we’ve Very Busy Working right now but just wanted to let you know that our latest column Just Went Live (don’t you adore the interweb?)

we took this picture outside the gallery while we were Gathering our Thoughts, slightly nervous (actually) about meeting the great David Fahey…….can you tell?

*shylooktocamera*

more. to. come.

#rushingOff.

do forgive >xx

a truly beauteous day……

we wrote 2000 (!!) words of The House On Church Row (no sneak peek today – it’s getting Rather involved and we’d just like to Finish it as opposed to confuse ourselves greatly).

then we met friends-for-lunch in Beverly Hills and afterwards drove to Santa Monica to the divine Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic Couture to interview someone from their HQ for our column next week in Los Angeles, I’m Yours.

the bed linens there are just too too beautiful for words.

and there were fresh rose buds in tiny vases on the counter and Ms. Carla Bruni on the sound system.

we had achieved so much by 3pm today that we decided to Take The Rest Of The Day Off and go to the beach.

so we did.

isn’t that glorious?

you’re right! that does look familiar (just in case you’re outside the USA and naughty You Tube won’t let you see it….here’s another clue from Mr. seeing-stars.)

we peeked through foliage.

and admired the human-dolphins-in-slinky-black-wetsuits.

before slowly making our way home – with sandy toes and salt-kissed calves and extra freckles and tousled sun-bleached hair.  *sighs*

a really lovely day.

in fact a splendid week so far and it’s only tuesday night.

did you have a delicious tuesday?

any sand in your toes?

darlings – we’ve got an Attorney! a lady-attorney.

and in Beverly Hills no less (very swish).

we are so relieved and intrigued and happy and ready-to-get-serious-about-business and all that – not that we weren’t before and we do have a NY based attorney but there was something so well – fabulous – about being in Beverly Hills and sipping mineral water and “talking to one’s attorney”. 

it feels sparkly and hopeful.

like this dress in the window of Brooks Bros.

and a sample of “Beige” from the Chanel boutique on Rodeo Drive (they only had huge bottles and we’re more of a compact-cute-can’t-drop-it-on-the-floor size of fragrance wearer).

still.

a sample is always delicious.

actually, this morning, before we met Our New Attorney, we felt a lot like Alexis Colby’s sister (in RL) or perhaps (because of our new cat’s eyes glasses) a bit like another lady novelist of some repute, because we were Editing The Manuscript while referring to our Publisher’s Notes (it felt GLORIOUS) and writing the Catalog(ue) Copy *blush*.

and now we must WRITE more on The House on Church Row – and we feel especially inspired because our good friend Vickie Lester sent us this!

quelle serendipity!

so, we’re almost there……….

The roads were jammed all the way south to Brighton. Women were driving the new Harden cars from as far afield as Scotland and had been traveling all night, fueled on Thermos of hot coffee and cheese and tomato sandwiches. Marion was astonished. She peered out from the passenger seat as they passed through odd little towns with names like Pease Pottage and saw thousands of women putting their foot down and making time while laughing and playing music, windows open to the breeze. Most of the cars were full – two women in the front, one driving and two, sometimes three if they were especially slim, in the back. It was a party on wheels and it was heading to Brighton.

At Preston Park, Lydia stopped to get petrol and Marion stretched her legs. A woman at the pump opposite recognized her from the press coverage. Suddenly women crowded around her, asking for her autograph and (strange to say for a group of Englishwomen) hugs. Marion had never felt so overwhelmed. Especially by the hugging from bosomy ladies with optimistic printed cotton dresses and delicately scented with lavender. Everyone wanted to tell Marion how she’d changed her life. Most had a story about buying the car as a rebellious instinct – a need to run away – be free at last. Others talked about reading Annabelle’s blog and finding their own voice. Marion was embarrassed to admit that she had not kept up with Annabelle’s blog. How long had she been writing it? The connections made around the blog, the campaign and the cars themselves were astonishing. There had never been a marketing push like it. And yet – and yet – Marion had to admit that she had little to do with it.

The campaign was good. Of course it was good. The graphics were excellent, the picture of the car suitably alluring and enticing and adorable, the copy promised more than a consumer product ever should. But that wasn’t why they bought the car. These women told her that reading what each other had said about the car sparked their imagination. Marion knew the boys in New York liked to talk about WOM (word of mouth, if you didn’t guess that one) but this more than people talking up a product. This was a movement.

Maybe she had not put any magic into the campaign at all. That was a bit galling. Marion had been feeling secretly proud of herself for doing it all over again. She wanted to taunt the boys in New York and Beijing and Moscow and force them to come after her. She was thrilled (not that she would admit it publicly) that Nigel himself, the last member of the Establishment, had decided to come out from behind the anonymous plush walls of his private club to teach her a lesson.

But what if none of this was her doing? What if it just happened at the right time? Well that changed everything.

Kelly managed to rescue her from the crowds of adoring women with a disgusted look and a swift pull on her arm. “Quite the working class feminist hero, aren’t you?” she sneered. Marion looked at her astonished. It was a team effort, she tried to explain, but Kelly could see that Marion was the only one they wanted to talk to.

By the time they reached Regency Square, Marion was dozing in the passenger seat. Lydia stopped the car and turned off the ignition. She pointed to Dorian in the back of the car. “We need to disguise you,” she said, darkly. Dorian nodded, he knew exactly what she meant.

“Radical red or brassy blonde?” he asked, digging into his huge bag and pulling out two wigs. Kelly laughed. The blonde wig looked exactly like the English movie star, Diana Dors. She tapped that one and he slipped it on expertly, applied some false eyelashes and bright red lipstick. “What about my outfit?” he said, looking down at his drainpipe jeans, Doctor Marten boots and skinny shrunken boy chest t-shirt. Kelly took off her leather jacket and gave it to him. He now looked like a blonde Stockard Channing from the movie Grease.

“Just keep the jacket open so no one can see you don’t have tits,” said Kelly, tapping Marion on the shoulder to wake her up.

“Huh?” said Marion, dozily. She looked back and saw Dorian and did a double take. “You look like Stockard Channing but with blonde hair,” she said, “When did you get changed?”

“You’ve been fast asleep since we left the petrol station at Preston Park,” said Lydia, “Come on, we’re here.” She got out of the car and stretched in the late afternoon sunshine. She loved Brighton. It was one of those places that her mother thought was beyond the pale – such a naughty little seaside kiss-me-quick town.

Regency Square was a 19^th century development that was once very posh and had now fallen on hard times. A few grand rooms remained inside multi-person flats as memories of what was. But many of the houses were now hotels for drifting tourist trade. The view of the sea though, was glorious. Twinkling in the six o’clock sunshine, the green railings stood proudly with a seagull perched on every one, looking out to sea like statues.

Lydia consulted her notes and knocked on the basement door of one of the once grand houses. There was no answer. She looked worriedly around. Her phone rang. It was Charlotte. She had not enjoyed the journey south – the buffet car was closed and smoking was banned, even out the window of the loos (she had been caught by the conductor and let off with a warning because she terrified him so much).

“Where the hell are you?” said Charlotte. Lydia was plaintive, she read out the address from the piece of paper. Charlotte was merciless. “It moved! A Decade ago!” she gave her the new address in Cambridge Grove. Lydia piled everyone back into the car and drove just under two miles east. They took ages to park and finally found a spot adjacent to Cambridge Grove, a small mews street, with garages at street level.

“So this is Brighton,” said Marion, looking around.

“Hove, actually,” said Charlotte who was standing just inside the double doors of a mechanics garage. She quickly motioned for them to follow her and went through the garage and out into a tiny back garden and through a door in the fence. They were now inside a mews house on the other side. Some very serious-faced women in overalls (or dungarees as the English call them) were sitting drinking mugs of tea in the kitchen. It felt like an underground meeting of modern suffragettes.

happy sunday!

isn’t sunday just a lovely day?

we won’t see much of it until later because we have Lots to Do (column to write, the last section of The House on Church Row and a fresh copy of a magazine from the languid and luscious South has arrived) – but we shall venture out around 5PM for a light supper and meeting up with friends in the Hollywood Hills. 

so last night the Light here was Luminous.

we left the car and took a walk up steep’ish streets and slipped into quieter back roads and got Quite exhausted but happily creatively enhanced by looking at all the nice houses….

some were Very Roman.

and others had slightly sad threadbare and troublesome histories (the one at the top straight ahead was the last apartment of a certain Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald at 1403 North Laurel Avenue, Los Angeles, California) – an ignominious end – although he did not expire here, he ended his hours with us in this world not far at another apartment owned by his lover of the time Sheilah Graham – an English writer who had come to America to find her own fortune with a Life in Ink.

The curriculum for my College of One was lost. I discovered its disappearance in 1954 when a magazine editor visited me in Beverly Hills and suggested I write the story of my life. He knows, I thought. “What you really want,” I said, “is an account of my time with Scott Fitzgerald.” In recent years editors had approached me about this, and my answer had always been “No.” “We want to know aboutyou,’ this one assured me, “an English girl who came to America. Why did you come and did you find what you came for? Of course”—casually — ‘anything you’d write about Fitzgerald would be interesting.” I would think about it, I promised.

I had been thinking about it ever since I had read Arthur Mizener’s biography of Scott, The Far Side of Paradise, and Budd Schulberg’s unsympathetic portrait in his novel The Disenchanted. It seemed to me that both books had given the wrong impression of Scott as I knew him in Hollywood. Perhaps the time had come to tell my story.

When the editor left, I went into my garage, lifted the lid of the trunk, and for the first time since I had placed it there in June of 1941 I held the bulging brown manuscript envelope marked Scott. It contained the visible fragments of the three and a half years we had spent almost continuously together, until his fatal heart attack in my Hollywood apartment on 21 December 1940. I carried the package to my desk, untied the thin brown ribbon that barely held the flaps together, and, with some apprehension but more curiosity, sifted at random though the material. Ah, here were the two acts and the prologue of our unproduced play, Dame Rumor. His letters and poems to me. I had forgotten how beautiful they were. Scraps of paper with scribbled messages in his loose straight—up handwriting. The recording he had made one evening of “Ode to a Nightingale”. Some short stories I had written, my fictional account of our meeting and falling in love. I had titled it Beloved Infidel after his poem to me. I had forgotten the story and his severe editing. Here was the entire lecture he had written for me. He was on the wagon, or so I thought, when I made the tour, and I had kept the telegrams he had sent to the various cities, humorous but also intended to reassure me that I was capable of lecturing and to convince me he was sober.

But where was the detailed curriculum we had called my College of One, the twenty—odd closely typewritten pages that had absorbed us and given us so much satisfaction in the last two years of his life? I searched through the envelope again. I went back to the trunk to see if they had fallen out. Incredibly they were missing.

we have Requested these materials from the Library Service of Los Angeles County so we may well Return to this period of Hollywood lore (especially as we’re sure we’re going to write at least a short story about 4 x girls in 1920s Hollywood with a backdrop of the silent movies – it’s all starting to gel in the Mind’s eye you see, in a most delicious way).

unlike Sheilah, we’ve never had a relationship that had a curriculum of Improving Oneself  therein.

*looktocamera*

oh. right. there was One (maybe two). but that’s for another blog and probably ought to remain entwined and enclosed in fiction………

movingswiftlyon.

no. you see. Our Curriculum comes from books and movies and Director’s Q&A post-film-screenings (we adore a director’s Q&A) and last night was a TREAT!

it was at the Sundance Sunset (started by that nice Mr. Robert Redford) which is a 21+ movie theatre (because some people – like Mr. Robert Redford and his friends – prefer to watch films without screaming children or teenagers and with a glass of a potent beverage – they certainly do a very strong and glorious Iced Coffee – black – which is what we sip there).

because it’s a 21+ theatre – they “card” as the americans call it.

and we got carded last night!

we *giggled* massively.

who-we-are-in-RL raised a (well-groomed) eyebrow and handed over her driving license (they won’t give us one because we’re a Virtual character, you see, so we hung back and looked out over the chinese lanterns and waited) and the sweet young man on the door did a double take at her date of birth (1969 – she’s not shy about her age, we can tell you – we are among friends here) and said:

“god, you look Good.”

and did a sly French/Irish smile and wrinkled up her (freckled) nose and said:

“thanks ;-)”

and we laughed all the way into the theatre and through the iced coffee (black) purchasing and finding-our-seat.

what was the movie?

gosh!

we forgot to mention in the excitement about getting carded!

It was SUPERB!

witty and winsome and dark (in places) and Very Understanding about being female and what-that-means-about-choices (Julianna Moore is a comedic genius – we had no idea  and luminous and earthy) and Nathan Lane is GLORIOUS and it was a Romp!

and after the movie the director was meant to be there to answer our Questions but he just did a few moments Before as apparently there was a small person emergency at home and he needed to go and be a dad which was sweet and sort of refreshing actually.

so the husband-and-wife-team-of-screenwriters (how 1930s Hollywood!) stopped by to do the Q&A and it was funny because people who spend time sitting in a room with virtual characters are often quite Strange when they are allowed out into public venues to interact

*lookstocameraironically*

and they had a nice Patter going back and forth between them – one could imagine their adjoining desks and bits of half-eaten toast and vast vats of coffee to sustain them and pacing up and down and shouting out bits of dialogue or running to the centre of the room to say “No! then This happens!” and acting out scenes.

it was fun.

and the movie was Most Excellent.

on the way back the twinkle lights and hummingbird feeders were all aglow.

and we stopped by the late night grocery store and carried our two brown bags (just like in Woody Allen films in NYC) back home and smiled a lot at the fact that we are Back Here.

and writing.

taking photographs.

and watching a lot of movies.

because That’s delicious.

we’re up to 75,000 words on The House on Church Row and can see the Horizon now (and we don’t mean the Literary Magazine edited by Mr. Cyril Connolly in the 1940s)

now we’d like to share a tiny snippet with you – we’ve been Very Careful about not revealing too much of how-the-plot-gets-worked-out with these little excerpts we’ve been pasting (and anyway, once we do the first Edit a Lot will probably change).

but we thought you’d enjoy this new character who only arrives towards the very end……..

He went down to the kitchen and saw his mother standing at the French windows staring out into the garden.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he said, half-hoping she had got up early enough to make coffee. His headache was splitting now. He searched in the kitchen drawers for an Aspirin.

Then he realized his mother was still staring out of the window and had not responded to him. He felt irritated by all the women in his life right now – either they were flakey, stunned, hurt or possibly queer. It was all too much. He slammed the kitchen drawer shut, took a cup from the coffee tree stand and poured some coffee. At least his mother had had the decency to make coffee.

He joined her at the window. And could not believe his eyes. There was a crater in his garden where the fence between his house and the garden next door had collapsed into a dark pit.

“What the hell were you women doing last night?” he said loudly letting all the frustration out of his body in a sudden burst of rage. Did they have any idea how much a fence cost to repair?

The doorbell rang. Simon left his mother in shock at the French windows and stormed into the hallway. He opened the door to the world’s press standing behind a group of men in white coats with the sort of visors and protective helmets he remembered from the film E. T.

“Annabelle!” he shouted. His wife and children appeared at the top of the stairs in seconds. They blinked as a thousand flash bulbs went off.

A man in a 1940s tweed suit stepped forward, ignoring the global press corp. and handed Simon his card. It said:

 The Honourable Nigel Blackcastle-Jones-Smythe
 The Agency
Hampstead
The Empire 

Charlotte took the card from her son’s hand and studied it for a second and then looked up at The Honourable Nigel Blackcastle-Jones-Smythe and said, “Gosh, we meet at last.” Nigel looked carefully at Charlotte and realized it was Deneuve. She did look good in the flesh, he had to admit, a dashed shame that the Agency had cut back on lunching its operatives at The Savoy; they could have had a splendid time.

Simon stared at his mother as Nigel walked smoothly into the house, seemingly gliding on his bespoke Church’s lace-up Oxfords in Oxblood. “Who is that?” he hissed as his wife’s boarding school manners took over and she started rustling up a tea while the men in radioactive clothing swarmed into her house. She wondered if she had enough cups.

“That, darling,” said Charlotte, with a smile, “Is the last remaining member of The Establishment – and my boss.” With that, she followed Annabelle into the kitchen and started putting out Arrowroot biscuits onto Spode plates. Simon was dumbfounded. He closed the door firmly against the world’s press and sat on the bottom stair with his son and daughter. Two very strange pieces of information swam in his head – his mother had a job – and there was only One Man Left in the Establishment. Where did that leave him?

It all feels Rather Thrilling.

we’re going to make a second pot of coffee, snack on a few italian crackers and Get Cracking on the rest.

we maybe    s o m e   t i m e

until then.

did we mention how lovely you are to Visit?

and that’s a delicious hat.

it’s Saturday.

and we Do like to Lounge around on a Saturday morning.

and read glossy magazines. 

and do a mini decoupage (with just sticky-backed-plastic).and call people on the Princess Phone (with the 50 ft cord so we can lie back against the soft pillows) in Connecticut* and find out Their (most exciting) News.

*where we spent our Last Weekend on the East coast if you recall……. 

and now we write.

just after we listen to a little more 80s music (a free CD came in the Post with the re-issued and rather reasonable re-mastered Classic Movie-on-DVD that we’ll be watching soon’ish).

we’re having one of those days – where – you know – it’s all Unfolding as one Imagined…..

an early email from someone deeply Sophisticated in Shanghai (“hello, dumpling”), lying in bed placing a Trunk Call to Connecticut, reading Vogue, a tiny amount of decoupage (similar to Pinterest, young people reading this), accepting an Advisory Board position as who-we-are-in-RL – super secret that one – don’t tell anyone as yet, saying Yes! to writing a blurb for the Publishing site for Someone Special’s New Novel – and waiting patiently for the Manuscript to arrive – most exciting – while listening to Jazz on the Radio via the interweb and – a few hours hence – popping out to see friends-at-a-gathering-place followed by another Evening at the Movies with a Director Q&A post-film.

gosh.

yes.

That’s EXACTLY how we thought it would be.

*winktocamera*

are you having a delicious saturday?

Some of you are showing us in Real Time *shivers* what You’re getting up to……

Miss Jules is lurking in twilight Berlin

Laure is looking out of French Windows in France

Trixie is here from the Philippines and hanging out with the Twilight people

Lisa (whom we met in South Africa originally) is now in London at a gallery

D is giving advice on D. I. V. O. R. C.E from the East Coast

Kristen has gone to the dogs in Manhattan

Mamzellev is here from Germany and admiring L.A

Stacy is enjoying music al fresco in Washington Square

Heather is lost in a cloud of riotous Peonies in La Belle France

Vickie Lester is taking Mister Lester out to dine in Little Tokyo 

William is in a cemetery in England

George was in (the middle of) America and has returned to the City of Angeles

Mark is settling down with a Pipe and Wodehouse somewhere near Bath, England

and Beautycalypse is trying to get to sleep….

you see?

it’s delicious.

we are able to Visit you and not even get dressed properly.

#divine.

a Most splendid afternoon was had at the house of a certain Ms. Vickie Lester!

we took tea (and calcium-enriched california salads) and talked about Life and Literature and England and Los Angeles

now as Many of you know – Ms. Vickie Lester’s “beat” (as it would be called if she was a lady-reporter on a 1920s Newspaper Downtown with a metal desk and a phone and stacks of spare nylons and Notepads in the drawer) is Hollywood and there was Much to talk about there – and Mr. Lester (not his real-name) was There Too and also has a Hollywood “beat” which was fabulous and oh! oh! we had the Loveliest Time.

bien sur there are pictures!

we took a small gift…..

…..we were going to take white roses – we adore white roses – but we knew that Vickie Lester has a beauteous garden and that would be taking coals to newcastle

*glancetocamerawithquestioninglook*

is there any American equivalent to that saying?

perhaps “citrus fruits to california”?

the garden was lovely – lush and mellow and sun-kissed (or rather sun-embraced-with-a-vast-bear-hug)

the heat is gorgeous on That side of town

*saidvaguely* (we used the Perfectly Prius global positioning system to get there but it didn’t know that Zoo Drive was closed for repairs or that one of the Freeway On-Ramps (could it have been I-134? we think it might have been) was Also Closed (shock) and so we were a tiny bit late (we hate being late)

but Vickie was gracious and the tea awaited us with a cool glass of water in a lovely rich shade of crimson glass. 

quelle succulents (very California) set off gorgeously with blue shards of glass.

a simple fleur set off with the oil jar – very Grecian. 

and rich blooms Everywhere.

silky shadows and falling jacaranda. 

and soft breezes through linens and cottons drifting through half-closed windows as if beautiful eyes were lowering their lashes in modesty-ness.

while we were admiring the soft linens there was the simply glorious sound of a piano being played.

yes – yes – it was a Perfectly delicious afternoon.

there will be Many More!

and a book launch (of which we shall speak of when Allowed to do so by Ms. Vickie Lester Herself).

and now to our Evening activity:

the light was still bright as we drove back West into Hollywood-adjacent-by-sunset-boulevard to see the movie Frances Ha.

this was a Charming (and elegantly shot in B&W – very Truffaut and not just the bit set in Paris) look at how Young People live in Manhattan – their hopes, dreams, leather jackets, dancing-to-Bowie (Modern Love and much of it was Very Modern Love in the Script itself), getting by and not getting enough, Modern Dance, Day Jobs, awful jobs, jobs-that-take-people-away and jobs-that-are-only-possible-with-rich-parents as well as Art (and what that takes to keep alive) and apartments and a place of your own to dream and make art and possibly, maybe, find Love.

but mostly it was about love itself.

between friends.

the nicest sort of love.

and after the Movie there was a Q&A (we adore a post-movie Q&A, as you know) with Greta Gerwig not just the Star of the movie but also the co-screenwriter.

and the audience was packed with people in their late 20s who Identified (as the Americans say) with the movie and asked Intense questions about Motivation and goals and dreams and hopes and Why-did-That-Happen and what-will-the-characters-do-next and Why Paris?

yes.

that was a question.

Why Paris.

gosh, we wanted to say:

Paris doesn’t need a reason.

and nor do tea parties with lovely authors and conversations about Hollywood and roses and books and designs and citrus fruits and Plans for the future.

no reason required.

because they are both glorious.

yesterday contained almost Far too much drama for us but there was a splendid business meeting later on in the day and who-we-are-in-RL got decked up in the pearls and swept up her hair and looked Ever so nice – sadly she left no bloody chocolates or anything sweet in the house so we lounged around looking winsome and reading the Library edition of The Talmadge Girls by our friend Anita Loos instead and jolly well enjoyed it.

we’ve been thinking (never a wise idea) about our Life so far in Los Angeles  - can you believe it’s been….

*countsonfingers*

Almost Four Months since we arrived on This Coast and did things like drive-to-malibu to watch the sunrise and wait for our furniture to arrive, and lease a Perfectly silver Prius and pass (eventually) the written driving test and get a new License and find a doctor, dentist, Receive the Green CARD, go to the Farmers Market, finish writing Emerald and Everything!

the strangest bit has been seeing our old signature on Forms as we Set up a New Life here.

when we got a Library Card (actually, two as there are Different Library Systems in Los Angeles) they pulled up our (RL) name on the Computer and there was our old address and phone number.

has anything changed?

they said.

and we did a wry smile.

oh yes.

it was the same at the Department of Motor Vehicles – we were On File from Before.

and even at the Motion Picture Library - there it was – our old signature (which is the one thing that hasn’t really changed although now it looks a little more world-weary) – on a Manilla Card and we scratched out the old address and Updated it.

another example -

yesterday we went back to our (lady) dentist for a Check-Up (the lady dentist that we used to see when we Lived here from 2001 – 2006 before we went to Manhattan to engage in sniper fire of midtown and get a green-card-qualifying-proper-job) – and the dental assistant (in some very lovely pale blue “scrubs”) said:

could you update your information please?

and handed us a Clipboard.

we reached for our (new cat’s eyes reading glasses – very Script Editor with D. W Griffith looking) spectacles and then did a whole body shake (in a not scary-movie-way).

there it was.

our Details from Before.

with our pre-NYC-tumor-life-travels-internationalbusiness-existence signature (it looked so young and carefree) and address and the empty tick boxes by “serious illnesses” and “hospitalizations”.

we swallowed hard and turned our head away and said (quietly).

do you have a fresh form please?

and then we looked once more at the form from a decade ago (the last time we had updated our details for the the lady dentist) and put it Aside and started again.

because that’s what we’re doing, darlings, Starting Again.

which is scary and exhilarating in Equal Measure.

and when people say “don’t you miss New York?”

we say.

y-es.

we miss our Friends (we definitely miss the Salary) and we miss days like this when the seasons slipped into the next and we ended up wandering home through greenwich village.

but we needed a different Life which is only really possible Here.

at least we hope so.

now we Must Write.

we’re a tiny bit Apprehensive about finishing up The House On Church Row because then we send it into the world (well, to our Literary Agent – such a lovely phrase) to see if it will Fly.

and then we need to start writing something else.

because we don’t want to get a proper job if we can help it.

we like to write Lots of Things – books, articles, columns, sell-sheets, production notes, people’s bios (we are terribly good at those, especially when they’re a Movie Star), online games, quizzes, interviews with a pop star, television technology and late night infomercials - anything, really.

putting words together feels magical.

and sort of, well, necessary.

Sometimes one gets Rather Shocked by life (or not Life per se, life is delicious, more the humans that reside therein).

We are a little shaken.

May we share?

You are most kind.

So you may recall that we are having some Issues (as the americans call it) opening a bank account while our S corp still resides properly on the Other Coast……..so we went to the Small business Association and they said Find a Lawyer and so we called the Bar Association (which is all about lawyers and not places where they sell beverages) and asked their Referal Service for help.

Well.

*swallowwithmoisteyes*

We just saw one.

And he (*sighs*) did not listen to what we needed but kept Talking (about his friends and who he knows) and we got a bit bored and slid our Paperwork across the table and smiled nicely and asked very simply how he could obtain us a business license so we could operate in CA.

He (barely) paused and told us it would cost us a minimum of One Thousand Dollars and then he would Bill against that (it still wasn’t clear how much the actual Task would cost).

Have you done this specific task before we asked (nicely but firmly).

There was no answer just more about how he bills and what he knows.

Then he asked about our bank and we said we would like to approach Comerica bank because they celebrate female entrepreneurs.

How?he said.

We said they award prizes and assert nice words.

And he looked surprised.

And that’s why you want to give them your money?

Yes.

(We like having Values).

It was clear by this point that we did not have our check/cheque book out.

In fact we started to wrap up the meeting rather nicely saying we had a couple of other attorneys to meet and would let him know.

And then it came…….the payoff…..

Despite having told him all about who-we-are-in-RL bio and the book deal and all he looked at us in a Really creepy way and said

What is your business?  Is it an escort service?

*deepsigh*

No. It is not.

We said.

Firmly.

And left.

The worst bit is that we still don’t have an attorney.

Jeez.

Thanks for listening darlings.

Btw, as the young people say, no judgement at all against people in the skin trade but we are dressed Very modestly, as always, and it was a definite shock to hear that.

Isn’t it delicious to be able to tell you about it though and not have to keep it locked inside like ladies used to?

*wrylooktocamera*

a few snapshots from today – another magical set-of-moments – revolving most deliciously around cafes, meetings-with-deeply-interesting-people, galleries, writing, more photographs and the purple blossom *looksvaguelytocamera* which must have a pretty name but we can’t recall it right now (do you know? you do? do tell!) which is covering los angeles with its inky fronds.

oh yes.

and we met one of our Artistic Heroes today – we interviewed David Fahey for next week’s column and *swooned* at seeing the originals of The Greats on the walls.

most Especially this one. 

oh god.

the stories, darlings.

the Tales of photographers and travel and the Eye and the spirit and everything.

we are going to enjoy writing next week’s column.

what’s that?

oh.

you are delicious.

thank you for asking.

this week’s column?

An art supply store and a pie shop from the early 1970s. 

you are Most Kind.

*wavingfromlosangeles*

we’ve been Contemplating the View as we drive around Los Angeles par nuit (not all Nuit, just en route to home last night) and thinking about which music really befits it.

first, the view.

this is driving east through Hollywood.

and then this is the first choice of music:

or perhaps this?

another View? one from an earlier twilight.

and This was our final choice of music…….#weAdoreBlossomDearie

don’t you?