First time I ever went to America, we flew from Edinburgh to London then caught another flight to Los Angeles. With two children. One of whom, a baby, spent the entire fourteen hours clamped to one or other of my breasts. By the time we landed at LAX, I was a shrivelled prune, as dearly in need of rehydration as one of those California raisins I’d been consuming since childhood. I’d always loved the packaging on those ; a vanishing series of girls holding a box of raisins on which was a girl holding a box of raisins until she was so small, she was invisible.

A matruschka of California girls. I’ve always loved those Russian dolls too. With their smaller and smaller editions of the mama dolly, until the penultimate  tiny dolly yields what I like to refer to as ‘the Bean’. Woe betide the hoover or dog that devours the Bean. Anyhoo, I digress. America. We landed, were picked up by our in-laws ( well, then they were out-laws) and driven in an enormous car out to the ‘burbs to a house with two vast, panting Alsatians with Greek names. I suspect the dogs were for security purposes rather than any love of dogs since their lives were proscribed by the smallness of their back garden enclosure and the lack of places to run, walk or generally be a proper dog.

Overhead, planes took off and landed all night long. Police helicopters chopped past, shining floodlights down into the glittering streets. Morning brought floods of sunshine, Cheerios and a trip to the supermarket which was an education in itself. The Santa Monica highway was seven (seven!) lanes wide and drivers of open-topped cars sat reading ( reading!) as we inched along.

Some years before, a boyfriend had nicknamed me Miss Mouse, and would draw little encouraging drawings for me if I ever had to take a portfolio down to London or go anywhere outwith my normal zone of operations. For that same Miss Mouse to find herself in LA was disorientating in the extreme.

I’m going to continue this later because I’m going to Morayshire tomorrow and somehow, I’ve lost all details of my train times. I know Morayshire isn’t that far, but Miss Mouse is still having a Major Fret and feeling totally overwhelmed. So for now, I’m off to hunt for train times and leaving you with the promise that I will return.

Squeaking.