And it is cloudy and raining. But when I look out my friend's window the view is of hills covered with palm trees and spaceship houses clinging to cliffs. The weather might be similar but we ain't in London anymore. We squished in with all the tourists along the walk of fame yesterday, and today we'll do the la brea tar pits. It was going to be Venice Beach but maybe the weather will be better on our return. Tommorrow we fly on to New Zealand, then at the beginning of May we stop over here in LA on the way back again. Twelve hours is the max possible on a plane with a one year old. Actually it is past the max. Anything more than an hour with a baby on a plane is past the max. It is twelve hours of sheer hell. Of walking up and down up and down. I got off the plane with my pockets stuffed full of rubbish from the walkways, grabbed before it could go in baby G's mouth. I used up a whole packet of disinfectant wipes in the toilets changing him (getting a nappy on and off a baby in a airplane toilet could be a mensa test). It was the cleanest plane on the Heathrow to LAX flight route. I say that we're going to do the tar pits today, but what I mean is that if Air NZ manage to sort out our replacement tickets and we've enough time left in the day we'll be doing the tar pits. Our original tickets are, as far as I know, still in the pocket in front of our seats, in the cabin of the plane we were on, on Friday.

It is Baby G's first birthday tommorrow and we still haven't been able to think of what to get him. Going by his own preferences, a box of tissues to rip and eat, and a bunch of bananas would make him happiest. For his first Christmas we got him a lovely illustrated book of Peter Rabbit and other stories. His grandparents are getting him a little walker type trolley - one of those carts with blocks in it that he can push along. He will love that as he likes pulling himself up to standing and moving around.

Imagine finding a new world under your house. That's almost what happened to us this weekend. Apparently there's a hidden void beneath our house. Void - that's the word repeatedly used by the burly bloke who came to check out the whiffs of gas I could smell in the kitchen on Saturday morning. I'd rather he didn't use the word void - to someone who has seen too many sci fi and horror movies it conjures up images of forgotten Indian burial grounds or gateways to parallel universes. Actually the latter could be quite cool. Imagine if Merlin had accidentally left a stargate lying around Londinium? Although, back then our part of the city would have been several miles out of town, just a hill rising out of marsh soaked countryside. Still, Glastonbury was a mound, and that's just a man made hill.

By void, the man from Transco meant the remains of an old Victorian cellar. When the old Victorian terrace here was either pulled down, or bombed out (we are next to a train line, a common target in World War II), the builders simply built over the old cellars. If it wasn't for a small hole in the floor of our kitchen where the pipework comes up, we'd never have known about it.

NOTE: the leak came from the pipe leading to the stove. He shut it off, and Transco kindly gave us a two hob electric thingie to tide us over until we can get it fixed.

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