Which first? The good or the bad? Well it’s a lovely warm and sunny day today.

And thanks to Jane for suggesting California as an alternative to Vermont. I was fortunate enough to spend about 10 years of my business life working in International as people put it. So I saw most - not all - of the world (watch out or I’ll tell you about the British Trade Missions I led to the USSR and India) and a fair amount of the USA - including California. I was often in San Fran, LA and San Diego on business - and over time spread myself about by car to sightsee and enjoy. I must have had the occasional bad experience, but none come to mind. I have some lovely memories of lovely people. Apart from an occasional lack of sense of humour over security (and this decades before 9 / 11).

I was staying in a large hotel in LA. Breakfast tray from room service. Being a tidy chap, I went to put the tray outside my door. I happened to be stark naked at the time. Don’t ask me how, but I over-reached myself and the door - on a very strong spring for security reasons - slammed shut behind me. Well now. Stifle scream and see wall-phone for maids to use. Call down. Pls. will someone let me back into my room NOW - if not sooner. And run into deep suspicion. Hang on to phone, face to wall, assailed by transfers and long waits whilst phones brrr somewhere. At last deep cross questioning. How could I PROVE I was the occupant? Try that with no clothes on. Suggest that nudist robbery was a very unlikely form of sport in LA - or anywhere apart from a nudist colony. And what happens? They send a VERY BIG MAN with a VERY BIG GUN who stands well back and DEMANDS that I face him, then DEMANDS that I prove who I am. You couldn’t make it up.

However the adult readers amongst us will know intuitively that standing naked in a hotel corridor trying to reason with a gun-wielding idiot whilst the occasional disbelieving guest passes by (direct to the Front Desk to complain, doubtless) makes the male dangly bits try and hide themselves. So I’m not even a - how shall I put it? - robust looking nudist. Probably about as - how shall we say? - ‘well formed’ as a 7 year old just after swimming in a country stream in November. Stupid sod. Him, not me. I told him to open the door, open my passport which was lying exactly THERE and I would tell him the dates of the latest three stamps in it and the countries that made them. Well THAT was stupid of me. With a BIG GUN who needs to know about passports? However, it worked in the end. When I checked out no-one would look me in the eye. Yeah, it’s a c-o-o-l place, California!!!! And thanks, Jane. Don’t let me know your address or I might just - -. No, don’t go there.

Enough for this blog - I’ll write another.

I’m on a GBS kick just now (oh, you’ve noticed) ‘Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same’. Couldn’t put it better myself!

Dad