Supermarket sweep

The area of West Hollywood where Matt lives is really quiet. It’s in the hills, away from the large, busy boulevards, so really the only sounds you hear are the chirping of birds and the wind rustling through the palm trees. It’s about as idyllic as you could ever imagine. I feel very lucky to be here.

I managed to sleep until a very respectful time this morning, and woke up at about 9am, taking myself to the garden to work on the screenplay version of Brass. I was recently given a set of very detailed notes on my first draft. There’s much to do to whip things into shape. I’ve never written a screenplay before, and I’m very much learning on the job - with a brilliant teacher putting me through my paces. I’m trying to take the piece further and further away from the theatre show version, repeatedly trying to remind myself how concise and distilled the language in a film should be, and how much you can convey through the visuals alone.

Of course, there’s nowhere better to write a screenplay than sitting by a pool in LA! I sipped tea in the cooling morning breeze before leaping into the pool for forty lengths (each length being about six strokes, so don’t be too impressed!!)

We worked through the afternoon. At the moment we’re simply throwing ideas around, watching films and diving into the internet, but it’s a lot of fun, especially as we can suddenly decide to dive into a pool instead!

There’s an early evening light which descends on LA which feels unique to the city, in the same way that there’s a specific Tuscan light and a definitive New York light. The LA evening light is a little hazy, quite washed-out and more than a little nostalgic. I realise as I write this, that it’s the light of Hollywood films.

We went shopping in a supermarket, which is always a treat for me. This particular supermarket was filled to the brim with weird and wonderful food stuffs. They were selling something called a “Mug Treat.” It seems that you pour a sort of dry mixture into a mug, add liquid, shove it in the microwave, and, hey presto, you’ve got fluffy muffiny goodness. In a mug. A mug I say!

I then stumbled upon a display of “sippies,” which are plastic bowls with a straw hanging out of the side. One assumes they’re there to encourage kids to drink their milk after they’ve consumed a bowl of cereal, maybe the brand of cereal they were selling with biblical quotes scrawled all over it!

The Americans love their soda drinks, and you can buy pretty much anything of that type in Matt’s local. Coca-cola over here is like a franchise. Cherry Coke is old hat compared to Georgia Peach Coke and California Raspberry Coke. Even the water is weird. I found one bottle in the shape of a teddy bear. It’s called “whoops” water, which sounds like a more suitable name for an incontinence pad, but it’s tag line is “because water is fun.” With all those brightly-coloured soda options, water needs to market itself very aggressively!

That said, I am more than a little grateful to the fact that, over here, there’s still sugar in drinks, which means things don’t all have the bitter, nasty aftertaste of stevia and aspartame.

The ice cream aisle needs to be seen to be believed! It’s the gem in the supermarket’s crown, with freezer after freezer filled with tubs of the stuff, which actually light up as you pass them, making everything within look extra specially colourful, so your children just won’t stop nagging you to buy!