Relocating Across Town (well, across The Atlantic)

For the hundreds of you who have been on the edge of your keyboards wondering where on earth I was, I'm sorry, I should have posted a few weeks back. The long and short (I don't understand that phrase, surely one or the other?) - I'm back in London town! The move is complete. Obviously that poses problems for someone who posts as a New York blogger.

I think once I've settled back into the swing of things here I'll probably kick off a whole new site. I'm not sure what it'll be about but rest assured I'll let you know where it is (there will be a link from here too). In the meantime, let me wrap this chapter of my life up by saying how much NY is going to be missed. It was colourful and vibrant, it sizzled with energy 24/7. Keep up or get out. Sure, it's in your face but when you boast that you're the world's capital then you can only get away with that kind of statement by being bold and confident enough to truly believe it, no one's doubting that New York is just that. Our planet would be a dull place without this cocky arrogant bruiser strutting around in the playground. I'm just chuffed I got to go a few rounds with it.

See you soon! And thanks for reading...

Which island are you on?

I'll tell you which one. It's somewhere grey and damp, where summer has not been seen in twelve months, where the mere mention of "pants" and "fanny" brings a snigger. Yup, I'm home! I'm back for a few weeks but let's hope it's nothing permanent. In the meantime, as I sit Brit-side, allow me to stray from the parameters of this blog a little otherwise there aren't going to be any updates.

This week I got caught up in one of the most painful exercises I've ever had the pleasure of being obsessed with. For our international friends, there is a weekly radio show broadcast in the UK called 'Desert Island Discs'. People from all corners of politics, the arts, sport - anywhere with corners basically - are invited to BBC Radio 4 and for 45min their disbelief is suspended from the ceiling as they are placed on a desert island. With the current lack of summer in this country it's a welcome exhile. On that island they are allowed to take any 8 pieces of music, a luxury item (inanimate and with no survival benefit), and one book (not the Bible or Shakespeare's Complete Works, they are already provided - a Gideons Bible I'm guessing). You can see how this is an interesting angle to take for an insightful interview and since the show's been running continuously since 1942 I guess it's been a winning formula for listeners and participants alike.

So I happened to be talking with a friend about this and it's not something I had really thought about in the past. Knowing how difficult it had been for me to come up with my favourite 5 movies back in the day when one beds down these things, I knew frustration, torment and many late nights were an imminent prospect as soon as I was asked for my 8 songs. How little I knew...

16 hours, 4900 songs, 4 ever-narrowing playlists, and 12 revisions later I think I've just done it. And since these things are down to personal tastes it's not as if you can pass judgement on them, but I thought I would share anyway. So here they are. Feel free to contribute your own in the comments section after...

• Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles


• Half A World Away - REM


• Just Like Heaven - The Cure


• Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley


• Beast Of Burden - The Rolling Stones


• One Of These Things First - Nick Drake


• Our Mutual Friend - The Divine Comedy


• Good Man - Josh Ritter

This post is brought to you in association with...

It wasn't too long ago that rumours had Coca Cola planning to advertise on the moon. Today I think the company of choice for the lunar marketing theorists is Google. They can probably afford it and I imagine that they've got the relevant maps to ensure that the pieces of the advert all go in the correct positions. It would certainly make for an interesting few evenings as the moon waxes and wanes; we would get to see "ogle" after a week and then "Goo" a couple of weeks after that. Ah, the inherent humour in celestial advertising.

These rumours aside, it's no surprise that you get the impression that they're running out of original places to advertise down here. You can't walk a hundred yards without the sun being eclipsed by a billboard or a Foxtons Mini running you down (yes, they have them here too). Just last month a squadron of planes (sponsored by Geico) flew round and round the island skytyping adverts into the blue in what can only be called a "cloud font".

I don't appear to be able to go through a website at the moment without a voice congratulating me on 'winning' a new iPhone. Incidentally, if anyone wants one I've won, like, 40 so far. Google and Yahoo! are just two companies that intelligently track the sites you visit and products you view in order to provide targeted advertising relevant to your tastes. Shocked? I can almost hear George Orwell applauding in his grave.

And there's no escape at home. A "half-hour" TV show is actually only 22 minutes in duration in order that we get 8 minutes of commercial conditioning. Even the closed captioning (subtitles) are "brought to you by...". What's next? Seeing-eye dogs being enticed into stores with wafts of chopped liver? [copyright ummit sethi, 2007]

I know all of this is a part of everyday life now, particularly in a big city. So it's all the more reason that when I want 'to get away from it all' for an afternoon I should be allowed to do just that. What better place than the beach? It's a regular favourite with the locals and hardly surprising since New York is close to some remarkably beautiful stretches of coastline out on Long Island and across in New Jersey. Protected dunes, conservation areas, beautiful small seaside villages, not an advert in site.

11.00 - arrive beach
11.10 - lie on beach
11.12 - propeller plane flies over beach pulling advert for Coors Lite Beer.
11.14 - 3 propeller planes fly over advertising Die Hard 4. Fortunately the famous tagline, "Yippee ki yay motherf---" appears to have been printed on a banner that was 5 letters too short for the job.
11.16 - propeller plane flies over pulling advert for breast enhancement surgery...I kid you not. Want a perfect rack? Call Dr Rac-anelli.

...and on it went. By 6pm I was so brainwashed that I was sitting in a cinema drinking cans of lager while adjusting the bra on my new set of D-cups.

Sweating Under The Lights

Perhaps you're getting a little bored with reading my rambles formulated from a series of questions and answers in my head, after all, it has been going on for over a year now.

Example:
Me: What's the weather been like?
Me: Hot. Bloody hot. And humid. Hot wet blanket humid.

Me: What gripe do you have with New York today?
Me: The stinky piles of rubbish bags left out on the side of the street to stew in this heat. And they wonder why we're only ever six-feet away from a rat.

Me: What are the city going to do about it?
Me: How the hell should I know? Leave me alone you schizophrenic loon, I'm hot and bothered.

Etc....
You get the point. I can be quite tedious sometimes.

SO! Here's a little treat for you. I was recently interviewed by this smart little 9 year old called Matthew. He posed far more interesting questions to me. I still gave back tedious answers but at least it's a 50% improvement for you. He's looking to interview 100 people as part of a project and as of today he's still looking for volunteers. As readers of my blog I know you must be full of kindness so sign up and help him out...

Here's the interview.

Brain Melt

I know I've been a bit useless on here lately but it's not because I don't care. I assure you that you're the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing before I go to sleep; but you must understand that summer is here and between life in the sunshine and the general exhaustion from life in the sunshine it's been difficult engaging the third of my brain dedicated to writing. The heat and humidity also seem to be affecting New Yorkers' brains too. Two events lead me to this conclusion. Last Sunday I sat in a bar and watched a less than sober patron thrown from the premises, as he landed in the street he promptly righted himself and proceeded to hurl his body at the locked door. It's a scene I've observed in London a few times, I think with the limited drinking hours there everyone tends to go a bit doo lally squeezing in their drinks before the 11pm cut-off. Here, though, it was a new experience and the second time I've seen the inebriated cross the line since the temperature ticked over 85degF. Not content with putting dents into his shoulder the chap took one look at the large plate glass window and, after a good little run up, placed his size 9 through it showering yours truly and friends with glass.

The second logic-less act came yesterday. There's a spot in the city famed for its burgers, fries, shakes, basically anything that can put a stop to your heart. It's a little shack in the middle of one of the parks and appropriately enough it's called "The Shake Shack". Now, when I say that this place is 'famed', I'm serious. We're talking regular queues from 11am to 11pm for its delights. Quite sensibly they've got a double queuing system in place. A "B-line" exists for orders of "Cones, Floats and Beverages"; for everything else you've got to stand in line with the other 63 people.

With the mercury touching 220 degrees and the humidity causing localised showers around your head it's a shake or nothing for me. Through the B-line I went.

Next in the B-line!" the teller shouts. That'll be me then.
"A chocolate shake please."
"This line is only for cones, floats and beverages. You need to get in the other one."
"A milkshake is a beverage though."
"Next in B-line!"
And that was it, I was cast to one side. I had a good look around but sadly there was no glass window to put my size 8 1/2 through.

American Heritage Dictionary
milkshake n.
A beverage made of milk, flavoring, and ice cream, shaken or whipped until foamy. Also called shake; also called regionally cabinet, frappe, velvet.

--I'll take that back with me next time. I'm sure they'll be happy to debate this one out.

BIG!

I love that film and this scene is a movie classic. I went up to FAO Schwarz recently and the keyboard's still there and what's better is that you can buy one for a cool $250k! Apparently it's recommended for ages 1 and up... which would be an interesting first step for a child to take. "Oh yes, our little Johnny, we're so proud. He just stood up and started springing around the keyboard. 'Heart and Soul' wasn't it darling?"

Speaking of big things. Some of you who have been paying close attention when reading this blog will know that my cereal of choice is good old Kellogg's Cornflakes. Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I poured out what I believe may be one of the biggest cornflakes ever. I was so excited that I just had to pull out the camera and have a bit of a photoshoot with it.

You'll note that I've given you some degrees of scale with a regular sized flake. You'll also note that I have black marble counters in the kitchen which show up all sorts of things. I don't recommend them if you have the option.

Something else also struck me about the mega-flake: its striking resemblence to the shape of the United States.

See!
Understandably I was late to work yesterday.

Gently heat to minus 10 degF

It's time to pack up the winter clothes and pull out the linen shirts and shorts - summer's here! Or so I thought. At any one time in New York there are parallel seasons running: one bestowed by Mother Nature and one bestowed by the man charged with controling a building's thermostat. The latter, I suspect, is a lone individual in a small subterranean room somewhere, a plaque on his door reading "NYCTRA". He sits in an office lit by a single 60W bulb behind an old stained desk on a tired chair, tufts of foam bulging out from its torn fabric. On one wall hangs a calendar with two dates circled in red, on the other is a large dial... 4ft in diameter. Twice a year the man plods to the wall and, with great effort, turns the dial. At that point a few million people either start shedding layers or reach for a sweater.

You see, the trouble with the jumbostat at the New York City Temperature Regulation Authority is that it has no numbers on it. The instrument was installed during the Carter administration and at the time a great debate was raging. Should America join the rest of the industrialised metric world or continue with the imperial system; pubs selling 16oz beers, weight watchers shedding pounds, and shoppers nipping out for a quart of milk? Of course they didn't convert; the metric system originated in France. I guess their conclusion was that everyone else should convert back. (Mark my words, there will be a war on metrics, just as soon as we're done with the current War In Error). Anyway, the jumbostat was installed and it was decided that the dial simply be labelled "Bloody Hot" and "Bloody Cold". So, as the temperature today hits 80 degrees outside (Farenheit my friends, not Celcius...or Kelvin), I'm driven to wearing an overcoat in the office.

On the street it's a slightly different experience. Your walk tends to take you through numerous pockets of hot and cold. It would appear that some of the stores are doing their bit for the environment by pumping out cold air through their open doors - I believe in an attempt to keep global temperatures down and thus stopping the ice caps from melting, which is just terribly considerate as we live on a low-lying island.

Of course this is all reversed in winter. The dial is turned back, the stores kindly heat the pavements for the pedestrians, and you're well advised to bring a pair of shorts and a T-shirt to work. If you're thinking about shopping then a small suitcase on wheels wouldn't be a bad idea, simply shed your clothing on entering a store and pack it in the case. Quite sensible solutions I think, but if anyone can think of anything better then maybe you would like to get in touch with the NYCTRA directly?

Right, time for a mug of hot chocolate I think.

And now, the news in your part of the world...

Recently, across the muddy waters of the Hudson River, a New Jersey man walked into his bathroom to find a hole in his ceiling and debris scattered across the room. Nestled sweetly in the floor was a golfball sized chunk of, well, something. It turns out that not too many miles away a piece of space debris had narrowly missed my head.

Last Wednesday a large African American lady in Times Square subway station took particular offence to a police dog sniffing another African American. "That dog be racial profilin'!" she shouts, "He's a racist! That cop dog's a racist!"

The Queen was in town last week. Having not been to America for 16 years the locals thought they would keep her waiting a little longer on the plane while they struggled to put the red carpet together on the runway. It was 15ft too short. But later the President made amends when he declared in his speech to our 281 year old monarch, "You helped our nation to celebrate its bicentennial in seventeen-sev- err, 1976." He then gave her a wink. Smooth, George. Smooth.

A few days back a kid in Oregon went to see the family doctor after complaining to his mother that he could hear popping sounds, "like Rice Crispies". They were stunned to find a couple of spiders nesting in his ear canal. The popping sound resulted from the spiders walking around on his eardrum. The boy's mother believes the spiders got into her son's ear when they were weeding the garden together. I weed in the park recently.

A couple of local "inventors" have created a computer mouse... out of a real mouse. They've shared the invaluable instructions on how to create this IT taxidermy crossover here so you too can own this tasteful computer accessory.

Between the tap-dancing spiders, hollering commuters, cosmic projectiles, and tech-savvy rodents I see that I may be living in one of the more - how shall we say - colourful countries on earth.

Still, at least they've got the right man for the job at the helm.

Trigger Happy Nation

As much as I can I try to keep an open mind in this crazy country. I can handle being mistaken for an Australian, the cab drivers who neither speak English nor know where they're going, even dogs dressed as humans, all these I can accept; but some things I can't ever get my head around and don't think I ever will. It's exactly a week ago since the shootings at Virginia Tech, 32 people killed by a student, and in the inevitable fallout of this incident the hot topic of gun control has once more been debated across the airwaves. It's an argument I have little comprehension of beyond the premise that guns kill, we have no need for them in our day to day lives, therefore people shouldn't have them. Quote that one line here though and a large group of Americans will come back with the words, "Ah, but the Second Amendment states that we have the right to bear arms."
And it's at this point that the great debate begins.

There are plenty of places you can follow that discussion, where people today try to defend a right that was decreed in 1791 in a country operating under totally different conditions. I'm not going to get into that can of worms here. This space is generally kept blog-lite. The only reason that I've touched on the subject at all is that I witnessed a piece of madness in the whole gun ownership argument this week. A friend watching CNN in London couldn't believe his ears when a guest on the station actually suggested that the incident at Virginia Tech would never have happened if the teachers were armed. So shocked was my friend that he chose to text me at 6am to tell me. I put it down to a kook on the airwaves until I turned on the news a little later to hear exactly the same theory being put forward. Hopping around the channels only unearthed more such supporters of this idea and apparently it's not a new argument either, it's been raging for years! (As has bad broadcast news evidently...)


Arm the teachers? ARM THE TEACHERS?? GUNS IN SCHOOL? The little statement at the top of this page reads, "Two countries divided by a common language", I'm thinking of revising that to "Two countries divided by common sense." When DEA agents can't handle their weapons properly what hope is there for teachers?


If ever there was a case for not seeing the wood for the trees this is it. Don't solve the problem by removing the root cause, no, let's throw more guns at it instead!

Anyway, if a guy in heels, make-up and a dress can see where the problem lies then maybe it's about time that the serious people did too.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia?

It appears it's a universal truth that we have to deal with whichever country we live in. When you need someone to come home to install something there's only one time that they can come - when you're at work. You're totally at the mercy of someone's twisted scheduling. "Yes sir, we can install your cable on Thursday between 9am and 2pm." And then you're at the mercy of the contractor's twisted time-keeping. He doesn't come on Thursday between 9am and 2pm he comes on Friday at 7pm... after you've waited at home all day. Would anyone care to explain this to me? A friend came up with a pretty good explanation last Friday, "It's the 13th, and you're the one who got hit by it this time." Yes I did.

I sat down to breakfast, spilling cereal over my lap, hoping to fire off a few work emails. I only got as far as booting up the computer before the all dreaded 'hang'. This is probably another universal truth: your computer will die at the most inconvenient time. The reaction is pretty universal too.
"Hello?" Tap tap tap at the keys. "Oh, come on. Open! Close! Anything, I'll take anything from you, just do SOMETHING!"
Like speaking louder to people who don’t understand what you’re saying, at this point you feel it necessary to start hitting the keyboard.
"No, no, no, no, nooooo! Where did all the icons go?"

It's now that the first signs of panic set in. The cursor judders across the desktop, applications stop loading, the screen takes on the appearance of a frozen jigsaw puzzle phasing in and out of this dimension. I imagine there was a mirror of me somewhere else in the universe having the same experience, but probably eating Apple Jacks and not Cornflakes.

They say that in times of emergency skills you never knew you had suddenly come to the fore. I once did a first aid course with the St John's Ambulance but thought that I had forgotten most of it; my instincts didn't let me down though. My fingers spidered across the keyboard, "Ctrl-Alt-Delete, two three, four. Ctrl-Alt-Delete, two three four. Reboot damnit! Reboot!" It didn't look good. Computer Program Resuscitation wasn’t working, the screen was going a sickly grey colour, and I was facing the prospect of not seeing my hard drive again. It was about this time that the remainder of my cereal spilled down my shirt.

I’m usually a big fan of Fridays but there are some days when it’s probably best not to get out of bed at all - I stubbed my toe getting out of bed that morning. When I rushed my laptop to ‘PC hospital’ and the Best Buy Geek Squad guy (yes, he exists) heard that I had to hurry back because the cable man was coming, he just chuckled knowingly.
“Don’t hold your breath, pal.”


I didn’t, but hurried back anyway. Four riveting hours later he turned up... with the wrong cable box. It appears that some things are the same the world over, but call me superstitious I think the date probably had a little to do with it too. Come July 13th I'll be spending the day in bed.

On the move

If you were watching this city on TV I think "FFwd>>x8" would be an appropriate little annotation in the corner of the screen. It's nuts out there - high-speed nuts, and probably not a place for a Japanese tourist to be stood curiously filming the world go by at 5pm in Grand Central Station. Camcorder in hand the bemused little man was pinged this way and that by a criss-crossing hoard of New Yorkers all late for something or the other. Slumped back here on my sofa - sorry, couch - this evening all I can see out of the window are bodies being whisked from N to Y and back to C and the picture hasn't changed much over the past 24 hours. A continual stream of cars pouring across the bridges, a water taxi zipping up and down the river, the worming army of silver subway trains slipping by every 3-5 min. The airspace isn't any less dynamic. Where one or two airports are usually more than enough to service a large city, here that wouldn't be heard of. Newark, Laguardia, Teterboro and JFK - four airports crammed within a 15 mile radius of New York City handling over 100 million passengers per year and making the airspace above my head the busiest in the world.

Awake or asleep, on the move or in your living room, you are literally surrounded by people - above, below and next door - it really is three-dimensional chaos. Of course, about 150 years ago, it was only two-dimensional chaos. There was a time, as Manhattan expanded, when it was projected that the island would soon reach its capacity for growth. In the 1880s The Brooklyn Bridge was built not to join Brooklyn to Manhattan but to join Manhattan to Brooklyn and the open, expansive farmland of Long Island beyond. Growth, it was thought, would continue in that direction once the small island of Manhattan had outgrown itself. However it was around that time that refinements in the mass production of steel came about - ironically heavily used in constructing the Brooklyn Bridge - and the vertical limitations surrounding building construction were overcome with steel frameworks and the steel-cabled elevators needed to service them. Manhattan began a new growth phase - upwards - and it hasn't looked down since.

I never really enjoyed history at school. It was all names and dates - the last thing you want to be learning. I think it's a whole different story the moment you realise you're surrounded by it though; when you can walk across a piece of history, or when you realise that your commute is taking you through the world's largest train station and that the Japanese tourist standing in your way is actually transfixed by its vast astronomical ceiling of stars overhead. Looking up you realise you're seeing a reversed view of the constellations - reversed as if seeing them from "God's perspective" - a result of the design being based on an outdated manuscript from the Middle Ages.

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I'm beginning to see that by taking a step back from the chaos there are stories to be found everywhere.

Scissors Schmissers

"Hi. I'm looking for some scissors please."
"Hey, Joe! Come back here and show this white kid where the scissors are!"
"I'm not white."
"You sound white."

Joe, the African American assistant, came back and showed me the scissor section. I bought a pair and then left one of the more colourful Jewish stationers in New York. So continues my experience in the world's biggest immigrant city.

Make a wish

"Fish in the sky? I'm telling you Morris, there's something not right about this month."

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Wow, that February month sped by pretty quick, quicker than most other months I would venture. Can someone tell me why they only give it twenty-eight days though? You would have thought that it made more sense to take a day from, say, January and July and give it to February - they all get thirty days and no one's left out. I digress.

The short-changed month actually brought up a milestone moment for me, last week was my New York anniversary. Already it's been a year since I decided to up sticks and venture to the New World in search of opportunity and burgers. I've officially lived through four American seasons, from the blooming of floral life in Central Park through the frying pan heat of summer and the burst of autumnal golds and browns, to recent days that literally brought chilling pain to the soul. In particular I found the ice storm a novel experience. Imagine shards of ice whipped into a cyclonic whirl by an arctic wind... and then imagine sticking your face into it. I've had kinder journeys to work.

With this my 21st entry since I've been here I suppose I've shared a few of the big experiences and cultural anomalies but I do begin to wonder at what point you lose sight of the novelty. Just flicking through some of those earlier posts I remember how crazy the TV output seemed to me, how big and brash everything was here, how no one understood a word I was saying. Now I can happily sit juggling between the commercials, watching several shows simultaneously, phone pinned under a baseball cap, ordering a takeout large enough to feed a small African village from a non-English speaking restaurant employee. Even my written sentences have been supersized!! And exclamation marks appear to have wormed their way into my life...

So, as I sit here about to blow out the one candle on my blueberry muffin I can't help but wonder what the next twelve months have in store. Will I learn to sleep through a New York night without using earplugs? Will I ever pluck up the courage to steal a doughnut out of the hands of a chubby policeman and make him chase me up the street? Will I ever eat something that's "broiled"? And will I ever find out why February only has twenty-eight days? These are exciting times... I'll be sure to keep you posted.

You know it's cold...

...when fahrenheit temperatures drop below zero
...when the weather forecaster has utilised the word "brutal" in his five day summary
...when taking your hand out of a glove to answer your mobile phone is not an option
...when taxis drive like the Flintstones' car because the tires have frozen into non-circular shapes
...when ice-flows down the Hudson disrupt ferry services
...if the dribbles from your nose reach your chin without you feeling it.

We're still awaiting the 'big' snow this winter though...

From Zero to Hero

The bumbling buffoon is back and there are few places to shelter from talks of "terrists" and "clean, hybrid ve-hicles" tonight. The President's State of the Union address is to be found on every television network this evening. Also to be found is a tearful senior speechwriter back at the White House. With head in hands he’s questioning why he can’t write for a leader of over 300 million people who is capable of delivering his script without tripping over punctuation and compound sentence structure. Nevertheless, the breaks for applause from the floor keep coming. You’ve got to wonder if modern day speeches are only written for these back-slapping moments and the statisticians. Significant column inches will be dedicated to the number of "applause-breaks" tomorrow. A few more undeliverable promises in the speech and soon we’ll all be tuning in for fifty minutes of continuous clapping. My suggestion? Move the event outside. It’s minus 2degC in DC tonight, if something’s really worth the applause then the politicians will take off their gloves to make the effort, if not then you’ll just hear the muted thump thump thump of mitten on mitten. You may even see the President thwacked with a few snowballs…imagine that, Secret Service agents jumping in the way to take those hits.


While the lecture continues on how the rest of the world can be saved from untethered leaders and nations who bypass UN resolutions (ahem) I’ve been learning a little more about how this event functions. One of the traditions dates back to 1982. In his speech President Reagan paid tribute to a government employee who had jumped into a frozen river to save a passenger from a crashed aircraft. Since then a selection of American heroes are invited to sit in the First Lady’s Box and for a few minutes we hear about their outstanding achievements.
(Oh goodness, no! We’ve just reached that bit now. A Congolese immigrant who has made it as a professional basketball player and has helped build a hospital back in Kinshasa has just been referred to as both Mutembe and Mutombo. It’s the guy’s name! Get it right!). Anyway, one of the great hero stories I’ve ever heard actually comes out of New York and only occurred a couple of weeks ago. Wesley Autrey was waiting on the platform at a Harlem subway station with his two daughters. Nearby, a man collapsed and began convulsing; he then fell onto the tracks between the two rails. The lights of the No.1 train were already coming down the tunnel so without a moment’s thought Autrey left his two kids on the platform and jumped down onto the track covering the convulsing body with his own, pressing it down into a space of 20” – five carriages rolled over the top of them before the driver finally brought the train to a stop, the clearance was 22”. Both were fine and extracted by workers. Autrey later said, "I'm still saying I'm not a hero ... I'm just saying I saw someone in distress and went to his aid. You should do the right thing." Now those are the types of people that really deserve taking your mittens off for.

For Your Consideration

"It doesn't do anything by halves." Not wrong. New York either goes the whole hog or doesn't go at all. So in that spirit, having delivered me with a special Oscar moment last year, the City's come along and delivered another one. This one was for Rain Man - Best Writing.

A friend commented that maybe this could be "my thing" - going around seeing how many Oscars I can get myself photographed with. So from the available stalker sites on the internet (there are two in the links to the right) I've started compiling my list of previous winners to hound over the coming months. Tomorrow sees me visiting Julia Roberts around East 20th St. The day-after sees me receiving my first restraining order...

A Winter Ramble

I’ll warn you now, there’s going to be absolutely no structure to this. I’m taking the opportunity to clean out my noggin from some of the musings that have built up during the week.

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President Bush has just come on the box as I write to announce his new strategy for Iraq and that’s sparked off a bushel load of personal irritation. I won’t vent here but I do feel like screaming at the TV whenever he’s on. Has there been a more monumental hash-up than the handling of “the war on terror”? And will George Jr ever get through a live televised address without bumbling over the script? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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In other classic moments from television (yes, tonight was TV night for me), “Real guns, real bullets, REAL danger!” CBS executives, having spent a day nailing tequila shots and inhaling a pharmacy, reach a moment of clarity and hit upon the concept of recruiting a group of “celebrities” to an Indiana police force. The city of Muncie wake up to find the likes of Jack Osbourne, La Toya Jackson, and a professional female wrestler are now patrolling their streets… with guns. Yup, they’ll hand them out to anyone here. Think Jackass’s Jason “Wee Man” Acuna arresting drivers on crack and Eric Estrada still living in his fictional world of Chips. The season premier was littered with priceless moments: La Toya zapped with 50,000 volts as the team get Tasered, or La Toya asking for a finger bowl in the local grill bar, or La Toya doing her laundry for the first time in her life.

Witnessing what is essentially a female Michael Jackson rough it with the general public is as close as you’re ever going to get to seeing how the reality of MJ being locked-up would have actually panned out... and that’s reality TV I would have tuned in for; CBS really missed out when that ‘not guilty’ verdict came through. Neverthelss I think I might be tuning in for episode two of “Armed and Famous”.

There’s a lovely scent of pine all around the city at the moment. Well, at least when there’s not the smell of noxious gas. In case you missed it, Monday saw lower Manhattan blanketed in a funny pong. Someone had left a very big gas cooker on but no one quite knew where. Still, that didn’t stop the Mayor from announcing that it wasn’t dangerous which is a bold statement to make when, minutes before, you said that you have no idea what the odour is or where it has come from. I noticed no one was smoking at that press conference either. As for the pine smell, you know how that British ad campaign stated "a dog is for life, not just for Christmas"? Well, over here a Norweigan pine forest is for Christmas, not for life. Come January 6th the streets are literally piled high with unwanted trees.

Apparently last year the city collected 156,000 discarded trees. And they're not small either, there are obviously some very big apartments around because these have been chainsawed right out of their roots. Many still have decorations attached, a few still have the lights wound around them, but all are stacked on the sidewalk - which proves painful when you catch a branch on your shin.

Christmas is but a fading memory now and typically January and February have been the dull, grey depressing months. Recollections of low clouds, rain and short sunlight-starved days at work remain clear though. Britain isn't blessed by latitude or the weather at this time of year and I'm grateful for the blue skies and crisp days here. Aside from that freak heatwave last week where temperatures soared to 22degC (72F) and the tulips started to blossom in Central Park, I know it's going to get much colder soon and there's always the prospect of an unwrapped body part falling off; for the moment though this is how winters are meant to be. Let me tempt fate and say, "Bring on the snow Mother Nature, bring on the snow..."

We Promise To Be Nice In 2007

The last of the JFK Customs and Immigration entries. I promise.

Tuesday. Immigration. Empty arrivals hall.
“Good evening sir. How are you today?”
“Fine thank you. You?”
“I’m good, thanks. Good flight?"
Hold on. What’s going on here? This looks like the beginnings of a civil conversation. Does this guy suspect something?

"Erm, yes thanks. Long delay in London but otherwise pretty good.”
There. That’s confirmed I’m from a respectable city, assuming he doesn't think I meant the one in Ohio.

“I see your flight’s come in pretty late. What held you guys up?”
“Oh, they were on reduced staff at Heathrow... In London... England. Long hold-ups getting people through.”
“That’s crazy! Reduced staff? It's always busy around the holidays, they should know that. It’s you guys that suffer. They didn't plan that well!”
What the hell? I can’t handle this level of politeness. Is it the first day on the job for this chap?

“Yeah, you’re not wrong. Still, no queues in here, I can’t believe it, this has got to be the quickest I’ve ever walked through.”
“You missed the earlier rush, and you’ve arrived just before the next couple of flights are due."

Pause. Extended flicking through passport.
"Now, let me see, you’re coming through on this visa here?”
I knew it. The ‘good official bad official’ routine - admittedly played out by the same guy - but now he's softened me up here comes the kicker. The beastin’.

“Yes I am.”
“OK. Great. There you go, sir. Happy new year to you!”
“Huh?”

Baggage Reclaim.
First two cases onto the belt? Both mine.

Customs.
The crazy sweary official who made that woman cry last time I came through? All jolly and smiley.

Now, here’s what I think happened while I was away. That complaint I made in November really put the willies up the boys over in Terminal 4. There was a big big meeting and the rude customs guy got a telling-off. But that did him a lot of good and he’s a better man for it now. He’s found the joy in his work again and that joy has spread through all the arrivals staff. There’s a newfound sense of communal purpose there. There’s also a vast amount of gratefulness being directed at the instigator of all this. I suspect that there was a little party when they saw my name on the passenger list and as a small favour they cleared the arrival hall and pulled my bags out of the aircraft first. Thank you JFK people, and a happy new year to you all - every uniformed last one of you.

Streets Alive!

Another number crunching moment from The Apple:
There are almost 2 million people in Manhattan, an island 23.7 sq miles in area, which works out to about 300 sq ft per person…and that would explain the size of my apartment. Fat chance of claiming your personal space at the moment though. It’s that time of year again – they call it “holiday season” here - the glittery red, green and gold month between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the sidewalks in midtown are swarming with shoppers flown in from all over the country - and even all over the world. What always catches me a little off-guard is when you see a bemused tourist rotating a map to orientate themselves in the street who then asks you for directions in an American accent. I bemuse them back with my English accent and confident, usually incorrect, set of directions. Obviously you can have American tourists in America, I just haven't managed to get my head around the concept yet.

Lost visitors and busy streets aside, this really is a time to get into the spirit of things. Window displays were going into shops on Fifth Avenue yesterday and the masses seemed genuinely excited – there was actually a roped off area along one store front as a separation between pedestrians and gawkers, Christmas trees are sprouting in key locations and as soon as the big one in Rockefeller Plaza goes up then we’ll be well and truly into the season. There’s no more quintessential Christmas sight than skaters gliding around the rink under that tree or in Central Park.

It’s one of the many things they get right over here: the “event”, granted it may be taken as going over the top sometimes but there's no half-arsing, it's either all or nothing. The parades are a good example. I don't remember a whole lot of parading going on back home, maybe the odd fete with a few floats when the village wanted to celebrate something, there's the Notting Hill Carnival once a year in London, and the Lord Mayor's Show - other than that we're not really a nation of street partiers. Don't start writing-in Morris Dancers. What you do is more "scary" than "party". But here there seems to be a parade for everything: President's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Puerto Rican Day, St Patrick's Day, Greek Independence Day, Memorial Day, Cuban Day... I could be here all Day.

Halloween was a crazy night. I've never witnessed anything like it before, the city was like a cross between a Tim Burton movie and a kid's fancy dress party and practically the whole city had got involved. There were ghouls, ghosts and walking pumpkins at every turn but then amongst these were superheros, members of The Village People and Star Wars characters. I saw someone dressed as a MySpace web page, a road traffic cone, cowboys, indians, Indians, Sponge Bob, Elton John - that might actually have been Elton come to think of it - there were even dogs in costume. Basically it was just a big excuse for everyone to get dressed up and eat lots of sweets. Maybe it is a bit too much but I love the fact that people celebrate. They get out there on the streets, they make an effort, they commit to something. If it takes "Random Day Parade" to get that done then so be it. It unites the city and that's some achievement in one of the most diverse places on earth.

Of course tomorrow's another big one - Thanksgiving. That's more than enough reason for another parade. It also sees the handful of pardoned turkeys around the country asking, “Hey, where’d everyone go?” You’ll find out next year my feathered friends…in the meantime eat up that grain and enjoy the extra living space.

Endure No More

So I wrote that last post a week ago on my way out of town. Last night I came back and was walking through the airport thinking, "Maybe I gave this place a hard time. OK, so there aren't that many shops, it lacks character and the henge-like seating wouldn't look out of place on Salisbury Plain but it's bright, airy and there's a big colourful mural in the arrivals hall. Perhaps I should amend my thoughts."

Having positively zipped through the immigration formalities and with disembarkation to suitcase retrieval being posted in record time there was just the little matter of Customs to go.

I mentioned the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pledges previously; I had a closer look at the poster last night:

• We pledge to cordially greet and welcome you to the United States
• We pledge to treat you with courtesy, dignity, and respect
• ...and on it goes; you get the point

So, can someone please explain the following to me? There we all were, travellers and trolleys, queued and funneling our way through one of the three open customs check-points and dutifully handing over our white customs cards. Suddenly, down the side of our queue, rushes a middle-aged lady looking very flustered and accompanied by a uniformed assistant from one of the check-in desks. They reach the front, the lady holding out her card apologising to the rest of us in very broken English.
“Sorry, so sorry! My card?” She says holding out her form for the official.
“You’re not getting in there lady, get to the back of the queue like everyone else,” the official shoots back at her while continuing his retrieval of cards from the rest of us.
“I sorry. My flight! My flight!” With which she pulls out a plane ticket while the assistant she’s with tries to explain that this lady’s flight arrived late and that she’s rushing to make a connection.
“I don’t give a damn. Get to the back,” he continues.

It would have taken a second to let her through – anyone with a modicum of common sense could see that it was an extraordinary circumstance and no one would have begrudged that act of discretion. Instead the torment was stretched out a little more.
“I show you ticket? Here is ticket for flight,” the lady fumbled trying to convince the official who wasn’t even looking at her now. She then started crying.
Finally looking back at her he answers: “Lady, I don’t give a sh*t. Get the f*ck outta here!” Word for word, that was his response in front of her, me, kids and dozens of others.

They can pledge all they like, those CBP promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, and having found the Supervisor on duty that night to point this out I then sent him in the direction of the abusive officer…

Make a stand folks.