From Limo to Waymo

Behaving badly in LA

The first time I went to LA was 1982. I was twenty and still at university . My father had been nominated for an Oscar and he took me with him. The ceremony started at four in the afternoon and went on for about five years. We went to and from the Beverley Wilshire Hotel ( of Pretty Woman fame) to the Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles in the biggest car I had ever seen, which I later learnt was called a stretch limo. It had a cocktail cabinet and wonder of wonders - a small tv . There was enough space in the back for my home made dress which was a Diana esque meringue made of white silk intended for a May Ball. Even though, unlike Diana, I emerged onto the red carpet uncrumpled, I went unremarked and unphotographed. When I finally got to my seat in the fourth row of the stalls I spotted that the man in the row in front of me wearing purple velvet was the artist then known as Prince. In one of the ad breaks interval I saw Jessica Lange talking to Meryl Streep. My father’s film lost to Amadeus. In the limo on the way back to the hotel we watched something fuzzy on the tv.

A year later I was at film school in New York, and when my father went to Hollywood for ‘ meetings’ I flew out to join him. My father was staying at the Chateau Marmont back in the days when it was still a dive with kitchenettes and orange carpets. I spent a couple of days hanging out by the pool while my dad went to the studio. It was sunny in January, and the people watching was excellent but in my northern Protestant soul I felt there must be more to LA than marvelling at the way that women of a certain age could swim for miles without getting their hair wet. My dad, who is used to humouring the whims of impossible women -he has worked with Elizabeth Taylor after all, took a taxi to the studio the next morning and left me with the keys to the hire car. ‘Remember to drive on the right’, he said as he left. . We did not talk about the fact that although I must have had about a hundred driving lessons, I had failed my driving test six times, and did not actually posses a license..

The Chateau Marmont sits above Sunset Boulevard. When the valet brought the car round to the front of the hotel I realised that I had no choice but to join this eight lane freeway. As a learner driver the biggest road I had tackled was the Cambridge ring road, a dual carriage way which has not to my knowledge inspired an Oscar winning movie. I managed to get the car onto Sunset ( in my memory the car is a convertible, but I suspect this may be an embellishment) and turned right or rather west. Fortunately for me, the traffic was heavy so I had time to admire my surroundings. Even for a London girl living in New York, the randomness of Los Angeles was overwhelming - Tudorbethan mansions nestled next to Haciendas or Loire inspired chateaux. I kept my eyes peeled for movie stars ( celebrities hadn’t been invented in 1983) but of course no one was on the streets, they were all in their cars. As I drove west through Hollywood it occurred to me that I had no map or any real idea how where I was going. I had a vague idea possibly from reading Raymond Chandler) that Sunset Boulevard went all the way to the Pacific. My hope was that if I just kept driving I would reach a dead end where I would be able to turn round and come back the same way. As the day wore on I got more and more anxious, sat navs and mobiles hadn’t yet been invented, my only guide was some half remembered movie dialogue, and the feeling that if I kept driving towards the sunset I would eventually get to the sea.

Dusk falls quickly on the West Coast, and it was dark when I found a place to turn round in the parking lot of a fish restaurant on the ocean. I have no idea how I got back. Somehow I must have made the left turn off Sunset to the Chateau Marmont, a manoeuvre that even now would make me anxious.. All I remember is the state of deepening panic as it sunk in that I was in a strange city with no map, no money, and no driving licence. I don’t feel particularly mature or adult now, but I have certainly grown up since then.

I should say that I did , at my thirteenth attempt, get my license , but even though I have been driving for thirty years , I am still not ready to drive again in LA, even legally. But last month I finally made another solitary journey in Los Angeles, sailing through the city in a driverless car. It gave me all the rush of being alone in a car ,( the ability to sing tunelessly at the top of your voice being one of life’s great treats ) but with none of the anxiety of actually driving or indeed being driven by a strange man. You order the car on your phone on the Waymo app, it turns up with a revolving turret on the top that flashes your initials, Your phone gives you a code to unlock the car, and off you go. I liked sitting in the front next to the empty driver’s seat watching the wheel turning under invisible hands. Loads of people tell me that they would be too ‘ scared’ to ride in a driverless car, but I am confident that in this case he algorithm is safer than I would be behind the wheel. The only thing that made me uncomfortable was the ambient whale music that the car plays - a massage feels imminent.

The invisible Waymo driver is way more law abiding than its passengers, or this one certainly. When we reached our destination, it couldn’t find a perfect parking spot so it circled the block two, three, four times looking for the right spot. This wasn’t ideal as my ‘ meeting ‘ was about to start. I pressed the button on the dashboard, and a voice answered. When I explained the problem the voice paused and said that he would have to talk to his manager, but he did offer to waive payment for the ride. As I waited for the manager to come on and the Waymo went round the block for the fourteenth time, I wondered what would happen if I opened the door - we were travelling at about five mph. To my relief when I pulled the door handle the car stopped, I got out and the car drove off. For all I know it may still be there, condemned to circle around the Brentford Country Mart,

until the end of time.