…and miles to go before I sleep.

1715 DST 0915 PDT

I hate flying. It’s tedious, uncomfortable, undignified and irritating, and that’s even before you get on the damn plane. You arrive at the airport stupidly early, and get in a queue. You queue to get in a queue, and then to get in another queue. Eventually, you get to put your shoes through an X-Ray machine. You hang around, drink coffee you don’t realy want and buy magazines you’re not that interested in reading until you get the call to go and hang around somewhere else. Frequently, this new place is much less attractive than the one you’ve just left, and now you can’t even buy the magazine you were indifferent towards. There may be free copies of the Daily Mail to flick through. If you’re sensible, you resist the temptation to cook off your blood pressure, and look out of a window at the planes instead.

If I could dose myself into a comatose state, and in that condition be strechered to and from the airport, unconscious and oblivious, then I would be a happy man. Dump me in an overhead locker. Revive me when I get to the hotel. Sweet Lethe, save me from the tedium of modern air travel.

Actually, this isn’t such a bad idea. Apply it on an industry-wide level, and just think of the money the airlines could save in food and entertainment costs. Just get everyone seated on the plane, pump a mild sedative gas into the cabin, and a nice quiet flight can be had by everyone. No jetlag, no air rage. It’s probably the closest we’d ever come to teleportation, at least in my lifetime. I’d sign up to that kind of initiative in a flash.

I couldn’t sleep on a plane if my life depended on it. How anyone manages to get a nano-second of shuteye in a metal tube barrelling above the cloud line at 550MPH is frankly beyond me. Squeezed into a two-by-three seat gap with no room to stretch your legs, with an excess of ambient noise, who could grab even the haziest of dozes? Let alone the full-on kip that Clare, beside me and bundled in an appropriately red blanket seems to be achieving, lucky sexpot.

Hello. Transatlantic Rob here, midway across the Big Blue on the way to Californi-ay. We’re spending the week in San Francisco, a city that’s been on our must-see list for the best part of a decade now. Home of Alcatraz Prison and the Zodiac Killer. And it’s gonna be great. That poor weak dollar’s getting wedgies from us, I tell yer. Once we get there.

For now, I’m on a Virgin 747-400, seriously regretting that second cappuccino and not spending a bit extra for an upgrade to premium economy, bush-baby wide-eyed, and contemplating my second film of the day.

Just watched 300, which had it’s moments, most of them directly cribbed from Frank Miller’s masterful graphic novel. The whole exercise seemed kind of pointless to me, and the over-faithful translation to screen adds nothing to an already spare narrative. An animated version might have been interesting. As it is, even the digital blood that’s flung around with such abandon doesn’t make enough of an impression to stick around. Seriously, check it out. The gore evaporates before it hits the ground. I know the show’s supposed to be stylised, but come on.

However, Lena Headey and Gerard Butler are both suitably charismatic and eye-candyish, and I’m prepared to go along with Leonidas bellowing in broad Glasgae whenever he gets angry. Thing is, it’s the usual argument for me when it comes to film adaptations of graphic novels. They’re never as good as the books. I’m not looking forward to Zac Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation. That’s one book that should stay in the unfilmable category.

It’s 9:21 in the AM in San Fran, twenty past five in the afternoon according to my body clock. A little over half way there. We have a lift from the airport from a friend of Clare’s and a queen-sized room at a hotel just off Union Square and therefore slap in the heart of the action. At the moment of writing, the only action I can contemplate is a hot shower and a catnap.

God, I hate flying.

1945 PDT

Aaaannd here we are. We cleared immigration at 3, a surprisingly painless experience considering the irritations at the Heathrow end. Security was all smiles and chatty, which is unexpected to say the least. Smoothly out to a warm welcome from our San Fran contact, X, who is hospitality itself. She’s warm, chatty and lovely. She chauffeurs us directly to our hotel, and leaves us with a care package containing wine and snackies. Wheeee.

We’re right in the heart of things, based in a quiet boutique place on Sutter St, a minute’s walk from Union Square. It’s chilled, boho and charming. Not flash, but it has everything we need. Big bed. Hot shower. And they do free wine during happy hour. Rehehehesult. We doze over a cheeky merlot in the hotel bar.

Now, at this point we’ve been up for 20 hours, and are making less sense by the ganglion. Food needed as a matter of urgency. We stumble out to refuel, and end up at Lori’s Diner, one of those intentionally kitsch Ed’s Easy Diner type places, just at the bottom of the road. Faux Americana, sure, but faux Americana in America still kinda works on me. Plus, it’s shabby enough to have a bit of charm, and the waitresses have a good line in that tattooed devil’s cheerleader vibe. For added surrealality, with Halloween just around the corner, the joint is encrusted in spray cobweb and cardboard skeletons. Or maybe I just imagined it. It’s possible. We’re both double-exposing at this point in the day/night/whatevs. Blaaargh. Then we just have enough juice left for a stroll round Union Square, before we give up and head back to the hotel to crash.

2010. Clare’s asleep. I’m just awake enough to type, with NBC burbling away in the background.

Tomorrow is another day. With a lot of shopping in it.