Bill Kay's postcard from pasadena

I published the following today on a British website, www.headlinemoney.co.uk. But as you need a password to access that site, I thought this would be a good way of opening it to a wider audience. Do bear in mind that it has been pitched at a readership of UK financial journalists.

Wapping to the west coast of America is not quite the leap into hyperspace that it used to be. After the ten-hour flight British tourists pour out of LAX all year round to throng Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Rodeo Drive and Hollywood, eager to spend the nearly $2 they get for every ₤1 these days.
I was one of those tourists for quite a few years: in my view if you are going to go America (and I know some hate it) then Los Angeles is the most American piece of America there is. It’s brash, it’s in your face, it’s successful and – best of all – there is an un-English feeling that anything is possible.
Instead of my hour-long commute to News International, I now sit in my own office at home, looking out on sun-dappled trees and brilliant purple azaleas. If you do have to commute, the freeways are a lottery but I still prefer them to a No. 15 bus meandering its way down Oxford Street and Regent Street to Tower Hill.
Thanks to phone, email and internet, the 6,000 miles between here and London has been largely abolished as far as work is concerned. Aside from the eight-hour time difference, which means I’m asleep during the UK morning, I’m effectively no further away from London than if I was in Edinburgh or St Ives – or, at times, even Brighton.
It helps that I don’t mind waking at five o’clock several mornings a week. That’s 1pm in UK, so I then have time to read the internet versions of British newspapers and – naturally - the press releases on Headlinemoney before people come back from lunch.
Like any out-of-London freelance, I suffer from being off the press party and lunch circuit, and miss not bumping into people who might give me some work or spark some controversial and commentable idea. I try to make up for that with email phone chats, but it’s not quite the same, so I rely on regular trips to London to keep in the swim.
As a sports fan, I also miss invitations to hospitality boxes at Wembley, Lord’s, Stamford Bridge, Ascot or wherever. On the other hand, US satellite TV is pretty extensive, so I have probably seen more live Chelsea matches in the past two seasons than I did in the season before I left. Rugby and cricket are easily available, and of course I can get golf and baseball on tap locally – but I haven’t yet got the hang of the strange Robocop ritual they call football on this side of the Atlantic, and basketball leaves me cold.
The California lifestyle definitely hasn’t disappointed. Forget the exchange rate, great bonus though that is: the cost of living versus average incomes is much lower, so the standard of living is higher. It really is more laidback than frantic, frenetic, crowded, jostling London. I can get an echo of big-city claustrophobia if I drive the ten miles into downtown LA, but even then it’s nothing like London. People drive all over the road, changing their mind at the last second, so you really do have to expect the unexpected.
And Hollywood is on the doorstep. Billy Connolly, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Chris Rock and Supergrass are among the many top-line acts that regularly appear just a short drive away. And there’s always that Beckham chap trying to teach the locals soccer.
Downsides: bureaucracy and job barriers. America may be the land of the free, but that small minority of the population that enjoys running Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service or City Hall do go completely to the other extreme. The form-filling can be staggering.
On the job front, the internet is hitting print media jobs sooner and harder than in Britain. The editorial staffs of the leading daily newspapers are huge by the standards of the UK nationals, so there is plenty of fat to trim and they are not hiring.
And I have recently discovered that, despite the internet, I do miss British newspapers: my son arrived with a weekend’s worth in his suitcase and I instantly devoured them.
US personal finance is of course quite different from the UK version because the law is different and, unlike in Britain, it varies from state to state. The writing approach is very different too: much more deferential to advertisers, and usually softer than marshmallow.
So I have concentrated my US freelance writing on covering business and the stock market, which is an international language and was my trade before I became Indy PF Editor in 2001. But, after 18 months, much of my work still stems from London. Consequently my writing style hasn’t had much chance to become Americanised.
In any case an English accent goes down well, thanks to the likes of Simon Cowell’s domination of American Idol, though they do find Beckham’s squeaky tones a little puzzling.
I regularly get Californians saying ‘I just LOVE your accent’ and then being astounded when I tell them that they too have an accent. Rubbing it in, I point out that in fact they have a very good English accent – it’s just that it’s the English of 300 years ago!
It can be tough to be understood in shops and restaurants, though. This is partly a language problem, but it is also a matter of cadence. I have lost count of the number of ways English-speaking Starbucks baristas mishear ‘Bill’ when they want to scribble my name on a cup - I find the answer is to bark the name at them, in caps and italics. They look a little startled, but at least I get the coffee I want.
However, I still have trouble making myself say tomAYto or banannna. Talking of which, I miss the rich flavours of English tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries and other fruit. The food here is virtually taste-free by comparison.
The reason is of course that crops here are parched by 300-plus days’ sunshine a year. The dry season has just started and will run virtually uninterrupted until October. We do get lashing rain and howling wind, mainly when the weather gods divert a storm intended for Canada. But spare your sympathy.