LA Part 1

Harper Collins sent me away for a week to help me write. It was the last act of desperate people. Chris, my editor, asked me where I wanted to go.

“LA,” I told him.

He blinked. “I was thinking more like Cornwall, or perhaps Torquay.”

“I find the locale very inspiring. The palm trees bring something out in me.”

“The palm trees are all fifty feet high. No one looks at them.”

“Just to know they’re there though…” His hand twitched towards the phone but stopped. He was wavering. “I’ll be writing non-stop by the poolside.”

“OK,” he sighed, broken. “I’ll set it up.”

“First class?” He reddened further until it seemed something in his face would pop. “Economy then.”



I bought Cheryl a ticket as we have friends out there. I planned to write on the plane, but BA has introduced On Demand movies with a library of about forty films. I had checked in on-line as soon as it became available, refreshing the screen and then snapping up seats in the emergency exit row. I tell them I am willing to help people escape in the event of an emergency, even though I would actually be first out of the door, if I was still sober enough to care.

We drank wine until Cheryl went to sleep, and then, reluctantly, I took out my laptop. A pretty air hostess sat opposite me when it became turbulent and we flirted and I told her I was a writer. She upgraded me to club class. I left Cheryl sleeping as she can get grumpy when woken.

The hostess brought me endless small bottles of wine. My seat flattened out into a bed. There was a man next to me, and it felt a bit odd, as essentially I was lying in bed watching television with another man. He kept watching the same film twenty minutes ahead of me and I couldn’t help but glance over and ruin it for myself. I put the screen away and listened to my iPod. Even when it got turbulent again I was calm. I find that when I’m drinking and listening to good music, I don’t mind the thought of dying as much.

As take-off is the most dangerous part of flying, only when we've reached cruising altitude do I adjust the time on my watch. I wouldn't want to have wasted a minute of the end of my life changing time zones.

The hostess came back and said that my wife had woken up and become distressed when I had disappeared with my bag.

“She can be temperamental,” I explained.

“It was some surprise when the woman sleeping next to you turned out to be your wife. Some of the things we said to each other were inappropriate.”

“She was asleep,” I shrugged. The hostess didn’t come back again and I had to make my way to the snack area and rout around in drawers to find wine and whiskey. Things became a blur. I must have passed out. I hope I did. If not, I don’t want to know what I did for the last six hours of the flight. I wouldn’t say I’m an alcoholic, because people from Harper Collins read this. Although they never click on the ads.

I came to at the baggage claim carousel, standing but hunched over, my head already hot with the encroaching daytime hangover. Cheryl was talking and I hugged her. She pushed me away, holding her nose away from me. But there was a Jacuzzi at the hotel which made up for the trip so far. Well, it did for me. Cheryl had forgotten her swimming costume.

In the room, I told her I thought I could write for hours in the hot tub. “Your heart will boil,” she said, not without hope.




If you would like to read about when I lived in America, you can go here: www.myspace.com/jesenk and read the When Chris Moved To America blogs.