SLO

What with one thing and another, and spending far, far too many hours last weekend going through the photographs I took on my recent holiday, I seem to have got myself so very far behind with all this blogging mullarkey and simultaneously got myself far, far ahead of myself. After all, our time spent in San Luis Obispo was over halfway through the trip and, apart from telling you about dear old “Tim”, I’ve barely told you anything yet about the latest great adventure, and I certainly haven’t given you the opportunity to make your excuses and quietly leave before your eyes glaze over at the awful enormity of having to experience someone else’s holiday experiences...


Actually, looking at those recent stats, maybe you’re already well aware of what’s coming and have all gone into hiding... Still, no matter. Tales are there for the telling, even if nobody wants to hear them, but many of them are going to have to wait because we have some unfinished business from yesterday to attend to first.


You see, with all my chat about San Luis Obispo yesterday, I failed completely to mention the name of the Motel we stayed in, the name of the café that I was so impressed by, or to mention the Mission Bells, so, in order to rectify that less-than-dreadful omission (in the great scheme of things), here are a few more photographs taken on that Monday morning, including the one of that hummingbird which I was so pleased about.


The rather lovely Motel we overnighted in was called “The Peach Tree Inn” and was one that we got out of the “Lonely Planet” guide so, I suppose, we shouldn’t have been too surprised to find it so full of students at breakfast in the morning. I, rather naturally, got rather intimidated by their brimming over-confidence and the fact that they all had the air of being far older than me despite the fact that they couldn’t have been. One of them oozed so much confidence that I abandoned the toaster and fled with my bread still pale and pasty rather than have to be anywhere near her for any longer. They were all, it seemed, in the middle of some vast cycling enterprise which I imagine had something to do with charity and which required copious amounts of food from the owner who had a very tolerant ex-services air about him, and a vast amount of support crew and equipment to see them on their merry way.


Happily, as the car park cleared, the bird life that the owner seemed to encourage into his own little oasis of calm in the world, returned. The soft chirruping of so many strange and unusual breeds on a warm, sunny morning is something I am really trying very hard to cherish, and obviously, capturing that moment with the hummingbird was just the icing on the cake, especially as the beloved had kept on spotting them whilst I was otherwise engaged taking one hundred and one pictures of the same old dreary bit of rock that was patently not festooned with hummingbirds. Another guest remarked as I pounced with my camera that morning that, on a previous visit, she’d seen at least ten clustered on one of those feeders, but such lofty ambitions in the bird-watching field were not on my agenda that morning. One would and did make me deliriously happy, and actually, I saw two, but the green one was far too quick for me.

The five bells of the Mission of San Luis Obispo del Tolosa (to give it its full title) each have individual names, which were given to them in order to honour the patron saints of Alta California’s first five missions (it says here...). The names are (from left to right in the picture) “Carlos”, “Diego” and “Antonio”, with the other two (which can’t be seen in my photograph, but have slots in the wall around the corner to the right of these three) being named “Gabriel” and “Luis”, all of which provide a distinctive background to the soundtrack of life in San Luis Obispo. There’s also a “little shop”, but the walls covered in plaster saints and stained glass trinkets were not to my personal taste and so I did a quick “about turn” and departed swiftly.

Interestingly (perhaps), the missions in California seem to play a large role in the general support of the homeless population in much the same way that general society chooses not to. Certainly more than the average number seemed to gravitate towards these spiritual houses and were presumably given suitable help by having done so. To the casual observer, which is, of course, all I could ever really be, America seems to be a tough place to live in if you have failed to live up to the American “dream”, so it’s very lucky that there are still these places to provide such support, especially in a culture that seems to suggest that being in such a situation is always “your own fault”. As always, the truth is always far more complicated in many cases. Happily there seems to have been a cultural shift amongst the so-called “super rich” that maybe, just maybe, it is possible to be too well off, and a certain amount of philanthropy seems to be returning to the public debate. Well, that’s certainly how it appeared to me, at any rate, and returning home to face this “budget week”, maybe that’s another American idea that we should think about importing and embracing.

Finally, I just must share the noticeboard from the Kreuzberg Café (as my snapshots seem to be telling me it was called) with its list of sandwiches based around the names of famous authors because it is simply a wonderful way to remember all of those writers in an environment that seemed to be rather devoted to that most lo-tech of pleasures, the humble book. Granted, I’m not completely convinced of the wisdom of ordering a “Sylvia Plath” (especially if the chef is having an off day) or an “Ernest Hemingway” for that matter, but they all looked very good and it is a lot of fun spotting just who they haven’t named a book after. I wonder whether they change it from time-to-time, depending upon how the mood (or the current curriculum) takes them? Dammit! I always think of these clever questions when it’s far too late to ask them...