The first thing that hits me about San Francisco is how effing cold it is. Everywhere else we’ve been has been roasty toasty, in the mid-nineties, just how I like it. San Francisco is about 68º, cloudy, windy, and frankly very unpleasant.

Peg and Marsh meet us at the airport. Peg and Marsh are friends of Jascha’s parents. They used to live in the same garden square in London as Jascha’s family and have been friends ever since. They drive us back to their beautiful house in the suburbs and show us to our room. Jascha turns his back for a second and their extremely pretty cat, Cabernet (this is wine country, remember) makes a beeline for his open suitcase:

How cute is that.

We have dinner that night with their sons Scott and Robert and Robert’s Scottish wife, Kate. We take the piss out of Kate for having a weird transatlantic accent and wonder what Jascha would look like without his monobrow:

When we get to bed that night, I am officially the tiredest person in existence. I have never felt so exhausted in all my life and start to think twice about ever having a baby. Imagine feeling this tired all the time. Still, all I have to do tomorrow is talk to a group of local ladies for an hour and sign their books. And I'm sure I’ll feel fine after a good night’s sleep.

*

I wake up the next morning feeling like I have ME or something. I drag myself out of bed at about ten o’clock and find Peg making cucumber sandwiches in the kitchen. She's been up since seven o’clock and it’s all in my honour. She’s worked her socks off organising this talk and I feel incredibly guilty. I arrange homemade biscuits on plates to try and make myself feel better and then I sit by their pool for a while with Jash. ‘The ladies’ start arriving at about two o’clock, various friends and neighbours of Peg’s, fellow committee and board members. I am shell-shocked as I stand by the door meeting and greeting and finding it hard for once in my life to think of anything to say. Jascha makes himself useful by taking pictures of sandwiches:

Then at three I am thrust centre stage. I'd warned Peg that I might not be able to speak for long. I didn’t have anything prepared and I was very tired. But adrenaline can do amazing things to you. As I stand and look around at that sea of expectant faces, all those ladies who’d made such an effort, put on their best suits, their favourite brooches, had their hair done specially, I suddenly turn into a gasbag. I talk for an hour. Non-stop. Without notes. And by the looks on their faces, I think they quite enjoy it:

OK - it’s not quite my target market but they are incredibly receptive and enthusiastic and I sell thirty copies of my book! Here’s me signing in Peg’s conservatory:

Peg has the whole family over for dinner that night, which is excellent fun and then the next day she and Marsh take us on a fifty mile scenic circular drive around San Francisco. We see the beach, the city, the bendiest road in the world, the vertical-drop roads and the Golden Gate.

It’s damn cold up there, I tell you.

That night me, Jascha and Scott have a proper English Friday night out. Except we do it the wrong way round. We have a curry first (we have to be quick - it closes at ten o'clock) and then play pool, drink beer and listen to the Pogues in an Irish pub up the road.

We get home and watch TV with Scott in Peg and Marsh’s home cinema (the coolest thing - ever) and then we go to bed to get our beauty sleep. We’re going to need it. We’re off to La-La land tomorrow.