Where's my southern California beach weather? As WC Fields once said, It went away, it went away. Not that I would have had much time for it, on tour as I am, but still. I mean, this is LA, what's with the cold and the wet? On the other hand, what could be more noir than waking before dawn to a spitting LA sky, a neon-numbered clock burning pink and green through the fog, not another human being to be seen and even the pigeons huddling miserably together?

My hotel is an old one, downtown, with big operable windows, so I've been leaning out staring over the street. On the rooftop a few stories below is the most fabulous collection of trees in pots -- palms, cypresses, shrubs, all between say 5 and 10 feet high, set on an orderly grid but in no particular relationship as far as I can tell in terms of species or size. I also can't tell whose trees they are; the windows that give onto this roof have no door, and the stairway down comes from a part of the building without windows. Does the gardener not have this wonderful odd view except when he's actually down there watering and pruning? Do the people who look out onto the results have no active role in the work?