I forgot how many crazy people there are in LA. They're everywhere, right from when you emerge blinking and crumpled from an overnight flight at the airport, and are especially plentiful around Venice Beach, where I am staying, and public buses, which I am - through necessity and with gritted teeth - riding. There is even a crazy person in my dorm room who mumbles, shouts, snores, yells and is generally pretty obnoxious.

I wanted to stay at the HI hostel in Santa Monica, which is a city I like and have stayed in before, but it was booked up. I hadn't slept properly for a while and after lugging my bags around I was cranky and irritable. I got on the wrong bus and was given conflicting directions, and eventually marched into a motor lodge that looked cheap and asked the price of a room. The lady told me $70 and I promptly burst into tears. I really didn't mean to and I wasn't that upset, but everything had all got too much and I was hot and tired. She knocked $10 off and was very nice to me, and I ended up forking out for a room as I was too exhausted to bother getting all the way to the nearest hostel, which was over in Venice.

I had a wander to Santa Monica pier, which has a lot of memories for me, and then walked around for a bit before heading back to my room for a shower, a pizza and some American TV. It was strange coming back to the US after not having been here for a year and a half. Everything seemed very brash and I don't remember the quarters being this small. I watched a lot of terrible telly and found that I couldn't sleep. I saw a heart-breaking programme about a man who had a skin disorder called ED and had to live in tremendous pain but with such courage and humour. It made me cry again.

I moved out of my cushy number in the morning and hoiked my stuff to a Venice Beach hostel. I then spent a great day walking along the beach front and strolling along the 3rd Street promenade, stopping in all my favourite shops like Anthropologie. My old jeans which I've had for years are coming apart at the seams so I bought a new pair from Abercrombie & Fitch. I normally can't stand this shop as it's so pretentious and preppy, but the jeans fit. I have never seen so many good-looking people in one place outside of a fashion show before. I don't know whether they have a selective hiring policy but the staff looked like models, and the customers were all shiny, pretty and healthy. It was a bit creepy, actually. I finished up going to the cinema to see 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' which wasn't as good as I expected, but entertaining nonetheless.