A Stroll Down Sunset Strip

I wake to a text message from Lips:

“There are baked goods down here.”

I scurry downstairs to find banana muffins and warm quiche which I eat standing at the counter without a plate. It's 9am and Lips has already dealt with a hundred work emails, walked the dogs, done two loads of washing, met a friend for coffee and brought home breakfast.

This is why he has a pool and I don't.

He heads out to jury duty and I take the Cooper Brothers for another stroll.

I get back to find a gift bag on the side. There's a picture of a beastie on it and the slogan “Party MONSTER!”

'That's for you,' Stephen says. 'It's nothing. Really.'

I pull out all the tissue paper and find some bubble bath, some 'reverse the damage' bath pearls and three different kinds of antacid pills.

'Ah reckon if you mix the Pepacids with the chewy ones and throw in a Zantac you'll be all good.'

'Oh Stephen, you had me at “Pepacids.”'

He sits next to me on the sofa cuddling the dogs. Bradley Cooper was the first and he's calm and passive. Anderson is the younger brother and he's fucking mental. Stephen is cuddling them both simultaneously with varying degrees of success.

'I love you both equally but differently,' he says. 'Is that a kiss Bradley Cooper? Well thank you so much. That's very nice. Okay. Okay. Anderson. Anders – Okay that was a bite. We're gonna have to work on that....'

I spend a lot of my time laughing at Stephen. He's actually really quiet and self contained but once you tune in to his frequency he's completely hilarious. He keeps up a constant patter of quiet comic observations that floor me several times a day. They are frequently at my expense which I consider a huge compliment.

Whenever he thinks something is shit or terrible or a really bad idea he calls it 'interesting'. It took me a full three days to realise he was insulting me on a number of levels every few hours.

Poor Lips is now definitely on the Jury and has to be in court five days a week from 11.30 till 4.30 which scuppers some of the plans we've made.

He's gracious about it and offers what I'm sure is a symbolic gesture:

'Perhaps you guys should go to Vegas without me...'

Stephen doesn't even blink. 'Okay. We'll miss you.'

'Seriously,' Lips says. 'You should go.'

'I heard you. And we will miss you.'

When we were walking up Runyon Canyon Stephen noted how many people had their dogs off leash.

'It's so dangerous. I mean it's a pretty steep incline down the side there. A friend of mine walked his dog up here and it just hurled itself off the side. He had to climb down there and carry it back up because it wouldn't move. It took hours. I don't know what I'd do if one of ours did that. I'd be like: “I love you Anderson! Good luck. I'll miss you. Thanks for all the good times.”

I've been in the garden writing with dogs keeping guard of my feet all morning when Stephen returns from the gym.

'Feel like a stroll down Sunset Boulevard?'

'Sure.'

'We could stop for a coffee...'

'Okay...'

'...or a cocktail...'

We race to the car.

We amble along in the afternoon sun and he points out famous places.

'That's Chateau Marmont right there...we'll have to go for a drink there before you leave. That's The Viper Rooms where River Phoenix...well you know. Oh and that there is The Saddle Ranch Chop House, that's real famous. You will have seen that in a lot of films.'

'Are there cowboys in there?' I LOVE cowboys.
'Sure, but mostly it's the bucking bronco that draws people in.'

We stick our heads in the door. The place is kind of fabulous. And sure enough there's a mechanical bull right in the middle.

We stop at The Standard Hotel to have a drink by the pool. It's a fancy place with hanging chairs and beanbags but the prosecco arrives in unbreakable plastic flutes.

'Interesting...' Stephen says.

We sit and talk about our families. We've both lost our fathers, him much more recently.

'...I flew back and was sat on the floor by his hospital bed. I was exhausted as I had been for the past (he laughs) 14 years. He wakes up sees me and says: “Son you look tired, why don't you get in the bed.” He was...'

'He sounds wonderful.'

'Yeah, he was.'

On the way back we see a girl in a short tight skirt and high heels staggering around on the sidewalk. She leans heavily against a wall opens her purse, pulls out a baby bottle of vodka, downs it and staggers on.

'Oh shit. Should we...'
She disappears around a corner. It's like something out of a dark movie.

When we get back Lips is home and we head out for Pizza locally. The food is always so good and usually features brussell sprouts in at least one dish. It's the new kale apparently.

They tell me about a great one man show they saw called 'Buyer and Cellar.' It revolves around the idea that Barbara Streisand has a Mall in her cellar purely for her own use. She pops down regularly to browse and 'buy' things. In the monologue the man who works in the mall says that she comes down and picks something up and asks how much it costs.

“I'm thinking, this lady is nuts! So I say 400 dollars. Streisand blanches. I'd never pay 400 for this! I'll give you 300. She's crazy. She already owns everything in here. I say: Well I'd never sell it for that. She leaves. Crazy lady. She comes back a few minutes later victorious. “I found a coupon!”

Lips gets advance copies of all the Oscar possibles on DVD. We go back and sift through them looking for something to watch and settle on The Imitation Game.
As we wait for Lips to send some emails Stephen sips coffee and stares and the blank TV screen.

'I have got to get him to teach me how to use the remote for this thing. Or when he's on his next trip I'll just be sat here like this...I may have to start reading....or perhaps I could write a blog...I've got things to say...'

Benedict Cumberbatch is good in this and I've almost forgiven him for season two of Sherlock.

Keira Knightley gurns her way through yet another performance that could have been done better by almost anyone else.

There's a great quote that's repeated three times: “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”

By the time Benedict has invented the first computer, shortened the war by two years and been chemically castrated for being homosexual we're all ready for bed.

'I can't believe what lightweights we've become,' I say.

'I was just thinking that!' Stephen laughs. 'We're either balls to the wall or in bed by ten. What is up with that.'

We have The Dame Edna Farewell Tour tomorrow night and that will not be an early one. We're all excited about that.

'And we need to check flights for Vegas on saturday,' Lips drops in casually.

Could Vegas actually happen? If it does I'm going to marry a stranger just so I can have my picture taken with Reverend Elvis.

'That is not going to happen,' Stephen states.

'It could happen.'

'It will not.'

'I could slip away whilst you're gambling.'

'We'd find you. I would rugby tackle you to the ground, ahm tellin' ya.'

'We'll see.'