Strengths and weaknesses

I've just been helping my younger brother complete an application form.

When I was younger, a teenager maybe, I used to get quite excited about filling out forms. I'd always jump to take on the task for my bemused parents, using my neatest, smallest writing and and the least-smudgy biro I could find in the pen pot.

I think it was after doing my UCAS form for entry into university that I realised it wasn't that much fun after all. It's all right when all you have to pen are the facts: name, address, date of birth, mother's maiden name. Your concentration can be focused on curve of the 'G' and whether or not you write the date out in full.

It's when you have to write '150 words about why you want this position' that it becomes less of a calligraphy exercise and more of an academic assignment. These questions really sort out the sheep from the goats. I'm definitely a goat when it comes to this section of a application form.

My favourite question has to be "What are your weaknesses?". I've heard recruiters explanations for this question. And I know it's supposed to be a test of some sort, but I still think it's a very weak question. No one has a good answer to this one. Except perhaps one friend of mine. When asked this particular question in an interview a few years ago, he pondered awhile, and replied with much conviction, "Spelling and women." He didn't get the job.

Driving me mad

If I had to take a guess, I would imagine that fewer than half of the licensed drivers in California would pass a UK driving test.

I was astounded by how basic the Californian practical test is. No parallel parking or three point turns. A simple reverse in a straight line (just to check you know where the reverse gear is I presume) and a few right and left turns and, bingo, you can drive your very own Ford F150 at 65 miles per hour on a 6 lane freeway with 100,000 other bad drivers. The trickiest part of the test for me was the bit when the examiner asked me where my windscreen wipers were. Mmm, I hadn't had much use for those in LA until then.

The combination of unskilled drivers, oversized vehicles and overwhelming volume of traffic makes driving in LA frustrating and exhausting work. Add in a little of the competitive spirit of Hollywood and the laid-back nonchalance of the West-coast and you have yourself a relentless and unpredictable daily struggle.

LA motorists appear to see other cars and their drivers much the same way as a lion sees a jeep full of spectators on a safari: yet another solid obstacle to be torn to pieces or flatly ignored. There is little eye contact from your average LA driver. Rarely do you get a 'thank you' nod or an 'after you' wave.

It's as though, once you climb into your seat and start your engine, you relinquish your status as a human being with feelings and manners, and become part of the machine. Blank stares from one direction meet equally blank ones from the other. It sometimes feels as though another driver cannot actually see you and your car. Your frantic arm-signalling and flashing blinkers edging out into the crawling traffic are met with a glazed and determined passivity. I can't work out if they don't actually notice you or they just pretend not to. Either way, there is nothing in the world that's going to make them give up that precious bit of space to you.

I could fill this blog with tales of LA driving misdemeanors: lack of indicator use, driving too close, drivers so drunk they cannot walk... I shake my fist sometimes, and use my horn often, but it pays to be cautious in this city. A friend of mine had a gun pointed through the window at him as he pulled up to a traffic light last year: the gun-wielding driver didn't like what my friend had said about his erratic driving. So in a bid to stay alive I'm making efforts to keep my frustration to myself and my obscenities muffled by the windows of my automobile.

Growing up

I met my adult cousin for the first time yesterday. We played together as children, paddling in Loweswater lake and getting grass stains at Grandma's, but that was a long time ago. And the cousin I met yesterday wasn't the cousin I knew then.

I watched her talking about a guy she's met and her new job as an air stewardess (the reason for the two day stopover in LA) and suddenly realised she is not my little cousin any more. She's a beautiful woman who has loved and been loved, feels the disappointment of Christmas and buys me a beer in a bar in Pasadena, thousands of miles away from home.

Taut or torte?

I start to feel fat and frumpy at around this time every year. There is no longer any excuse for the generous warming portions and chocolate indulgences, Easter and the major birthdays boxed up and put away for the year.

And the flimsy clothing has started to appear in shop windows. Bare brown legs and taut midriffs seem to be the fashion, again. And, again, my own legs and midriff are a far cry from brown and taut. They have never been taut. And it takes a lot of effort and expensive flights to get them brown enough to be exposed.

And every May I wonder if this could be the year. I might finally have enough willpower to eat like a waif, keep up the regime of specific, targeted exercises and find the miracle cream to apply 4 times a day.

I thought last year was the year. We got married last year and surely if it's ever going to happen, it's going to happen the year you get married. But no.

I'm just hoping that one May my desperate dream of a perfect body will be blissfully replaced by a resignation to my imperfect one: those legs will never be mine.