Valley of the Angeles

It was wonderful to be away, but it’s wonderful to be back in the Valley of the Stars – reinvigorated by a few weeks of adventure and ready to plunge back into the madness with renewed vigour.The builders have been busy while we’ve been away, the animals were almost as pleased to see us as our neighbour Daniel who’s been managing the menagerie solo for a week of torment by Simon & Garfunkel and the relentless Val Kilmer thief-cat and her kittens.We were amazed to see most of our saplings have survived the summer (so far) and that everything was far tidier than when we left courtesy of our work-obsessed house sitter pals the Gledsons.  And what a trip – to London, California and Lisbon – to meet up with old friends and family, spending time with our wonderful daughter Oda after too long apart and going on what for us is now a rare overseas expedition.Jumping on planes was once our way of life, but there’s far too much to do these days in remote rural Portugal and a whole new life to invent.A wildfire alert the day before our return, the remnants of an aircraft cold and a couple of welcome-home wasp stings didn’t even dent the excitement of being back at Vale das Estrelas.In summary, we embraced the Barbenheimer weekend in LA, saw two amazing Derek Day concerts, ate “the world’s largest shrimp platter” washed down by Mexican michelados, tasted our friend’s award winning wine and met one of America’s most Alentejo-obsessed wine masters.I re-engaged with the journalistic world at a Stanford University JSK fellowship reunion delving into Artificial Intelligence and Disinformation.We headed up into the high desert to double down on California’s heat wave, and our Joshua Tree AirBnB had a cowboy saloon complete with swing doors, honky-tonk piano and cowboy pool – a theme we extended with a trip to Western film-set Pioneertown.We ate the best tacos, dim sum and sushi, got our fix of In-N-Out Burgers, went the full lobster while outlet mall shopping and heard ourselves telling everyone how amazing life is in Portugal...and realised just how right we are.Apart from starting to write a new monthly column in the Portugal Resident magazine (greetings to our new subscribers!) it was a total break – a reset and a re-evaluation ahead of a re-launch as we work hard re: the opening of our eco-lodge in the Spring.Crazy California is a wonderful world apart from the peace and serenity of Alentejo, but it excites and invigorates us almost as much.The two places in the world where Ana and I would most like to live are a city of nearly 10 million people and a valley of five.So this week’s despatch is a window into our old world – the four years we spent living in Los Angeles, our year studying in San Jose and the fabulous craziness of the other west coast we call home.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.And I’d like to begin with an equally unlikely combination: Barbenheimer and the buzz around a double-movie opening weekend which broke records and packed cinemas with people dressed in pink.Fuelled by memes and marketing, watching the films Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back became a thing and Hollywood embraced it as only Hollywood can.Oda drove us from c