Back to the future.

When I left England in 1981 with my best mate Jules to ‘follow our noses’ around the world, I had no idea that all locations we'd pointed to on the map would disappear upon touch down in the US. First stop San Francisco and that remained home until I got on a plane to move to Maui six and a half years later!

So as I sit in my sexy ‘W’ hotel room in San Francisco enjoying a week of city life, room service and mod-cons the memories come flooding back. BTW-if you too want a light changing Buddah....he's yours for just $310.00.

It was a crazy time and our flat mate across the hall (as a gesture of welcome I’m sure) started posting tiny little envelopes under our door. It was a bit creepy (to say the least) and when we opened up the miniture wrappers they contained a white power that we could only assume was cocaine. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to offend (you can take the girls out of England) we gathered up all the packets and wrote a polite note back of ‘thanks for the lovely offer of narcotics, but we’re more the booze and fags kinda girls’. Now I think about it, with language like that we’re lucky a leather clad-buffed out-Polk Street ‘top’ didn’t come a knocking!

Walking around the city today I realized that I consider the environment on Maui to be my good friend and without her I fall in step with everyone else and start to over consume (OK –just a lipstick and one pair of shoes-so far….).
Of course nature is available here, but it takes effort to get to it and the easy way out is to not bother and numb your mind with desire for stuff and ‘excuse me may I please have a latte’?! I have the same routine on Maui but the desire is to windsurf or romp in nature and the latte is my snack and water afterwards!

So yesterday, instead of nature I went to a Museum of Modern Art and had a blast. I saw an exhibition and went on a tour explaining the work of James Cornells creative genius and felt the deep satisfaction of being exposed to something new and interesting.

The day ended perfectly when I finally hooked up with said best mate Jules, her beau Ed and one of their two lovely offspring, Gemma. They’re cooking for 12 on Thanksgiving day and decided to bypass kitchen safety and get their knife cuts in early! Now thats love.....