Trolleys, trams and waymos

 Our final full day on the Long Suffering Husband’s 60th birthday adventure was spent exploring the transport of San Francisco. After yesterday’s hilly walking, I relented and bought a day’s Muni pass. However, as you age your mapping skills become worse and you find yourself panicking (or arguing) about the location of the bus stop and the direction of travel. All of this is made worse by the fact that you have never had a sense of direction and the LSH has a Samsung phone.

“It’s ridiculous,” he huffed, “You’d think in this day and age you’d be able to get on the internet almost anywhere but especially in a big city.”

We are both on the same network but my iPhone was having no trouble at all.

“It’s Silicon Valley. Maybe you just have the wrong phone?” I joked.

The LSH was not amused. Luckily, I am an IT expert and so on the penultimate day of our holiday I googled how to fix the problem. 

In the meantime small fierce women at bus stops were there to help us. All women in San Francisco appear to be short, forceful and opinionated. Americans in general are so loud but San Franciscans come with some added quirks. They like to tell you about Harry and Megan living in Santa Barbara, are extremely disappointed when you say you have no opinion on it and when you say, ‘Thank you,’ their reply is always, ‘YES.’

Once we got the hang of it, though, riding the buses was much easier. It feels as though you are going round in circles because streets are exceptionally long. You can start on one bus, getting on at Sutter, travel for a mile. Get off and catch the next one from a stop you turned right to get, travel another 3 miles and get off at Sutter. 

“They only go in straight lines. It’s very confusing,” I complained, “It feels as though we are going around in circles.”

“We are,” replied the LSH, who was grumpy because of his phone signal. 

Once it was fixed, however, he realised that the reason they travel in straight lines is because they are trams; early electric vehicles that get their power from overhead wires. 

The modern electric vehicles make the whole of San Francisco sound like the set of Logan’s Run, which although the cars on that film were solar powered, the film makers accidentally captured the noise perfectly. San Franciscans have completely embraced the electric car and the whole city thrums with the sound of them. They even have driverless electric Ubers. 

As you walk around you start to get used to empty driver’s seats. The little white Waymos begin to have a personality of their own. Sensors spinning on the top and sides, you sense their cautious anxiety, even though you know they’ve been programmed by a laid back dope-head in an air conditioned office just outside San Jose. 

One bus stop woman told us that she’d seen one with a child in the front passenger seat. “Now, who would think that was a good idea?” she shouted.

Anyone who hasn’t read the Passengers by John Marrs who is under 40 I suspect. (Do read the Passengers - it’s a brilliant novel). I could certainly see the appeal of never having to do the school run, or drop off for ballet classes again. Just pop them in a Waymo on their own and they don’t even have to talk to strangers. 

She also told us a funny story about them. Apparently, they live in the posh end of town. They have a parking lot where they sit and wait to get your buzz from the app. Never turning off. Awake all night. Waiting. No wonder they’re anxious. Anyway, residents of the expensive condos that neighbour the parking lot have been complaining that the Waymos have been disturbing their sleep. The company in Mountain View explained the problem. The poor little things are not coming back home after an hard day at work and partying all night long but instead they’re getting confused. They are programmed to beep to avoid low speed crashes and when they get too closely packed together these sensors are activated. They’re a bit like the sea lions, who honk all night and bash necks if they get too close.

We were not brave enough to try a Waymo (I’ve read the Passengers and I think too much) but we did go back in time and ride the trolleys, which require a strong man to operate, engaging and disengaging them from the cables with a foot pedal and pulling the brake on with a hand lever and another to stand at the back and make sure no one falls off. Such fun! It appears that we are not adverse to danger, only we prefer the old fashioned kind. 

I hope you die

 San Francisco is full of small, fierce Chinese women. We started our day walking to pier 33 to catch the Ferry to Alcatraz and as we walked through Chinatown the first thing we heard (and saw) was a small woman get out of a taxi. She looked furious - her brows were knitted and she pulled her shopping bags from the backseat with the kind of force usually reserved for helping an elephant out of sinking sand. She slammed the door and leant into the passenger window and shouted, with a heavy Chinese/San Fran accent, “I hope you die!”

It was a shock. Especially as on the morning of his 60th Birthday he had been contemplating his mortality. 

Alcatraz was his choice of Birthday destination. It was fascinating but there were a number of prisoners who had pre-echoed the words of the small woman.  Exploring San Francisco on foot will leave you wondering if you are going to make it. The hills, the hills, the hills. Such steep hills. I know we should have caught a tram but as I said to the LSH, you get to see so much more on foot.

I’m not sure but I might have heard him whisper, “I hope you die,” under his breath.

Favourite tree

 Everyone should have a favourite tree. If you’ve not thought about it then you should. I like a huge singular oak tree, one in the middle of a field that has witnessed years in splendid isolation. I was quite impressed with the lone Cyprus at Pebble Beach for its ability to grow where nothing should but with golf anything is, apparently, possible so I’m less impressed. Also, I’m not that keen on a pine - they’re a bit sappy. 

The Long Suffering Husband had wanted to go to Mariposa Grove in Yosemite because he thought big trees were his favourite. When we got there he was disappointed. 

“Maybe these aren’t the trees you are looking for,” I said mangling a movie quote. I’m not sure what it is about America that makes me talk movies.

“Maybe it’s Redwoods I need,” he agreed.

We managed to squeeze in a little stop at a redwood forest on the way. Henry Cowell Redwood Forest in Felton, San Diego was the perfect place to stop. A little forest bathing before nearly dying from the stress of driving in San Francisco was what we both needed. Our powers of prognostication were obviously good. 

“That’s better,” said the LSH, “These are the trees I’m looking for.”

I have to admit they were quite magnificent, if a little too close to each other and sappy for my liking. 

The LSH has a new phone with an AI camera. It has irritated me a little, while I’ve been lying on the forest floor and playing with focal length and shutter speed, he can get a better snap, even while his phone case is flapping. This makes his photos near giant redwoods like being in the hall of mirrors. 

I can see the appeal of a tree that makes you look tall and skinny. 

I have lost my camera lead so all photos from now on in my Facebook photo dumps will be phone photos. 

His bookshop

 Regular readers will know that it’s a bookshop (or a library) that makes my heart sing but for the Long Suffering Husband it’s golf. In the way that my nose twitches as we walk along a street with a bookshop he has a sixth sense for golf courses. We can be driving along and he’ll say, “Look at that course!” or “See those bunkers!” I will squint off into the distance until I see a few Steves in poloshirts and a Michael Jackson glove. (If you want to test my theory then stand on the edge of a golf course and shout, ‘Steve!’.

Monterey is the most beautiful place. Our hotel is perfect and it happens to be where the US open golf tournament is held every year. 

Pebble Beach is a community for rich golfers. There are 5 courses, next to the sea with huge houses and country clubs, built around a road called 17 mile drive. For a small fee of $12 you can spend all day exploring this 17 mile road. Women were looking right, towards the sea and men were looking left, imagining taking that shot or critiquing the drives they had just witnessed.

Seeing the LSH so happy in the beautiful relaxed place may have been the best part of this holiday, so far. 

John Steinbeck worship

 Before we left home I made a list of bookshops because if I’m  overwhelmed or a bit anxious a quick sniff of some lovely new books can set me right. With such a full-on trip I knew there would be moments. Once I’d made the list, though, ticking them off has become a challenge. Not that we needed any extra challenges. 

We had a long drive from Yosemite to Monterey. It wasn’t very exciting, except for the acres and acres of tree farms. Unfortunately, the Long Suffering Husband wouldn’t let me stop to buy 20 avocados for a dollar, although on reflection I don’t know what I’d have done with 20 avocados. 

I was quite excited to find that we were booked into a hotel on Cannery Row. John Steinbeck was the first literary author I enjoyed. My classmates complained about having to read such a boring book but I read all night with my torch under the covers, crying over poor misunderstood Lennie and bristled with injustice. I went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden but so many books, so little time has meant that my reading of Steinbeck stopped there. Cannery Row has been on my TBR pile for a while.

John Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, which was on our way and his family home has been turned into a restaurant run by enthusiastic middle aged Steinbeck fangirls. I felt right at home. 

As we were leaving one of the women beckoned me over and surreptitiously shoved and handful of something into my hand, placing her finger to her lips and looking round. This is where pockets in clothes come in handy, they are perfect places to hide contraband. 

“What did she give you?” the LSH asked as we left.

I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out enough printed paper coasters to host my very own drinks party. I’ve been chuckling about it ever since, although I think book club will enjoy them. 

I know an old lady

 I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, now I know why.

She hired a bike to explore the valley floor of Yosemite National park. I have swallowed enough flies to consider going into hibernation. My protein intake is definitely up. You think, “I’ll just keep my mouth closed. You are meant to breathe through your nose unless you are swimming or doing certain yoga breaths. Just breathe like a normal person,” then the Long Suffering Husband asks a direction related question and you have no option but to eat another couple of flying bugs. 

Apart from the flies I can thoroughly recommend it. The wow factor goes up a notch. 

After, we went on a bear discovery walk. (To learn about them not see them). They estimate there are 300-500 bears over the whole of Yosemite (747956 acres).

Ranger Will, who seemed a little lost without a surfboard told us that bears hibernate once they’ve eaten enough. A little girl told him about the time she saw a bear and he said, “Cool. Gnarly dude!” The LSH couldn’t stop saying ‘gnarly’ after that and I fear it may become his favourite word, which might push me into wishing to be a bear even more. They are solitary creatures who live alone, spending 20 hours a day foraging.  Berries are their favourites but quite like an ant or several. They only consider flies when preparing to sleep for the winter. This is a great holiday but the idea of being on my own and sleeping for the winter is appealing.

The downside to being a bear in Yosemite is if you find a good source of food the humans will catch you, give you an earring, call you something stupid like purple 12 and take you miles from where you found the good food. Bears worked out that the best way to get food from humans was to scare them into dropping it. Now the park has a motto: Scare the bear. How the tables have turned!

Our final adventure in Yosemite was to scare ourselves. We drove up to the top of the world (Glacier Point). 

I know an old lady who swallowed some flies.

The bear went over the mountain

 Despite very much looking forward to the Yosemite part of our trip I was worried about the bear warnings. I had read that you had to be careful about food and that even included hand cream, which the black bears of Yosemite find delicious. Once I got here I thought the warnings were to stop people leaving food around. Bears are, apparently, quite shy and will only steal food when you aren’t looking, unlike the squirrels and birds, who will actually beg. 

The Long Suffering Husband wasn’t looking forward to this part as much as me. He knew that I’d probably make him climb a mountain and he wasn’t wrong. 

As we drove into the park we thought we saw lots of bears on the forest floor but they were only blackened tree stumps from one of the many forest fires. We were, however, greeted by a deer at the welcome centre. 

The LSH has discovered a vlogging tool on his new phone camera and took a video half way up complaining that I’d told him it was just a little walk. This is not at all true. I told him we needed to start early and take lunch. As you walk up towards Vernal Falls there are rainbows everywhere, which even his AI phone camera didn’t do justice to. However, I did catch him telling the vlogging tool that it was worth it. 

We kept going, to the top of the falls and higher, planning to take the John Muir trail down. ‘A decent hike,’ the couple who had just climbed half dome told us while we were eating chips. The snippets of conversation on these kinds of walks are amusing. You discuss walking poles, other walks, how much further, the relationship between drinking enough and having a bladder the size of a pea. You judge the people walking in sandals or sketchers but admire the barefoot walkers. These walks are not peaceful.

“It’s OK,” I told the LSH, who was flagging. “I don’t think we’d see a bear up here anyway. Can you imagine a bear doing this climb? They’re far more sensible.”

He did his best bear impression and we spent the next part of our walk having a pretend bear conversation about deciding to climb half dome for the challenge. 

“Oh no.” I remembered. “There’s the song. The bear went over the mountain. They must climb the song is wrong.”

We didn’t see a bear but I did worry that I’d killed the LSH with the adventure. 

Land of the Giants

 If L.A. looked better in photos than it was then the exact opposite is true of Yosemite. You might look at my photos and think, ‘wow!’ but the reality is much, much more spectacular. 

We left Pismo beach 100 years ago (yesterday morning) and decided to look at a giant rock on the way at Morro beach. It was hiding in the mist. A woman in the bakery shop thought we were joking when we asked where it was. 

Then the drive to Yosemite. 

“Go straight for 338 miles,” the SatNav said. She wasn’t wrong. 

Into the park and a ‘hike’ (2 mile walk) in Mariposa Grove gets you to see a huge Sequoia grove and listen to arguing Americans. The trees were impressive but nowhere near as amazing as the rocks we saw in the sunset as we drove out.

I’m going to have to think of better words to describe everything because today we plan to walk over them, up them, round them and maybe even through them. Hopefully, we’re not going on a bear hunt but who knows. If they are anything like the squirrels then they will also be giants.

Pismo clams via Denmark

 The Long Suffering Husband has been randomly shouting ‘Clam Chowder’ since we arrived in California. This particular creamy fishy soup has been at the top of his holiday to-do list. The fact that he could say it in a funny way courtesy of The Simpsons has been a bonus. 

Channelling my inner Buggs Bunny in reply, I have been saying, “Pismo beach and all the clams we can eat.”

Our drive to Pismo took us past a pretty lake, through farming country with vineyards, olive groves, polytunnels and hundreds of black cows. It didn’t feel that long of a drive but we went through Denmark, so it must have been.

I wonder why people move to new countries and replicate the one they came from?

I’m happy to report that there were no Pismo beach disasters (Clueless reference), the LSH got his clam chowder and we are both feeling well rested before our three day walking holiday in Yosemite. 

Hello

 Rest days can be exhausting. You have to walk down the beach at sunrise, sit, read, swim and eat. We even found time to visit the Santa Barbara historical museum with no clues about who Barbara was. There were, as usual, a lot of men and a few wives who ‘bore him five children,’ and a few flamenco dancers but none were called Barbara. 

There were no Barbara’s around the pool, unless you count the tree. 

There was an Adelheid and Johann and a Lina and Karl, who were joyously happy. Like the Long Suffering Husband they had their headphones in and a phone in their hand. Like him, they may have been listening to the latest Jack Reacher book but most of the time they were taking video calls. Their friends and family wanted to share their joy and who can blame them?

“Hello!” Karl would shout and they’d all sit up on their sunbeds and crowd around the tiny screen.

“Hello!”

“Wie gehts dem hund?”

“Ahhh. Pschttt.” Followed by head tilting whistles. “Braver hund. Ahhh. Ja. Braver hund.”

As far as I know, the dog didn’t speak back, even though I’m sure he knew he was a good boy. 

Once the LSH got to the end of a chapter he took out his headphones and suggested that the people on the other side of the pool were quite loud.

“Where do you think they’re from?” he asked.

“Germany.” I said, decisively. 

“No, no I was thinking Poland. They’re too happy to be Germans.”

“They could be Dutch,” I conceded. “But I think they’re German because I speak dog.”

They should have brought it with them because the Californians love a dog,  In the LA hotel dogs shared a sunbed with their owner. There are even dog hotels for when film stars have to travel to countries with quarantine regulations. They even employ dogs for the mundane jobs that the homeless could do.

Is this Barbara?

Santa who?

 The manic driving is over. Now we are on the long distance section down a coast road, breaking the journey with some beach stops. Past Malibu beach, where the houses look insignificant from the back but if you’ve seen 2 1/2 men then you know what they look like from the front and on through the Santas.

A drive in this part of the world shouldn’t cause wintery thoughts but we couldn’t help ourselves. Singing, ‘Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane,’ for reasons we couldn’t fathom.

There are so many Santas.

Santa Barbara is our home for the next two nights. Barbara is lovely, as you would expect a Barbara to be. It has the feel of being in a cozy drama, a bit like Stars Hollow without the snow. It wouldn’t surprise me to wake up and find styrofoam snow on the ground and go us to go to Luke’s coffee bar for a pumpkin spiced Latte. 

We are hoping for a relaxing day with no driving tomorrow. Just sitting around the pool with Barbara, letting it all hang out.

Mussels and Muscles

 Every day is a school day and your hips don’t lie. Shakira was amazingly insightful for such a young woman. When you’ve walked nearly 30000 steps, driven 100 miles and treated LA like your own personal eye-spy book then your hips will honestly tell you your age. Old. Very, very old!

Writing today’s blog is leaving me feeling a little overwhelmed and when I get like that it’s best to list. So, this is our day. 

1. Venice beach - not awake at 8am -homeless people everywhere. Smells worse than Amsterdam. 

2. Venice canals - we walked to the canals, which are beautiful.

3. Muscle beach - fit people everywhere. Paddle tennis, sweaty muscular bodies. The Long Suffering Husband had his first laugh of the day when I said, “Oh, muscle beach. I thought it was mussel beach.” For some reason I had thought it was homophonically named. I thought the seafood came first. 

4. Breakfast. Stale pastry and coffee.

5. Argue - the lead to the phone navigation app is unstable and we both join it. 

6. Rodeo drive - we didn’t stop but we saw the Beverley Wilshire hotel, the school, Nakatomi tower (best Christmas film) and designer shops. It was tempting to walk into one and say, “Big mistake,” but I suspect they’ve heard it all before.

7. Argue again - driving around LA with disappearing navigation map will do that, especially if you are desperate for a wee. 

8. Park the car in Downtown LA never, ever, have we spent so much money on parking. 

9. Find a bookshop - with a toilet! Smile. I’m happy. Everyone’s happy. 

10. Walk along old Broadway - the oldest theatre district. I love history and can imagine how it was. Americans have no sense of preserving the past - they just abandoned it and moved on but the buildings give up their secrets of past glamour. One even had its own security guard who popped out and said, “No pictures.”

11. Angels’ Flight - this quirky little funicular railway gets you up a hill and was the perfect opportunity to recreate the kiss in LaLa Land.

12. Look at amazing buildings - art centres and tower blocks. 

13. Disney concert hall - what a building!

14. Lunch - in the market

15. Drive back to hotel - argue a little more.

16. Venice school - where they filmed Grease. Decide not to take photos as children are coming out of school. 

17. Swim - in hotel pool. Rest those aching muscles. 

18. Rydel High - go back to Venice school for photos. The marching band were practising. What’s not to love about a sousaphone? 

19. Santa Monica pier - sunset. 

20. Should we have mussels for dinner?

Do you feel the earth move?

 Our first proper day in California included an earthquake.

We were sitting in the Starbucks at Warner Brothers curing the h-anger that seems to manifest as confusion and an ability to park when you are nearly sixty, when people stopped, looked at each other, nodded and said, “Earthquake!”

The Long Suffering Husband paused, ham and cheese toasty midair and said, “Earthquake.”

I put my crispy grilled cheese down and said, “Earthquake?”

“That’s what he said, didn’t you feel it?”

I hadn’t but didn’t like to confess just in case it’s a sign of something. Often, when I’m  tired I find the earth jolts a little.  Besides, the couple next to us were muttering something in Spanish about God. 

Obviously, I did what any self respecting citizen does in those circumstances and checked Twitter. Sure enough, a 4.8 had just happened in the Pasadena  area of LA, just 10 miles from where we were. Enough to rattle a few plates, which had happened in the staff canteen. 

It didn’t spoil our day. 

Griffith observatory followed by a walk up a big hill to get a look at the whole of smog-bound LA was the perfect start. The LSH was amazed at my ability to make him climb a mountain on any holiday. Driving around LA is a nightmare but the air conditioning makes it worth it if you take a hike first. 

We were a little disappointed with the Warner Brothers studio tour but would still recommend it.  There’s so much more detail in the UK Harry Potter version but I suspect that it would be different not in the school holidays. After our little walk it was relaxing to be driven round in a cart, looking at elephant doors, a jungle, whole streets that are redesigned for any film that needs them. They have a rule that anything a production company brings in they must take with them but no one told the bamboo! Most shows were on hiatus but it was exciting to see people in hospital gowns stumbling around outside one of the sound stages and I know I will watch any new medical drama. Jack Warner’s motto was, “Anything for the picture,” and the photos you get do look amazing. 

The walk of fame is horrible. It would be bearable if the driving and parking wasn’t such a nightmare and there wasn’t a premier at the Chinese theatre. LA sprawls on massive 5 lane roads, 38 miles across and 44 miles deep without a decent public transport system and so popping back when it is less busy is not an option. You can’t do everything when it is less busy. 

An evening back at Marina Del Rey, where we are staying led to confusion from the restaurant staff. 

“You walked?”

“You haven’t got the car?”

“Where are you from?”

“Oh England.”

In California, you are allowed to hike but you must never walk.

I had a pulled pork dish that included something we hadn’t heard of. The LSH asked.

“What are hush puppies?”

“They’re potatoes. Sort of. Oh I don’t know how to describe them. But they’re potatoes. They’re nice.”

“The only hush puppies I’ve heard of before are shoes.”

The waitress nearly wet herself, “I’ve never heard of that before.”

Hush Puppies at home are comfortable shoes for the over sixties but in SoCal they are little round overcooked croquets with spring onion and jalapeños in the mash part. They were nice, we told the waitress, who left our table singsonging, “Noice! Noice!” as she went. 

LAX

 Social media is full of pictures of other people’s holidays. In truth, vicarious travel is my favourite. You don’t have to spend hours trapped in a metal box at 36000 ft and suffer the panic inducing security checks or freak out the moment you step off the plane and feel truly lost. There’s no dehydration, constipation, airplane cough or time difference. The pictures only tell you the best. Some captions hint at difficulty but you can flick through those. 

The story, however, is in the conflict: The moments people pushed through fear, anxiety or trepidation to go somewhere new. A holiday is the ultimate good news story.

My Grumpy Old Woman travel blog is back for another two weeks of random thoughts on a place I’ve never been before. Of course, I will also post pictures for my friends that don’t want to delve deeper into the conflict but if you want words too, you are in the right place. We flew into LAX which seems to have been contrarily named as the airport was full of the usual rules and rigidity, albeit with a security guard who was amused at how thin our passports were. 

The Long Suffering Husband has a big birthday coming up. How this has happened is a mystery to us all. Sixty sounds ancient and in no way reflects his mental age. He wanted to be in San Francisco on the day, so we booked a trip that involved complicated packing. Two cities, a beach and a walking holiday in 15 days. Trust me, that’s a lot of shoes. 

Weirdly, I get very anxious going through security. Luckily, with being nearly 60 comes an ability to only hear half of what is said. This is a skill the LSH has practised for years but through security at Heathrow he put it to extreme comic effect, which got me through the gates with my breathing under control. 

“Can you lift your jumper up, Sir?”

It was a simple request that surprised everyone when the LSH, who was mirroring the shadow picture started to do star jumps. Laughter really is the best medicine. 

“I thought he said, ‘jump up’,” he said slightly embarrassed but relieved that I was more relaxed.

Sometimes you arrive in a new place and immediately feel at home. The language might be different but there’s a sense that it feels right. I’ve felt this in two places: Greece and Vienna. I was particularly surprised in Greece because even the letters are different. You would have thought that America would feel similarly familiar. They speak the same language and you’ve seen most of it on film, however, this place baffles me. I feel alien. A good night’s sleep and some adventures the next day should help. In the meantime, there’s a sea lion barking outside my bedroom window and a woman is in the bar downstairs telling her boyfriend how she had to book an expensive massage to see the sunset on a holiday in Greece because at certain times of the year the sun sets in the East there. 

Live Pricing

“You are through to our award winning customer services. How can we help you today?”

Do those words make you twitch with righteous sarcasm? Do you want to know, ‘What award?’. Do you shout into the ether, ‘You wouldn’t need award winning customer service if xyz was done properly in the first place.”

You are not alone. 

The thing with award winning customer service is that the company you are ringing gets so many complaints that they have to employ teams of people to persuade you that you  are plain wrong. You put the phone down, thinking, “Stupid me. How could I have not known that?” Then you spend several days thinking about it. It wakes you at 3am - what doesn’t? And you write a blog.

“It’s live pricing, madam. It’s on our website. It does state it clearly, if you would just care to read it.”

I was vaguely aware of live pricing. Actually, more than aware. I’ve worked in a bank on a graduate training scheme where I hated almost every moment except foreign exchange. I happened to be doing my few weeks to learn everything foreign on Black Wednesday and while older men with paunches were running round ashen faced, I found the lines and lines of red ink oddly satisfying. Then in my few weeks on stocks and shares I understood that live pricing was about making up a cost for something imaginary. And things that are not real can change all the time. My imaginary friend from childhood, baby Cumby, who is sometimes green and sometimes not, said, “I wonder how much I’m worth today?” Obviously, baby Cumby was priceless. Then I moved onto gilts and the precious metals market. Catalytic converters had just been made mandatory and so the price of Palladium had gone through the roof. I passed my economics banking exams by biting my tongue and not writing the word immoral during an essay on supply and demand. 

I suppose it makes sense for items that are in high and variable demand, like money, oil, holidays or Taylor Swift tickets. You have to give people with loads of money the chance to make even more by buying those items cheaply and selling them on to poorer people. 

You are probably wondering what item had caused me to ring the award winning customer service team. It must have been an energy company, right? If you’ve walked the Pembrokeshire coast path then you’ll have seen the boats waiting outside Milford Haven until the market changes for them to get the best price at which point they all scramble to be the first in. (If you haven’t walked the coastal path then you should and you should stay with my lovely friends Liz and Dave in Tenby https://www.penmar-tenby.co.uk/ )

But it wasn’t. It was a printer cartridge, for quite an old printer. Who knew there was a market in toner?

I had ordered a branded version and they rang me up and persuaded me to swap it to their own version and they would refund me the difference. When it arrived it was broken and didn’t work so I asked them to send me what I’d originally ordered. 

“You haven’t actually credited the refund for the difference to me,” I said with certainty, “So you can just cancel that.”

“Oh no, madam. I can’t do that.It has already been processed. It’s on my computer.”

“If you can’t stop it then you can take the amount again.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I can credit the refund to your account and you’ll have to reorder the product you’d like or I can replace the item with the same.”

The branded toner cartridge had increased in price by £10!

“Can you not honour the original price, as you sent me a faulty item that I didn’t order on your insistence?”

“Oh no, madam. It’s live pricing.”

Swarm

 I’ve neglected my blog. I crashed into the school summer holidays doing the usual things: reading books, cleaning cupboards, walking, eating, watching the Limpics (why, oh why do they have to shout, though?) and taking photos of bees. 

I had no desire to comment on the complicated issue of who is allowed to compete in which sport or Joe Biden’s resignation, or Trump’s never ending self delusion. Although tragic, I had no opinion on the mass murder incident in Southport where children at a Taylor Swift dance party were stabbed to death (except to say how lucky it was that guns are hard to get in this country).

However, the recent spate of riots do interest me.

Not with the hand-wringing despair you hear from people my age. You’ll hear no, “What has happened to our country?” remarks from me. No. I’m only interested in the behaviour.

“These riots are crazy,” said the Long Suffering Husband, while we were on our evening fart walk. He had stopped as he is unable to multi-task and had got out his phone. “What do you think has caused it?”

“It’s the temperature,” I told him. 

“Not Farrage, or poverty, or immigration.?”

“Nope. It always happens. It’s young men with all that Testosterone swimming around in their ball-sacks and …”

“You can’t say it’s men,” he warned.

“Have you seen the pictures? Anyway,” I said, refusing to be diverted, “When their ball-sacks get up to a certain temperature…”

“Will you stop saying ball-sacks?”

“No. You asked my theory. Now listen! So, as I was saying, it always happens after a couple of days of sweaty ball-sack weather they get into groups, swarm and fight each other.”

“You said it again.”

“I did. Ball-sack! See, I said it another time!”

This is where our conversation ended, except that every now and again, I’ll grin and say, “ball-sack”. Don’t tell me you can’t have fun in a long marriage. 

However, I am serious about my theory. Before we get all hand-wringy about the state of the nation we should acknowledge that young men swarming to fight each other is a biological phenomenon when the temperature is between 27 and 32 degrees Celsius. 

Honey bees swarm as a natural part of their reproductive cycle to create new colonies. Are humans much different?

Carlsmith and Anderson (1979) were the first to notice that violence was curvilinear and Lance Workman worked out the specifics of the temperature needed to cause a riot and stated that when it gets to 32• ‘it’s as though people can’t be bothered.’

Summer bank holidays at Southend Seafront in my childhood were often spent watching gangs of young men swarm at each other and I can confirm that never happened on rainy days.

There was an incident like this at the end of July https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/southend-machete-fight-update-eight-9448596.amp that wasn’t linked to Southport. 

Now that the weather has stayed warm but not too hot, it’s the summer holidays and there are people on social media prepared to give these sweaty ball-sacks a side to pick the fights will continue.

I’m convince that instead of kettling, riot shields and violent water cannon, a light spray down of the pant area would have hundreds of young men standing there wondering what they were doing. Or we could pray for a heatwave. 

In other news the LSH has just walked past and I told him, “I’m just writing about ball-sacks” and he has gone out to cut the grass.