Author: Taran

Born into a middle-class English family, Taran was educated at a minor UK public-school and graduated from Imperial College, London as a mechanical engineer. He worked variously as a marine engineer, a marine surveyor, a company owner and as an industrial accidents investigator. He is a family man although now divorced from the mother of his two sons. He has travelled the world extensively, often as part of his employment, but also many times simply for the pleasure of experiencing new countries their cultures and their people. As well as calling England his home for much of his life, he is also a citizen of Canada where he lived for seventeen years and has had homes in Nigeria and Kuwait. Now retired, he lives in California, happily married to his second wife, and close to both his sons and his grandchildren. He continues to travel as often as possible and is enjoying his dream of becoming a writer.

SFTF: Solvang, our release from lock down!

If only we had known what was coming in 2020, we might have made more voyage hay in the pandemic-free sunshine that was 2019. How many other frustrated travellers around the world must be thinking the same way?!

Now, nearly one third of the way through 2021, we have at long last broken free from self-imposed restrictions and have once again slept away from home. Admittedly, it was only two nights and a measly three-hour drive from our suburban life in beautiful downtown Belmont Shore, a small oasis of relatively sane living in the corner of Long Beach, the southernmost quarter of the Los Angeles megalopolis. But what a delightful way to express our new-found freedom.

Solvang, sometimes referred to as the Danish Capitol of North America, is the nearest thing to a quiet little European town to be found in these parts. Founded in 1911 by a small group of Danes, disenchanted by the Mid-Western winters chosen by their immigrant forefathers, and anxious to live the life their families had left behind in Denmark,  the town was built from scratch on almost 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) purchased from the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant. Initially the town’s architecture was strictly reminiscent of traditional styles found in their homeland, even using traditional materials wherever possible; modern artistic ingenuity with concrete has allowed the visual style to continue throughout the town centre although these days there isn’t so much solid brickwork and real timber used to produce the desired effect.

One can always find an excuse for a holiday and for this particular journey of discovery the guilty party was my 75th birthday. Celine had booked us into the Hotel Corque, a fairly large, comfortable, stylish, so-called “boutique” hotel close to the town center and well within walking distance of the multitude of restaurants, cafés and eateries that abound. Our room was on the second floor, overlooking the pool and with delightful views of the lush green hills that surround the town in nearly every direction; whether or not that verdant image survives the hot dry summers we will have to determine some other day. One of the joys, for me at least, of finding ourselves in surroundings that are reminiscent of so many of our travels is the promise of once again sampling café culture, good coffee and home baked patisseries, and Solvang delivers all of those in plenty. The thought of fresh baked Danish pastries for breakfast, mid-morning snack time and afternoon revivers was irresistible; the only serious question was which of the many hostelries was most worthy of our attentions; the other consideration was how many such pauses in our short stay could our stomachs accommodate, without causing unwanted digestive trauma, let alone long-term bodily harm!  A three-hour drive demands a reward for the participants and soon after our arrival, too early to check into our room, but armed with a map of The Village of Solvang thoughtfully provided by the hotel receptionist, we strode purposefully the fifty yards towards Copenhagen Drive where we found the promisingly named Danish Mill Bakery. In true Euro-café fashion, the pastries were temptingly displayed in long glass-fronted cabinets yet for some reason we decided to opt for the tastefully presented but rather uninteresting triple open sandwich platter, accompanied unfortunately by very weak filter coffee from a thermos flask due to the failure of their espresso machine. This was altogether an unfortunate mistake as this sixty-one-year-old establishment has good reviews, is comfortable and quaint and we even had a talking mannequin of an old moustachioed Danish pastry chef sitting next to us; I am sure their pastries are every bit as tasty as many to be found in Solvang, but our poor choice of comestibles did kill any inclination to return.

Our travellers’ hunger appeased, we were suitably fortified to continue on our tour of the town, or perhaps village is a more suitable epithet for this compact little community of around six thousand seemingly contented residents. There is a touch of Disneyland about Solvang that is perhaps inevitable in such close proximity to Hollywood, and yet it manages to avoid being tasteless. As well as the multitude of eateries, there are plenty of interesting shops to browse selling everything from recycled clothing to fine art, quite enough to make a slow stroll through the main streets a pleasurable pastime; but we still had a mission which would be satisfied appropriately at the far end of Mission Drive, in Olsen’s Bakery. Whilst the Danish Mill Bakery was, to be honest, a bit of a tourist trap, Olsen’s Bakery was the real McCoy. The baked goods looked and smelt totally enticing and before we had even tasted their wares we had placed an order for two loaves of Swedish Limpa bread and an aeblestrudel to be ready for our departure two days later; and after a few minutes drooling over the tempting array of pastries we opted to stop longer and share a Bear Claw and a “cream puff thing”, washed down with a couple of very welcome caffè lattes.

It was a beautiful day for a stroll around the town, warm sun ameliorated by a cooling breeze, and it being mid-week and out of season we took pleasure in the lack of crowds until finally the weariness that results from any long drive on California’s freeways took its toll and we decided to take an early night, determined to “do the town” properly the next day. Fortune was not completely on our side as we were caught out by the one and only fault issue we had with the hotel. Beautifully equipped with all “mod cons”, one little item, a very neat personal bedside light built into the lush headboard, decided it was definitely not going out of its way to embellish the hostelry’s image any further than necessary and to our great discomfort, several times during the night managed to turn itself on unaided by human intervention. The first time was before “lights out” and the bellhop who was sent up to resolve our problem reckoned a good hard thump would do the job, which it did for a while. One beef we both have with many hotel rooms these days is the plethora of little lights that serve no obvious  purpose other than to annoy the light sleeper; the bed-side radio needs to remind us that it is always there at our beck and call; the TV not wishing to be forgotten in the middle of the night, winks its red light at us across the room; the fire detector proves it remains alive up there on the ceiling by flashing another light from about where the panhandle of Ursa Major should be located to those back sleepers amongst us; and inevitably management leaves a message of welcome on the internal phone, indicated by an otherwise insignificant little orange beacon that only becomes visible as one’s eyes become accustomed to the dark. Personally, unlike my dear bride, I am one of the lucky people who can usually manage to ignore all of these small nuisances, but even in my deepest sleep the sudden flashing on of a high intensity LED reading lamp focused directly onto my right eyelid – I am a left side sleeper – left me quite frazzled after two or three repeats.

Somewhat surprisingly we did actually sleep not too badly overall, the final flash to my eyeball serving as a seven o’clock alarm for me which I resolved, for a while, by cunningly smothering it with my luxuriously soft, well-puffed pillow. COVID restrictions meant no breakfast was being served in the hotel and after a leisurely long awakening, we eventually started our more detailed exploration of the town with a stop at another of the more highly recommended coffee shops, Mortensen’s Danish Bakery, where we sat out on the patio breaking our fast with an apple Danish, a custard puff and a couple of lattes as we observed the town’s clientele, not just a few of whom wore clothes of sufficient size to remind us to go easy on the pastries.

Suitably fortified by our morgenmad, we opted to check out the local galleries, the first of which, Stix’n’Stones, was filled with so many wonderful pieces of art as to seriously threaten our annual budget. But we were on a birthday treat and we were both equally enjoying browsing around this amazing collection of artisan craftsmanship, so when our visit ended it was no surprise  that we needed to ask the young sales lady to look after our well-filled bag of goodies until our return to the hotel later in the day. And that was just the start. Two doors further along Copenhagen Drive, the Pavlov Art Gallery had some fascinating thought-provoking paintings by the eponymous young Macedonian artist, inspired by his studies of philosophy, as well as a series of beautiful landscape photographs printed on canvas, by his wife Iris. Still heading East, our attention was drawn to three wooden carvings of the Solvang Founding Fathers in the window of a building that started out life a century ago as the Santa Ynez Valley Bank. Renamed The Copenhagen House, this edifice is now home to The House of Amber, a large store that encompasses an impressive display of modern Danish design including everything from an enormous collection of Hoptimists, funny little spring-necked creatures of all colours, shapes and sizes that nod at you mesmerisingly,  through to very smart Bering watches and the elegantly sculptured silverware of Georg Jensen; but the most interesting corner of the store is the little Museum of Amber, wherein one can discover the provenance of these beautiful natural gems that started out life millions of years ago as simple blobs of tree resin.

No old town or village is really complete without a good bookstore and the Hans Christian Anderson Museum performs that function admirably. Its main attraction may indeed be the well-informed life and history of that clog maker’s son who became such a renowned author of fairy tales and other stories; but it also houses its alter ego, The Book Loft, a veritable cornucopia of new, used and rare old books, in at least four different languages; I could have happily spent the rest of that day just browsing through the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of shelves on two or three different levels and breathing in the musty aroma of well-thumbed pages.

It had been our intention to maintain some sort of gustatory deprivation for most of the day, as a celebratory dinner was on the early evening timetable; alas, hunger defeated those noble aims as we looked into the window of Solvang Restaurant and realized we had not yet tried the delights of aebleskiver. Variously described as odd-shaped pancakes, waffles and donut holes these oft-mentioned Danish snacks are in fact balls of dough mixture, slightly crispy on the outside and light and fluffy within after being cooked in a cast-iron skillet that resembles an egg-poacher, and traditionally served hot with raspberry, strawberry, black current or blackberry jam; what is more they are actually very, very tasty. But gourmands as we are when out on the loose, we realized our hunger was still lurking and decided to reinforce our midday snack with a slice of tasty, if perhaps a little too salty, fried medisterpølse, accompanied by a Hoppy Poppy IPA from Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.

Weary from our happy meanderings we had one more necessary stop at the well-stocked Solvang Shoe Store, to buy me a pair of much needed sneakers and seek out some sandals for Celine; my needs were fairly quickly satisfied, but the ever-helpful manageress must have pulled out a couple of dozen boxes of shoes from her store in the back of the shop before we concluded the second objective simply wasn’t going to be achieved that day. Whilst having a good shoe shop is not exactly high on the tourist bucket list, its presence shows that Solvang is much more than just a tourist attraction, for there must be nothing worse than living in a town lacking the basic essentials

No birthday outing is properly fulfilled if it fails to include a special dinner and we were well pleased with our decision to place the responsibility for that exercise in the hands of the chef and staff of Mad & Vin, inside the Grandsby Hotel on Mission Drive. A ten-minute stroll from the Hotel Cirque in the cooling evening air, the Mad & Vin (which means “food and wine” in Danish) is a smart little dining establishment where the service is suitably discreet without being unfriendly, the atmosphere subdued without being depressing and where the food, if our choices were anything to go by, is tasty and well presented. Celine had a Flat Iron Steak which although slightly too pink upon its first arrival at the table, was seared to perfection a couple of minutes later, and my Cioppino was everything one could ask of the dish, a generous selection of fresh tasting local fish and shellfish swimming in a lightly spiced tomato and white wine sauce accompanied by fresh baked sourdough bread; lubricated by a couple of glasses of Stag’s Leap chardonnay, and topped up with generous portions of banana bread pudding and a flourless chocolate cake, this happy couple wended their contented way slowly back along the now quiet streets, contemplating the pleasant idea of perhaps one day living in such a welcoming community.

Next morning, after a night only “slightly” disturbed by the noise of a circulating “copper chopper” – only our second sighting of the “fuzz” in our 36 hours in the village – we awoke to another beautiful day, clean clear air, a coolish breeze and delightful views of green hills in all directions. Once checked out we went for a short drive around some of the nearby residential neighbourhoods before making a second stop at Olsen’s Bakery for our morning coffee and Danish, and not forgetting to collect the loaves of limpa bread and the strudel we had ordered so soon after our arrival in town. Then a bit more residential research out towards some of the rolling countryside surrounding Solvang and then, before hitting the road home, a final sortie into New Frontiers Natural Market Place to stock up our home larder with some of the freshest organic fruit and vegetables we have seen in California.

Friday afternoon is not the best part of the week to have to pass through downtown Los Angeles, and my mood had changed quite radically by the time we arrived back in Belmont Shore. However, we brought home some very good memories from our truly delightful birthday break in the almost European village of Solvang, with every intention of making a return visit before too long. Whether or not it will prove to be the end of the rainbow in our search for the future remains to be seen but it is certainly worth placing on the “distinctly possible” list. We just have to wait for today’s crazy seller’s housing market to settle down again to offer a more equable relationship between buyer and vendor.

SFTF – British doctor awarded for Services to Health and Safety in the Workplace

A little news item that caught my eye . . .

British doctor awarded for Services to Health and Safety in the Workplace

Dr. I.G.A.Smallpiece, an Anglo-American emigré who is a recognised expert in the field of workplace psychology, today received the coveted Health and Safety Services Medal of Honour from prime minister, Boris Johnston, in recognition of his brilliant achievement in ensuring the future respiratory health of construction workers. I was fortunate enough to catch up with Dr. Smallpiece at St.Katharines Dock in London, as he was about to board his private yacht on which he has been residing ever since the country first learned about the coronavirus scare in China. I asked him what it was that he had done that warranted such an honour. He explained that working in the Health and Safety industry for the past thirty years had left him frustrated and dismayed by the lack of awareness among construction workers of the health dangers from the many dusts and volatile vapours they come into contact with on a daily basis, and their complete lack of interest in wearing the appropriate PPE that was provided by their employers, especially the wearing of face masks. Last December he had been in Washington at a conference of construction industry executives and at dinner one evening he had found himself sitting next to Donald Trump, who also happens to be an old friend of the doctor from when they were both students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Laughing now he said it was amazing to meet Donald after all these years and described how “The Strumpet”, as his friend Don had been nicknamed at school, was always coming up with weird crazy and outlandish ideas of how he was going to control the world. Apparently the President was still doing the same old routine at that dinner party, gushing on about the most amazing virus he had learnt about from another of their student buddies who was now working in a laboratory in Wuhan, having been forcefully repatriated back to China after being found guilty of a series of sex offences at the university where he was a resident professor of epidemiology. Mr. Trump had told Dr. Smallpiece, and I quote him word for word, “Old Hochoi has found the most amazing germ, a really great germ, a great great germ, that is just what we need to stop these wretched lefties from spouting so much fake news . . .” The conversation between them had then gone on to make lots of very non-PC jokes about the way Asians took so readily to wearing masks in the street at the slightest sign of bad air, and how the masks were also very efficient at cutting down their ability to have meaningful conversations, let alone shout down their opponents.

On the plane coming home from the conference, Dr. Smallpiece had an idea whirling around in his head, a truly eureka moment in fact, which he held in check until he arrived back in London and immediately requested an audience with the prime minister. “I explained to the PM” he continued, “about the terrible lack of awareness of the need to wear face masks on construction sites and the need to find a way of playing on the psyche of the workers so that they would happily accept the idea of wearing face masks all day long.” And the doctor had gone on to explain to Mr. Johnston how the idea of scaring the general public into wearing facemasks would quickly permeate throughout the construction industry, and the introduction of this amazing virus that his friend Don had told him about just might be the answer. Mr. Johnston had initially looked perplexed but had then replied quickly “It sounds reasonable to me. I .. er .. wouldn’t wear a mask myself of course. But  . .er . . yes, go on, give it a try, it can’t do any harm.” And thus Dr. Smallpiece had been given the go-ahead, and as we now know his idea was a brilliant success. He seemed totally unconcerned when I asked him if he had expected the fallout that we have all witnessed these last few months. Did he really think it was worth all those lives that had been lost, once COVID19 had got totally out of control. “And what about the ruination of the British economy?” I managed to shout to him as he disappeared into his yacht and a couple of flunkies, wearing bullet-proof vests, carrying powerful looking sidearms and wielding batons, whipped up the gangplank and threatened me menacingly.

The Wit

BS News Special, Tuesday 9th June 2020

SFTF . . .OMG . . . AWNT already???

An acronymically inspired tale of eyes from the past peering into a worrying future.

We were jarred awake by the unearthly sound of a sudden, short, supernatural low-frequency BUZZ from deep down in the bowels of the earth. Jumping out of bed and staggering bleary-eyed to the bathroom to grab my old red dressing gown from its hook on the wall, not wanting to expose my unadorned family jewels to the originator of this sleep-shattering blast, I did a quick Cook’s Tour of our 1000+ SF of living space and discovered only rare SOCAL rain pattering hard against closed windows and spied palm trees bending their trunks, cowering in the face of a strong SSW wind. Pattering back to our bedroom on my brown woollen sock encased feet, I found not my sleeping bride in our old queen bed, but curled up on an old velveteen couch, a spectral young female with cropped black hair, brown eyes and a slightly snub nose reading a Penguin copy of George Orwell’s “1984”.

Looking up at me she opened those sweet lips from so far back in my past.

“Is the future really going to be like this?”

My hesitation must have unnerved her, for the apparition slowly dissolved away in front of my eyes, and back in the here and now, I glanced over at my beautiful wife who had returned to her own land of dreams and was now curled, foetus-like beneath the flowers of the duvet, a wisp of a smile on her sleepy face. Slipping back into my normal bedtime nakedness, I followed her beneath the covers and quickly returned to my previous somnolent state.

My mind however, continued to race, eager to return to the specter from the past. Very soon I was standing in front of a large bay window, with my back to that same old velveteen couch, remembering the future from which I had returned.

I mused out loud, trying to calm the fear I had heard in her voice, but not wishing to destroy this renewed time lapse relationship we were experiencing.

“I’m not sure about Big Brother watching our every move, but I know the pigs from “Animal Farm” will certainly be taking control”

“Nice segue my love, but try to get real”

“No, it is . . . I mean . . . will be like that, pigs will be presidents and prime ministers” and then getting slightly out of literary context I continued wildly, “monetary matters will rule their thinking processes and people will be mere pawns in their global games.”

All the dire warnings from the WHO and the CDC were rushing through my brain. The uselessness of NATO, the UN, the EEC, and even their predecessor, the League of Nations, was clearly demonstrating the inadequacies of the human race to organise itself and unite its millions of different factions to fight a common enemy. Racking my brain, I sought to warn my pretty young lady friend, that things might get even worse, Cold War would become a threat from the past, weapons would be circling the earth like Sputniks, evil drug lords would make the Heroin Wars seem like gang fights in the playground, and COVID19 would become the threat to beat all threats to humanity.

Reaching over to my bookshelf I pulled out another well-thumbed Penguin edition.

“Here Skolly, read this and you will see another alarming possibility for our future”.

But, as I bent down over the back of the couch, handing her my copy of Albert Camus’ “The Plague”, the beautiful wraith slowly faded into the encircling mist, and I was left with nothing but the sound of water splashing its way down gutters, and the low light from an unusually damp grey South California dawn filtered into the room as my sweet Celine slept on blissfully at my side.

SFTF:  Another short sojourn in the Carolinas

This year has seen a distinct change in our travelling habits as we haven’t once stepped off continental North America. I nearly said continental USA but that would have been to ignore the wonderful week back in April when we set foot in my old stamping ground of Ontario, Canada.

North America is a vast continent, shared by two of the largest countries in the world by area, offering such an endlessly diverse mix of plains, mountains, forests, prairies, coastlines, weather, nature, ethnic groups, cultures, cities, towns and villages, that it must surely be an easy task to find the ideal place to lay down new roots that will satisfy the aspirations, needs, desires and longings of two not too dissimilar people who are held together by a strong bond of love and a determination to live out the autumn of their lives in peaceful harmony. Well life is never quite that simple, for as well as the aspirations and needs and so forth that we bring into the search for the perfect piece of ground to start the planting process, tagging along behind us are our preconceived notions of what is ideal, acceptable, bearable or untenable, based on the quite varied lessons that life has presented to each of us in the past.

Those who have followed earlier episodes of this blog will know Celine and I have travelled far and wide over the last few years and more than once have been sorely tempted to buy our “ideal” home in the sun, by the sea or in some beautiful corner of a foreign land. Much closer to home, and just a few short weeks after taking up residence in the “promised land” – a.k.a. Southern California, I was filled with excitement at the idea of moving up-country and buying a house in Big Bear Lake, a small town nestling in the woods high up in the San Bernardino Mountains, enthusiasm that only waned nearly a year later when we visited again on Labour Day weekend and, being a rags and sticks fan, I was appalled by the mass of noisy jet skis and power boats churning up the placid waters of the eponymous lake . . .!!

Back in April we made a fleeting visit to Asheville, NC, and being quite taken with that small city, our most recent travels took us there once again for a closer look. It being another community whose charms arise from its location among mountains and midst a vast sea of deciduous forests, it seemed appropriate that we should re-visit when those woodland charms were approaching the end of their multi-coloured autumnal glory and the renowned fresh mountain weather might be starting to show its less desirable side, that of cool winds, grey cloudy skies and that phenomena we miss so much in Southern California, a good dollop of rain every few days. And we were right on the mark, except for the several days of glorious warm sunshine, and the autumn colours, for which the Appalachian Mountains are renowned, had kindly delayed their magnificence, the result of an unusually dry summer, a phenomena with which we Californians are all too familiar.

We had found accommodation for our two-week stay through HomeExchange.com, though were unsuccessful in finding a simultaneous reciprocal exchange with someone who fancied leaving the relative peace of Asheville for the hustle and bustle of the West Coast, “No surprise!” according to our hostess. The house was in the Haw Creek subdivision, a ten-minute drive west of the city centre. Our first morning we breakfasted watching jays and cardinals flitting among the branches of the beautiful trees outside the kitchen window, and the squirrels doing what would prove to be their daily balancing act as, nut in hand, they pranced from picket to picket along the garden fence. Through a gap in the trees we had a view of the nearby mountains, and with the warm sunshine radiating out of clear blue skies, it seemed like we had arrived in paradise, certainly as far as this country loving boy was concerned.

Typical view from within Asheville city boundaries – this one taken a hundred yards from our HomeExchange abode.

Not completely forgetting why we were there, we eventually managed to drag ourselves away from nature’s spectacle and drove into the city to delve deeper into its offerings than we had six months previously. But getting a real feel for a place in just two weeks is a challenge at the best of times, and when seriously contemplating the idea of moving one’s life there, lock, stock and barrel, the task feels impossible. We did our homework before we arrived and having sought out the services of a knowledgeable local realtor, to whom we had given some ideas of what we thought we were looking for, we had spent many happy hours perusing a long list of wonderful looking properties which we had boiled down to a baker’s dozen to view during our stay. This in itself was a fairly hugger-mugger process, as we had only a sketchy idea of the neighbourhoods around the city and very little feel for their relative desirability.

However, we had a free day before our viewing schedule started and so we began our visit by doing the tourist thing, exploring the River Arts District where one can wonder in and out of galleries, chat to the working artists and of course expand one’s own collection of art as the mood takes one. It also turned out to be a great way to meet locals and to quiz them about their experiences of living in and around the city; no point in asking them why they chose Asheville, as it really is an artist’s mecca. In the late afternoon we happened upon a delightful small farmer’s market located next to the All Souls Pizza Parlour car park, and enjoyed chatting to various artisans, again many of whom had moved to Asheville in the last ten years or so and were totally captivated by the place.

The next afternoon we met up with our friendly realtor, Laurie Reese, viewed six houses of which at least four were totally damp squibs, another was “OK” and only one actually grabbed us. Actually the last house we were due to visit was so awful from the outside, and so obviously different from the MLS description, that we didn’t even get out of the car; it did however, leave us close to the village of Biltmore and we took the opportunity to partake of afternoon tea at the seemingly historic Grand Bohemian Hotel, the interior of which looks like a late Victorian hunting lodge, only to discover it is very much a twenty-first century construction.

The city of Asheville nestles in a valley, surrounded by thickly wooded hills with views of distant mountains in every direction. The city centre is quite compact and very walkable, but we had difficulty finding any suitable homes for sale in the few residential districts within the perimeter created by Highway 240 and the French Broad River. From the list of “possibles” that Laurie had provided us, I had upgraded to “favourite” status one gracious older home in the “desirable” Kenilworth district, which was a real disappointment, and another lesson learned about interpreting MLS descriptions. The house would have been very elegant when it was built in the 1920’s and the trees surrounding it would have been much smaller allowing far more light into what had become a very dark home. The “garage” might indeed have been accessible, or even usable, once upon a time, and the “delightful architectural details of the interior” were probably very up-market in its era. But, sadly, the sinking south corner and its associated structural cracks, and the cramped old-fashioned kitchen, convinced us that a top-priced fixer-upper was not what we were looking for. In our previous short visit to the city we had discovered the very attractive, but we presumed rather expensive, Montford Historic District, just north of the highway but still nominally walkable to the city centre, and so we were quite excited when, on our second day of viewing, Laurie found a very reasonably priced three storey home literally a couple of blocks away from our two favourite stores, Trader Joe’s and that other one whose name has now become tarnished by having become part the burgeoning Amazon empire. And what a disappointment that was, demonstrating once more the dangers of judging a book by its cover.

We soon realised we needed to look slightly farther afield and that’s where things started to become complicated. How far away from the centre were we prepared to consider living? Our hopes of being able to walk into the city centre had been somewhat dashed and we both started to accept the idea that a five or ten minute drive, such as we were by then doing regularly from our temporary residence in Haw Creek district, had to be one of the conditions of living in Asheville. Laurie showed us some amazing houses that were positively ideal but, alas, never quite perfect. The beautifully maintained house on Skyview Court, built precariously on the side of an extremely steep wooded mountainside and having the most fantastically gorgeous views from its three balconies, from sunrise to sunset, would have been ideal for the two of us thirty years ago when we could still bound around like a couple of gazelles, and my Canadian chain-saw wielding skills were at their prime. But the threat of our advancing years, mine in particular, and the hair-raising descent just to get into the basement workshop, or to fetch a load of wood for the lounge stove, made it a complete non-starter. Such a shame as I could really imagine us sitting on the balcony, each with a glass of wine to hand, watching the red-tailed hawks circling below us, as we swapped stories of our beautiful life together while the sun slowly disappears down behind the tall pines to our right.

Anyway, dreams aside, the practicalities of life in Asheville are what we came to consider, part of which could include domiciling ourselves in one of the outlying small towns we had begun to hear so much about. Weaverville is one such town about ten miles due north along highway 26, a pleasant fifteen to twenty-minute drive from the city centre, through rolling green countryside. With a population of around four thousand, this compact little town is really more of a homely village and has all the characteristics of same with the usual mix of realtors, banks, cafes, a pizza parlour and an Italian restaurant. It is very walkable, most of the streets have sidewalks, a small lake with a fountain greets you as you enter the town along Merrimon Avenue, the famous Well-Bred Bakery and Café is there to satisfy the inner man and the ‘everything-for-the-apiarist’ store, Honey and the Hive, is waiting to sweeten everyone’s lives. It has all the essentials, even a small shopping centre on the outskirts with one of the chain supermarkets – sadly not one of the two I mentioned earlier – and from our few short experiences there, is replete with friendly residents. And we even found an absolutely perfect house, well within our budget, five minutes’ walk from the town centre, a delightful garden, views across the valley, a sunny south-facing aspect, and in a very presentable neighbourhood; for some reason the owner, who was also the realtor, wanted to sell so that he and his wife could move into one of the posher districts of North Asheville to be closer to town, which of course seemed nonsense to me, though I know Celine was slightly sympathetic to the idea!  All in all, to me the little town looked like an ideal place to plant one’s roots . . . or was it?

Perhaps a comparison with another apparently popular little town was called for. And thus, one rather damp, rainy day, we drove to Black Mountain 16 miles north-east of Asheville along Highway 40. Very different from Weaverville, Black Mountain with twice the population appeared to be decidedly more touristically inclined with its many eclectic shops, seemingly busier in spite of the wet weather, and with less of a “village” feel about it. It had a fair selection of eateries, many of which were closed by mid-afternoon, so we ended up eating simple wholesome fare at Trailhead Restaurant, a hangout for the locals judging from our noisy fellow diners. We did a bit of gift shopping and then took a short drive around the residential areas, but overall the town left us less than impressed and I believe all three of us – we had Celine’s brother Darius staying with us for a few days – decided  Weaverville was probably the nicer of the two.

Although house-hunting was a major reason for our visit, there was far more that we needed to learn about life in and around Asheville. We checked the countryside by taking a few trips out of the city and a short test drive along the famed Blue Ridge Parkway. For our first sortie we headed in the direction of Knoxville, Tennessee, to meet old friends for lunch. The drive was initially viewless for it does indeed rain at least a couple of days a week, bringing mist down low over the hills, and the choice of eatery was somewhat unusual, being a Russian-American roadside café called Grill 73 just off the highway of the same number, somewhere outside the town of Newport. However, the food turned out to be delicious, the company was good, and we had our first experience of driving through the Great Smoky Mountains.

Our next excursion was more focused on the surrounding countryside as we set out to drive the I-441, the one highway that goes right through the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Cherokee to Gatlinburg. We stopped for a coffee and pee break at the Oconaluftee River Visitor Centre and then heading northwest we soon saw our first caribou resting in the woods across the river. This was when I learnt that Park Rangers are much more than good-looking gals and guys in Smoky-the-Bear hats, as I got severely reprimanded for foolishly trying to get closer for the perfect photo; perhaps the signs saying “Keep off the field when caribou are present” should have given me a clue! From there onwards the road went steadily uphill, winding more and more, and offering us some wonderful lookouts with glorious views across miles of autumnal colours as the 130+ different species of trees, for which the region gets its reputation as the most bio-diverse part of the country, fluttered their red, yellow and scarlet leaves for all to admire. Our objective was Clingman’s Dome, at an elevation of 6,643 feet, the highest mountain in the Smokies and the highest point along the Appalachian Trail (read Bill Bryson’s  “A Walk in the Woods” to learn more). Luckily it is very auto-accessible, although the parking is so limited it must be chaotic in the height of the tourist season, and once parked near the Information Centre we had an easy half-mile paved trail to take us up the final 300ft to the summit and its 45ft high observation tower from where one has a magnificent 3600 panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. It was while we were atop that tower that I began to have fears that living in Asheville or that general area, one could possibly become punch drunk with the sight of not much else than trees. A slightly scary thought to one who professes to love the idea of living in the countryside and has just started to become acquainted with the natural beauty of western North Carolina.

House-hunting is a lot easier than hunting for good pictures of the prolific local wildlife; this caribou was relatively obliging but the Park Rangers weren’t so happy!

To complete the day’s experience, we finished the drive through the Smokies finally passing through, but with no wish to stop, the singularly unattractive city of Gatlinburg, an awful concoction of the worst, most grossly touristic parts of Niagara Falls in Canada, Las Vegas, Blackpool in England and Disneyland, plus every other tourist mecca the sane savvy educated tourist tries to avoid, before eventually finding ourselves all alone on the most untravelled road imaginable. Highway 32, the link between Highway 321 and the I-40, is hardly even a two lane road for most of its length as it twists and turns its way through a myriad of lonely forested hills and valleys, the undisturbed fallen leaves carpeting the tarmac, and making me for once begin to doubt the veracity of Google’s direction finding capabilities, especially as dusk was fast approaching and memories of the 1972 film “Deliverance” started to flash through my brain accompanied by the sound of duelling banjos! But what a wonderful drive it was, ending at the Walters Hydro-Electric Plant on the pigeon River as we crossed the border back into North Carolina, joined the I-40 and drove home on normal roads once more.

On our penultimate day, we drove south-east along highway 26 to the Tryon Equestrian Centre, to satisfy brother Darius’ abiding passion for horses. We were lucky enough to visit on a day when trials for an upcoming major event were taking place, so we did see some impressive horsemanship, but otherwise the venue was fairly dead, so we soon headed back up the road to Hendersonville, another town that some people compare favourably with Asheville. Their implication is that it is perhaps a little more refined, but the town-wide power-cut that greeted us did nothing to confirm that view, the dead traffic signals causing us one rather alarming near-incident. Powerless, practically all the shops, cafés and restaurants had closed for the day, all the more unfortunate as the town was preparing itself for its annual Halloween Parade that evening. One brave lady working the afternoon shift in the Black Bear Café bucked the trend and was kept extremely busy as we and everyone else in town sought out her coffees and croissants.

A chance conversation at Tryon had elicited the advice that we really should visit Dupont State Forest whilst we were in the area of Hendersonville, and as the weather was so obliging, sunny and cool, we went back into the countryside to see Hooker Falls and Triple Falls. The 10-15 ft drop of the former is not that impressive to the casual observer but is evidently a favourite testing ground for the bravado of local kayakers and we watched a half dozen brave souls as they projected their little polyethylene craft over the edge  of the cascade, bobbing up from the maelstrom of foaming water a few seconds later. The Triple Falls however were a wholly different visual spectacle. A brisk ten minute walk up from the car-park took us to a lookout where we had a dramatic view through a break in the trees across the valley to a series of three successive cascades thundering down the rocky hillside towards us and being forced to take a sharp right turn as it reached the river below; there’s certainly no lack of water in these hills!

Triple Falls in Dupont State Forest

Another town said to be popular with retirees moving into this region, and conveniently located on our road home, is Brevard where we did our usual quick drive around and walk through as the sun started to disappear behind the surrounding hills. Less than an hour’s drive from Asheville the countryside around Brevard was less densely wooded and the airy feeling of rolling horse-country was in some ways a welcome change from the never-ending pageant of autumn colours with which we had, by then, become familiar. Unfortunately, the town itself appeared a little too much on the tranquil side, bringing on fears of early, rocking-chair induced senility, something that Asheville could never be accused of doing.

Back in our cosy Home-Exchange dwelling once more, we contemplated all the other things we had done to make our two weeks stay so entertaining: an evening of culture when we watched the Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake, delicious eats at just a sampling of the city’s eclectic mix of fine restaurants including Spanish style tapas at “Curate”, “Rhubarb” where we ate outside while enjoying the antics of a trio of hill-billy musicians playing tin-can double bass, spoons and banjo on the sidewalk, and slightly more refined dining at “Chestnut”, plenty of enjoyable walks along city streets window-shopping and admiring the many Art Deco buildings, seeing black bears, red foxes and grey wolves up close in the West NC Nature Centre, taking afternoon tea at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Biltmore village, and seeing a wild black bear wandering peacefully through someone’s garden on the slopes of Mt Patton. And we didn’t sample any of the breweries, visited only a fraction of the many art galleries, and completely failed to find time for any of the museums or one of the many concerts on offer.

Even so late in the season, it was easy to imagine that with so much to offer, Asheville becomes very busy during peak holiday periods and so it is also understandable why so many locals complained about the traffic, parking difficulties and so forth, “compared to how it used to be”. But to someone coming from the frenetic lifestyle of Southern California the traffic was hardly noticeable, apart from the evening rush hour when there would be a few more than the usual half dozen cars waiting with you at red traffic lights and road rage was totally absent. It is a city in which the slower pace of life and the laid-back atmosphere contribute to quickly making one feel comfortable and at home. But do we still want to live there? That is a moot question, for much as we enjoyed Asheville’s many qualities, we are still unsure whether we will also enjoy its cool winters and, even more fundamental, we still need to convince ourselves that a major deracination is what our lives really need.

After a couple of weeks, I was sorry when the time came to leave Asheville behind us, but we had planned to extend our trip down into South Carolina, to visit my son Tom and his family who relocated there six months previously, and sample the delights that Charleston had to offer. This time we used the services of HomeAway.com to find ourselves a cosy little single storey duplex in Mt.Pleasant as our base for the week. About mid-way between Tom’s new home and the centre of Charleston we were well placed to both enjoy the family and get a brief taste of life in that land of reputedly hot humid summers, mosquitoes and hurricanes. November was of course the wrong time of year to experience any of those hazards, so we were able to enjoy ourselves unthreatened. Charleston is a compact city full of elegant old homes from its Colonial days and we enjoyed our peregrinations through its narrow streets, mostly on foot, but once ably supplemented by a ride in a horse-drawn carriage with a very erudite driver who delighted us with his intimate tales of the lives of the homes and owners alike. We took a few trips out of the city, to a couple of plantations, to Seabrook Island, and one day we drove down to Savannah GA, another fascinating old Colonial city. With reminders at every turn of either the ignominious defeat my British countrymen took in the War of Independence or the part the locals played in the American Civil War, history abounds everywhere. These attractions together with Charleston’s large protected harbour, and the sailing opportunities that offers, the miles of beautiful clean beaches and a cost of living considerably lower than they had left behind in SoCal, it was easy to see why Tom and his family decided to make their move. But the surrounding countryside is flat and low-lying, wetlands abound as many rivers wind their way through the swampland, making a complete contrast with where we had spent the previous fortnight. Add the three aforementioned negative threats to a peaceful life into the account and I still know which of the two I personally prefer.

A swampy lake in the grounds of Magnolia Plantation beside the Ashley River; we were surprised to learn that rice rice was this plantation’s main crop in the eighteenth century.

Undeterred by our continued indecision, Celine and I always enjoy our travels and are off again in a few months, this time for a prolonged journey to Poland, to meet family and friends and for me to experience more of Celine’s homeland. Perhaps upon our return we will ruminate further about the uprooting idea. Who knows, we might probe into the possibility of buying a second home in Poland, or even consider moving there! After all the world is our oyster and we are both still young enough to wield a sword to open it! (Thanks to Mr Shakespeare  and his “Merry Wives of Windsor”.)

SFTF – Maybe we could stay in California? Part 1: Ojai Okay?

Part one – Ojai Okay?

 The main source of my dissatisfaction with living where we do in Long Beach, California is the close proximity of Los Angeles and all that entails, never-ending urbanisation, high traffic volumes, too many people and no real countryside out of sight and sound of all the aforementioned. There are, however, pluses about life in this state, the weather being the first to come to mind and also the one that is probably foremost in Celine’s mind when we start to discuss our nest-building options. We have other reasons for not wanting to leave here in too much of a hurry, mostly centred around family, some of whom are a delight to be with as they grow up far too fast, others who we just like to be around and one who needs our ongoing support as he fights a vicious tumour. And finally one does kind of get used to the place one has become familiar with over the years.

The question, therefore, is “Can we overcome my dissatisfaction without also losing out on the pluses?” and so last week we decided to look around in our own backyard and drove a hundred miles north of here to Ojai (pronounced OH-hy), a small town on the edge of the Los Padres National Forest. The derivation of the name is variously said to be either from an indigenous word meaning nest,rather appropriate for two people who have spent the last six or seven years searching for a new place to do just that, or it may be from the Chumash word “Awha’y” meaning moonwhich also has good vibes for Celine’s name in Greek is Selene, who was the goddess of the moon. Whichever way you look at it there has to be some reason why this place came up on our radar and sceptic though I am, I’m quite happy to read the runes if what they say suits my way of thinking!

Once we got clear of the oilfields just north of Ventura, the drive along Highway 33 into Ojai Valley gave all the right vibes as we got closer to the mountains, the road changed from a dual carriageway to a single lane, the vista became greener and with less hectic traffic your scribe became calmer. We stopped for gas in Oak View, an appropriate name as we were soon to discover that Ojai Valley is so green because of all the California Oak trees which seem to abound there and soon after, the road turned eastwards as we joined Highway 150 in Mira Monte, where we noticed a large mobile-home park, which turns out to be one of four such estates in that town. There’s no doubt that on initial face value mobile homes provide an economic alternative for those, such as ourselves indeed, who cannot always afford a house in our ideal location, but I also have to wonder if they are such a wise investment when one is living at the mercy of whoever owns the land upon which that home is “parked”. I have to admit my negative feelings arise from tales I heard about such communities back in Britain, where unscrupulous landowners were quite ruthless towards their residents, and as a result many parks became quite unpleasant places to live; I think that perhaps I need to do some further research on that type of home ownership here in California, as I do begin to wonder if it could be a solution to our quandary.

Anyway, just a few miles further and we found ourselves in the middle of Ojai and as is our wont, once again we took ourselves on a little orientation tour around the town. The main street had some handsome older buildings including what we discovered later was the old Post Office Tower, a long arcade reminiscent of some we had enjoyed in Bologna during our recent trip to Italy and across the road a tree-filled public park. Traffic was light, street parking was free for a couple of hours, the views of surrounding mountains were delightful and the general atmosphere was relaxing and stress-free, a definite positive after life in the Los Angeles basin. We turned off north into the main residential neighbourhood and criss-crossed back and forth, past many attractive homes but started to wonder if we may have been a bit out of our financial depth – this was mainly after we picked up a For Sale description sheet outside one very fine old house surrounded by a large garden of mature trees that was well over $1m, somewhat similar to prices in our up-market corner of Long Beach. Nevertheless we were starting to feel pretty good about the place, a sense that was further reinforced as we drove across to the other side of the town, in and around Soule Park, a large green space beside the river good for picnics and walking the dog –  one of which we don’t actually have at the moment – through one or two other smaller neighborhoods and eventually finding ourselves at Persimmon Hill, a very exclusive estate of large elegant homes, prime horse property and beautiful views across Ojai Valley.

Returning to the main street, East Ojai Avenue, we parked in a shady corner of Westridge Midtown Market IGA’s car park to pick up some groceries (and make use of their ‘facilities’) before walking through the town centre, popping into Libbey Park and briefly watching some musicians rehearsing in Libbey Bowl where the Ojai Annual Music Festival was due to open that evening. Apparently there are plenty of things happening in Ojai during the summer including wine and beer festivals and a Lavender Festival which we hope to visit later in the month. Our post-midday tummy rumblings prompted us to drop into the Ojai Café Emporium for – in my case at least – life-saving scones, quiche and coffee none of which were very wonderful although the service was friendly enough. With the “inner man” suitably sated, we set off to find a realtor, finally meeting the very laid back Ron McCrea, the owner of Ojai Valley Real Estate who seemed decidedly underwhelmed by our price range and took great delight in showing us a map of the December 2017 Thomas fire that encircled the town like a giant horse-shoe and resulted in dense smoke covering the town for several days; very encouraging!

Unperturbed we went and looked at four possible* homes for sale (*that is they were within our price range) that we found in one of the local newspapers, all of which further deflated our enthusiasm for the town as a possible future nesting site. Which is a real shame as the town is in a beautiful setting, has a friendly, relaxed ambience – the local shops even seem to recognise the benefits of an afternoon siesta – has lots of chic artsy studios and boutiques reflecting no doubt the prosperity of many of the residents, and even has one – soon to be two if notices are to be believed – charming little theatre, plus the usual necessary, for Celine at least, offerings of yoga and zumba studios, and for me the potential of having a productive little back garden due to the supposedly very fertile soil to be found throughout the valley.

The afternoon was drawing on by the time we had seen as much as we could for the day, and not wishing to face the Los Angeles evening rush-hour traffic, we headed west instead, taking the old 150 road towards Santa Barbara, a lovely drive as the road winds its way around the edge of Lake Casitas, a man-made lake created in 1959, still somewhat lacking its full water complement in spite of recent rains, and around the edge of Los Padres National Forest, a vast untamed area with plenty of hiking trails and, we understand, lots of wildlife. It was nearly dusk as we arrived in downtown Santa Barbara and checked baggageless into the Holiday Inn Express hotel, an older building fairly typical of much of the city’s traditional architecture, before venturing back out to find a healthy supper in The Natural Café, having very little energy left for much else. The next morning we enjoyed strolling up State St before checking out, as unladen as we had arrived, taking to the road again and spending an interesting couple of hours walking around The Old Mission, the only one of the original thirty plus Californian missions built by the Franciscan order that still has an active community of monks living and working there. This was followed by a short detour among the opulent homes in the Eucalyptus Hill neighbourhood, just confirming for ourselves that we certainly could not afford to live in Santa Barabara, before the very agreeable drive along highway 101 taking us back into that great, overly busy, exceedingly overly populated megalopolis that is Los Angeles, and thence slowly home among the throngs of Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic.

Is Ojai okay? Well it is certainly a delightful small country town which ticks a lot of our boxes, but I fear we may be too late to bag ourselves a bargain. So the search continues, perhaps we’ll head south next time, and try our luck a little closer to the Mexican border . . .