Settling In?

I got a lovely comment on my last blog post yesterday from another blogger (not someone I know in real life - amazing!) whose blog I've been avidly following and reading for quite a while - in fact the only blog I follow written by someone I've never met! AliBlahBlah, thanks very much - you provided me with the inspiration to start this weird transatlantic/kinda motherhood/waffle-a-lot blog and now the kick up the arse I needed to write something for the first time since April - APRIL!!! It's nearly sodding June!!

One excuse I have is beavering away creating the programme for my theatre company's latest show - Henry V...

On the assumption that the lovely AliBlahBlah is my only non-real life follower, I won't bore you with the details of Theatre Delicatessen - if you're a friend of mine on facebook you're probably doing the usual eye rolling at the number of status updates begging you to spread the viral marketing campaign word and buy tickets to the show. I've been spending the limited computer hours I get (inbetween the sleep training of a certain Little Loy who has decided every bedtime and naptime shall start with an hour or more of screaming tears) doing one of the few jobs that can be achieved from the other side of the world. The programme is done and looks beautiful, even if I do say so myself - but has left me feeling even further away as opposed to closer to the show, the company and my professional (often personal) family. But do buy tickets if you're in London - it's directed by Roland who is one of the most exquisite directors of my all contemporaries, and stars some Theatre Delicatessen stalwarts who are incredible actors it has been my greatest fortune to work with.

Theatre Delicatessen

The other reason for absence has been the visit of the parents to the new house - and bearing in mind my mum is probably the biggest reader of my blog, it seemed a bit counter productive to write about what we've been up to when she's been seeing it for herself.

We moved and welcomed the arrival of our stuff off the boat a few days before Mum and Dad got here, and in a way that was perfect - they were present right at the start of us really beginning our lives in LA (you can't help but feel in limbo land when living in a glorified hotel room wih only a few clothes and photos to resemble home), so they now feel very much a part of it.

We managed a glorious mix of running round seeing sights and sounds of LA - was amazing to get out of Santa Monica for a bit, I REALLY need to learn to drive - and just chilling out and living our lives here. It does feel more like we're living a life here - I'm still thinking ahead to when we go home but it helps that Paul and the Little Loys seem really settled. But a part of me doesn't want to feel utterly settled, I want to go home - maybe not right now but eventually. My first impressions have improved since that particular post but I still can't see me falling in love with city - this weird mixture of chillaxation, yoga and granola eating with the frenetic and frantic need to be doing everything all the time, rushing around in cars that fill up massive roads, everyone living in their fast paced little bubble.

So I continue to feel like there is one foot still planted in the UK, spiritually by the side of my colleagues and friends as they open the first show in our most ambitious space yet, but feeling like I no longer have the right to say "our" company, "our" space because I left everything that is mine. The foot in California is gratefully padded however by a growing close network of people we can now start to call friends. So maybe a balance is starting to be achieved. We plod along, just the same.

First Impressions

We're nearly three weeks into our move to Los Angeles, we've seen a bit, met a few people, done one or two sights and buggered about doing not very much inbetween. The major thing I've found about LA is that, more than any other city I've been to, it is so vastly different from one area to another, from one street to another. Ok, so Hampstead is very different to Brixton, but it changes subtley from north to south across the river, and even though London has basically existed since the dawn of time compared to LA, and has the architecture to prove it, it all still feels underneath like the same city. Maybe that's just because I know it so well, but I think the same of Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, New York, Chicago, Madrid, Barcelona, Prague...

And NONE of the touristy photos you see of LA are accurate. At all. Santa Monica looks like boutiques when in fact it's massive roads then suddenly one pedestrianised street with much the same shops as Oxford Circus, and the beach is ten times wider and longer than any photos would have you believe.

Then there's Venice - which one second is million dollar homes and the next clear gangland territory, a weird mix of uber trendy and crack-selling corners, like setting The Wire in Shoreditch.

Last week, the midgets and I went downtown to scope out some disused buildings with a view to eventually attempt TD style work in the city of celluloid (oooh they're not going to know what's hit them!); my two are pretty used to being dragged around derelict building sites.

When you type "downtown LA" in Google, you come up with images like this

I don't know what kind of photoshopping was done on this but it wasn't the same downtown I was in. Maybe it was if you looked 180degrees up.

Downtown LA is odd - now I get down and dirty with the best of them, having grown up in Lagos, frequenting pubs in Holloway, going to school in Kentish Town, walking through St Paul's late at night, living in Streatham - but I was shocked at the state of most of the downtown populace. Maybe it's just indicative of the poor system of care in the US, because there is a major difference between the homeless and drunks of London (be clear, they are often two very different groups of people) and the plethora of people who ought to be being looked after in some kind of welfare institue in LA.

Just as the buildings alternate huge empty caverns epitomising the destruction of the American Dream and the collapse of the Global Economy, with high rise, glass fronted, trendy loft converted mega-bucks-towers, the people walking the streets of downtown LA are in expensive suits or rags. I don't often admit to being shocked, and lord knows Ethan has grown up in an area where a woman walks around with hundreds of heavy chains and padlocks round her neck, another in her seventies dresses up like a five year old raiding a drag queen's dressing up box and make up kit, and a lot of people with severe disabilities, predominantly learning or mental, are going about their daily lives with carers. But even he started to look a bit worried by the sheer number of people who looked like they desperately needed more help than a few quarters for a hostel, or a warmer jumper for the night or just a can of lager to keep their alcohol levels consistent.

Ten minutes drive up the freeway (which is MENTAL - they really do look like this)

is Echo Park. It is St Andrews in Bristol crossed with San Francisco crossed with Camden Town on a good day. Young and trendy with rough edges, second hand bookshops with adjoining cafes in which sit teenagers drawing on giant canvasses wearing peace sign glasses, a creative writing centre for children run by sci-fi fanatical volunteers, a farmers market held in a crumbling car park where $20 will buy you two weeks worth of food rather than 2mins, and a total jumble of houses perched on rocks and nestled into the hills which cause roller-coaster like roads throughout the area.

Then back to the wide streets and plazas hosting expensive yoga studios behind their grotty frontage of West LA. I'll save our adventures of Sunday brunches in Beverly Hills for another blog...