So here I am in California, after 10 hours and 4 movies, none with a shot as good as the icecaps of Greenland. Mo collects me from San Francisco airport and we take the coast road past long pale sands where surfing waves are dramatically eroding the cliffs away, down to Half Moon Bay.
Mo and Anja live here in a blueygrey painted timber house, the Pacific on one side and hills & creeks on the other, canyons in the distance and hummingbirds in the back garden. In short, Wow...
Within an hour of arriving we’re all in Café Gibraltar where I’m mesmerised by the way the waiter chants the specials with particular attention to dressings. I pick the tomato salad with pumpernickel, Peruvian pine nuts and open-sesame seeds, drizzled with light squalls. (I may have misrecalled some of those ingredients, but the waiter applauded my choice & didn’t call the whole thing off even though I pronounced tomato the UK way.) Ah, and there was Californian wine too, I seem to recall...
Next day is mostly orientation & walking by the rocks of Pescadero, with an evening performance of Waiting For Godot at the theatre in Half Moon Bay. Mo plays Pozzo. “One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?” It’s an amazing play for many reasons, one of them being that every part seems to have the best lines. The director has decided that this timeless allegory of alienation exactly defines the plight of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, and his set reflects this. It’s interesting, and of course all interpretations have validity, but for me there’s extraordinary power in Beckett’s evocation of the road to anywhere, and that existentialist question what are we waiting for? is compromised rather than enhanced by a realistic answer: for rescue from specific urban tragedy. That aside, a great production, with some powerful performances, notably Estragon and Pozzo.

A quieter day seemed called for after the cast party: more coastal walking along the bluffs and a little downtown mooching -oo-er that’s me on the poster in the bookshop! I'm hoping my airbag burns will be less livid by the time I perform. We're off to Morro Bay for a couple of days first...