ok, so as i was writing and having my accounts deleted of the last few weeks laura was writing a much more comprehensible email with many bits that i missed out. so here it is. i'd also like to add though that the 'tight corner' laura so kindly refers to was actually a teenily thin, cars close on either side, barely able to even fit a car down it (worse than our street han) dead end road, with nowhere to turn or maneouvre. so much worse and more difficult than she makes out!! anyway here you are...
Thought maybe it was time for another update on mine and Fi's star spangled summer. The exciting news is we finally left LA, after being gently reminded by several sources that travelling was supposed to entail visiting more than one city a month, we packed our comedically overized suitcases and said a tearful goodbye to the walk of fame.
The thing is we had it really good in LA, firstly staying with Ali's friend Dean who refused to let us sleep on the futon or sofa and insisted we take his bed, and use the swimming pool as often as we liked, then moving on to Mike's. He's a friend of Fi's sister and an artist on King of the Hill, his house actually looks like some sort of old school Hollywood Museum, its littered with old film mermorabilia and we slept in a custom made pirate room whilst we were there. He's also a total artist by lifestyle (and by that I mean natural enemy of order, routine and sobriety) When he wasnt trying to force feed us Margarita's at 11am or educate our taste in films (he rented the entire Godfather trilogy and I suddenly understand why all men are obsessed with it - amazing and Al Pacine = sex god) then he would do stuff like cook us dinner, making little animals out of the vegtables, or after watching Shaun of the Dead take us up to his roof and make us recreate the back garden scene by throwing old LP records off the roof (Fi's and Mike flew about 20 ft, mine rebounded on a post i front of my head, shattered and nearly left me blind in one eye)
The thing was as lovely as Mikes house was, it was in a totally ropey area - the centre of female Mexican gang warfare in LA (Mike has bullet holes in his car where he was shot at) complete with a real life Godfather and THE female gang leader living next door. At first we were both a little worried we might wake up to find horses head at the foot of our beds, but Michelle was really cool and it was weirdly re-assuring having her around. Especially one memorable night when we, convinced the house was being broken into risked our lives walking into the living room - me using my phone as a torch (with 911 already dialled) and Fi threateningly wielding one of Mike's doc martins (the heaviest object we could find) to call Michelle, only to find the worlds largest racoon going through the trash...it was hardly a scene from Scarface, but racoons sound deceptively scary.
I was also in a chemist when apparently there was a hold-up, four cops burst in holding guns and ran up to the cashier who was serving me saying: 'are you the one who called in the hold up?' The cashier just looked blankly at the cop and made a monosyllabic 'I dont know whats going on and I dont care mate, I'm on minimum wage' grunt. I walked out whilst Fi was phoning me from the carpark confused as to why three more cop cars had pulled up and asked her if she had been the one to dial 911. We just drove home with our cereal but the road was cordoned off for the rest of the night with about another five copcars up the street and we have no clue what actually happened.
Anyway we finally left for Orange County and it was all going well til on the way to get some food on the first night Fi was trying to do a 3 point turn on a tight corner and after a while all these people drinking on a rooftop were laughing, i just thought (not unreasonably) that it was at Fi's driving, but after a while i wound down the window and they shouted 'you do realise you just hit our fire hydrant with your car' at which point we looked horrified and they shouted 'there's only one thing for it, you better come up here and have a few Margarita's to make it up to us'...God Bless America! Anyway the guy Tommy and his friends hung out with us for a few days and we saw them on Independence Day - which was not as crazy as the yanks would have you believe (I have come to realise that the Brits really do party the hardest) but we did get to see Kanye West...yumyumyum. The O.C. was beautiful and like the TV show just reaks of money, there's people no older than 17 driving top-of the range, brand new 4x4's everywhere you look and the beach is the quickest way to give yourself a complex - being totally full of perfectly toned, bronzed and (i like to think lipo'd) babes...ome people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light...
As much as i love the yanks, it was a relief to meet up with a couple of English lads we knew through friends of friends and we've travelled with them for the past couple of weeks. We met them in a bar in LA and after much sambucca, Jack Daniels, dodgy dancing and a slightly embarassing 'getting kicked out of the Church of Scientology Building for answering their phones at 3am' incident, we decided to opt for safety in numbers and travel together. We've crammed so much in with them, three towns in Mexico (where we couldnt walk three feet without the boys being offered Viagra,) camping and hiking in Joshua Tree national park, camping at the Grand Canyon and spending nerly a week in San Diego, thats its really wierd now theyve left (especially as they did all the driving, cooking, organising and planning)
So then there was two, and we're currently in Texas, which is cool, though you get pestered a lot and no one ever walks anywhere (prob why there are quite a few fattyfattybumbums) so it draws attention. No joke we were walking down the road in Pheonix 2 days ago and after being honked about 12 times (I should add we both looked hideous - the sweatiest of betty's) a truck actually slowed down and I swear to god he thought we were hookers. Needless to say we were completely freaked out and ran to the nearest shop to call a taxi. On the bright side everyone here calls you 'ma'm' which is amazing, I keep resisting the urge to tell people I'm not 'ma'm' material, that I dont deserve that much respect and that they can just address me as 'miss' or even 'OI YOU' but we're both enjoying it too much. Going to see where JFK was assasinated tomorrow, the grassy knoll, the book depositry where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly shot him etc. sounds morbid but it should be really interesting, then onto New Orleans where we're hoping we can still spend some time, we figure the tourist industry needs all the money it can get after hurricane Katrina....
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