Working At The Car Wash

Right! To the car wash to get three tons of desert dust and a little elk-brain off the hire car. Our metallic grey chariot is now under a secondary finish of very thick cloying desert dust that is millimetres thick. It is not good and the hire folk will probably freak. The car wash is a revelation. As well-appointed as a spa hotel in Wales plus a pond and a waterfall, there are Buddhist statues and stickers telling us to “Be nice you’re in Laguna”. There are iced drinks, newspapers and a swinging wi-fi hotspot. My wait seems interminable and my concerns are justified when the very serious-looking manager approaches me and tells me they’re going to have to clean the car twice as it’s so very bad:

‘Where you been, man? We gotta do this one again’.

‘Errr, we’ve been all over the place I suppose.’

‘Charge you half for the extra, have a coffee…’.

‘Gosh….thanks’.

The word ‘Gosh’ gets the usual unworldly reaction and he swaggers off in that louche Latino way, swinging a cleaning cloth – Northern Europeans just can’t nail that walk. He’s got to be the best car-guy I’ve ever met. In 45 minutes the vehicle now gleams like a diamond, I’m hoping this will detract from the rather obvious elk-inflicted damage.

This place is not real, we were here in 1996 and it was a cockroach haven and a little hippy, it’s Richmond-upon-Beach now, not necessarily a good thing as you have to be George Clooney or Dave Grohl to afford living here – the younger folk all keep going South. Dana Point is the next Laguna apparently. Oh yeah, you can carry a gun but woe betide you if you smoke or skateboard. Smoking is up there with child abuse and genocide and skate-punks get fined $50 for doing skate punk stuff.
I don’t like to hurl ‘travel tips’ around but don’t even think about staying here unless your accommodation includes parking. Just don’t.

Walk Laguna, over the beaches, around the pink hills, do the sometimes dodgy galleries, if you question the often outrageous costs you shouldn’t be here. These are the beaches south of LA. Bless them.

Oh Lord, please let my very lucky photo of two seabirds flying into a Laguna sunset become an Athena poster to match sales of the tennis bird scratching her arse… or have Athena gone bust?