It's pumpkin time in California and Half Moon Bay is pumpkin capital. Orange polka-dotted fields, roadside stalls billowing with orange - we dine on pumkin soup and carve pumpkin lanterns for the pot-luck party. A great night of music, folk & country classics and original songs by Mo and his friends.

Lots of coastal walks too, all along the bay where the pale sand is deserted and the sea crashes in endless high waves for miles and the sky is vast and impossibly blue and everywhere seems empty except for sun and birds. And I've been with Mo and Heather down to Pescadero (where a stranded blue whale is now in the piquant stages of disintegration) and dog-walking in the pine forest, and cappuccino-sampling at Pillar Point... and a certain amount of writing. But to be honest, not much.





Footling footnote of the week: The New Yorker is bucking the American trend of attempting perfect parenting with a "Good Enough" approach. A baby never really needs to be clean enough to eat off, unless you intend to, so why not just run it through the sprinkler occasionally? Feeding on demand is hardly a good way to prepare a child for the real world, where nothing is available on demand except cable television, while reading, singing, and talking to your baby 'may actually be harmful, lengthening her attention span to the point where she will be unable to enjoy most popular entertainment.'
Clearly not all Americans have an irony deficiency.