getting to grips with cockney rhyming beer slang ...

The moment we walked through the door of Sean's apartment in LA he swung his refrigerator door open to reveal his preparation for our visit. On view was an extensive selection of American beers, and with a grin he said "Right then, let's get some of these on that beer league of yours ..."

There are almost as many varieties of beer here as there are choices of fast food outlet. The tricky part is finding the good ones in a sea of mediocrity. Although, with a bar down the road boasting an incredible 133 beers on tap I feel I will be happy conducting my research here for a while.

Of course just because there are lots of beers available, doesn't necessarily make them easy to get hold of. Not only do you regularly have to present ID in bars (even if you're an octogenarian), but somehow an English accent can be very difficult for bar staff to understand.

First, when asking for a pen (to log the different beers - I learnt early on how easy it can be to forget most of a solid evening's research) we managed to recieve a pint of Old Speckled Hen. In another bar a straightforward request for a beer called Great White led to a suspiciously long delay before our waiter returned with cocktails called a Greyhound (vodka and grapefruit juice apparently).

We have decided to name this phenomenon cockney ryhming beer slang.

We've been spending our days in LA checking out sights like the Getty, Venice Beach and the Hollywood sign - all things you'll have seen a hundred times before on TV (so don't need to hear about here).

Sitting down to our first beer of the evening after a long day marching around the Getty Centre (above) we noticed the piano. Yet strangely none of us felt inclined to risk asking for the pianist ...

The moustache has finally gone - and thankfully no tell-tale white patch (due in no small part to 3 days of constant rain before we left Kaua'i). Last minute sponsors please see the post below this for details of how to add your support for the Prostate Cancer Charity.