Sunday 6th July - The Humour of a Five Year Old

Flicking through the television channels I found myself laughing with the humour of a 6 year old at the names of America’s top sprinters: (Tyson) Gay and (Walter) Dix. Even better, when I googled the pair to find their first names to make this entry complete, I stumbled across the following sentence in the L.A. Times:

‘...Afterward, the usually stoic Gay wrapped Dix in a big hug and praised him for being loyal…’

Nonetheless, inspired by the Olympic trials, we went for a morning run with its usual American sights of pickled tramps and more traffic lights than the Blackpool illuminations.

More lounging and reading started a morning in which we moved on to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This was a typically varied experience – a kayak sculpture, neon nudes,the architecture and a garden of exhibits. The present exhibition was by Bruce Nauman, whose work focuses on experimentation with light. At times the attraction was lost on me but a few were brilliant. One led you sideways between two white stud partitions, lit with fluorescent tubing. As you drew towards the end, the natural light flooding in through the large windows appeared lilac forcing your eyes to readjust to their surroundings. Another took you through rooms with verging walls and stark white light, which led you to question the surface, texture and size of the space.

As ever in search of food, we headed to the Cottage where across the road and outside the Chauvinist shop (!) a guy was blaring out Frank Sinatra shrouded in the stars and stripes - Hmm. We were impressed to see a small MG pull out through a set of traffic lights although less so by the drivers inability to use a stick shift.

We had been hoping to use the hotels computer but it's location in the reception area meant it was often being used by the staff. Instead we headed to the library where as ever my escalating levels of irritation with fellow computer users hit an all time high. La Jolla is an affluent area and as such has a library computer user demographic devoid of vagrants, but densely populated with eccentrics of aging proportions.

Those incapable of turning the phone onto silent having answered it a few times already were top offenders who likely needed it at that volume to even remotely perceive it was ringing. Their inability to talk without shouting whilst informing the person on the end of the line that they shouldn't talk as they were in the library just cemented the assault on my senses, as if the Vivaldi ring tone hadn’t been enough.

I was constantly in awe at the force with which a keyboard can be taken to within inches of its life, and the various huffs and puffs expelled as the computer (apparently not a mind reader) refuses to execute their demands. At one point a guy sat down next to me (although for a moment he hovered dangerously close to toppling onto my lap) and started clicking away still looking at a blank screen. For a while I was alert in case he needed a little help, but a letter at a time (to 10 words of mine) he got himself sorted. A few minutes later he was swearing at the screen. The student next to me seemed nice but he soon started mumbling under his breath about God – it is very off putting when you are trying to catch up with the most recent celebrity gossip to have to hear about the seven deadly sins and their modern interpretation. It all reminded me of the guy who, wanting to take a file home, had whipped out a floppy disc - I wasn't even aware these were still around.

Of course every cloud has its silver lining and as I looked over at Tim (tongue in that stuck out concentration state), I was very glad for his sanity. All things, after all, are relative.