Everyone's been asking me whether or not I am glad to be going home and the answer is a qualified "Yes". I want my own bed. I miss Ross a great deal. But I am not looking forward to returning to work. And that's more than just post holiday rhetoric. I am not looking forward to the mess and the pressure. I really don't enjoy living with chaos.
So what did I do with my final morning? Well, I said goodbye to the rainbow flags of the Castro. I phoned Bruce to wish him well and then I headed down town to the major arts centres on 3rd Street. Nothing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art caught my eye but I did buy a postcard for Rossi. So, I went to the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts and passed a pleasant hour with Impressions in Winter: Effets de Neige which included landscapes by Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Gaugin, Caillebotte and Renoir.
Although there are six artists mentioned there, nearly 50% of the canvases on view were by Monet and, given the major London retrospective taking place at the moment, it makes you wonder just how much this man painted.
Still, it was his works that I kept being drawn to. There were a couple of big raw-boned Gaugin's, paintings with large slabs on tone, not afraid of outlining objects almost cartoon-like. Some awful Pissarro's - just too fussy. Some lovely Sisley's, delicate without over-elaboration and even a painting Snow Effect at Argenteuil from 1874 that captured the sparkle of snow and the deep blue shadows that it casts.
But it was the Monet's, time after time, that held me - particularly A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur from 1865 which miraculously caught the lambent early evening sky in all its glory. Everything glowed.
Great way to finish the holiday.
I've got a few more impressions to note before I head off to the airport. One was from the Yerba Buena Centre at lunchtime. As I sat out eating my sandwich, an electric cart drew up by one of the rubbish bins and a woman got out and cleaned and polished it. Now that is what I call late 20th Century decadence when you employ your underclass to keep your bins smart for you when you dispose of your detritus.
I've also had some interesting experiences on public transport of late. The main bus out of Potrero Hill is the 22 which heads along 16th across Potrero and Mission, turns up Church to Market. Apparently, there's a Methadone Centre on Mission and the change-over en route to the hospital happens at Potrero so there are a few blocks when the bus fills with all types.
There's a lot of human misery around, not simply at the drugged out end of the spectrum. There's a lot of loud vocalising from the black youth on the buses with their talk of niggah this and niggah that and all about those scrawny white asses. Partly, I don't think that they hear themselves any more. It's showing off. It's commanding attention. It's taking a limited control of a very narrow situation. They probably get little attention from society as a whole. But I find it jars and grates and, while I don't feel physically threatened, I don't feel comfortable with the implied intimidation. It's trying to fight a force with a force in a very unfocussed way.
Still, the sights and sounds and smells and interactions with this other side of San Francisco is a useful leavening to the glitzy tourism of my first week here. If Europe is complacent and smothering, it also has humanity. Though great things are possible here in the USA, it's only at the cost of others and at the creation of a driven and fragmented society.
So, I'm here at the airport again and somehow the intervening fortnight (the subject of all those intervening words) is fading fast. I can clock in most easily to that anxiety of waiting for Chris on that first evening.
The shuttle trip out here was fast like just over 15 minutes door-to-door. Check-in was swift too. But I wasn't allocated a seat number. I wonder if this means that I get to be upgraded. I have to check in at the desk 60-90 minutes beforehand so guess I'll find out then.
I've bought some duty free Calvin Klein eau de toilette. That'll alert the credit card company that I'm on my way home again. They also have a different system of duty free here - like you pay for it then collect it as you board the aircraft.
So, the possibilities of being upgraded are increasing. They're overbooked, I am confirmed and they won't give me a seat number until 20/30 minutes before we take off. Well, I shall look forward to a real comfy seat and the possibility of some sleep. I am sitting in a bar with my last Miller Light of this tour of duty and I'm looking down at the fountains that aren't working which I saw when I arrived. There's basketball on TV. I wonder what happened to Gonzaga?
In the event I get a standard seat. Pisser. Why the wait? I could just as easily have been given this number two hours ago. Feels like a similar plane but I can't get comfortable. There may only be millimetres in it but when you are my height that makes all the difference between where you can and can't put your knees. Watch Mulan - good - and Psycho - OK and I can't tell what they've cut. Don't really relax. Homeopathic tablets don't work. Earplugs against pressure are a nuisance.
Land. Disembark. Passport control. Baggage reclaim. Customs. Tube. Taxi. Home. Great.