A Californian Christmas

Tradition, tradition, tradition has been my mantra at Christmas for the past 30 years. The whole day was meticulously planned, stockings, church, luncheon, crackers, pudding, The Queen’s Speech, walk the dog, wash up and make tea, presents (in order of age, youngest to oldest) and collapse, either with a board game or Downton Abbey, according to how much energy we had left. Suggestions that we could change the tree decorations or have presents in a different corner of the drawing room were met with outcry, and the only variation that was allowed was whether we went to Midnight Mass or morning service. That depended on the vicar – we were put off one vicar forever once when she preached about how the animals gave gifts to the Christ Child, and said that the fox brought ‘cunning’. Not exactly a commendable quality for the Son of God! Thereafter, we avoided her, and opted for more heartwarming fare.

Hitherto, my usual Christmas Day

All this came to an end forever last year when we finally sold the family home and left the high, steep hill with the magnificent views and huge garden that had become too much to care for. This year, my parents are camped in a tiny cottage while they renovate a town house, my sister is comfortably ensconced in London and I am in California. Not quite the place I would have predicted for me, for whom Christmas Day means snow and Boxing Day means hunting, but I intended to embrace every American-flavoured moment.

The incomparable view from our old home

Our whippet, Eddie, enjoying the snow in the orchard

Christmas began in fine, traditional style, however, with Midnight Mass at Grace Cathedral. This glorious cathedral, set atop Nob Hill on the other side of Huntington Square to the palatial Fairmont Hotel, is modeled on Notre Dame in Paris and its splendid great doors (currently being restored) are copies of Ghiberti’s gilded Gates of Paradise on the Baptistry in Florence. Its soaring interior is fluttering with colour at present, with 20 miles of ribbon hanging from its vaulted roof in Graced with Light, an installation by Anne Patterson created as part of the 100 Years of Music celebrations that mark the anniversary of the foundation of the Choir of Men & Boys. The choir in question was in fine voice on Christmas Eve, as was the magnificent Æolian-Skinner organ and the orchestra under the aegis of conductor Canon Benjamin Bachmann. The music of the Prelude was succeeded by my favourite carol, O, Come all ye Faithful and the 2,200 strong congregation gave due credit to the wonderful words. It was an uplifting service, with all the ceremonial niceties performed to a turn, and a lovely ‘homily’, as the address is called here, from the Dean, the Very Rev. Dr Jane Shaw, on the subject of music and its power for good. I felt I could almost have been back in Worcester Cathedral at home, but for the American accents and the odd verse of a carol that was slightly different – occasionally, a line was altered and I did a double take at the order of service. But the joyful atmosphere was the same, and I felt Christmas had truly arrived.

Grace Cathedral from my privileged seat in the Quire, 

courtesy of my great friend, verger Charles Shipley

Full of comfort and joy: me and my friend Shannon

I spent Christmas itself staying in a friend’s house while he was away, and felt a little glum at the prospect of waking up on my own with no stocking. But I needn’t have feared – on hearing that I was to be alone, a great friend presented me with my very own stocking at Midnight Mass, which turned out to be full of goodies from England. Skype condescended to work perfectly, so I was able to watch my family open their presents and share all our experiences just as if we were together, and it was soon time for a walk in Buena Vista Park with Chad Jones, one half of my Christmas dinner hosts and author of Theater Dogs, a blog about Bay Area theatre, and his beautiful dog Fanny. After so many years in the countryside, it did seem strange to be in a city on Christmas Day and seeing other people (not to mention smelling waves of marijuana smoke in the park), but very sociable. 

Looking towards the Golden Gate Bridge - not a bad view for December 25

Me with Chad and the adorable Fanny

A superb dinner of roast beef, done to a turn by host Todd Stein and carved in enormous slices that none of us had any difficulty finishing, was followed by a stroll, in fact, an amble, to a nearby house that had been imaginatively, and relatively tastefully, decorated for the season, complete with skiing Santa Claus. Before the pudding (cheesecake, lemon slices and pear and apple crumble), I introduced everyone to the fine old tradition of crackers. Astonishingly, none of the assembled company had ever experienced the delight of paper hats, terrible jokes and strange plastic trinkets. I’m not entirely sure they’ve been converted to them, but ancient conundrums such as ‘Why did the tomato blush? Because he saw the salad dressing’ did raise a few chuckles. Back home, sated on the sofa, I watched The Queen’s Speech, thus ending a very memorable day.

Making an effort for the season!

Me with my wonderful hosts, 

theatre critic Chad Jones and chef extraordinaire Todd Stein

Hitherto, Boxing Day has always been spent hunting, but this year I had to be content with the alternative tradition – a Big Walk. On a sparkling clear day, I climbed to the top of Twin Peaks, the highest point in San Francisco, and gazed out at a view that encompassed the whole of the Bay, the glittering towers of the Financial District, the spear of Market Street thrusting towards the Ferry Building, the rich red of the Golden Gate Bridge and the blue Pacific Ocean with the Farallon Islands, California’s Galapagos, on the horizon. The Sutro Tower radio mast atop the Twin Peaks is frequently shrouded in fog, but no wisp blurred the view that day, and I sat writing my diary and basking in warm sunshine until the shadows grew long.

The Sutro Tower, free from even a hint of fog

A certain red-painted bridge from Twin Peaks

The day ended with a homely flavour – a full English Christmas dinner with turkey, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, proper gravy and all the trimming with friends of mine from the cathedral, one of whom, Lesley Hay, a newly arrived canon, is British, and a superb cook. She had preached on Christmas Day itself, to a record congregation of 1,000 people. Back in England, she worked with Simon Hart at the Countryside Alliance, so you can imagine that we have plenty in common! Proper Christmas pudding and brandy butter crowned a superb meal, and it was wonderful to smell the unmistakeable aroma of basted turkey and chestnut stuffing. The lights atop the Golden Gate Bridge, glimpsed from the windows, were a twinkling reminder that I was in the glorious city of San Francisco, the setting for a truly wonderful Christmas 2013. 

The city that might have been - unbuilt San Francisco

I wonder what would have happened if…? The question of how our lives would have turned out if we had made a different decision somewhere along the way is one that we have all debated in the small hours when, unable to sleep, we muse on what might have been. Even the smallest happenstance, like the butterfly whose wingbeats start an earthquake on the other side of the world, can have an impact on our lives. It is a phenomenon that was brilliantly explored in the film Sliding Doors, which chronicles the two possible routes of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character’s life, one where she caught a Tube train and one where she didn’t. A split second made the difference between change, happiness and success or misery and failure. That was a case of chance, but there are times when our fate is in our hands. It was the fear of waking up in 10 years’ time and realizing I was still doing the same thing in the same place that made me leave my beloved job at Country Life magazine to travel the world and write – leaving behind certainty and security for excitement and insecurity. I knew that I would only regret it if I didn’t do it and spend the rest of my life wondering 'what if?'.

Happy days: a Country Life staff outing

The question of what might have been works very well in fiction, as in Robert Harris’s compelling study of a world in which Hitler won the Second World War in Fatherland. In real life, unrealized plans for cities or landscapes tend to be forgotten, buried together with unpleasant planning applications at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'. Now, the California Historical Society on Mission is remedying this in an elegantly presented exhibition, ‘Unbuilt San Francisco: the view from futures past’ (until December 29). The most shocking section examines how the wild, windswept hills of the Marin County, just north of the city, were threatened with the worst of 1960s tower blocks and well-intentioned but horribly misguided ‘open-space architecture’ in a ‘bedroom city’ for 30,000 people. Enormous local opposition prevented all but the grandiose entrance arch of ‘Marincello’ being built and the area was saved for posterity in 1981 with the creation of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, remaining a haven for wildlife and walkers, fog-bound and mysterious one minute, open and sun-baked the next. Can you imagine how the views below would look if the hills were crowned with concrete? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

The Golden Gate Bridge across the trees of the Presidio, 

with the hills of the Marin, blissfully bare, behind

The Marin hills seen from the San Francisco Maritime park

One San Franciscan landmark was damaged so badly by the 1960s blight that it needed an earthquake to save it. An iconic symbol of the city since it opened in 1898, the Ferry Building’s position in the hearts of San Franciscans was cemented after the 1906 earthquake and subsequent devastating fires, when it stood undamaged above the smoke, a beacon of hope for the thousands who lost their homes. In its heyday, only Charing Cross Station in London saw more passengers pass through its portals, as ferries and steamers from Oakland, Sausalito and far-off lands across the Pacific Ocean discharged their travellers.

The Ferry Building after the 1906 earthquake, on one of the

stylish information boards that proliferate on the Embarcadero

Full of life, commerce and travel: the Ferry Building in its heyday

Yet, for some reason, the city has always struggled to know how to best showcase its Classical beauty, visible for miles down the wide thoroughfare of Market. The area in front of it was once a bustling terminal for cable cars and carriages, chockful with street traders and colourful advertisements, but, as the car took over and the bridges reduced the number of ferries, its importance was diminished. The final ignominy that came in the 1960s was the eyesore of a raised freeway that cut it off from the city with concrete and fumes and encouraged the Californian gods to bring the earthquake of 1989. By far the best outcome of the quake was that the freeway was so weakened that its demolition was necessary. 

Standing proud: the Ferry Building of the Port of San Francisco

However, the lack of a celebratory setting for the Ferry Building isn't for want of trying. As the exhibition reveals, many grand ideas have been proposed over the years. In Ferry Building Peristyle of 1897, Willis Polk envisaged curving Ionic colonnades culminating in a triumphal arch that turned the area into an echo of St Peter’s Square in Rome, and Embarcadero Crescent View reveals Ernest Born’s 1950s scheme for the whole of the waterfront all the way to Fort Mason, with areas for sports, the Arts, business and shopping. An 18ft-high sculpture of a foot by Buster Simpson was even considered. But none of them was ever realised, and the Embarcadero still has its shabby elements, huge old piers that stretch out into the Bay, reminders of when the waterfront thronged with goods and men from all over the world. Parts are enjoying a revival, the magnificent Exploratorium science museum at Pier 15 being a highlight, but the whole lacks a coherent vision and is still partly cut off from the rest of the city by the road and F-line trams. The Ferry Building itself is almost lost against a backdrop of the Financial District skyscrapers, of which more are being built as I type. However, it is thriving, filled with busy cafes and shops, with a superb farmer’s market every week, and there is still a frisson of excitement to be had when disembarking one of the Blue and Gold ferries after a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge or San Rafael. I wonder what grand plan the city fathers will come up with next?

Can you spot it? The Ferry Building no longer stands out on the skyline

The exhibition looks also at the Yerba Buena area of downtown San Francisco, with designs and models for museums and galleries that were never built, including an attractive proposal by women-owned firm Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris for the San Francisco Ballet when it needed a new home in the 1990s. Unfortunately, it proved unaffordable, but there is solace here in that the Yerba Buena Gardens are today a pleasing and popular combination of public parkland and buildings, with the Museum of Modern Art to the east, the astonishing Contemporary Jewish Museum to the north and the Metreon shopping centre to the west, resplendent in neon. The area has preserved the past, too, with the 19th-century St Patrick's Church and an historic carousel, currently being restored.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind

The 19th-century Catholic St Patrick's Church, incongruous amid the skyscrapers

Altogether, the exhibition is an intriguing examination of what might have been, and one that would be worth imitating in other cities. I wonder what disastrous schemes have been averted in London or what magnificent dreams have remained just that? One should try to look forward and seek to advance the future, but we can always learn from the past and, sometimes, a look back can be profitable - not to mention fascinating.

Life in Livermore - the great American suburb

I knew I was truly in America when I went for a run and passed an open garage in which two men were shooting at a person-shaped target on the far wall. Quite a normal Friday evening in this charming, friendly, well-kept neighbourhood that just happens to have turkey vultures nesting at the end of the road. Such is suburban America, a world of pretty front yards and gleaming cars, familiar to viewers of Edward Scissorhands or Desperate Housewives, but infinitely less sinister in reality.

Pristine and pretty: a Livermore street

Turkey vulture in a tree

Showing off a magnificent six-foot wing span

At rest, or posing 

In this quiet area of the East Bay in northern California, only 40 minutes from San Francisco on the BART train, dusty hills ring vast shopping malls and comfortable neighbourhoods linked by multi-lane freeways that stand in for British A roads. In my friends’ area, four designs of identikit houses, half built off site and adorned with well-kept front gardens, have been assembled along roads that curve artistically around a couple of parks. Although slightly plastic looking, it's an attractive place to live, with palm trees and watered lawns adding to the sense of leafy open space. You feel people make an effort here to keep their homes nice, just as they do the environment. This being California, the recycling bins far outrank the regular rubbish bins, and there are hefty fines for anyone caught putting anything in the wrong one.

Beware incurring the wrath of the Californian rubbish police 

if you mix these three bins up! 

Guess which is the smallest, recycling, organic or garbage?

Smooth tarmac and plenty of parking - essential for a car-dominated area

Three vultures circle above a dried-up levee. 

The hills beyond will be green for about two weeks in spring, I'm told

Wide roads are flanked by sidewalks that get little use, as everyone drives everywhere. There are no corner shops here, no newsagents or off licences residents can pop to on foot to fetch a pint of milk. An enormous Safeway is a few minutes away by car, together with a giant Target, TJ Maxx and Lowe’s, not to mention assorted Starbucks, Macdonalds, Subways and so on. It’s all awfully tempting, a stereotypical temple to consumerism, full of food that’s terribly bad for you and trendy clothes you don’t really need. Of course, there’s an awful lot of stuff that’s tremendously useful too, and it’s very convenient having pretty much everything you could ever need within easy reach. You just have to resist the lure of the e-numbers!

Looking over the Livermore rooftops towards the hills, 

during my half-hour march to Safeway

I can’t help but think that all this does make for slightly soulless residential neighbourhoods, though. Because everyone drives everywhere, rather than walks, there are fewer people to be seen out walking or chatting, and because the yards at the back of houses are so spacious and private, there’s plenty of room for family life well out of sight of the road. The only people I’ve seen out running are fellow joggers, occasional dogwalkers and a few children on bikes. They’ve all been pleasant and, I’m sure it’s different in the summer, when the basketball hoops at the end of cul-de-sacs must get a lot more use, but I do miss the easy friendliness of popping to the shop from my flat in Fulham and seeing several people on my way.

Awaiting summer

Livermore does have a tremendous saving grace, however - vineyards galore. There are some 50 wineries in the area, including the gorgeous Concannon, which managed to stay open during prohibition by making wine for the church, and nearly all offer daily wine tastings. I will return to Livermore wines in detail at a later time, but suffice to say that a relaxed afternoon sitting in a shady garden, glass of wine in hand, is a welcome change from the crowds at the outlet mall.

Inside Concannon Vineyards

Who could resist such an entrance?

At this time of year, there is an added interest to exploring an American suburb - the astonishing array of Christmas decorations. Every second house is festooned with every possible variation on festive themes, from gaudy Santas to elegant white fairy lights. Occasionally, houses opposite each other seem to be having a competition to see which could fit the most twinkly coloured lights on their facades, with strings of red and green and blue and pink and gold flashing from every eave and tree and encircling the lawn in fairy rings of glittering colour. Around here, there aren't too many of the blow-up figures I find rather creepy (anyone know why blow-up snowmen carry brooms?), and the whole effect is really rather pretty. I dread to think what the houses' electricity bills are this winter, but I'm jolly glad their owners make the effort. It's like living in a Christmas tree!

The Christmas Lights Competition commences:

Return to California, just in time for Thanksgiving!

Turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, general good cheer… the feast of Thanksgiving has much in common with the traditional Christmas meal enjoyed in between church and The Queen’s Speech at home in England. The day that remembers the early days of America is as joyful as the festival that celebrates the birth of Christ, and my first Thanksgiving on American soil was certainly a night to remember. It was the first time I have joined hands with my companions before the feast to give thanks and the first time I have eaten marshmallows with meat – both, it turns out, to be recommended. For us reserved British, the idea of an effusive, literal ‘thanksgiving’ can be a little uncomfortable, requiring the speaker to show emotion and sentiment more usually implied than expressed, but when we truly mean what we say and have something particular to be thankful for, it’s easy. In my case, I am thankful for my friends Maxine and Paul, who have welcomed me into their home in the true spirit of American hospitality.

Maxine - chef extraordinaire

Paul putting the finishing touches on the Thanksgiving feast

Maxine, me and Paul before the eating started

San Francisco itself is more beautiful than ever when dressed in her finery for the season. Every store and street is decked out in fairy lights, a vast tree stands as the centerpiece in Union Square and, most beguiling of all, the annual collection of puppies and kittens are gamboling in the windows of Macy’s. The SF SPCA holiday windows have been running for the past nine years and have raised more than $400,000 for the charity. All the dogs and cats are available for adoption, although the charity is very strict about ensuring that ‘a dog is for life and not just for Christmas’. They need to be – the animals on view are adorable and very tempting!

Macy's on Union Square - festival of wreaths

Christmas, Hannukah and shopping - Union Square has it all!

A sleepy puppy dog in the Macy's window

A pair of kittens draws the crowds

Union Square in glorious December sunshine

Market Street, the main avenue cutting diagonally through the main shopping area from the Ferry Building, is festooned with lights, and even the cable cars have got in on the act. This will be my first Christmas away from home, and I’m a little nervous about missing my family, but there’s no doubt that seeing the city so festive is a help. There are parties galore in the offing, carol services at Grace Cathedral and roast beef on Christmas Day to follow the Thanksgiving turkey. It may be a different continent, but the spirit of goodwill is the same, and I can’t wait to see the American take on this wonderful time of the year.

Alcatraz in evening sunshine through the masts of square-rigged Balclutha

Bloomingdale's on Market

Time for Christmas? Yes, I think so!

Market Street lights

Cable car tinsel

Whizzing off up Powell