8th January 2013 – HAPPY NEW YEAR ENGLAND!
Bless me Father Christmas, it has been nearly 3 months since my last blog. But MIND OUT, here is the rather belated BUMPER CHRISTMAS ISSUE of what has been happening since then, from the crazy land of:
… and this is on a purse!
I’m going to have to take you back a bit now, as just have to share our experiences at the LA County Fair – 90 years of fun! Now, imagine the Middlesex Show or the Suffolk County Show or Denham Fair etc and times it by 100, because as you KNOW, the Americans do it bigger and better than anyone. It isn’t just for a weekend either – this puppy lasts for a whole month and has EVERYTHING. It took about an hour to drive there from Hollywood and was crammed full of so many weird and wonderful things and people and of all shapes, sizes and colours. We went on the penultimate day in September, so it was HOT, man – almost 90 degrees. It covered such a huge expanse of land and had indoor arenas as well as acres of grassland and a ‘grandstand’. You could experience anything from Pig Racing, Cow Milking and Live Horse Racing to scary rides and the Land of Frogs, Princesses and Knights where kids can dress up and do crafts. But the best part for me was the food – man, it was like being in a Pantomime! ‘Deep-fried. On-a-stick. Battered. Breaded. Dipped in chocolate’ – some of the culinary delights on offer would make you want to hurl, but the winners for me were:
This was served chilled (obviously), in a little white, cardboard box and the size of half a rasher of bacon. I tried it (on your behalf of course) and have to say that it just tasted of salty and sweet together, like chocolate covered peanut brittle – you would never know it was bacon. Except it was a bit chewy. And fatty. And cold.
And when we’d tried that, we had to look at Bacon Donuts (doughnuts).
Sounds horrible? It looked it too, and evidently SO fattening it would make your cholesterol level shoot up with just one lick. As if an oversized round doughnut, topped with fried, crispy bacon isn’t enough – they cover it with a toffee, fudge glaze – FREAKS. I had to get one of Luke’s work colleagues (who we met there) to try it for me/us. It was so greasy, it shimmered in the sunlight, trying to blind us.
Still peckish, then you need some poultry inside you –
Never mind ‘Texas sized’ – these monsters were easily the size of the leg of a toddler and I can only think the turkeys were fucking OSTRICH sized. The ‘legs’ were wrapped in bacon, barbecued and served on a paper plate with a plastic fork – BIG mistake, it broke with the first prod, FFS. The only way to eat it is to grasp it in your fist, man. Imagine Henry VIII holding one high in the air, before staggering off to the vomitorium, tossing it into the crowd of peasants as he went. He could have had a Big Rib after – a 17-inch bone covered in juicy, tender rib. 17 inches, I mean why fucking 17 inches?! What’s wrong with just a foot? And a Hot Dog on a stick – why on a stick? Because it’s the size of baby’s arm you IGNORAMUS, that’s why and you can’t fucking hold it. It must be like trying to eat a giant’s shoe.
20 flavors (flavours) of Shaved Ice – think of a cup of crushed ice, squirted in fluorescent syrup – all colours of the rainbow. Why stop there, when you can have some Chicken Charlie – deep fried frogs’ legs, together with Shrimp and white rice served in a pineapple.
Talking of deep fried – anything you want, you got it! – Snickers, Oreos, Hot Dogs, Cheeseburgers (honestly), Brownies and Cheesecake were the ones we saw. Man, you is gonna DIE if you eat that shit. Am I sounding like I’m obsessed with food yet?
So, enough of the nosebag already and let me tell you about the GADGETS. If you have money to spare, you can buy a Hot Tub for a few thousand dollars or any type of clothing, accessories, jewellery, furniture, and even a Neck Cooler – if you think someone has ‘invented’ a tie dipped in cold water – you’d be right.
The Petting Barn didn’t just have the usual suspects: rabbits, goats, lambs etc., but some extra live animals, ‘bred’ for our delight. We saw a Zonkey (cross between a zebra and a donkey)
and a Zorse – come on man, a horse and a zebra.
Meanwhile, back in sane Los Angeles, where we only eat our strawberries covered in chocolate and gold …
and only eat ice cream made out of black, furry, oversized looking rats
And why does everyone want to know your name, ALL the time? From coffee shops to phoning opticians, schools, hotels, doctors – you always have to give your name. I’m gonna start wearing a fucking BADGE. Then they call me ‘Miss Angela’. At first I though they were taking the piss, suggesting I was being prissy, up-tight English person, but the Americans like to use it instead of ‘Mrs Vernon’, which in my case is actually right (as I kept my surname). I quite like being called a ‘Miss’ actually (like the character in The Dick Emery show, that used to correct the reporter’s shout of “Excuse me Madam”, to “MISS!”), it’s better than being referred to as “That WOMAN”. Eventhough I appreciate the attentive ‘service’ in shops, and the willingness of shop assistants to bend over backwards to find that random, anal little thing or present I’m looking for, sometimes I get so bored with the sugary intrusiveness, I just pretend I haven’t heard them or don’t speak English.
MORE LOST IN TRANSLATION
Now, I’m getting rather concerned at Ruby’s American ‘spelling’, I mean her school is teaching her ALL WRONG – jewelry, color, neighbour, Mom, gray, labor, tire (instead of tyre) and check (instead of cheque) – should I be patiently correcting these glaring errors? And I mustn’t forget that in the US of A, they are still working in yards, feet and inches and also gas (petrol) is still sold in gallons and milk in half gallon plastic bottles (same size as 2 pints). I saw a very weird sign on a building the other day – Joyce and Stanley Black Family Building. Now how confusing is that? Where’s the fucking punctuation PLEASE? And is it racist? Is it a coupling of Joyce and a ‘black’ Stanley, or is it Joyce and Stanley ‘Black’, or are they implying that Joyce and Stanley are a ‘black family’. Or perhaps the building is only for the ‘family’ of Jo and Stan?
And can I just ask why people in LA have to speak so loudly and PUBLICLY? Are we really interested in hearing EVERYTHING that they say to each other, or their children? I don’t fucking THINK so. Honestly, I was in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf the other day and a Dad was talking to his toddler at volume level 10:
“NOW! Let’s see if you can hop up on the chair BIG MAN! Can you do it, can you DO IT? Let’s just watch Josh – one, two THREE! YAY! WAY TO GO! There you go BUDDY! GOOD JOB! GREAT JOB!! You are SO AWESOME – give me a high FIVE! YAY!”
And this is at 8 fucking thirty, AM! MORON! I just want to shout “SHUT THE FUCK UP – we are not interested”. Then there was a Mum and Dad with their kid at the swimming pool the other day, trying to coax it into jumping in. I got SO bored listening to their “Come on BUDDY! Atta boy! Jump in for MOMMY! Are you READY, are you SET? Here we GOOOOOOO …” I wanted to push the child in with my foot. And why do they have to laugh out loud so falsely in restaurants, like they want you to think they are all so HILARIOUS! When we took Dude’s Dad out for lunch when he came to visit, he came very close to telling them to keep the noise down. I also overheard an over competitive Dad talking to his two year old son in the school corridor. “Now listen buddy, now touch this wall little man. Can you feel it? Now, would you say this was a solid a gas or liquid? What would you say? Come on BUDDY!” Man, the little kid could barely walk, let alone determine what the fucking wall was made of. Even I wanted to say “FUCK OFF”, so imagine if I asked my six year old child the same question, she’d probably lie down in the floor, chanting “You are a pooh-pooh head”.
Talking of school, I’m still volunteering like the WOLF. Had to take a group of children to do ‘Gummy Bears Math’ last week. Talk about complicated (nearly wet myself again, in fear that I might not understand the question and have to ask scary teacher) – they had to ‘estimate’ (ESTIMATE? They’re only 5 and 6 years old, FFS) how many bears were in a packet, then open the packet and count them, then say whether their estimation was too high or too low. Then they had to sort them by colour, then do a bar chart, then a tally, then they had to cut out, colour and stick the correct number of drawn bears on a sheet. ENOUGH ALREADY. Jeez, all they wanted to do was fucking EAT them. And WE, her parents, have already been told off (via a note on Ruby’s marked homework), for allowing her to use felt tips – ‘PENCIL only please’. When Joonki (one of the Korean children, obviously) made a mistake in class, I said to him “OK, go and get a rubber and we can put the right number in”. He just looks at me. I do the obvious thing of course: turning him round to face me and saying louder, right into his face “Go and GET A RUBBER and we can CORRECT it”. Still nothing. In the end, he gets up and goes to the next table, saying “I get an ERASER!” Oh whoops! Felt a bit foolish after that for using the wrong word, and even a little embarrassed when the Dude told me that in America, a rubber is a ‘condom’. Well, these boys need to learn early don’t they, FFS! Ruby is coming home with some great words and phrases though. Dude and I had tears in our eyes in the car the other day when she was talking about cousin Jess’s dogs:
Ruby: “Pixie and Baby only have breakfast and dinner. No lunch!” (look of incredulity on her face).
Me: (over-encouragingly) “Really?”
Ruby: “Yes (she mused). It’s really fascinating!”
And she had just the right amount of stress on FASCINATING. She was also messing about putting my bra on the other day and jumping up and down on the bed; announcing in all seriousness to the dude: “Women wear bras, so people don’t steal their nipples”. Cousin Jess has now officially ‘broken up’ with her boyfriend and Ruby was very curious to know why. We had to be diplomatic here (just in case they get back together you understand) and try and make it sound amicable. A few days later, we were in the car listening to the radio. They were playing the Taylor Swift song (for the millionth time). Ruby was staring out of the window, but obviously listening quite intently, as after the phrase “We’re never, ever, ever getting back together” she said rather wistfully “Mummy … this song is about Jess”.
And so many people in LA use coffee shops as their ‘office’. Man, you can barely get a seat to DRINK A CUP OF COFFEE – LITERALLY, as people are taking up all the tables with their laptops (plugged into the power, if you please) and iPads. Rude!
HALLOWEEN
This must be the biggest thing in the American calendar – it is HUGE in Los Angeles – bigger than Christmas. People in shops are dressed up and the Dude told me that people were going into his work in fancy dress. And not just the ‘horror’ theme, kids can be superheroes, princesses and we even saw some grown-up men, walking the streets dressed as women. We went trick or treating with two of Ruby’s school friends and their Moms with an orange bucket the size of a crash helmet. Man, by the end of the night it was almost full to the brim and could hardly be carried. The lengths that people go to with their decorations; one house on a corner had hired a bouncy castle and put it on their front lawn for all the visiting kids to enjoy:
plus they had a DJ (dressed as a doctor) playing pertinent tunes (‘Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!”) and had laid out tables along the pavement with cheese and biscuits, crisps, popcorn, crudities and dips and toffee apples. Others had dug up their lawns to ‘plant’ tombstones and skeletons and there were pumpkins, lights, candles, music, mechanical skulls, dummies:
And almost every house had huge tubs of candy (sweets) to give to all the children – KILL THEM WITH CAVITIES!
And I’m afraid I do have to report that we have had RAIN here. Just saying. Mind you the Angelenos do get into such a panic. There was a bit of ‘drizzle’ the other morning and the parents and kids were scuttling around in the playground wearing wellies, hats, ear muffs, scarves and gloves. There were so many umbrellas; lots of eyes could have come out. Man, I would have barely put my cardigan hood up if I was in London. Get OVER yourselves, you dorks!
Saw a great sight the other day and was imagining a scenario like this: Man and woman get married and the husband is in charge of booking the honeymoon. Unfortunately as he’s been so busy at work (instead of deciding on the colours of the bridesmaid’s dresses, seat covers, lady’s favours, flavour of wedding cake and posh hand cream in the ladies …), he books the hotel in a hurry ‘on line’, without seeing it. As the newly married couple speed away from the reception, towards their first night together, the husband announces “Honey (because that is what people in LA call their ‘partner’), we’re going to stay at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, in Los Angeles!” Imagine his horror when they see it’s not a hotel but a Motel, plus it doesn’t look very tropical on that busy boulevard and not a tasteless shirt in sight, or whiff of coconut:
Talking of hotels, I was most disappointed when I spotted this in Santa Monica,
I was expecting some sort of spooky ‘castle’ – “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave … (sing guitar solo)”
We did see the most ridiculous ‘tall’ bike in the same street though …
As I’m going to be 50 in just 4 months – JEEZ, that’s half a century! I am officially Menopausal Mary – hooray. I will make you squirm with my symptoms another time, but am attempting to fight signs with visits to the ubiquitous Juice Bars LA has to offer (I’ll try anything, me). I am necking wheatgrass shots and smoothies called Radiant Skin, which contains lots of weird shit, including E3 live (that’s blue green algae, granny). If I’m with my running friends, I like to shout triumphantly “I’m nearly sixty, you know!” It’s taken years off me, just check out this photo I had taken with all the staff at The Earthbar’s 1980s themed Christmas Party this year …
Anyway, must sign off now to rescue Rubes from the aquarium …
Lots of love and more to come soon, I promise. In the meanwhile, I’m gonna pour meself a cup of proper British tea (thanks to the two ton delivery from the family) and a very understated, period drama biscuit and a porno cookie…
love Anj
xx
ivegotthisenglishfriendlivinginla 