Friday 3 (30/07/10)

This has definitely felt like the longest week so far, although now it’s over it doesn’t seem a week since last Friday. I went into Downtown again today, but this time managed to find the real shopping areas. I started off at “LA Live”, which is a new development on the South edge of Downtown, not far at all from the campus. But it turns out it’s not a shopping centre, just a series of restaurants, bars, hotels and entertainment venues. So I wandered further North and Eastwards, hoping to stumble upon the shopping streets Josh and I had driven past the week before. And I did manage to find them.

It has always made me laugh that in American movies people generally know what direction things are in, and seem to use the points of the compass for most of their navigation. But it really is the simplest way to understand where you are in a city that’s based on a grid. Most of the streets in LA run approximately North-South or East-West, and the buses and trains can generally be categorised that way as well. The surprising thing is that it actually works, because in most UK cities you can quickly become disorientated by the curving roads.

So this area is, as I think I described last Saturday, quite downmarket. It’s all cut-price electronics, jewellery, clothes and accessories. And theatres - there seems to be an old Vaudeville theatre on every street. Josh tells me that because of building regulations, people generally find it worth their while only to let the ground floor of the old buildings. Renovating the upper floors to the required level would involve too much investment. It’s incredible to think that it isn’t worth turning any of these buildings into clubs or bars, given how quickly this happens in the UK. But then, in a city that’s practically closed over the weekend, I suppose the usual rules don’t apply. I saw a sign outside a bar in LA Live that said “Count down to the weekend with our Happy Hour specials” – presumably there’s no point having a weekend special, so they have it during the week.

Thursday 3 (29/07/10)

I took this photograph from the top of Los Angeles City Hall. When it was built, it was the tallest in the area, but now the financial district is filled with banks and hotels that tower over this. It is possibly the tallest building I have ever been to the top of - the observation platform is on level 26.

The building in this picture is Union Station, called the last great railroad station because after this there was a distinct decline in architectural quality. The external architecture of Union Station is unlike any I’ve come across. It looks like a modern copy of a Franciscan Mission, which makes its Art Deco interior somewhat of a surprise. The entrance hall is very spacious, with only one or two concessions – it’s very different from the shopping-centre style of modern stations. It also has a restaurant, which Josh tells me is excellent. Some of its tables are actually set out inside the main hall of the station, which makes you feel that you’re walking into an enormous hotel lobby. It also means the commuter rush mentality is not as pervasive.

From Union Station you can get a train to New Orleans, or to Chicago, and then on to New York, which takes 3 1/2 days. And that’s with only a 3 hour gap between trains in Chicago. As always when abroad, I feel a reckless desire to hop on one and see where I end up. Being away from home always fills me with Wanderlust. But I’m sure once I get home I’ll never want to leave again.

Wednesday 3 (28/07/10)

I must have walked past this tree about every other day since I got here, but I only noticed it today. At first I thought it was some kind of parasitic cactus attached to another tree, but a closer look shows that it is entirely cactus. I’ve no idea what kind it is, but it’s amazing the way it has turned to bark at the bottom of the trunk.

I finally found proper chocolate today – I had run out of things for lunch so instead of taking some with me, as usual, I went into a shop on the campus. It was a cafe, I suppose, but the kind that only makes its coffee fresh – everything else was pre-prepared. On their shelves was some Galaxy – it’s called ‘Dove’ here, but it’s the same stuff. I was glad, because I’d begun to think no-one here ate chocolate on its own. The Americans seem to prefer chocolate biscuits and so on.

I’m looking forward to getting back to the UK. Only two weeks to go now, which seems amazing.

Tuesday 3 (27/07/10)

It’s just as well we’ve never had these in England. I doubt even the Timelords would be able to fit inside one of these, and there’s no room for the coffee machine. I assume they are for contacting the campus police, rather than the LAPD directly. I haven’t noticed these boxes outside the campus.

The USC librarian gave me a present today – an original blank timing sheet from MGM studios. My very own piece of Hollywood history to take home. I’ve already promised not to go into details about my work, but I’m going to anyway. The timing sheet was the cartoon composer’s starting point. It is a printed chart with space at the top for descriptions of the action, a line or two in the middle to mark where sound effects are going to fall, and three empty staves for the composer to write the music on. The composer and director would mark out the action beat by beat, second by second. Very few timing sheets survive, because they weren’t considered worth keeping. I am really quite thrilled to have my own.

It’s amazing how exciting a blank piece of paper can be.

Monday 3 (26/07/10)

It has been unseasonably cold today. The sun didn’t really come out until mid afternoon. In fact, for the first time, it was colder outside than it was in the air-conditioned library. I felt a bit silly sitting outside at lunchtime with my shorts on feeling cold, but usually I have the opposite problem.

So far, my research has been entirely musical, looking at Scott Bradley’s cartoon scores. But today I started looking at the archive of his personal papers. Included among them were things like his mother’s last letters to her children, his great-grandmother’s handkerchief, and a relative’s letter to Scott’s widow dated a month after his death. I felt as though I shouldn’t be reading them. There were, of course, plenty of things that will aid my research – plenty of reasons why I should look through them. I won’t go into details, but there were one or two unpublished pieces of music that tie in to his cartoons.

I took this photo a while ago. It’s not the cartoon cat I’m looking for, but it’s interesting that a character from a century ago can still be such an icon. I don’t doubt that Tom will last just as long as Felix.

Sunday 3 (25/07/10)

This is the tallest building in Los Angeles. Actually, it’s the tallest US building West of the Mississippi. I took this yesterday. Joshua, who is a wonderful tour guide, took me to a place where you can stand right next to this building and look straight up at it. I took a photo or two from that angle, but I think the height is better showcased in this shot. If you count the windows, there are more than 50 stories in this photo, which doesn’t reach the ground. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a building that tall.

Downtown Los Angeles is a strange place. For some reason, the locals don’t tend to congregate in the centre at the weekend, preferring either the beaches or the peripheral areas where they live. It’s very strange to find any city centre quieter on a Saturday than on a weekday, and Josh assures me that LA is odd among American cities in that respect. It is also lacking in eateries. Within the last five years, a new shopping and entertainment centre opened just on the edge of Downtown, and in so doing doubled the number of restaurants in the area. I don’t know quite how large “LA Live” is (although it’s now on my list of places to visit) but even if it is the size of Bluewater, it’s still incredible that the original restaurants could have been so few.

Perhaps, given what I just wrote, you won’t find it surprising how small Downtown is. It is incredibly small, given the comparative size of LA. This impression is no doubt influenced by the fact that there are no pedestrianised streets, nowhere designed for people to congregate on foot, but it’s also because, compared with the height of the buildings, or the width of the roads, the central shopping streets are very short. Not to scale, you might say.

I can’t help feeling that much of LA’s uniqueness in these respects is down to the vastness of the economic divide between rich and poor. After all, when there is a whole community of super-rich, the shopping areas are going to split between extremes. Which means that you end up with Beverly Hills’s $50 000 handbags on the one hand, and Downtown’s $10 dresses on the other. You can’t really imagine these businesses, nor their clientele, sharing the same geographic space, and you can also imagine the separate areas becoming gradually more and more, or less and less, expensive.

Saturday 3 (24/07/10)

I went out for a tour of Downtown with Joshua today. I may blog a picture of that tomorrow, but this is from the drive we took afterwards. We started on the Pacific Coast Highway again, but cut inland across the mountains and back several times, enjoying the dramatic scenery and winding roads. For once I feel I have too many photos to choose from.

This view across the valley away from the coast is possibly the most spectacular in the area. It’s difficult to believe that Los Angeles is less than an hour’s drive away. I suppose Glasgow and its neighbouring countryside are like LA in miniature, in that respect.

I feel I should have more to say about it, but really the scenery speaks for itself.

Friday 2 (23/07/10)

I went into town today for the first time (unless you include Hollywood). Since it was the first time, I kept it simple so I wouldn’t get lost. I finally managed to find the bus route online that goes from outside USC (basic as the transport is in LA, their websites about it are even less sophisticated, and there seems to be no collated information about the various buses). The bus I got is called the DASH and it’s much cheaper than the regular buses – only 25C a ride!

I came across a variety of familiar and unfamiliar foods today. A BLT, a kitkat (the closest thing to British chocolate I’ve come across here) and a Mountain Dew – a coca-cola product similar to Sprite which used to be a favourite of mine when they briefly sold it in the UK. It didn’t quite live up to my memory of it – perhaps things never do. Later in the supermarket I came across edible cactus, which I might try – apparently it’s similar to green beans. I wasn’t quite brave enough to get it without coming back to google it first!

As I ate my lunch in a gloomy basement foodcourt under Macy’s, it occurred to me that it was the kind of place that would gain a reputation for being better avoided. But quite undeservedly, really – it seemed to be just another victim of 60s/70s architecture. It was all fluorescent lighting – no planning to allow daylight in. It reminded me of the Savoy Centre in Glasgow, or the St John’s centre in Liverpool. Mind you, I must be a very long way from home to be nostalgic about those particular places. Even so, I wouldn’t hesitate to go to any of them for fear of personal safety. Ditto the bus – considering its reputation, I was expecting something that felt run-down. But Merseyrail used to be much worse (and the Glasgow subway isn’t up to much, when you think about it). The only thing I was worried about was missing my stop and getting lost (which is difficult, once you figure out that all the East-West streets are numbered in order, and considering how big and unmissable the USC campus is when you return). I think if you’re comfortable using inner-city facilities, whatever they may be, it doesn’t make much difference which city you are in. They’re all dangerous. They’re all safe.

Thursday 2 (22/07/10)

I decided to take today off, in order to do mundane tasks such as my laundry, wash my hair, repair a small hole appearing in my rucksack... Ah, the glamour of life in LA. I took a walk around the neighbourhood in a direction I haven’t been so far. It’s quite liberating just to get one’s bearings and become more familiar with the immediate area. I came across the Shrine Auditorium (pictured) close-up for the first time. I have seen it from a distance before, but I didn’t realise how impressive it was.

The Arabic-derived architecture is down to this being the headquarters of the local temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (affiliated to Freemasonry) which, like all things ancient here in the US, was established in 1870. More famous is its some-time use as a venue for the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, SAG awards and so on. It also houses the home court of the Trojans basketball team.

It is also where, in 1984, Michael Jackson had his hair set on fire.

The size of this building really doesn't come across in photographs. Something to do with the classical proportions (the masons probably used the Golden Mean for every single aspect of the design) means that it really could be of any size. But if you look at the pavement in front of the building, and follow it to where it disappears under the archway next to the palm trees, you see that the very bottom panes of glass in those front "windows" are actually 9 or 10ft high double-doors.

Wednesday 2 (21/07/10)

I’m now a third of the way through my trip, which is hard to believe. Just when I thought I’d run out of things to take photos of around campus, a great blimp loomed into view. I’m probably too old to get as excited as I do at seeing a balloon in the sky, but it was such a novelty that I followed it down the street taking pictures as I went. I got one shot of it over the trees on campus that was possibly a better shot than this, but I haven’t posted any street views yet, and this is just as typical a sight as the leafy ivy-covered buildings.

Crossing at traffic lights here is an entertaining experience. When the pedestrian light goes green (or white, rather) you are ushered across by a “cuckoo” noise or a sort of “Pew, pew”. It’s not the only place I’ve been to that has bird noises for its traffic lights, Adelaide crossings have the sound of a whip bird (has to be heard to be appreciated). You are allowed to cross diagonally, and there are separate lights for each direction. Once the cuckoo has sounded, the light switches to an orange hand (as you can see in the photo) and has a counting-down clock next to it to tell you how many seconds you have to finish crossing. You have to be quick, too, at some of them. Then, of course, there’s the fun rule that cars turning right (hugging the pavement, as it were) are allowed to go when the light’s red. Pedestrians have right of way, but you have two chances on each crossing of being hit if someone doesn’t pay attention. Add to that the cyclists, who all seem to travel along pavements and use the crossings as pedestrians, and an English person’s suicidal instinct to step to the left of someone approaching, and things can get interesting.

In any European country I’ve been to, these rules would be a total disaster. But whether it’s because everyone is used to traffic jams here, or because everyone’s terrified of being sued, or maybe because USC is not in the city centre, the drivers all come across as laid back. They may honk the horn a bit, but they seem to accelerate slowly and brake often, and even at rush hour you don’t get the feeling that they’re competing with each other to get to the front.

[If anyone's interested in finding this place on Google Streetview, search "denny's west jefferson boulevard" on google maps, and zoom in. Denny's is on the corner just out of shot on the left.]

Tuesday 2 (20/07/10)

A little sparrow hopped past my chair today as I was eating my lunch. It was too quick for me, though. Shame you can’t just download images straight from memory.

Instead, I took photos of various buildings around campus – any whose names struck me as interesting. The Music faculty’s ‘Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall’ had me wondering all day where I knew Jeanette MacDonald from, since as far as I know I’ve never seen any of her films. The ‘Juliette “Julie” Kohl Trojan Band Center’ made me ponder over the necessity of both shortened and long versions of the same name, and also what a Trojan band would sound like. (I’m being silly, of course – Trojans is the nickname of all USC’s teams.) On similar lines, I saw a “Trojan hospitality” lorry, and wondered whether they specialised in stables, whether they would be particularly accommodating towards a girl called Helen, whether they provide faces to help launch local ships...

This building beat the “Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Hydrocarbon Research Center” (how specific a research center can one feasibly endow, I wonder?) and the “Department of Astronautical Engineering” (above Aeronautics any day...) to become today’s blog photo. I just love the sheer audacity of having an engineering building on stilts. Hope they don’t have a wave tank in that thing.

Monday 2 (19/07/10)

I’m starting to run out of things to talk about (and take photos of) around campus. I’ll have to start doing more interesting things. Of course, I find my work fascinating, but I don’t expect anyone else to be riveted by my description of it.

On Saturday, before we went to the Hollywood Bowl, me and my new friend Josh went for a drive along the pacific coast highway. It’s pretty scenery, with the mountains so close to the coast. On a clear day, you can also see the Channel Islands to the Southwest of the road, although on Saturday they were just vague shapes in the haze. It was certainly the full cliché experience, since Josh has just himself a manual red convertible (Mazda Miata). It’s his first car, and he’s extremely chuffed with it. I took this photo pointing backwards over the rear of the car, because the setting sun was ahead of us.

It’s amazing how quickly the sun sets here. There’s no real twilight, which is quite disconcerting, especially when driving because the cars suddenly need their headlights. Joshua’s just as unused to that as I am, being from New Jersey.

Sunday 2 (18/07/10)

Very early this morning (straight after the concert, in fact) I had possibly the best milkshake ever in a Johnny Rocket’s (50s-style diner chain) just off Hollywood Boulevard. It was about a pint of “Oreos and cream.” Anyone who knows the style of diner should be able to extrapolate the decor from this picture of the juke-box selector. They had one on every table, but since all the songs were famous 60s rock-and-roll hits, I was quite happy listening to all of them, so I let it run on random. The only American-style diner I’ve been in is Filling Station (no, TGIF doesn’t count), which is very roadside-oriented, with aged metal highway signs (mainly of Route 66, of course) and rusty car bumpers (or fenders, if you prefer) on the wall. This was much shinier – all stainless steel and white backlit signs, Still had the red leather booths, though.

I imagine it’s based on the prohibition-era milk bars, but was unable to corroborate this satisfactorily with a google image-search (try searching for “milk bar” and you will find more pictures of Moloko from A Clockwork Orange than anything else!).

Something else I can tick off my list of American clichés. And as we were driving away from Hollywood, I saw another – a lowrider car bouncing along the street! Not quick enough with the camera for that, unfortunately!

Saturday 2 (17/07/10)

I went to the Hollywood Bowl today, fulfilling a life-long wish. I’ve known about the Hollywood Bowl since I was about 3, partly through Monty Python (who played a sell-out live show of their sketches there in 1982, but mostly through Tom and Jerry at the Hollywood Bowl. How appropriate, then, that my trip there should be to see screenings of cartoons, with music played live by the LA Philharmonic, and that the program should contain this very cartoon.

The concert was a Warner Brothers presentation, so of course the cartoons featured were mainly WB, but this “guest appearance” by T&J was my favourite piece (what can I say – there’s a reason I’m studying MGM, not WB). In it, Tom and Jerry fight over the privilege of conducting Johann Strauss Jr’s overture to “Die Fledermaus”. I urge anyone interested to look it up on Youtube – and then to imagine trying to conduct a live orchestra in time to the images. I have no idea by what technical means the synchronisation was accomplished, possibly the orchestral players had earpieces with the beat playing continuously (called a click-track – a process that was used to record the music for the cartoons in the first place) or possibly some form of visual metronome in front of the conductor. I imagine the most important technique was lots and lots of practice, and conductor (George Docherty) and orchestra did a masterful job.

At the end of the concert were fireworks that came out of the top of the amphitheatre, synchronised to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. This piece was chosen because Milt Franklin and Carl Stalling (WB’s cartoon composers) used bits of Wagner frequently. Most famous is Franklin’s score for What’s Opera, Doc? – the last cartoon screened, and another must-see. (Be quick if you want to Youtube it, though – WB is very prompt at taking down web videos, and the current one has been posted for 3 weeks already!) Funnily enough, the Ride of the Valkyries was the one piece of Wagner least likely to be used, because it was so recognisably German. It was used throughout the war to accompany newsreel footage, and the connotations were so negative that Disney scrapped a planned segment from Fantasia based on it.

Friday 1 (16/07/10)

I can hardly believe I've been here a whole week. Or that I've still got four more to go.

I spent the whole day working on a tricky problem that stems from a wrongly-named example in a 1949 article. I won't go into details, because I don't want to turn this blog into a diary about my work. Suffice to say that one mistake like that has meant 60 years of further confusion for subsequent scholars!

This picture shows the invserse fountain (or "waterfall", as it's known in the UK) in front of the Bing Theatre, sadly not named after Crosby, but after USC trustee Anna Bing Arnold. I love the typeface used for the sign - pure Hollywood!

The design of the waterfall is quite intriguing because it looks from all angles like an irregular shape, but it's in fact a regular hexagon inside a regular octagon.

Thursday 1 (15/07/10)

I spent all of this morning and early- to mid-afternoon working in my apartment. Now that I have the ability to check books out of the library, I don’t feel the need to spend every hour I can there. I didn’t go out until about 4.15, by which time the day was pleasantly hot, rather than unbearably so. I took a stroll South through the University to the block on the other side, which includes the natural history museum and the rose garden. Possibly the most impressive this about the rose garden is the lawns that blanket the ground between beds – pre-dawn sprinklers again, no doubt. That’s not to say that the roses are not worth mentioning. I forget the exact statistic, but there are somewhere in the region of 1500 bushes of 140 varieties of rose. It’s a shame that none of my photos do justice to it – they are either close-ups that lose the symmetry of the place, or they are wide shots with no colour.

On my way back I dropped into the USC Catholic Centre, which has a chapel and a rather interesting set of Westminster chimes outside it. There was no clock face, and the tower housing the chimes looked more like a water tower than anything else. As one would expect, the chaplaincy was very welcoming, and I was able to find out all the events that go on there over the summer (their usual timetable being understandably diminished over the vacation). This picture is of the chapliancy office front door, and reflects the one thing about Catholics of which I’m most proud – their enduring sense of humour. I would urge anyone who has had the distinctly forbidding experience of visiting European cathedrals (“No photographs! Take your hat off!”) to drop in uninvited to a small church somewhere – the effect can be like being given chalk after eating too much cheese.

Wednesday 1 (14/07/10)

I’m cheating a little bit today because I actually took this photo on Monday. But I spent all day inside or rushing from one building to the next to escape the heat. Most sources reckon it reached 88 degrees Faranheit, so just as well I don’t have Dave’s syndrome. (You have to be a Black Books fan to understand that remark.) That’s 31 Celcius, and it’s set to stay there for tomorrow and Friday.

The building in this picture is the Doheny Memorial Library, where the cinema and television library is housed, as well as various others. It’s a wonderful Art Deco building with marble floors in the lobby, wooden interiors in the elevator, and by contrast some incredibly institutional-looking staircases! I may ask if I can take pictures inside next time I’m there.

The Cinema and Television library proudly displays its collections of movie memorabilia. There’s a whole glass cabinet of various affects of Cecil B. De Mille’s, including the great man’s ink-stand. Today I noticed for the first time a matte painting of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz (a painted background that was filmed separately from the live-action footage and combined with it later). Even though the whole idea of matte painting was to save from having to paint huge backdrops to film against, I was still surprised by how small it was – only about a metre square.

If you look for pictures of the Doheny Memorial Library on Google, you are bound to find some taken from the approaching footpath, with a fountain in the middle and hedges either side. But this lovely Italianate doorway tends to get swamped in wider shots.

Tuesday 1 (13/07/10)

I spent most of today sorting out internet access. This somewhat lengthy process was aided a great deal by the staff here, and it means I am now officially a “Visiting Scholar” of the Musicology Department.

I made myself a packed lunch today, and ate it on a bench underneath a tree on the campus. It’s amazing how quickly the sun moves (or rather, how quickly the surface of the earth spins at this latitude) – I had to keep an eye on where the dappled light was so that I didn’t get sunburnt. And at one o’clock (local noon because of daylight savings) it’s almost directly overhead. While I was eating, a brilliant red dragonfly was flitting about the ornamental pond in front of me. I tried my best, but wasn’t up to the challenge of photographing it. At least, not with a compact camera.

I did manage to get this photo of the squirrel. Well, I say “the” – chances are it isn’t the same squirrel I saw outside my apartment on Saturday. But it was only across the road, so you never know.

Monday 1 (12/07/10)

Made my first trip to the University today. The campus is quite stunning – deep green lawns with winding paved footpaths and buildings set at interesting angles to each other. The place reeks of privilege, partly because maintaining lawns in the desert is somewhat of a luxury, no matter how ubiquitous it may be throughout parts of LA, and partly because of the pretty young students cycling, skateboarding and driving golf buggies along the broad paths.

I took a while deciding which photo to post. I took a few of the most interesting architecture. This one shows the Bovard Auditorium and Administration Building, which is probably the least interesting building architecturally, but it gives the best impression of what it’s like to walk around the campus. This is the only ivy-covered building here – I suspect that any university with a claim to age tries to have at least one as some sort of badge of honour (although that is only a complete outsider’s impression). It did make the following lines from Tom Lehrer’s ‘Bright College Days’ spring to mind, however:

Bright college days, O carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

Another gloriously sunny day today, and not too hot (only 19 C in the shade). Tomorrow is forecasted to reach 25, and Wednesday 26, but the rest of the week is set to drop back to 20. I think I’m very lucky to be here in a cool summer – and to have happened upon a campus with plenty of leafy shade.

Sunday 1 (11/07/10)

Woke up at about 6 this morning and decided I wanted to cook chicken and rice for dinner. Consequently spent most of the day in supermarkets, trying to find a saucepan. Finally found one at about 4.45, by which point I’d decided I thoroughly deserved a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, forgot to buy a corkscrew (or to limit myself to screwcaps) so had orange juice instead.

Cooking went smoothly (once I had made a fourth trip to a supermarket to buy the forgotten vegetable oil) and I now have two extra portions of chicken in the freezer and half an onion to use at my leisure. Also cornflakes and milk, which I will be eating out of a Tupperware bowl since none of the three supermarkets sold ceramics.

I was afraid I would have to eat off paper plates the entire time I was here, or else make a trip to a cookware shop about 3 miles away, but an office-staff member recommended I try the dollar store across the road (exactly like the pound store, selling the same Chinese tat). I was surprised to find most of the kitchenware I needed, including plates and metal cutlery. Funny how an extremely cheap store can stock better quality things than its superiors. I treated myself to this fake orchid while I was buying dishcloths etc. It certainly brightens the place up exponentially.

Saturday 1 (10/07/10)

My first blog will have to be uploaded at a later date, since internet access is not yet sorted.

I can feel my energy levels dropping, and I suspect my good mood will go with it, so I will try to keep this brief.

The flight went very smoothly, perhaps the most surprising thing of all was how quick immigration turned out to be. I think my flight came down at a lucky time – there was no queue in front of my fellow passengers. We landed at about 3.30, and by 4 I was outside waiting for the shuttle bus.

The accommodation here is much better than I expected. The decor is predictably depressing – white woodchip walls, industrial carpet, plain wood furnishings, single bed. I may not be able to resist finding a poster or two, even if it’s only for 5 weeks. But the apartment is more spacious than I thought it would be. The living room has a couch and an armchair, and a small table with four dining chairs. There’s a separate kitchen behind a bar or counter. The kitchen has a double sink, lots of cupboard space, a fridge with a generous freezer compartment, and best of all a gas cooker with oven and four-ring hob. Not sure how much cooking I’ll be doing, but it’s nice to know I can. No kettle, unfortunately – I’ll see if I can get a cheap one. If not, a milk pan should do.

Bought my first American food – a baguette from Subway. Curiously, the Subway Smell didn’t seem to be so pungent here as in Glasgow. I’m going to eat it at 7 in hopes that it will help with jetlag. Don’t expect to be up much after 8.
There was a little girl sitting across from me on the plane, and she was watching Tom and Jerry on a portable DVD player. Even though I was watching and listening to Bill Bailey, I could hear Tom and Jerry’s soundtrack in my head when I glanced over. I’m obviously right for this job.

Going to watch a film now. I feel as though I should take some photographs, but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow, when I’m sure to have time to kill. Possible subjects I saw today were a grey squirrel (much greyer than your common UK squirrel, which supports the theory that British greys and reds are interbreeding into a new breed) and views of the University. But I got this picture before I left Glasgow of the FlyBe plane to Barra. This is supposed to be an LA blog, but since this is technically Day -2, I think I’m justified in having one from Scotland.