wrong that was making me smoke
to take a backward step to the extent that I’d never want to smoke a cigarette again. Yeah right I thought !
I felt as though the tiny devil I could feel on my shoulder was repeatedly whispering the word ‘bullshit’ into my ear as he spoke as I stared back and listened, trying not to blink like a child playing stare in the playground, all the while thinking is this it ? Is this hypnotism ? Am I under ?
I had no idea if I was in a hypnotized state nor even on the way to being so but I was seriously beginning to doubt the wisdom of us blowing a combined four hundred bucks when Bob stood, manoeuvred himself carefully around the desk and approached me, still staring and still talking.
He told me to pull back on the arms of the chair and as I did so I immediately slid back into a fully laid back horizontal position whereupon in the manner of an all healing prophet he rested his hands on my forehead and instructed me to close my eyes.
He urged me to think deeply about each solitary strand of
my hair on my head and to imagine that all the tension in my body was slowly being released through them, then through my forehead, my cheeks, my nose, throat and eventually all the way down to my toes. I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening for never in my life had I felt in such a state of complete and utter relaxation as I did five minutes later. It was almost as though I was having an out of body experience.
Over the next forty minutes he talked, slowly leading me down the large winding staircase that existed solely in my imagination, across a large, cold marble hallway and then down a slowly moving escalator at the bottom of which was a large white conveyor belt piled high with every cigarette I’d ever smoked. Tar and nicotine, he said, could be seen to be seeping through and staining the conveyor with a thick black oily residue. Wasn’t it horrible.?
Although I was conscious throughout and could remember everything that had happened when I left the clinic over time, much like with a dream, that memory has faded. When the session was coming to an end he brought
the tension back into me as he'd made it leave, one body part at a time before clicking his fingers. I entered the waiting room to find Liesl still smiling.
As we drove back I commented that I felt in shock and that I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me. That was nine days ago. Neither of us has thought about a cigarette since !
PS: It seemed BP liked the sound of me. I started work at Carson Oil Refinery on Monday 13th August and have no idea whether it'll be to my liking. What I do know is that it's a fifteen minute commute and four ten hour days. To my calculations that's an extra fifty two days vacation a year ! I like it already :-)
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waymo
non-member comment
keep up the good work lad
Won't be long before your back on them LOL I was there for the kung fu killer display. Couldn't believe it myself. Absolutely hysterical!