LA Diaries

I came for clarity

DAY 1. London Heathrow > LAX Los Angeles. 30,000+ feet up. seven hours into an eleven hour flight. Notes on my phone.

As the distance grows between myself and home I think I’ll get clearer on what it is I am supposed to do in this next chapter of my life. I’m squashed into my seat next to my mum and my daughter (no business class for me right now), I eat my chicken and leek ‘casserole’, I drink my white wine in a can and I listen first to a rain on the roof ASMR audio and later some modern piano concertos (thanks Vera/Virgin Atlantic for these odd selections).

I look out the window as uninhabited Scottish islands drift by below, any feathered or furry island residents blissfully unaware of the chaos in the rest of the world.

I fantasise about selling the house and buying a camper van and just driving. It would be me and Kimchi and the open road (incidentally many years ago my ex-husband and I created and filmed a pilot for a tv show called The Open Road about a family - us - who sold everything and travelled the world. We shot it in Costa Rica. Sadly it didn’t get picked up by any studios but of course now there are shows just like it. Ahead of our time apparently).

Anyway, back to the camper van fantasy. There would be an interiors spin to my travel. Somehow in my fantasy there is a tv show or at the very least a YouTube channel or a podcast. I would travel around and interview people about the way they live. Their homes. The choices they made to get where they are, whether they live on a houseboat in the Louisiana Bayou or a glass house on stilts on the Malibu Coast.

I’d be living the free-spirited lifestyle I inherited from my mother.

And in the fantasy it is all good. That’s the way it works in your imagination.

There are no van breakdowns or scary nights alone parked somewhere sketchy or stretches of loneliness. There is only adventure and freedom and the feeling of simultaneously disconnecting myself from the world while still staying connected by sharing the adventure (YouTube, podcast etc).

I’m susceptible to this type of fantasy thinking when times are tough and I can’t see a way out that doesn’t really stink. I want to pack it all in and literally hit the road. I run. 

There’s another version of this fantasy - also dreamt up in the first hours of this flight. Me and Ella (my 24 year old daughter) travelling around - wherever! Europe, India, Iceland. The gap year I never took because I had Ella at 23. The bonding experience we would thrive in even though it isn’t required because we are already deeply connected. 

The wine buzzing through my system makes me feel optimistic for something. But just as quickly it fades and makes me feel sad. 

I don’t know if these types of fantasies are ‘normal’ for other people, but to me they are ever-present. Years ago, before kids and marriage and divorce and breakups and career highs and lows and countless moves - probably when I was 19 or 20 and took my first USA cross country drive - I had a vision of me on a ranch. Strong and powerful. God knows what I was doing on the ranch in the fantasy, but as a visual person all I had was the image of me standing on a dusty road in cowboy boots, legs in a power stance, sun setting behind me. It was the mid nineties and I’d probably seen a Coca Cola or Guess commercial or something equally silly and taken the image on as my own.

Meanwhile my fantasy becomes reality this week, as pictured below. I sit squashed into a hired minivan with 3 generations of my family and watch this desert view of California fly past; one of us is looking up the price of land, another is eating sweets bought at a farm shop, another staring at drifts of tumbleweeds.

Middle age.

When you feel like you haven’t achieved the life you imagined (maybe not me on a ranch but many other things) and the urge rises in me to pack it all in and go in search of…SOMETHING. That’s where my head’s been lately.

I think I’m addicted to starting over.

DAY 2: Being back in LA, all sorts of emotions are coming up.

Regret for leaving LA - which is silly because we all loved moving back to London and we all thrived. But selling the house in LA feels like I closed a door, especially now house prices have doubled since I sold in 2016 and the area where I bought almost 20 years ago is so ridiculously cool. I’m good at spotting emerging neighbourhoods but I sold up too soon. Mental note: don’t do the same thing with the Margate house.

Wonder at the beauty of Mount Washington and other parts of LA. The birds, the trees laden with citrus, the cacti. The fresh fruit stands on every corner. THE LACK OF CLOUDS.

Curiosity about how everyone can afford to live here. This used to be my home, but now the divide between the rich and not so rich seems gaping. Where have the middle class gone? Oh yeah. America, no class system. A takeaway coffee is $7 minimum, a packet of the same butter I buy back home is twice the price. Everyone I know is in therapy as well as their kids. Everyone has a gardener and parks at restaurants using the valet and no-one washes their own car. Every family has 3+ cars. It’s all gone a bit mad. How do they pay for it all? How did we?

Comfort at being with family. A truly safe space to just be myself. My mum, my daughter, both my brothers, two nephews, one niece. Reconnecting, laughing, a bit of bickering of course.

DAY 5: No time for the self reflection I came here for.

But it turns out to be exactly the self reflection I needed. Getting out of one’s own life and head and problems is often the best way to come back to them re-energized. I’m going to try to hold onto this feeling when I get home to cold, rainy Margate and sail on through to Spring and the hope it brings.

DAY 6:

Feeling inspired by my big brother and the house he’s built out in LA. Lately back home I’ve felt overwhelmed by quite simple tasks and haven’t progressed much lately with the house which needs to be a source of income for me very soon. But being here and seeing what my brother has achieved (whilst also holding down a pretty important job and being an excellent parent) has revved me up.

Comparison is rarely a good thing - being the thief of joy and all that - but in this case it’s working for me.

My brother learned how to weld so that he could make this railing. Once it is rusted to perfection it will be sealed.

His talented girlfriend designed the kitchen and he built everything single thing himself. For a few years this room was exposed to the elements, the walls were plastic sheeting, the fridge was in the hallway and the dishes got cleaned in the bath. A lesson in patience. All these windows open up!

DAY 7: The desert

A chance to hike a bit, to challenge my daughter’s recently formed fear of heights, and be immersed in the grandeur of nature. Also to see that one particular bit of rock that stood in for alien lands in many an episode of Star Trek as well as countless films and commercials since the 1930s. Because even on a break I’m always interested in my work world. We went here.

Not me, not my bike. But pretty sure she’s living out one of my fantasies.

My daughter and I, probably discussing our favourite cheese or when we’re going to In N Out burger or snakes.

Charlie Brown Farms, an American county fair squeezed into a huge shop.

Day 8: Venice Beach

We came to show my other brother and his young son (who live on the East Coast of America) the long stretches of sand, the body builders on the beach, and the many eccentrics who populate the area.

I came for the houses.

My next post is all about what we can learn from Californian homes

DAY 9:

A couple of hours to write.

Heading home

I’m pretty good at going with the flow, sometimes too much so and I get carried along on someone else’s plans instead of my own. But this trip ended up being the medicine I needed. I didn’t overthink things, I went where the crowd went, I made few plans except to see old friends.

I left the UK feeling raw, waking up anxious and scared, constantly in panic mode. Nothing has actually changed. I haven’t solved any of my most pressing problems. But I feel calmer and stronger and almost ready to tackle what’s next (what’s next??)

Thanks for following along and allowing me to veer away from only writing about interiors. I write for me but I also write for you, always, always hoping it touches someone positively.

Next time though, it’s back to interiors and the inspiration I’m taking home from Los Angeles x