Getty me outta here

Sorry for the terrible pun. The best thing by far about my trip to LA – apart from finally clutching my edited manuscript to my relieved bosom – was dinner at the Getty Museum restaurant with friends on Saturday night, followed by several hours by myself wandering around the museum the next day. Whiling away a perfectly warm and sunny Los Angeles day among the extraordinary complex of buildings and gardens that make up the Getty Museum and its research institute, was as far as I could be – physically, spiritually – from Santa Monica Boulevard, where that morning I had what passes for breakfast in these parts. What a godforsaken place it is, full of people who think filter coffee and bleached blonde hair are the height of sophistication. I was shocked to realise that I had become what the west coast types hate: a New York intellectual. I was so proud! The savage expense of taxi fares to and from the Museum to the airport, where I boarded a plane to Reno, Nevada, to visit a friend before heading back to Sydney, were almost worth the time spent at the museum. I saw a fabulous exhibition of photographs by Edward Weston.