Newsletter - Xmas 2000

This newsletter covers the last part of 2000, up to Christmas.

It was released to an unsuspecting world on December 15th, 2000.

Lynne and Dave’s Christmas Diatribe

Well folks, much as we don’t particularly like the idea of a generic newsletter, I’m afraid time pressure etc has finally got to us, and so we’re resorting to this to get everyone up to date with the last few months’ happenings here in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

It also means we can print it out and include it in the cards to our more Luddite pals who don’t yet have e-mail (you know who you are… you’ll have to give in eventually… you can’t escape our messages for ever…)

And for those who are in touch regularly by e-mail, apologies for any duplication of bits you may have heard before.

ANYWAY – We haven’t put out a general newsletter for a few months now, so there’s a fair bit to cover. The reason for lack of communications has been that we’ve been busy on both the work and social fronts… I’ll have done a new ‘personal best’ (or worst) this year for travelling – I’m currently (as at Dec 10^th) up to 74 flights so far this year (with at least 6 more scheduled before the end of the year). Most of my recent travel has been to Kansas City, with a few quick New York trips interspersed. Kansas City is actually much more pleasant than I expected – friendly, laid back, and surprisingly civilized with good restaurants and a busy live jazz and blues scene (and not THAT many cows and guns at all…)

Lynne’s not entirely escaped from the joys of business travel either – a recent very short notice trip back to the UK gave her chance to try out some new drugs (Melatonin – the anti jet-lag thing which you can buy over the counter here in the US – apparently it seems to help!). Despite the short notice she was able to cram in some visits up to the Midlands to see Jennie & Claire and to gatecrash a few gatherings of her pals up in Harbury (as some of you will know), so it wasn’t solely a business trip.

On the ‘travelling for pleasure’ front, we’ve been (slowly) venturing out from SF on day and weekend trips… we did a long weekend up in Mendocino (160 miles north) earlier in the year (if you’ve seen the film ‘Same Time Next Year’ you’ll know the place we went – we stayed in the Heritage House Inn which is where it was filmed). We’ve also done various day trips out to local viewpoints/attractions such as Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, Stinson Beach, Bolinas and of course we’re getting familiar with the Napa and Sonoma wine country.. (but somehow I think it will probably take a few more trips before we’ve really got the hang of this area..). Napa happened to be the epicentre of our first real earthquake here back in September… not a very big one for this part of the world (a 5.2 centred 35 miles north of us) but strong enough to shake us awake at 1:30 am. Slightly scarey!

We also ventured east for the first time recently… courtesy of Lynne’s new morris dancing side. After a series of ‘auditions’ Lynne was invited to join Berkeley Morris, which of course she enthusiastically accepted. On 5^th November they had a gig up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains – a Bonfire Night bash at a Brit-owned microbrewery up in the old gold mining country. A great day was had by all (remember that most US folks have never even heard of Bonfire Night.. but it didn’t seem to stop them having a jolly time and drinking lots of beer).

The travelling highlight of the year was our holiday out in Hawaii with all Lynne’s girls in August. We managed to co-ordinate a trip out there during their summer visit, and had 8 days in Kona on the Big Island… managed to squeeze in snorkelling, parascending and a helicopter trip over waterfalls and the (still erupting!) volcano. Amazing stuff, especially hovering over a moving lava flow as it poured into the ocean…

Possibility of a few more trips coming up – potentially some seasonal things with the Berkeley Morris crowd and maybe a short trip up to Lake Tahoe over Christmas/New Year with some other Brits who are now over here working for WhiteCross.

We also quite fancy a weekend down on the coast further south – Monterey/Carmel is supposed to be good to visit, and now is the beginning of the whale watching season down there, so maybe soon…
On the ‘music and arts’ front, it’s pretty much impossible to fit in all the possible gigs, shows, etc that we’d like to see (partly due to all the travelling, but also cos we’re spoilt for choice to a degree). Apart from the ‘usual backdrop’ of free jazz, blues and acoustic music in places like Lou’s, the Saloon, the Cannery, and folk sessions in the Starry Plough or Johnny Foley’s, we’ve seen some great Celtic music (mainly at the Freight and Salvage Coffee Bar in Berkeley). Most recent have been Johnny Cunningham and Susan McKeown, Solas, Dougie Maclean and the Copper Family. We also went up to Sebastopol (1 hour north) for their Celtic music festival which was a real treat – a small low key 2 day festival but with some top-rate music including Martin Hayes, Karen Casey, Tabache and loads more I can’t remember.

There was also an excellent free ‘Festival of the Sea’ in September at the Hyde St Pier downtown. This is a museum of maritime stuff, but for the festival they have a lot of folky music acts playing shanties etc on the decks of the old boats they have moored up there – definitely in the diary for a return trip next year. We’ve been to a few ‘house concerts’ which seem to be popular around here – intimate acoustic sessions in someone’s home.. seen Pete Morton and Colum Sands in this setting.

There’s also been the odd occasion when we’ve ventured out to the bigger venues to see ‘big name’ acts… the bigger venues are the large purpose-built arenas they have here – one up in Concord and one down in Mountain View. These are outside, built into ‘natural’ amphitheatres and they seat around 15000 people at a time. We went to see Sting & k d lang there, and also saw Don Henley over in Berkeley. Of the lot, I think my personal favourites were Solas and Sting.. both excellent, and now getting a lot of airtime on the turbo-nutter-bastard stereo system we bought earlier in the year.

Got some good stuff lined up for the New Year too – Bob Fox, Chieftains, and Elton John & Billy Joel.

On the theatre front, it’s been a bit quieter than the first half of the year… saw ‘Fully Committed’ which is a very funny solo performance based on a day in the life of a reservation-taker in a swanky restaurant. The guy in the play switches between all the (dozens of !) roles, keeping several characters and conversations going simultaneously – well worth seeing if you get chance. Also saw Michele’s first on-stage performance in a play called ‘David and Lisa’ which was done by her school drama group – it was very ambitious, but very well done. Michele’s currently in rehearsal for the next one (The Rook) which runs in Mid-Jan – she seems to have really got into the drama stuff (no surprises there!) but also seems to be enjoying the school here, and is learning lots (she tells us). I went to see Penn & Teller last week – comedy magic, occasionally slightly gory (which put Lynne off going), but some amazing illusions.
Other recent(ish) local ‘events’ include Halloween (where everybody in the US just seems to use this as an excuse to wear fancy dress… not particularly Halloween stuff, just any fancy dress…). This included the airline pilots and stewardesses on one flight I was on, which wasn’t quite so amusing… and speaking of fancy dress, I must also mention the Folsom St Fair. Just about every weekend throughout the summer in SF there’s a street fair in at least one of the neighbourhoods. Typically they fence of 3 or 4 blocks, put up some stages for live music, and set up loads of food/drink stalls and art/craft booths – an excuse for a big street party, really. Folsom St is no different, except that Folsom Street is the area where all the more outrageous clubs are, and so the theme of this street fair is leather, fetish and S&M… Even for San Francisco, this was pretty outrageous.

On the domestic front, we’re getting the house sorted out, and are settled in now. Still have some stuff to get done… the back garden is still basically untouched (making it seem just like my old house in Molesey, as a recent UK visitor kindly pointed out). We still don’t quite understand what to do with the ‘family room’ – for some reason Lynne thinks I’m joking when I suggest putting in a pool table.

We’ve finally installed our own washer and dryer, so my Saturday mornings of sitting over a quiet beer in the Mint Karaoke bar while the Speed Queens in the Castro laundrette did the washing are now just a fond memory. In common with most San Francisco residents, we’ve put up some Christmas lights outside the house.. ($9.99 for a string of 450 lights…). Some folks REALLY go over the top, but this year it’s been a bit dampened by the fact that the local electric supply company has managed to arranged to take several plants off stream for maintenance, and so power is in short supply and ‘rolling blackouts’ are threatened unless we’re all more careful about how much power we’re using.

We were good little visitors at Thanksgiving, and did the full Thanksgiving thing, complete with turkey and all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie for afters. (It would have been daft not to, since any turkey up to 15lb weight was only $3.99 in the local Safeways).

We’ve had chance to hone our ‘San Francisco tour guide’ skills by practicing on several unsuspecting sets of visitors over the past few months – a mix of family (Lynne’s sister and family, and briefly (2 hours in the airport bar!) my brother) and friends/ex-colleagues – Anne & Tricia (who shopped till they dropped and led our young male colleagues astray), Clive (twice! – once with Terry and once with Mary) . Plus Lynne’s ex Bede colleagues Keith, Brian and Matt, and my ex colleagues Dan, Alex and Will. We’ve had a ‘visitorless’ spell since October, but Alex returns for a week in Jan, and I’m sure that we’ll be getting a steady stream throughout 2001. Book early to avoid disappointment!

Other ‘flying visitors’ – the US Navy! The annual Fleet Week celebrations happened in October, coinciding with visits by Anne, Tricia, Clive and Mary. We had a bash on Treasure Island, where it turned out that we had grandstand seats for the Blue Angels flying display. It seems they used Treasure Island as a marker to line up for some of their display runs – so consequently we had lots of F-16s zooming (literally) a few feet over our heads.

Speaking of flying visitors, we now have real live hummingbirds which come to the feeder we put up in the back garden, and also Treasure Island now has it’s own set of resident sea-lions that seem to have decided to stay in the bay just by the gates to the island. We can see them posing most mornings as we head to work. Last month we had the biggest cranes in the world (no, not the birds, the big steel things they use to unload containers….). There were 4 of them on a ship bound for Oakland seaport, and they had to time their trip into the bay to fit under the bridges at low tide… they had 5 feet clearance under the Golden Gate, but only 22 inches under the Bay Bridge (which links Treasure Island to the city).

That’s probably about it for now… hope everyone has a great Christmas and new year, and best wishes to all for 2001. I’m afraid Lynne and I have been bad and are already using our Christmas presents (didn’t even bother to wrap them!). Lynne has a new wizzy sewing machine (apparently she needs to make herself some kit for her new Berkeley Morris side). I got a record deck (you know, for playing those big old-fashioned black plastic things) which as I type this is blasting out some almost forgotten tracks from our recently-neglected vinyl collection. (It’s really difficult getting the 6 dogs to stay in front of the speakers though…)

© Copyright Cooke-Shuttleworth Enterprises 2001


This newsletter covers the last part of 2000, up to Christmas. It was released to an unsuspecting world on December 15th, 2000.		Lynne and Dave’s Christmas Diatribe Well folks, much as we don’t particularly like the idea of a generic newsletter, I’m afraid time pressure etc has finally got to us, and so we’re resorting to this to get everyone up to date with the last few months’ happenings here in San Francisco and the Bay Area. It also means we can print it out and include it in the cards to our more Luddite pals who don’t yet have e-mail (you know who you are… you’ll have to give in eventually… you can’t escape our messages for ever…) And for those who are in touch regularly by e-mail, apologies for any duplication of bits you may have heard before. ANYWAY – We haven’t put out a general newsletter for a few months now, so there’s a fair bit to cover. The reason for lack of communications has been that we’ve been busy on both the work and social fronts… I’ll have done a new ‘personal best’ (or worst) this year for travelling – I’m currently (as at Dec 10^th) up to 74 flights so far this year (with at least 6 more scheduled before the end of the year). Most of my recent travel has been to Kansas City, with a few quick New York trips interspersed. Kansas City is actually much more pleasant than I expected – friendly, laid back, and surprisingly civilized with good restaurants and a busy live jazz and blues scene (and not THAT many cows and guns at all…) Lynne’s not entirely escaped from the joys of business travel either – a recent very short notice trip back to the UK gave her chance to try out some new drugs (Melatonin – the anti jet-lag thing which you can buy over the counter here in the US – apparently it seems to help!). Despite the short notice she was able to cram in some visits up to the Midlands to see Jennie & Claire and to gatecrash a few gatherings of her pals up in Harbury (as some of you will know), so it wasn’t solely a business trip. On the ‘travelling for pleasure’ front, we’ve been (slowly) venturing out from SF on day and weekend trips… we did a long weekend up in Mendocino (160 miles north) earlier in the year (if you’ve seen the film ‘Same Time Next Year’ you’ll know the place we went – we stayed in the Heritage House Inn which is where it was filmed). We’ve also done various day trips out to local viewpoints/attractions such as Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, Stinson Beach, Bolinas and of course we’re getting familiar with the Napa and Sonoma wine country.. (but somehow I think it will probably take a few more trips before we’ve really got the hang of this area..). Napa happened to be the epicentre of our first real earthquake here back in September… not a very big one for this part of the world (a 5.2 centred 35 miles north of us) but strong enough to shake us awake at 1:30 am. Slightly scarey! We also ventured east for the first time recently… courtesy of Lynne’s new morris dancing side. After a series of ‘auditions’ Lynne was invited to join Berkeley Morris, which of course she enthusiastically accepted. On 5^th November they had a gig up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains – a Bonfire Night bash at a Brit-owned microbrewery up in the old gold mining country. A great day was had by all (remember that most US folks have never even heard of Bonfire Night.. but it didn’t seem to stop them having a jolly time and drinking lots of beer). The travelling highlight of the year was our holiday out in Hawaii with all Lynne’s girls in August. We managed to co-ordinate a trip out there during their summer visit, and had 8 days in Kona on the Big Island… managed to squeeze in snorkelling, parascending and a helicopter trip over waterfalls and the (still erupting!) volcano. Amazing stuff, especially hovering over a moving lava flow as it poured into the ocean… Possibility of a few more trips coming up – potentially some seasonal things with the Berkeley Morris crowd and maybe a short trip up to Lake Tahoe over Christmas/New Year with some other Brits who are now over here working for WhiteCross. We also quite fancy a weekend down on the coast further south – Monterey/Carmel is supposed to be good to visit, and now is the beginning of the whale watching season down there, so maybe soon… On the ‘music and arts’ front, it’s pretty much impossible to fit in all the possible gigs, shows, etc that we’d like to see (partly due to all the travelling, but also cos we’re spoilt for choice to a degree). Apart from the ‘usual backdrop’ of free jazz, blues and acoustic music in places like Lou’s, the Saloon, the Cannery, and folk sessions in the Starry Plough or Johnny Foley’s, we’ve seen some great Celtic music (mainly at the Freight and Salvage Coffee Bar in Berkeley). Most recent have been Johnny Cunningham and Susan McKeown, Solas, Dougie Maclean and the Copper Family. We also went up to Sebastopol (1 hour north) for their Celtic music festival which was a real treat – a small low key 2 day festival but with some top-rate music including Martin Hayes, Karen Casey, Tabache and loads more I can’t remember. There was also an excellent free ‘Festival of the Sea’ in September at the Hyde St Pier downtown. This is a museum of maritime stuff, but for the festival they have a lot of folky music acts playing shanties etc on the decks of the old boats they have moored up there – definitely in the diary for a return trip next year. We’ve been to a few ‘house concerts’ which seem to be popular around here – intimate acoustic sessions in someone’s home.. seen Pete Morton and Colum Sands in this setting. There’s also been the odd occasion when we’ve ventured out to the bigger venues to see ‘big name’ acts… the bigger venues are the large purpose-built arenas they have here – one up in Concord and one down in Mountain View. These are outside, built into ‘natural’ amphitheatres and they seat around 15000 people at a time. We went to see Sting & k d lang there, and also saw Don Henley over in Berkeley. Of the lot, I think my personal favourites were Solas and Sting.. both excellent, and now getting a lot of airtime on the turbo-nutter-bastard stereo system we bought earlier in the year. Got some good stuff lined up for the New Year too – Bob Fox, Chieftains, and Elton John & Billy Joel. On the theatre front, it’s been a bit quieter than the first half of the year… saw ‘Fully Committed’ which is a very funny solo performance based on a day in the life of a reservation-taker in a swanky restaurant. The guy in the play switches between all the (dozens of !) roles, keeping several characters and conversations going simultaneously – well worth seeing if you get chance. Also saw Michele’s first on-stage performance in a play called ‘David and Lisa’ which was done by her school drama group – it was very ambitious, but very well done. Michele’s currently in rehearsal for the next one (The Rook) which runs in Mid-Jan – she seems to have really got into the drama stuff (no surprises there!) but also seems to be enjoying the school here, and is learning lots (she tells us). I went to see Penn & Teller last week – comedy magic, occasionally slightly gory (which put Lynne off going), but some amazing illusions. Other recent(ish) local ‘events’ include Halloween (where everybody in the US just seems to use this as an excuse to wear fancy dress… not particularly Halloween stuff, just any fancy dress…). This included the airline pilots and stewardesses on one flight I was on, which wasn’t quite so amusing… and speaking of fancy dress, I must also mention the Folsom St Fair. Just about every weekend throughout the summer in SF there’s a street fair in at least one of the neighbourhoods. Typically they fence of 3 or 4 blocks, put up some stages for live music, and set up loads of food/drink stalls and art/craft booths – an excuse for a big street party, really. Folsom St is no different, except that Folsom Street is the area where all the more outrageous clubs are, and so the theme of this street fair is leather, fetish and S&M… Even for San Francisco, this was pretty outrageous. On the domestic front, we’re getting the house sorted out, and are settled in now. Still have some stuff to get done… the back garden is still basically untouched (making it seem just like my old house in Molesey, as a recent UK visitor kindly pointed out). We still don’t quite understand what to do with the ‘family room’ – for some reason Lynne thinks I’m joking when I suggest putting in a pool table. We’ve finally installed our own washer and dryer, so my Saturday mornings of sitting over a quiet beer in the Mint Karaoke bar while the Speed Queens in the Castro laundrette did the washing are now just a fond memory. In common with most San Francisco residents, we’ve put up some Christmas lights outside the house.. ($9.99 for a string of 450 lights…). Some folks REALLY go over the top, but this year it’s been a bit dampened by the fact that the local electric supply company has managed to arranged to take several plants off stream for maintenance, and so power is in short supply and ‘rolling blackouts’ are threatened unless we’re all more careful about how much power we’re using. We were good little visitors at Thanksgiving, and did the full Thanksgiving thing, complete with turkey and all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie for afters. (It would have been daft not to, since any turkey up to 15lb weight was only $3.99 in the local Safeways). We’ve had chance to hone our ‘San Francisco tour guide’ skills by practicing on several unsuspecting sets of visitors over the past few months – a mix of family (Lynne’s sister and family, and briefly (2 hours in the airport bar!) my brother) and friends/ex-colleagues – Anne & Tricia (who shopped till they dropped and led our young male colleagues astray), Clive (twice! – once with Terry and once with Mary) . Plus Lynne’s ex Bede colleagues Keith, Brian and Matt, and my ex colleagues Dan, Alex and Will. We’ve had a ‘visitorless’ spell since October, but Alex returns for a week in Jan, and I’m sure that we’ll be getting a steady stream throughout 2001. Book early to avoid disappointment! Other ‘flying visitors’ – the US Navy! The annual Fleet Week celebrations happened in October, coinciding with visits by Anne, Tricia, Clive and Mary. We had a bash on Treasure Island, where it turned out that we had grandstand seats for the Blue Angels flying display. It seems they used Treasure Island as a marker to line up for some of their display runs – so consequently we had lots of F-16s zooming (literally) a few feet over our heads. Speaking of flying visitors, we now have real live hummingbirds which come to the feeder we put up in the back garden, and also Treasure Island now has it’s own set of resident sea-lions that seem to have decided to stay in the bay just by the gates to the island. We can see them posing most mornings as we head to work. Last month we had the biggest cranes in the world (no, not the birds, the big steel things they use to unload containers….). There were 4 of them on a ship bound for Oakland seaport, and they had to time their trip into the bay to fit under the bridges at low tide… they had 5 feet clearance under the Golden Gate, but only 22 inches under the Bay Bridge (which links Treasure Island to the city). That’s probably about it for now… hope everyone has a great Christmas and new year, and best wishes to all for 2001. I’m afraid Lynne and I have been bad and are already using our Christmas presents (didn’t even bother to wrap them!). Lynne has a new wizzy sewing machine (apparently she needs to make herself some kit for her new Berkeley Morris side). I got a record deck (you know, for playing those big old-fashioned black plastic things) which as I type this is blasting out some almost forgotten tracks from our recently-neglected vinyl collection. (It’s really difficult getting the 6 dogs to stay in front of the speakers though…) © Copyright Cooke-Shuttleworth Enterprises 2001