And now my diamond shoes are too ... dusty

As the weather gets warmer (from the bitter depths of 15c we have suffered through this winter) I am reminded again of one of the biggest downsides to life in Hermosa Beach.

This is the combined effect of two factors:

1) Flip flops or sandals are a must here from April to November. Its too warm and too darn beachy for closed toes.

2) We walk along the Greenbelt to get to most places – downtown, to see friends, to go to the park. And the Greenbelt is paved with woodchip and dirt.

Hence: dirty dirty feet. My feet are never clean. They are somewhere between mildly dusty or absolutely filthy at all times.

That diagonal stripe of dirt is semi-permanent, April-November

And dirty flip flops too.

This is AFTER I washed them. They will never be clean again.

I don't know what the solution is. A deeper tan? I’ll try but I’m really not made that way. Darker flipflops? I’ve tried that too - but my new red ones already look as grubby as last year's neon yellow. Closed shoes? Never. Not in this weather.

No, I think it’s just a cross I’ll have to bear. Another heartbreaking story of life in Hermosa Beach.

Can the customer experience ever be too good?

Customer service in the US is famously better than it is in the UK. So much so that it takes a bit of getting used to. Shop assistants barely even pause texting to look up when you enter most high street shops, and British waiters are experts in studiously avoiding eye contact. Meanwhile over here they accost you with offers of help from the moment you walk in, which can be alarmingly. Even after you've shopped they throw out a ‘Need help to your car, ma’am?’.

So far, so clichéd. I always thought the British were underserved by the cliché though. The family who ran my old corner shop were always very friendly, for what it's worth. And the customer service in John Lewis is usually brilliant.

Still, I don’t think there is anything in the UK to match the experience TLOML and I just had at a shop called Pirch, which claims to purvey joy. No, really.

Thanks to an unreliable oven and a juicy insurance cheque, we are in the market for a new range. Our house came fitted with a 48” Thermador, from which it is rather difficult to retreat. I mean, we’re not going to take it out and replace it with something smaller, for starters. What would we put in the gap, after all? It turns out there’s no such thing as a budget 48” range, and if there were, it would probably affect our home’s value. Frankly if your real estate listing doesn’t call out a Thermador, Wolf or Viking range you might just as well spraypaint ‘tear down’ on the front of the house.

Therefore we are in the market for a fancy range. And therefore we went to a fancy shop. We went to a mall in Orange County that looks like this:

Jjust as an aside, heres how the Farmers like to purvey their goods down in the OC (puts the trestle tables of Saltburn's farmers' market to shame somewhat):

I think the farmers were out on the golf course they day we visited

Anyway, back to Pirch and the reason for our visit. As you walk through the fancy schmancy doors, you are greeted with an offer of coffee – freshly ground and made to order. Then an actual chef talked us through how he would could what with which range, and did a little steam oven demo. They offered us a test drive: a trial run cooking on the ovens in the store (with foods their chef had prepped – no need for us to chop or peel, obvs). I'm not sure I could cope with cooking in a kitchen this pristine, so I declined.

They had a chicken on a rotisserie which I think if we’d wanted we could have helped ourselves to.

That's TLOML's nose. I cropped out the drool.

All the appliances are wired and plumbed in. In fact I think you can even use the loo or take a shower if you want.

It was actually rather overwhelming. TLOML didn’t even want to look at the wine fridges, which is how I knew it was all a bit much for him. We shuffled out feeling drained and somehow not entirely full of joy. We really do need a new range, and it does need to be a posh one - but I’m not sure we really needed the Pirch experience. Does anyone?

The most wonderful time of the year (is over)

I may be a little out of the loop down here in the South Bay bubble but I'm not talking about Christmas. No, according to TLOML the most wonderful time of the year is March Madness: the college basketball tournament which whittles 32 teams down to one winner over the course of  a couple of weeks and over 30 games.

Because it's a knock out, it's a bit like the FA cup in that there are giant killers and upsets along the way. And it's intense, with many game packed into a short space of time. Lots of people draw up brackets, where you predict who's going to win each game. Drawing up your bracket, talking about who's in your bracket, constantly checking your bracket predictions is a big part of life during March Madness.

TLOML's bracket, which unsurprisingly beat mine

It is almost all some people can think about, resulting in (according to some) billions of dollars of lost productivity. March Madness certainly kept us entertained, and we watched games at home, at friends' houses, over happy hour drinks in local bars - it's on wherever you go.

The funny thing is, these aren't even professional teams. This is a university competition. Can you imagine anything like this level of attention being paid to the British University Football League, say? Let alone the netball league (for I believe - much to TLOML's exasperation - that netball is our closest equivalent. Back me up on this, it's fun to see him riled). With the exception of that anachronistic anomaly the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race, college sports are not televised events.

But here they are huge commercial enterprises, generating income for the universities and creating an incredible opportunity for talented players. Just don't ask too many questions about how they balance their academic commitments with their life as a fulltime baller... No matter, the most important thing is they provide top quality sporting entertainment for rest of us to enjoy. Even as a habitual phone-in-hand watcher of sports, I was gripped by the final this year in which TLOML's beloved Tar Heels lost out to surprise victors Villanova in the final seconds of the game. Just watch the last 30 seconds of the game if you don't believe me. Great telly! Maybe the UK is missing out... time to start that televised netball league?