I knew from Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books that San Francisco has a ladies-who-lunch aristocracy. This week I met some of them at a very hoity-toity exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The Legion of Honor is a ravishing art museum in Lincoln Park, with a drop-dead view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city. I showed up for their annual Bouquets for Art exhibit and it was a very campy, very San Fran experience.
Fifty of California's top floral designers were asked to create an arrangement for a specific spot in the museum. Many designers took their cue from a specific work of art, or from the building itself, and most of them really went to town. To say the bouquets were extravagant is like saying I've been on a little jaunt these last four months. It doesn't begin to describe the explosions of flowers, petals, ferns, twigs and ribbons. I have to say the flower arrangements did look, and smell, sensational in this context, with armies of Chanel and Yves St Laurent-clad ladies piling through the galleries. Countless pairs of Dior glasses were pushed up surgically altered noses so their owners could bend in and get a good sniff.
Perhaps these women were weak from lack of food, or maybe it was just that the flowers needed warmth, but the place was ferociously overheated. Even after stashing my market stall fleece and Hennes sweater in the cloakroom I was still mafted (as we say in Redcar), so I stripped down to my Gap t-shirt, with my Top Man shirt casually knotted round my neck. Wandering through the park to the exit, I passed a very tall and elegant black man in a flowing black coat on his way to the museum, carrying a pot of white roses. "You'll fit right in." I quipped. He whipped a rose from his arrangement and stuck it down my shirt, and purred "And so will you now - anywhere."
I needed a peasant lunch after all that swank and camp, and chose a Russian deli down the road. I'd been on dry toast for a few days due to a dicky tummy, and stick-to-your-ribs Slavic stodge seemed a fantastic idea all of a sudden. I ordered a cabbage pie, a potato pie, a heap of beetroot salad, and a bottle of kvass (think dandelion and burdock, but more so). Russian cabbage pie is as delicious as it doesn't sound. Despite the dodgy Russian pop music I stayed on for a second pie. And more beetroot salad. And some Russian salad.
This week I left the city to visit an old college friend out in the Sierra foothills. Jami and her husband Matt have moved from the city to a tiny wooden house set in 20 acres, with deer roaming free and a lovely view of the Yuba river valley. The weather can be unpredictable up there, and on the first morning I woke up to an unexpected 6in of snow. I was staying above the garage, away from the main house and, having padded up the wooden stairs in flip-flops and pyjamas the night before, I couldn't go anywhere until someone brought my boots up from the front porch.
Their nearest town is Nevada City, an old gold rush town with a population of 2000, dominated by gift shops that smell of cinnamon and cloves. While Jami went to her masseuse, I explored. Well: I explored for 10 minutes, then holed up in the Mine Shaft bar. It was a bit rough, and even mid-morning it was full of people drinking beer and watching basketball on television. A few barstools away a big-haired babe with bangles was already working on a second martini, swishing the maraschino cherry around by its stalk. Nevertheless, I felt more at home there than in the scented-drawer-liner shops, and sat up at the bar drinking 50-cent coffee and reading the tabloid magazines. One royal headline described "Camilla's Baby Joy" and I thought, my God, I have been away a while.
A few days later I was in San Francisco's drab and ill-equipped airport waiting for my flight to Toronto, when I glanced at the front page of a discarded newspaper. There had been a huge fire in downtown Nevada City, and several buildings were completely gutted. A couple of the hippy-dippy shops had gone, but I was more interested to read that "patrons of the Mine Shaft bar watched live television coverage of the fire which raged only half a block from where they sat".
To complete my California experience, my friends took me to Wilbur Hot Springs for an overnight stay. Their bathing area is "clothing optional", a euphemism for nude. Euphemisms always sound silly when you hear them for the first time: I heard a woman on the streetcar saying that she went to unlock her bike and "a dog had been to the bathroom on it".
Wilbur is a lovely relaxing place. I had a lie-in, read my book in the library, hiked up the hill and flopped into a hammock for a while. I sampled the hot spring baths, and enjoyed them once I got past the eggy ammonia pong of sulphur. I did like being naked in the water, but wasn't so keen on wandering around in the buff. And it's weird: you feel more naked when you are wearing a pair of flip-flops than when you're barefoot.
Wilbur has a visitor's book in which visitors record their thoughts (fine), feelings (OK) and poems (oh-oh) about their stay. I had to stop on the fourth page. Any more and I would have run screaming down the lane and demanded to be let out the front gate.
