LA Baby!

🥂19 February – HAPPY BIRTHDAY THARA and happy anniversary Thara and Santhosh!

16 – 19 February = Los Angeles

My site crashed and I’ve been locked out for a few days so I’m just catching up now…

Valley Village – Thara’s! 17 – 19 February

When people talk about the traffic in LA you think, oh how bad can it be… well, it’s a bit like having a city full of M25s, it’s horrendous! Our taxi to Thara’s was 45 minutes late and instead of taking 40 minutes it took 75 so we arrived quite a bit later than we had planned. The driver made it up to us by turning his car into a mobile 90’s rave 🪩!
In the first week of January 1998 after two months in my new career in recruitment, Debbie sent me on a course to study a certificate in recruitment practice. I was her first ever trainee and she wanted me to have the best possible training – clearly the best training I ever had was from Debs herself but the course turned out to be really good. And of course the best thing ever happened on it…

I’d arrived for the first class, it’s about to start, the door flies open and a tiny whirlwind strides in, beaming, radiating positive energy and plonks herself next to me. Hi, I’m Thara, shall we go out for a drink after class? I mean, it was love at first sight.
It’s hard to describe our relationship over the last 25 years in a few words; she’s saved me more than once, picked me up when my heart was broken, opened her home to me for over a year when I had no money and no job, she’s made me laugh so much I’ve collapsed on the floor crying, we’ve partied (a lot), been to Paris together, flew from different parts of the world to meet in NYC, I flew to Bangalore for her wedding and not long after I went to stay with her in LA. There are so many stories, so much love, she’s an amazing woman and my life would have been totally different and nowhere near as good without her in it. I’ve always called her my angel. Thank you Debs for sending me to be educated!
So you can imagine I was pretty excited to see her! She is married to Santhosh (who very kindly spent most of his weekend being a taxi service; massive thanks from Craig for that one!!) has an absolutely lovely very talented daughter and a VERY cute dog (lots of tablets taken over the weekend!). They were all so welcoming and lovely, we went to some great places and had the best time. Thank you all so much! It was extremely emotional saying goodbye. I need to make more of an effort and get to LA more. So here’s my message to the Devathis – thanks for everything, you’re amazing, I’ll be back! Love you all x

PS apologies to Debs and family for us FaceTiming when we were let’s say a little worse for wear and you were coping with sone tricky stuff. Big hugs and best wishes to you and the family Debbie.

💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺

I can’t think of LA without thinking of The Doors. Triptease Tom – if I was better at editing you know I’d insert the opening chords from “Touch Me” right now! My absolute favourite is Break on Through (1966) so that’s clearly being included! For my Thara it has to be about an angel and although he’s from Seattle rather than LA surely Jimi Hendrix has to feature in a music tribute to the US! It’s called, simply, Angel (1970).

“Angel came down from Heaven yesterday
She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me”

For Mum – the beautiful Jim Morrison…For Thara, the amazing Jimi Hendrix…

Venice Beach ~ 16 – 17 February
We arrived at LAX after a nice easy flight from Loreto. Before we left we had one last walk around Loreto and I took a few pictures of the beach as I realised I hadn’t taken any. Here’s one above this entry. Lovely.
Within half an hour of leaving the airport we arrived at our hotel Venice on the Beach. Simple, basic, very clean and pretty pricey but right on the beach in the quiet residential part of Venice, really close to the canals. There’s the beach right across from the entrance where I’m standing to take the photo – now that’s close!

We headed to the Venice Whailer for happy hour – both food and drink on special – and I worked my way through the menu; I had a burger, fries, chicken wings and a massive slice of pepperoni pizza!! Talk about throwing yourself straight into American “cuisine”! We got taking to two lovely FedEx pilots; one was hilarious and reminded us of James Kearns! He’s my brother in law.

We were pretty exhausted from all the excitement of travelling and a really early start so we ended up having a fairly early night.
Next morning after breakfast at The Cow’s End (yep, charming) we walked the entirety of Venice Beach (slowly, my foot still isn’t 100%) and we found the place that Craig used to hang out in when he lived here in 2005/6 but it had changed name and ownership so it wasn’t the same. It used to be the Venice Beach Bistro where he quite regularly went to watch a great Doors tribute band and Ray Manzarek (the actual keyboard player from The Doors!) would go in there and Craig would chat to him. They creatively changed the name to The Venice Beach Bar…

But we had a drink there for old times sake anyway! Then headed back to The Wailer.

We had almost 24 hours to the minute in Venice Beach and it was lovely, chilled and the perfect transition from laid back Baja to crazy LA.
Our taxi to Thara’s was delayed by 45 minutes and it took us twice as long to get there as quoted. But that’s another story…

I’ll see you from the Southern Hemisphere and I’ll let you know about our weekend with Thara and how the North Island is faring after the cyclone.

LA songs to be added too!

Farewell for now x