Ian Whitcomb's New Year's Eve at Cantalini's by Bill Kay

We were just beginning to think about getting ready to go to see in the new year at Cantalini's, the ultra-traditional Italian restaurant at Playa del Rey, a little seaside resort on the coast between Marina del Rey and LAX. Lynne was belatedly bringing the post in from the box when I noticed over her shoulder an on-off red light that didn't somehow seem to belong to New Year festivities.
'What's that behind you?' I asked. She turned round and poked her head outside. 'It looks like fire engines,' she said.
I walked down my garden path and onto the sidewalk, to where there was a small group of spectators. It turned out that a wire in the microwave had short-circuited, sparking flames and clouds of smoke. The firemen were worried that the fire might have climbed into the attic, so they were taking ladders to the back of the house. This was one reason for the apparently overkill of fire engines: if the attic caught fire the next danger would be the trees lining the street. And there are an awful lot of those: it would just race from tree to tree, setting the whole street alight.
The sense of panic briefly returned when we reached Cantalini's. To our surprise we were seated half an hour early and a few minutes before 10 o'clock the place was near-deserted. This did not bode well for a new year's party.
'It's OK, they're fully booked,' Ian Whitcomb assured us during a break in his band's marathon five-hour session there. And, sure enough, almost as if someone had blown a whistle the place filled to the brim by five past ten.
It turned out to be a great evening, some great number's by Ian's band and a couple of energetic guest numbers from Michael, the San Francisco diva, who danced around the restaurant as if she was plugged into the mains. Terrific. Just before midnight Ian got the crowd roaring with his special number, Have A Martini, and suddenly we were all on our feet toasting the new year in a free glass of champagne. For $100 all up, it was wonderful value and as we were thinking about leaving a volley of thunderclaps signalled a dazzling firework display which seemed to be taking place over Marina del Rey.
Getting home proved to be a different kind of adventure. We had used a GPS navigator to guide us to Cantalini's via the freeways - it took just over half an hour to go 30 miles - so we thought we'd give it a slightly tougher task: get us back without going on a freeway.
All was fine until we turned onto Santa Monica Boulevard and told the gadget we wanted to go home. 'Go East, it instructed, and make your next turning in 18 miles.' That seemed OK, because LA roads often go on for ever, and Santa Monica Boulevard seamlessly changed into Sunset Boulevard and then Cesar Chavez Boulevard. By now we were going through the northern end of downtown, but the GPS was saying it was still eight miles to the turnoff north for Pasadena.
We blindly carried on until Cesar Chavez became Riggitt Street, which became smaller and narrower - and finished in a dead end. I had wondered if our computer robot was paying attention, because Santa Monica Boulevard winds north and then south, so only makes sense if you are heading north before you get near downtown, and we didn't. In the end I overrode the robot and used a good old-fashioned map to get back to Garfield Avenue, one of the main roads north, and then across Huntington Boulevard by Twohey's diner to Los Robles Avenue and then to Pasadena. It took us two and a quarter hours, but I'd have reckoned on a good hour and a half to two hours anyway - and I learned a hell of a lot about the LA road system!
Home at 2.45 and collapse into instant sleep. When we woke the Rose Parade was nearly over. Thank goodness we hadn't repeated last year's decision to buy tickets!