Sunday morning in El Granada... in Café Classique beside the shore, with mellow guitar playing and full-on sunshine through the cedar trees. It's my writing-and-walking month in California, but after the winter we've had I've done more striding than scribing. I think when I packed to come here I'd forgotten what spring is supposed to feel like, I had to get myself a tee-shirt from the Thrift shop I was so unprepared for warmth.



This is the view I never tire of. 
Silver-grey sand, platinum blue where newly wet, 
spreading from my feet for miles beneath 
that inconceivably enormous, unbelievably blue, sky. 
Soft moon, frail as half blown dandelion down. 
Purr of white waves at the lip of the long topaz sea. 
Cliffs saffron in the afternoon sun, flickered by 
seagull shadows.  The moon rises as I write. 
A moment of eternal transience.  Another of them. 
I gather it in with the rest of the harvest.

Mo and Anja's new house, where I'm staying, is not only temptingly close to the beach but also has an enticing back garden perfect for reading in the sun... cue for a book recommendation: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joy ~ an engrossing tale beautifully told, plangent with truths about life and death and love. Harold learns along the way that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other... and he learns more too, in a touching redemptive conclusion to his 627 mile pilgrimage. Mo's friend Dave Minton is a writer too, and my first evening here coincided with one of his Spoken Word nights. I persuaded Mo to co-read my short play Park & Ride as my contribution, and his perfectionistism demanded so many rehearsals the piece went down a storm. Quieter evenings all lovely too, conversing over supper as sun sets over Half Moon Bay.

Back in the UK: May 3rd is the next Story Friday in Bath at Burdall's Yard where I would definitely be at 8pm if I could, since as well as organising a really good event, A Word In Your Ear will include my latest monologue In These Shoes, performed by Kilter Theatre.  If you go, do send me feedback, I'll be wondering with fingers crossed...