So, O Best Beloveds, I won't lie to you: la vie is rather bleak chez nous at the moment. I'm in a slough.

Really, this is the most picturesque city. Above is the view in which I've been rejoicing from the office for the last ten days, and it's a measure of the beauty of the place that it's really not all that special a view.

So I'm in San Francisco, and no one could be more surprised than I...

Well, I've been a bad travelogue-er, I know, but what with one thing and another, I've been rather on the go. And, given all that's going on in the world, I'm afraid I've had something of the grim expression of this lovely Matisse lady I ran into last weekend.

So, here I am, ensconced in an on the whole entirely comfortable room in San Francisco.

Yes, it's travel time again, and once more I will be following in the brave, befuddled shoes of Dr. Howard Bannister and jetting out to San Francisco.

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Except for the hills, it turns out that what San Francisco reminds me of is Alexandria (the real one, not the DC suburb, of course). Both are cities profoundly shaped by water; both feature scads of fabulous Beaux Arts architecture (although San Francisco's are in rather better shape on the whole) juxtaposed with a dizzying array of other styles; and both seem to feature a disproportionate number of deeply attractive - and an equal number of deeply outlandish - people.

Well, the Powers That Be that guide my life (at least in its 9-to-5 variations) certainly are puzzling.  Having decisively put me, last year, into a quiet corner where I can do no harm, they've suddenly decided to release me once more out into the great wide world...