Dreaming California

So we are back in California, the land of blue skies, constant sunshine and infinite possibilities. Where dreams might come true if you believe for just one more day.
And here we are in the City of Angels and for just a few days we have borrowed someone else's dream. We are staying in a house of more rambling and elegant beauty than we could ever have imagined. We sit on one of the many sofas on the sun drenched terrace, drinking wine and watching the sun set. Above us, almost close enough to touch, the HOLLYWOOD sign rises gleaming white from the scrubland beneath it. And at our feet the lights of LA beckon to us through the dusty dusk. Around the pale blue of the swimming pool, humming birds hover, their wings whirring ceaselessly as they drink nectar from the pink and purple flowers. And just for now, this paradise is ours. the house once belonged to Aldous Huxley and is being 
gradually reimagined by its current owner. In true Gatsbyesque fashion we have never met her. She is a friend of a friend and all we can do is try and piece together a person from her home. 
and her home makes me wish, more than anything, that we could meet her.


We spent last weekend jumping on and off trams and cable cars in hilly, chilled out and chilly San Francisco. We stared at Alcatraz from the pier, accompanied by the honks of chatty sea lions. We played rounders in Golden Gate Park and bough t designer clothes in thrift shops. We were open and honest in Castro, full of love and peace in Haight Ashbury and cool and trendy on Polk Street. 
By the time we were winding our way along 
Pacific Coast Highway with its breathtaking views of the ocean, so blue against the pine green mountains, we were ready for the next part of our adventure.
And so we celebrated Joss's birthday in the party city of Santa Barbara. We arrived there during the big,noisy fiesta full of Tacos and tamales and Spanish music, bars full of  laughing, tipsy fiestarers.
And after a birthday picnic in a park with a pond full of basking turtles, Ninesh and Joss toured the city on Segways while Mia and I chatted on the soft-sanded beach watching the pelicans. They always seem wrong, somehow, pelicans. their heads look so much heavier than their bodies that I keep expecting them to topple head first into the sea. but they never do. One more of nature's inexplicable wonders.

And at last we arrived here, LA.
Beneath a sign more famous for what it represents than its own history.
In a hot, polluted city made beautiful by the collected hopes and dreams and aspirations of those who live in it.
And for just one more day, we will borrow the dream and make it ours.