Return to Monkey Bars

I could see on Friday afternoon that Mabel's monkey bar technique had evolved since the previous week. She made her newest moves with more speed and bravado.

That broad brown pile of formal architecture in the background is the rear end of the Pacific Union Club, the richest and most conservative of San Francisco's private old-time power-brokering refuges for weary plutocrats. Inside, the place is (as you would expect) all silence and solemnity, frozen in dignity and slightly shabby – like the traditional London clubs it imitates.