The sunniest February ever
The weather has been far too wonderful of late for blogging. Despite the dire predictions and the climate charts I have hardly seen a cloud for the last three weeks, let alone witnessed any rainfall. Sunday was so warm and sunny that we sat outside Ben and Jerry’s in our t-shirts eating ice-cream (Rachel with a restrained waffle-cone vanilla heath-bar crunch, myself with the Banana Fudge Royale)! Quite the best February in living memory. Locals predict a dire Summer of drought, hosepipe bans and forest fires; really, there is no pleasing some people. Meanwhile, Californians have been swept away in torrential mudslides. Yes, it’s hard not to smile.
I have been in rude health of late; yes, that’s right: rude health. Clearly the climate here agrees with me as I have had barely a sniffle since arriving in August, as might be juxtaposed to my usual winter of discontent. This is despite the fact that colleagues and indeed Rachel seem to be getting sick on a regular basis, the office appearing, at times, rather more like the bronchial ward at Brighton General, with less tobacco. So given this history I was quite annoyed to catch a cold and take a sick day Friday before last. It was especially frustrating as we had planned to take advantage of the holiday weekend to travel to the coast… I was all for tucking myself in for the duration with a cup of tea, a cat and a few magazines. However much to Rachel’s credit she ordered me out of bed and into the passenger seat of the ginger car and drove us to Astoria regardless of my condition, which coincidentally took a rapid turn for the better (rude health I tell you). The journey followed the route of the Columbia out to the shore. We found a little restaurant for dinner, seemingly rather dumpy, where I ate quite the best halibut and chips of my life.
On Saturday morning we found a beautiful quiet stretch of beach just along the coast. The sun shone brightly. I walked along the line where the strongest waves fissle out to nothing and watched as pale circles extended out from my footsteps; meanwhile Rachel tracked one way and then the other in front of me, searching for sand dollars. Mission successful: not one but two complete specimens were discovered!
Next we headed on down to the imaginatively named Seaside - the most commercial of the coastal resorts, full of tourists even on this winter's day and with all the usual shops selling nonsense and sticky sweet things... including a store which boasted 192 flavours of salt-water taffy... I wasn't aware that there were 192 flavours of anything full-stop, so had to check it out for myself. Salt-water taffys, for the uninitiated, are irregularly shaped soft-toffee like sweets which taste like weak opal fruits that have been left in the sun too long. Not everyone's cup-of-tea, then. As far as I am concerned, British sweets reign supreme (apart from the Dane's tyrkisk peber of course, but that is an exception). Rachel strongly disagrees however, suggesting that these are tastes acquired in childhood. Although even she prefer's Cadbury's to Hershey's chocolate.
Lindstrom's Danish Bakery in Astoria, image added primarily for Jacob's sake.
I found the touristy delights of Seaside a bit too much of a contrast from the serenity of elsewhere on the coast and we returned to Astoria for the evening; more of a working town with some interesting diversions than a full-on cockney jellied eels and dodgems knees-up cor blimey sort of thing, US-style (which means better executed but without character). Speaking of cockney-isms, very few people over here can differentiate between Mike Reid and Brian Sewell accent-wise, providing the creative Brit-abroad a far wider range of expression that would normally prove acceptable amongst his peers. To the American ear (and I have this on good authority) a British accent is only one step removed from that of the outre homosexual - I presume of the bookish Oxford-don stereotype, rather than the Will and Grace variant. In consequence I feel quite free to use such terms as jolly and pigs-ear in consecutive sentences and apparently both are found to be equally charming. The screenplay for The Limey is a good source of inspiration and I look forward to deploying whole paragraphs of this nature in due course:
"Look, mush, you're the guv'nor here, I can see that, I'm on your manor now, right. So there's no need to get out of your pram. I'm Johnny-come-lately to all this. Whatever the bollocks between you and this slag Valentine, it's got nothing to do with me."
Charming I tell you.
Anyhow, back to the plot: we had a lovely time.
We travelled back through Tillamook, famous nationwide for it's dairly products. The cows have the best of it, as a visit to the cheese factory soon confirms: observing clinically-attired drone-staff mechanically moving identical giant-sized blocks of tasteless orange fat from machine to machine felt more like watching a Marxist video on the perils of industrial alienation than a celebration of the world of cheese.
Back in Portland I have found a group of people to kick a football with on Saturday mornings. After six months on the old Ben and Jerry's diet, the first game nearly did for me, but I seem to be back in my stride now (i.e. hapless but enthusiastic). To call it informal would be a bit of an understatement but it's good fun and a good way to meet new people too.
We met up with the Bartster on Saturday night to hear some music at Dante's in Old Town (the rougher side of downtown, near the river). The first, Robbers on High Street (sic - obviously it should be Robbers on the High Street) sounded to me like a more melodic and far less pretentious versionof The Strokes, with some outstanding songs. Then the main act: Devotchka, who were simply outstanding; offbeat and utterly hypnotic tunes which sound like they've been dragged from a Polish gypsy camp and abandoned somewhere down in South America. One man wore a suit which it looked like he'd slept in for several years and had the bearing of an awkward Eastern European intellectual who'd fallen off the boat onto Ellis Island circa 1900; he alternated playing the violin and the accordian. The drummer (who came on stage playing the trumpet) looked like James Fox in Performance and played in an upbeat, moddish fashion. A Spanish senorita alternated between the double-bass and the tuba. Meanwhile the lead vocalist - an incredibly charismatic individual who looked like a darker, more slender and more handsome (yes, ladies, it's really true) version of George Clooney, played guitar, sitar, trumpet and what looked like an ancient experimental electronic instrument and sang like his heart was breaking and his life depended on it, eyes closed. No, I know you don't believe me, but check out their site and then buy their records and then hope they tour Europe soon! In any case if you like music then we should return to Dante's when you visit; it's a great little club with little round tables and (albeit flaky) waitress service, an old brick-building with great acoustics, dimly lit in red and with a huge firepit in the corner. Either that of The Crystal Ballrooms with the amazing bouncy dancefloor!
I have been in rude health of late; yes, that’s right: rude health. Clearly the climate here agrees with me as I have had barely a sniffle since arriving in August, as might be juxtaposed to my usual winter of discontent. This is despite the fact that colleagues and indeed Rachel seem to be getting sick on a regular basis, the office appearing, at times, rather more like the bronchial ward at Brighton General, with less tobacco. So given this history I was quite annoyed to catch a cold and take a sick day Friday before last. It was especially frustrating as we had planned to take advantage of the holiday weekend to travel to the coast… I was all for tucking myself in for the duration with a cup of tea, a cat and a few magazines. However much to Rachel’s credit she ordered me out of bed and into the passenger seat of the ginger car and drove us to Astoria regardless of my condition, which coincidentally took a rapid turn for the better (rude health I tell you). The journey followed the route of the Columbia out to the shore. We found a little restaurant for dinner, seemingly rather dumpy, where I ate quite the best halibut and chips of my life.
On Saturday morning we found a beautiful quiet stretch of beach just along the coast. The sun shone brightly. I walked along the line where the strongest waves fissle out to nothing and watched as pale circles extended out from my footsteps; meanwhile Rachel tracked one way and then the other in front of me, searching for sand dollars. Mission successful: not one but two complete specimens were discovered!
Next we headed on down to the imaginatively named Seaside - the most commercial of the coastal resorts, full of tourists even on this winter's day and with all the usual shops selling nonsense and sticky sweet things... including a store which boasted 192 flavours of salt-water taffy... I wasn't aware that there were 192 flavours of anything full-stop, so had to check it out for myself. Salt-water taffys, for the uninitiated, are irregularly shaped soft-toffee like sweets which taste like weak opal fruits that have been left in the sun too long. Not everyone's cup-of-tea, then. As far as I am concerned, British sweets reign supreme (apart from the Dane's tyrkisk peber of course, but that is an exception). Rachel strongly disagrees however, suggesting that these are tastes acquired in childhood. Although even she prefer's Cadbury's to Hershey's chocolate.
Lindstrom's Danish Bakery in Astoria, image added primarily for Jacob's sake.
I found the touristy delights of Seaside a bit too much of a contrast from the serenity of elsewhere on the coast and we returned to Astoria for the evening; more of a working town with some interesting diversions than a full-on cockney jellied eels and dodgems knees-up cor blimey sort of thing, US-style (which means better executed but without character). Speaking of cockney-isms, very few people over here can differentiate between Mike Reid and Brian Sewell accent-wise, providing the creative Brit-abroad a far wider range of expression that would normally prove acceptable amongst his peers. To the American ear (and I have this on good authority) a British accent is only one step removed from that of the outre homosexual - I presume of the bookish Oxford-don stereotype, rather than the Will and Grace variant. In consequence I feel quite free to use such terms as jolly and pigs-ear in consecutive sentences and apparently both are found to be equally charming. The screenplay for The Limey is a good source of inspiration and I look forward to deploying whole paragraphs of this nature in due course:
"Look, mush, you're the guv'nor here, I can see that, I'm on your manor now, right. So there's no need to get out of your pram. I'm Johnny-come-lately to all this. Whatever the bollocks between you and this slag Valentine, it's got nothing to do with me."
Charming I tell you.
Anyhow, back to the plot: we had a lovely time.
We travelled back through Tillamook, famous nationwide for it's dairly products. The cows have the best of it, as a visit to the cheese factory soon confirms: observing clinically-attired drone-staff mechanically moving identical giant-sized blocks of tasteless orange fat from machine to machine felt more like watching a Marxist video on the perils of industrial alienation than a celebration of the world of cheese.
Back in Portland I have found a group of people to kick a football with on Saturday mornings. After six months on the old Ben and Jerry's diet, the first game nearly did for me, but I seem to be back in my stride now (i.e. hapless but enthusiastic). To call it informal would be a bit of an understatement but it's good fun and a good way to meet new people too.
We met up with the Bartster on Saturday night to hear some music at Dante's in Old Town (the rougher side of downtown, near the river). The first, Robbers on High Street (sic - obviously it should be Robbers on the High Street) sounded to me like a more melodic and far less pretentious versionof The Strokes, with some outstanding songs. Then the main act: Devotchka, who were simply outstanding; offbeat and utterly hypnotic tunes which sound like they've been dragged from a Polish gypsy camp and abandoned somewhere down in South America. One man wore a suit which it looked like he'd slept in for several years and had the bearing of an awkward Eastern European intellectual who'd fallen off the boat onto Ellis Island circa 1900; he alternated playing the violin and the accordian. The drummer (who came on stage playing the trumpet) looked like James Fox in Performance and played in an upbeat, moddish fashion. A Spanish senorita alternated between the double-bass and the tuba. Meanwhile the lead vocalist - an incredibly charismatic individual who looked like a darker, more slender and more handsome (yes, ladies, it's really true) version of George Clooney, played guitar, sitar, trumpet and what looked like an ancient experimental electronic instrument and sang like his heart was breaking and his life depended on it, eyes closed. No, I know you don't believe me, but check out their site and then buy their records and then hope they tour Europe soon! In any case if you like music then we should return to Dante's when you visit; it's a great little club with little round tables and (albeit flaky) waitress service, an old brick-building with great acoustics, dimly lit in red and with a huge firepit in the corner. Either that of The Crystal Ballrooms with the amazing bouncy dancefloor!
posted by Richard Tammar at 9:50 PM
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