An intrepid visitor touches down in L.A.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA | The VfE (Visitor from England) landed at Los Angeles International Airport in the middle of a hot June afternoon. At home at this time of day he’d be having a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of fruit cake at his golf club. Now he blinked as he emerged from the aeroplane that had delivered him from London’s Heathrow to LAX in 12 hours and flinched as the California sunshine bounced off the tarmac and whacked him in the face. Immigration. Customs. Luggage carousels. Queues. Cars hooting their horns. Drivers slamming the trunks of their cars. Noise, noise, noise; people, people, people. The hallmarks of travel, he thought to himself.

This was his first visit to the much-loved California city since the 2017 Walker Cup at Los Angeles Country Club. He remembered how, at that biennial ceremony of particular warmth and friendship, he and other journalists were made to feel only marginally welcome at this club – perhaps 15 of them were housed in a room that would adequately accommodate 10 and told that in walking to...