This isn't the usual one leg longer than the other sacro-iliac pain; your SI is fine, said Cedric. So where is the agonising, I can't stand up, I can't walk, I can't sit down pain coming from, please? And did I say I fly to Florida on Monday? Maybe it's your LS. Of course in this much pain, he couldn't do all the tests and manipulations he wanted, so he put some movement through it, did some craniosacral work - and then the same gentle technique right on my aching sacrum, reminded me to use ice a lot and told me to relax. I find it hard to relax I said, twitching as he was doing the craniosacral; I've noticed, he said drily.
Cranio-sacral always makes me feel fragile and emotional. Something about the cradling, maybe, or just stopping. Today amongst other things, it made me think I'm not polite to the universe at the moment, because I don't trust it not to throw something horrid at me. I could do with stopping and relaxing, but for it to really work, I have to believe the universe won't throw a death in the family/wretched illness of someone I love/tax audit/house falling down/other Horrid Thing at me. On the other hand, if I stay this tense, I end up with Horrid Backache.
I also remembered we have cheapie toning pad machines that do something very like TENS, that I've found good for muscle pain in the past, and my regular osteo uses ultrasound and TENS style machines to good effect. So I'm wired up and being electrically pummelled. I wonder if I can take it on the plane?
Between incompetent couriers, people with little grasp of timezones and accounts, I could do with a crumb of amusement today.
We ummed and ahhed about whether to go to Nepenthe for lunch or Mountain View to sell books and decided to check the UPS store instead (they've moved, but we had no post waiting, which is unheard of the way banks here spam out statements). As it was such a lovely sunny day we thought 'ice cream' and drove over 17 to Capitola. The queue at Cafe Violetta was out the door and there were no tables free and as the first order of business was to check in online and score better seats we went to the coffee shop next door. I'd like to thank whoever runs the free wi-fi in Santa Cruz: it was nice and fast and got us aisle and window seats - a real amenity. We took our ice cream onto the beach - peach and honey and mexican chocolate and ollalaberry and honey and some cheesecake flavour - and perched on rocks and basked and window shopped all the way back without spending any extra money!
I needed a restroom and fancied more sea views so we tootled up and down every coastal side street to Aptos beach, where the house on the beach that looks like a boat has gained a dinghy and a ship's bell and a skirt-up Marilyn on the roof. No drummers but many people lighting fire pits and more sun.
Down the coast to Moss Landing. The yacht basin had three sea otters; one who vonted to be alone, one who wanted not to be disturbed by the fishing otter but would spin around with its paws up to its mouth in an overdose of cute, and the fishing otter who was turning somersaults, diving into the weed and coming up with mussels (and with weed all over its head) and banging them on a rock on its belly, with much noise, splashing and smacking of lips. Fishing otter had found such a good rock that it held onto said rock with both front flippers when diving or turning over in the water. Wonderful to watch.
We headed onto the beach before dinner and took photos of the surf (the surfers agreed with me about the best waves so my moody breaker shots keep having surfer heads in them). The Fuji camera Simon used to use takes good photos but I find it a little slow; I really do want that high-speed Casio I think, for times when I want to use a big camera (which is when we go somewhere specifically to take photos). We had a vast amount of fabulous fish things and now it's our last night - time only for packing, brunch, last minute work and a final attempt to find a battery-powered motion-sensitive LED light without buying one from Skymall...
It was sunny when we went over to the Glass Beach at Fort Bragg; once the town dump, now the problem is stopping people taking away the pretty driftglass that keeps washing up, though I'm sure some folks add to the raw materials too. Lovely surf to watch and rocks to scramble over and a bold seagull inspired by Bodega Bay. Still sunny as we walked for a while in Van Damm state park, by the Little River under the redwoods. It clouded over a little as we drove past the lighthouse with the 1908 original Fresnel lens that sent the light from a kerosene map 14 miles out to sea, though we didn't notice when we were watching the glassmaker at Glass Fire and drooling over jelly fish lamp shades and buying a necklace of glass hearts and buying blackberry ice cream for lunch at Cow Licks.
We ate the ice cream gazing out to sea and seeing surf and seals but no whales. We stopped at another overlook for a last glimpse of sea before the 1 turned inland and twisted up and down over the hills. We stopped at a redwood grove labelled up by a 'responsible' forestry company and I couldn't resist snarking it. This is a tree that fell over; you can't blame us. This one caught fire; not us! This was the wind; don't blame us! This one is just old. This isn't even a redwood. Not our fault! Er, yeah, we cut this one down - but hey, look, squirrel! The honey bucket was also perched inside a rusty digger on caterpillar tracks in a scary post-industrial woodland fantasy way...
We also drove through a drive-through tree - just like the one in the Look and Learn book I had as a kid; I can still see the illustration in my head, with the car and the 50s clothes and the sense of being on holiday in a world becoming tomorrow. Rather special to do it, even though driving through a tree is kind of cheesy.
We drove up and down the 101 and the Avenue of the Giants as the rain started; so many twee redwood attractions - the one-log houses, the treehouses, the burl carvings, the Hobbiton US with the scary Gandalf-alike and hobbit houses sunk into the hillside (the talking book guide was unplugged and the orcs were shrouded in plastic so we avoided the wrath of Smaug... Spent the night at the Best Western in Fortuna where the jet in the hot tub is the most powerful I've ever sat down on by accident, had dinner at a diner where the waitress's conversation with the customers in the next booth was so easy to rewrite as porn dialog even though it was totally innocent. Coffee from Schotz in the morning, which has a fabulous Charles Rennie Macintosh logo then back through the redwoods which are awesome even in slightly grey skies. Stopped for a wine tasting at Riverbed Cellars in Malder Flat, where 80% of the town is vines and lunch in the Cafe of the Avenue, Miranda, which has a labelled fish tank with living coral. The Eel river is full of lampreys and a gorgeous blue-green between gravel banks.The things that look like bears drinking are really cows. We did another drive-through tree, and a drive-on tree - it's a log, we tarmac'ed it! - and walked into the Chimney Tree - big enough to pour a floor in - and looked at the weather rock at the visitor centre and had a generally fun time.
And as we needed to head back to SF, we booked Ad Hoc for dinner and drove to Napa and found the next Best Western, which was friendly and full of roses fresh picked form the garden and does an excellent breakfast, although we hardly needed it after dinner. Which was a green bean salad with walnuts and fingerling potatoes and air-dried ham and sliced radishes, buttermilk fried chicken with honey glazed biscuits and macaroni and cheese and spinach wilted with shallots, promontory cheese with marcona almonds and strawberry preserve and chocolate brownie with caramel sauce and vanilla cream. We had glasses of TuTu Pinot Gris and a local pinot gris beginning with H, possibly H for honey as it was deliciously rich.
Birthday dinner, birthday sleep, workday breakfast and drive to SF and off to the conference...
- Location:San Francisco
In other news: we had a lovely Easter with
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tanais (hope you had fun too epredota!), some DIY and some decoupage, meaning my wooden drawers look good rather than icky. And today was at least half made of awesome because the ever-impressive Ceri @SnarlHair did a fabulous job on my new braids, colours chosen by sbisson - white, blonde, pale green, peachy-orange, 'petrol' green (pale green, mid-green, blue). They're sleek, shiny and stiff. They took nearly six hours this time because Ceri did them thin and long enough for my hair to grow in to - right down to the widest part of my hips, several inches beneath my waist. Getting to Muswell Hill wasn't as much fun as: I forgot my glasses (uncomfortabe 'what's wrong, where are my glasses' twitches all day, plus myopic peering at buses), I forgot my phone (with the directions and map tools on so I had to keep turning on the laptop and writing on my hand and couldn't text himself), the Picadilly line caught fire so I had to backtrack to Earls Court and a combination of 1+3 led to me rushing around looking for a tube map and tripping smack over the bag the charming gentleman had left sticking out across the width of the platform. I fell with a book in one hand, a banana in the other, a cardigan and jacket under my arm and the laptop in a bag on my back, flat on my face (ankle through the bag strap); I think I must have done a breakfall as I didn't even squash the banana and have no visible bruises but I have been lolling around asking to be cosseted ever since I got back.I like my braids though!
Friday evening the_magician came over and we introduced him to Shark and Ratatouille and bacon chocolate; broadening horizons one square at a time.
Saturday we got up a little later than we'd meant owing to how long we'd spent enjoying friday and headed off into sunny Sussex to pick up natalief and go take photos and buy wine and mead for saffronrose at the Lurgashall winery. They were tapping the silver birch trees for sap for wine and the gentleman in the shop turned out to be a Rex and Bengal fancier and we had a long chat about pets and Esmond Grey and the like. Then there was feeding of the parakeet, and us, and the cats.
Sunday I took apart my desk (once tanais's desk) as I haven't sat at it since I hurt my ankle in Seattle, removed Ratty Old Sven from the wall and replaced it with 3 out of the 4 layers of Expedit that will go there to give us storage for my tax papers and dictionaries and in-progress review kit &etc. I have changed my mind about the height of one shelf three times already and filled one bin bag and two recycling bags with out of date press releases. We still need to rearrange the wooden racks on which the server sits as the new server won't fit and I want a surface to put my twin 17" screens on as I can drive them over USB (and soon I hope wireless USB) from the notebook and this means getting enough space to put my desk over in the window. I will finally be sitting next to sbisson again!
As a consequence of all this I woke up today with aching hips and a yearning for Deep Heat ;-)
Lied to a friend to get your own way
Cheated at a game
Stolen something from a shop or your place of work
Had a sexual fantasy about someone who is not your partner
Seriously exaggerated something on your CV
Failed to help someone properly when they have asked for your help
Acted ungenerously towards someone who considers you a friend
Shouted at somebody who didn’t deserve to be shouted at
Taken credit for the work someone else has done
Purposefully humiliated someone
Gone at least three consecutive days without taking a bath or shower
That's a interesting lack of distinction between action and intent, and in terms of the fantasy question, a major understanding on what fidelity and normal sexual thinking might be. Do they view a fantasy of Tasty Celebrity Of Your Choice as being equivalent to the other behaviours which are weasel-like and harmful? Many people have a wide sexual imagination and there's nothing wrong with that, and per researchers from Hite to Friday and beyond, it is in no way a gateway behaviour to adultery.
And past the 'good' behaviours and on into something that's midway between culture and self-gratification, would you expect this list to belong together? And if you did them one after another, what kind of a day would that be?
Gone to a football match
Signed a petition
Gone to see an opera
Spent more than £200 on clothes in a single shop
Gone jogging
Washed your car by hand
Baked a cake
Bought a hat
Gone to the doctor
Shampooed the carpet in your house
Dyed your hair
And who are they looking for with these questions?
I watch more than 2 hours of TV per day
I am a haemophiliac
I am one of triplets
I drive a left-hand drive car
I speak two or more languages fluently
I am colour-blind
I grow my own vegetables
I live in a hamlet
I have spent a holiday in Lesotho
I live on a houseboat
And for today I have taken more zinc and put real ginger in my ginger peach tea and manuka honey on my toast instead of marmelade.
Vote
Honey on leather?
Honey on silk?
Honey on toast?
Should I hope the honey on toast I just dropped fell on my silk dressing gown or on the leather chair?
- Location:the armchair, the office
Here's a thought.
When do we have to stop being children, playing at being grown up? When do we have to grow up and take on the weight of adulthood? When do we have to stop, and grow a family? Take up the responsibilities, play our part, take our place. I’ve always wanted to watch the future arrive: that’s why I write, so I can be always learning, learning the things that make the future, seeing it as it arrives. But I want to be there! I want to be in that future as it arrives, always me, ever me, not ageing and changing and diminishing and dying. I want to be there, arriving into the future as it births tomorrow. How do I get there, how do I stay here?
A child takes a piece of you in the future, they say, you live on in your child. Do you? My grandmother lives on in me, maybe: I never knew her, she never knew me but I have her ways, my mother tells me, or is it that she wants me to have them? Some of her skills and gifts and interests I share: I feel it’s a tribute to her, but she doesn’t know about it, dead and gone, does she? Her memory lives on. Speak Memory! Speak Empathy! Speak Imagination! Speak Experience! Damn, no one there, I’ll have to say it myself. I want to leave something of myself to the world, some value, some benefit, some contribution. Some repayment to those who reared me? And to do that, do I have to stop being a child, take that step of connection, take a place in the chain, in the chaingang, in the cycle, in the circle? Do I have to even have a child?
Or can you be light to life’s end, light without being lightweight, unburdened and yet strong, with mirth and joy and strength and freedom, choosing what matters to you without taking the path that the fear of death darkens, going on without fear of stopping, or without letting that fear stop you? Is that what it means to be eternally childlike, blessed, of millstone weight, heavier than a sparrow in regard? Is it fear and fancy or is it responsible and right; burden or growth, future or furious present? Growing up, growing away? Growing up or giving up? Is it having to give up the last of childhood (freedom/irresponsibility/choice/immatur
- Location:Putney
Banking question for my US friends. I'm after a simple, no-interest free checking account that doesn't charge for incoming wire transfers. State Farm Bank looks good , especially with the 'foreign' ATM rebate - any thoughts?
There was also some typing in of accounts and a long phone interview and some writing as there is Work to be done before we go again. More writing yesterday, including a fruitless search for a BlackBerry VOIP client (you're paying for voice and data and email; keep on paying!). I also died my roots (is blonde!) and made my jeans fit properly.
These are jeans I bought for about $7 at Old Navy which fit pretty well when I pull them up to just below my waist but the waist was too big so they slid down over my hips, leaving not enough warmth around the waist - and the very long legs triping me up all the time. I didn't want to wear a belt because that wouldn't fit the contours and the seam and belt loop at the back made it very thick. So I put them on inside out and used a big clip to hold a dart in place at the back so we could mark the triangle to cut out on the inside of the fabric where it wouldn't show when I inevitably changed my mind.
The plan was always cut out a triangle of fabric, finish the edges, punch in eyelets and lace up, turning the excess material into a stylish feature, but I was in two minds about how to finish the edges. I liked the idea of a smaller triangle of pretty cotton fabric that would show through behind the laces, but I also thought this bunching up next to my skin could be bulky and uncomfortable. So I went with hemming the cut edge with a strong but shiny woven ribbon - posh binding really - that already had heat sealed ends which I folded under to give little loops at waist level. It only took two goes to get the ribbon sewn covering the cut edge from both sides at once - I needed a little more easement on the 'point' of the triangle which turned out flat. The ribbon is dun yellow with a hint of gold from the shininess, the stitching is orange to match the seams and purple to match the lacing ribbon (and so I didn't have to wind another bobbin) and the jeans now fit beautifully.
This means I can safely buy jeans that fit well in the leg and the butt but gape at the waist - as most jeans do on me - and fairly quickly have them fit well. Go me... Glad to have that done before another year rolls around. Now to buy cat litter and do a gps battery test and make more to do lists and think of more things to pack...
Himself will be the answer to life, the universe and everything tomorrow (no, well, more so than usual). Owing to us having been so ill that we missed most of the party season and weren't sure we'd be out of bed by tomorrow we didn't organise anything (omnes: no, really?). So if you're near Putney tomorrow evening and you'd like to come and drink champagne and eat brownies and have dinner, come on over ;-)
Good things: cats on the bed, books to read, nice things in the fridge, the new microwave gets delivered.
Bad things: the coughing, the blocked nose, the headache, the fever, the phlegm and the coughing. The microwave goes to the downstairs neighbour and I have to lug it upstairs myself. It turns out to be small. Very small. So small that although the popcorn maker will fit, the chocolatiere won't, so I've packed it back up, got an RMA and arranged collection for tomorrow (a good reason for buying from John Lewis), scrubbed the back of the old microwave and got a heap of crud out of the ventilation holes and heaved it back into place.
So now I'm wondering just how bad the melted plastic issue is; yes, the magnetron is behind it but maybe the gummed up ventilation made it overheat. Thoughts? Because getting a new one probably means trekking into town so we can measure the inside and then waiting for a delivery and with all the work I ought be doing before Christmas and this cold I'm not sure I'm up to it.
- Mood:sick
At this point my main thought was 'can has do-over pliz? but I did have a lunch that was both tasty and informative (Alistair Little: v v v good). I may have been a little more outspoken in my opinions than usual (omnes: is that possible?) and the branches of the trees against the sunset sky at 3.30 were incredibly detailed and clear, catching my attention as if it was weed in water.
The plan: turn up the heating, decide between taking a duvet to the sofa and taking dinner and a notebook with the Sling player up to bed, medicate more and early night. Tomorrow I shall be receiving the new microwave (the plastic panel covering the magnetron in the one we've had for years looks melted so we decided to upgrade to one with a grill in - Peter, if you're reading this, John Lewis has a smaller selection than Argos and Currys online but the selection turns out to be A more interesting B more name brands and less low end junk and C cheaper).
- Mood:racked by cough
P for Penelope was always there.
C for Christopher I added at 16 when I legally changed to my mum's surname, which I'd always used instead of my dad's (so for Mother's Maiden Name I always have to give Grandmother's maiden name, which my mum always talked about reverting to); I was 'supposed' to be a boy and I was going to be called Christopher and she was so surprised I wasn't she didn't have another name. I was nearly April for the month, until my dad put his foot down. I thought if I was always going to be Christopher I really should be, it nicely expresses my unfeminine pushiness and I wanted more initials on my team pictures at school (weight training!).
I used to be maryb online, but that was gone when I signed up for an AOL account to review the service, so I picked marypcb and kept that account when I worked there. It's nice to be Mary Printed Circuit Board when you write about computers ;-)
When we moved the biggest thing to deal with was our books. We have a lot more books now. Over the years I've made more bookshelves and after all this time we're merging and deduplicating the book collections. We've only had about 20 feet of duplicates...
When we first moved in there were regular power cuts and we had a notebook running AOL software permanently dialled in over dial up to share a network connection. Now we have wireless music and videos and a Sling box to watch Sky in bed.
We've done a lot to and in this house - we have count-em one-two-three-four-five flights of stairs from the front door to the roof terrace and four to the bedroom so I think of it as a house rather than a flat. New kitchen, refitted bathroom, new front room windows, loft extension with bedroom, bathroom and roof terrace; some painting, much Ikea construction, a new front door for the flat... The new windows in the front room meant replastering the entire wall, the radiator leak meant replacing the carpet and replastering the hall ceiling... We've fought here, worked together, got married, cleaned up fur from four cats, thrown parties, slept friends on futons, sofas and comfy chairs, run cat 6 through the walls with a really big drill bit, covered every inch of wall space with pictures. This is home...
- Mood:fed up
The third time I chased the friendly but absent painter he answered the phone, clapped his hand ot his forehead and admittted he was so busy organising a music festival he clean forgot to put us in the diary and he had a very good chap he could send today. And there he is, scraping the wood down.
My D&D character died after nearly four years playing, crawling into danger to give succour to another party member (isn't that 'sucker'?); the new character I rolled up last night should be fun as he has a huge two-handed sword and a chip on his shoulder about farming. I also got an unheard of 10 bonus XP for spotting how the monster we spent THE WHOLE SESSION on works, and this time I have all my hit bonuses written down from the start...
The auctioneer's carriers phoned and we'll go back to mum's house on Monday to supervise a lot of things going off to be sold, leaving only what needs to go in the skip. American sister asked if there was any silverware to have as a memento and I found some nice silver spoons; Simon dug out the silver cleaning plate and did an excellent job of getting the tarnish off. Must have done it wrong last time as this time it did a great job on the silver teapot mum gave me. It says household soda and I'm using bicarb, but I wonder about trying it with caustic? Definitely not with caustic, I shall try some of my silver jewellry on it. A butler sink would be ideal for this - deep and non metallic.
There's a vanishingly small possibility we could buy the downstairs flat to rent; my money man is doing sums and says it would work but not exactly how much a month it would cost. I'd like the control over the neighbours (along with the investment potential), but it's probably borderline on whether we can do it.
Tonight I am moderating a panel on women, technology and breaking down barriers at the second anniversary Girl Geek Dinner; this is a subject I have been paid to rant about, the other panellists sound really interesting and I have lots of ideas so naturally I'm starting to feel nervous. I think I shall go install wireless music systems for a while to soothe myself.
- Music:the welcome sound of a paint scraper
tanais and elinor were here...- *lots* of tidying up, trips to Oxfam, putting things on shelves - I guess we're about halfway to things being properly tidy in all the rooms but it's a lot better. We've got the painters here Tuesday to do the front room windows so the front room is all re-arranged and going back stuff should be tidier there too. The baby Dyson is fun to use so lots of dusting done too ;-)
- I've been having physio for my ankle which was never quite right after the fall. There's still a subtle impaction somewhere but it's a lot better - more flexible, pretty straight, moving more normally, so I'm discharged with exercises.
- Boring but useful, as CHEFFF used to say - we're cooking a lot more rather than getting takeouts and more dishes from scratch than convenience stuff; when we got back from the US we finished off nearly all the things that had been lurking in the freezer, though we still have a *lot* of dim sum and squid in there. Work: we've both done lots and have lots to do. This is probably what fills up all the bits of the last month I can't remember! Working through the last paperwork for my mum's estate now I have probate. Tomorrow I go sign the contract to sell the house and have the auctioneers round to deal with furniture. Are old vinyl records of any value these days? As in Frank Sinatra and Gilbert & Sullivan 60s and 70s vintage...
- a lovely time with
ladymoonray, which meant we also returned tamaranth's PC at last.- indulgence reading; had a binge re-read of Jennifer Crusie and Georgette Heyer favourites.
- discovered last week that a friend from Seattle has just moved to London; met him yesterday for dim sum and then took him over to Costco to buy life's essentials (a pillow, bin bags and a TV mainly) where it turns out you can only use debit cards, and only UK debit cards and not the same debit card twice in a row and many other things that make it hard to pay. Our essentials turned out to be Elysium, Ghiradelli triple chocolate brownie mix and 13kg for cat litter for £5. It's amazing what you can get in our car with good will and a lot of bungie cords. Avoiding the motorway meant we saw a lot of North London; I hadn't seen the really stylish circular furry Hasidic hats before - I liked how many father and son pairs we saw coming back from synagogue or heading to temple. Finished up with dinner at a turkish restaurant where they do many nice things with aubergines and lamb, but also something really disturbing that they call turnip juice which tastes like pickled beetroot without the sugar and who ever saw purple juice come out of a turnip. Fun day out and driving home through London was very nostalgic; at one point we used to come through London when driving home from places and we went down streets we haven't driven down in over five years.
A grey and slightly blah day for me; the sun has gone in, I'm supposed to be working, I had some sad news on Saturday and the probate forms for my mum's estate came through today. We've had a nice weekend though; we dragged
tanais to ikea-hell while elinor was at Sectus and met her for dinner then spent Sunday tidying and going out for BLTs and hanging shelves and pictures and making barbecue and chit-chatting. And Simon made me this lovely icon (because the motto of the Jennifer Crusie fanclub one year was Got Snark) And we were excessively sociable last week; two lunch meetings, four press conferences and one movie screening. Now I have a card to write and a parcel to post and forms to get ready to send off and work to do... but first, more coffee- Music:Simon steam-frothing milk for my coffee
Open to: All, results viewable to: All
Simon reminded me this morning that it's my 40th birthday this Saturday and I thought it would be nice to meet up with friends for dim sum as a lunch into late lunch into afternoon tea thing. We have tickets for Loudon Wainwright in the evening, though later afternoon/early evening drinking might occur too... Whether you can make it or not, where is your favourite dim sum restaurant in central London?
Somewhere else being...
If you're free on Saturday when would suit you?
noon
2 (66.7%)
1pm 1 (33.3%)
2pm 1 (33.3%)
3pm 0 (0.0%)
I'll roll up whenever I can 1 (33.3%)
If you're likely to come along, how many people will you be? Multiple personalities have to share a chair...
I also like the idea of a one-month-after get-together; we plan to be in the Bay Area weekend of May 19th and I know there must be nice dim sum places there too ;-)
YOSushi is doint a half price thing this month - who wants to go for sushi and when? We'd be up for Bloomsbury one evening... you get up to ten plates at half price and you have to print your own copy of the voucher from the link...
The offer says:
Come and get some YO! Sushi - half price - from Monday 12th March at 2 of our newest and funkiest restaurants - Brunswick Shopping Centre in Bloomsbury and Brent Cross Shopping Centre in North London. Both venues serve the tastiest, freshest sushi all day long and make great shopping pit stops. But hurry as this fabulously yummy offer must end on Saturday 31st March. So what are you waiting for?
Just sign up here to get your voucher and enjoy!
- Location:bed
- Mood:ill
After a full tour and one show tonight already Billy Bragg was chatty, relaxed and a bit punch drunk, joking about the alter ego he discovered when he lost all but the hoarse cockney registers of his voice (Johny Clash, artist of albums like Rock the Jazzbar and The Man in Black (and Red)), confessing to being a YouTube fan (the hamster and the biscuit, the Canadian cat and the ceiling fan) and complaining about being woken by the jetplane flyover celebrating Fleet Week. It's the chatty second half of a Bragg show without the concentrated music of the first half although he played plenty of good tracks, from Sexuality, Shirley and Milkman of Human Kindness to the slower version of Like Soldiers do and the singalong finale of New England. The political numbers included There is a Power in the Union, Eisler's on the come and go, Bourgeouis (BushWar) Blues and the always topical patter version of Great Leap Forward.
Driving back on a deserted 280 pungent with eucalyptus, fog creeps over the hillsides and pools in the fields as far south as Redwood City.