SO LONG AND FAREWELL---FOR NOW

Writing a blog has been quite an eye-opener.  From the Statistics on my Dashboard I know I have many more readers than those that have been kind enough to bother to sign up as Followers. I’ve received personal emails of encouragement which has been great, even if there hasn’t been a lot in the Comment boxes. I also know I have readers in Canada, Switzerland, India and Russia (!) who I’ve never met (Hello out there!) and I know, with some fascination, that some people follow me on their Blackberry.  All of this is very flattering and encouraging.

Sadly, however, time moves on and with a body stuffed with turkey and a holiday to Guatemala fast approaching, not to mention a desire to spend more time on other projects, I’ve decided to give up the blog on a regular basis.  The other side of this is, of course, that I am fast becoming acclimatized to dealing with the vagaries of living in NYC and the USA.  Well, most of the time…  I’m not particularly happy that grocery shopping here seems to be a contact sport, nor that tipping entails carrying around a load of One Dollar bills and a calculator.  I’m certainly not happy about having to tell taxi drivers to get the hell off the phone nor that Customer Service is anything but:  I have days with the phone on ‘speakerphone’ as I wait for a human being to replace inane music.

However, here are five things that absolutely scare the hell out of me about living in these United States:

1)    That the result of “Dancing with the Stars” is considered important enough to be included on the 11p.m. news;

2)   That some idiot calling himself ‘The Situation’ with a girlfriend called ‘Snookie’ can become an overnight multi-millionaire because there are enough other idiots out there wanting to see what they get up to on “Jersey Shore;”

3)   That medical care is so convoluted and so expensive that many seniors can no longer afford the medications or procedures they need once they go on Medicare (though hopefully Obama has sorted some of that out) ;

4)   That the infrastructure of the U.S., and NYC in particular, has been so lacking in investment that we are just basically waiting for bridges and tunnels to collapse or a major subway accident; compared to the Underground system in almost any major city in Europe we are on a par here with the Third World;

5)   That someone whose total government experience is 6 years as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, followed by 3 years of the governorship of Alaska—which she resigned to make money!—can even vaguely be considered a presidential runner.  Sometimes I wonder what John McCain thinks of the Pandora’s box he opened up. 

You’ll no doubt now want to know what I do like about living here.  So:

1)    It’s much more a 24/7 society than London and that availability of virtually anything you want at anytime is strangely comforting;

2)   The variety of foods available is fascinating; you name it, New York has it;

3)   New Yorkers have to pick up after their dogs with pooper scoopers so, while there may not be the many street sweepers we have in London, you are less likely to step into a dog mess;

4)   There’s always something going on near you, be it a street fair or market, an outdoor concert or a parade;

5)   And finally, yes, I have to admit it, the people are pretty damn wonderful.  They’re friendly and open----even if a little bit crazy.

For now, adieu.  But if you like, you can follow me on Twitter @andidowning.  I’m limited to short spurts so it’ll take less time from your day J And thank you for reading!

A SEINFELD DAY

A few weeks ago I had an appointment with my ophthamologist to discuss the possibility of having an operation---my third---to correct a lazy muscle in my right eye.  Since the last operation had been some 23 years ago I sort of hoped that opthalmology had improved to the extent that a better job could now be done and maybe, just maybe, before I pass on to the next world, I might be able to have a photograph of myself where I don’t look drunk.  The ophthamologist listened to my plaintive story and scribbled the names of two doctors for me to consider approaching.  I, in turn, had to discover if either of the two would be covered by my insurance.

One was.  I duly googled her without putting the M.D. after her name and what came up so amazed me that I sat staring at the screen for some time before feeling impelled to share my amazement with someone, namely my brother.  Yes!  It was all true.  He recognized the name immediately as has everyone else of a certain age who was resident in the U.S. in the 70s, unlike myself.  Yes!  This doctor had had a sex change operation.  She had been a he.  And not only that, but a famous “he,” a star tennis champion.  Oy ve.    However, let me say immediately that she is also a brilliant opthamologist, a well respected eye surgeon who had been the Director of several opthamology departments and is the non plus ultra in this particular area of expertise.  What the hell should I do?

Well, reader, I went to see her. 

The day hadn’t started well.  My housekeeper had shown up late and then stated somewhat coldly, when I asked her not to knot the blind pulls in the living room, that perhaps she couldn’t work for me anymore because I didn’t like her work.  I managed to ease that over and went on my merry way only to get on the bus and discover that I had lost one Metro card and was left with a second with no money on it.  Gleaning enough change from my purse to pay my fare, and wondering what else could go wrong, I finally made my way down Madison Avenue and got to my appointment.  After an initial consultation with the smiliest, happiest, friendliest assistant one could imagine, I sat reading a magazine in the waiting area when I suddenly heard my name called and found myself looking directly into the crotch of an incredibly tall PERSON of no discernable gender.  The good doctor seemed to be wearing man’s pants and a white coat, as doctors often do:  male doctors.  She had hands the size of dinner plates and a voice that I can only say reminded me of Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” or maybe it was closer to Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire”. I’m not going to discuss the face and hair because, well, we’re all getting on in years and some of us will always be a bit better looking than others no matter which sex we are.  But the total lack of femininity was not what bothered me.  What did bother me as I tried to hang on to my fast vanishing sanity was that there was absolutely no glimmer, not a hint, not a spark, not a nano-dot of humour or personality.  It was as if the removal of her manhood had taken with it her ability to interact with humankind.  And that bothered me.  I spoke, she listened.  I jested, she was like a stone wall (no pun intended.  Well, maybe just a little….)  When I got tired of my monologue, and suffering with the light due to those dreaded eye drops, I waited for the prognosis.  “This is operable,” she said before handing me on to her Operations Coordinator.  And that, as they say, was that.

When I recounted all of this to my dear friend over dinner that evening, she said to me that it was “soooooo Seinfeld!”  And, indeed, it was, if by ‘Seinfeld’ we mean that New York kind of day when the weird and wonderful are interspersed with things going wrong that turn out right.  So even if the good doctor doesn’t have a sense of humour, I hope I do.  And I’m hoping to go ahead with the op and hopefully have the last laugh.

Carriers of Values

There’s been a lot in the news about the new body scanners the TSA has brought in over here.  Strangely enough, for Americans who value their freedom but value their lives even more, there have been an awful lot of complaints about these things…mostly from men.  The pilots are calling the scanners “dick sticks” or “dick measuring devices” because of the clear view the personnel get of your body outline.  Now, I have to say I’ve looked online at some of the photos generated and I actually mistook a female for a man. That surely must make the men look pretty good?  But no, on the men’s photos you couldn’t tell what the hell was between their legs unless it was a gun stuck up there.  Personally, I don’t like the fact that the rolls of fat are clearly outlined which will no doubt show my saggy tush.  But if the damn things are going to turn up bombs wired to men’s packets, I guess I’ll just be a little less vain.

ON the homefront, there was a two-day training program recently in Baltimore for exorcists in the Catholic Church.  More than 50 Bishops and 60 priests attended as there is apparently a great shortage of exorcists over here!!  On the news, they seemed to treat this increase in the need for exorcists with some astonishment.  Are they kidding?  Has anyone counted up the number of progammes currently on telly over here that deal with the paranormal/superhuman/extraterrestrial?  You put some nut in front of one these programmes and of course they are eventually going to think they are possessed.  My daughter told me the vampire Twilight books were originally created for teens to have love stories without sex in them.  Once again I ask, what happened to Westerns?  Maybe the problem actually is that Americans can’t deal with life as we know it anymore; they have to day- dream of something that empowers them.  No longer the World’s foremost Super Power, people are taking refuge in vampires, witches and aliens…in fact, anything except the daily grind.

FINALLY, my daughter is currently studying for her M.A.  at NYU.  One of the articles she was recently given to read was so appallingly written, it needed line by line translation.  We discovered that the professor is a German currently employed at prestigious Chicago University.  It would appear that he is using an 18^th Century dictionary (no not 19^th Century, I did mean 18^th!) for looking up words he cannot translate from his native tongue.  Here is a quote Kit sent me:  “"Rather, from its very origin athwart the African riverine highways along which knowledge about the law-giving voice of the leopard was sold from one slave-trading local unit to the other, ekpe’s success had been pegged to its nature as a sacred commodity circulating against other carriers of values. "

The question is, what American editor sat there, read the paper (presumably) and decided to publish it?  If anyone can translate, please put it in the comment box.  I’m going athwart the riverine highway of Columbus Avenue to get some aspirin after that.

THE COSMIC SCALE

Last night as I was leafing through a magazine in an attempt to induce somnolence I was jolted back to awareness by a full page colour advert for---CAN IT BE?--- cigarettes.  Since I was under the impression that cigarette advertising had been banned, as it certainly has in the U.K., I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at.  “Natural American Spirit” sounds so innocuous, with their ‘sandals and oats’ packets showing an Indian smoking the peace pipe, that I couldn’t quite comprehend that this was an actual tobacco product.  But there it is in huge letters:  “100% U.S. Grown Tobacco,” obviously something to be proud of.  “Share the love,” it says, “100% additive free natural tobacco.”  In my hazy state I read it as “addictive-free” before reading it again.  Natural tobacco?  Is there any other kind?  I didn’t even know tobacco came from other countries; I sort of thought that down there in Raleigh/Durham and Salem and places they were growing enough of the stuff for the current market.  NO?

Not only are they offering $20 in gift certificates (surely that can’t be legal?) they go on to tell us, “On the Cosmic Scale it may be a small thing, but then, to the many farmers we support it’s actually a pretty big deal.”  And not only that, but it means “….safeguarding the environment through encouraging sustainable agriculture, by shipping across shorter distances, and by reducing fuel use and emissions.  It means we can improve the big picture by focusing on the details.  IT’S WHAT WE DO!”  Wow!  It seems that if you smoke these things you’re positively helping the American economy----indeed, helping the Universe! Isn’t that sustainable agriculture similar to the US trying to get all those coca farmers down in Colombia to grow pineapples instead?  Heck, hang the consequences:  let’s all band together and smoke ourselves silly sharing the love!

Oh, but then come the warnings:  “No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette,” and “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and may complicate Pregnancy.”  Well, surely since they’ve just written two pages about sharing the love and helping farmers, the gamble is worth it?

On television there is no cigarette advertising but there is advertising for pharmaceuticals, something which the U.K. also does not have.  I often wonder what doctors think of this:  are we supposed to be going in to our doctors well-informed when they tell us they are going to put us on ABC or are the drug companies just hoping that we go into the doctors demanding to be put on ABC?  I have a cardiologist at the moment who is about half my age.  He rather looks as if he just stepped off his surf board and came in from the beach, but, my gosh, does this guy know his stuff.  It would be a cold day in hell before I went in and demanded to be put on something I saw advertised on television.  And why would I?  The drug companies, just like the cigarette companies, have to give you all sorts of warnings.  After the happy little scenario encouraging you to want the particular medication they are selling, someone goes on to give you a list of possible side effects that make cigarette smoking look positively healthy and life-enhancing.

So, on the Cosmic Scale where does this put us?  We’ve got cigarette companies asking us to share the love but warning about heart disease while happy couples headed off to the bedroom on Viagra or Cialis are warning about four hour erections.

 Hmmm. I guess I know on whose side the cosmic scale is balanced…

NO IT’S NOT ME

     Today is Hallowe’en---at last.  It seems to have been going on since Labor Day at the beginning of Sept.  Preparations started with decorations for sale in the shops, quickly followed by the appearance of pumpkins anywhere a pumpkin can appear.  Then came the costumes, and how New Yorkers love their costumes!  Hallowe’en used to be about kids going out and ringing doorbells for candy.  Now it’s about everyone dressing up to mimic their favourite television personalities.  And I have to ask myself :  why?

Throughout the year New Yorkers dress up in costume.  The list of parades for this city is longer than my monthly shopping list.  Starting in January there is the Three Kings Parade in Spanish Harlem and the parade for Chinese New Year which may run into February along with the parade for Lunar New Year in case you missed the fact that Chinese New Year starts on the Lunar New Year.  February also sees the President’s Day Parade.  March of course sees the St. Patrick’s Day parade but if that isn’t enough for Irish Americans there is also the Irish American Parade followed by the Greek Independence Day parade and the Phagwha Parade celebrating the triumph of good over evil.  Phew! April has the Easter Parade, bonnets and all, along with the Sikh Cultural Society Parade with headdress of their own and of course there has to be an April Fool’s Parade so New Yorkers can dress like their favourite fool.  Then with better weather coming along we get into the thick of it:  multiple Memorial Day Parades in May are followed  by  Cuban Day, Bronx Latinos Unidos, Dance March, Global Marijuana March, Turkish-American Parade, Haitian Flag Day, Norwegian-American 17th of May, Martin Luther King Jr./369th Regiment Parade, Haitian-American Day Parade and Greater NY Good Neighbor Parade.  Are you beginning to get the hang of this?  June is the month for Gay Pride parades but also for Hare Krishna, Puerto Rican Day, Children’s Evengelical, the Bronx and Mermaids in Coney Island.

I am tempted to stop there at the half way mark as you no doubt have the idea by now.  Indians, Dominicans, Pakistanis, African Americans, Caribbean families, Brazilians, Mexicans, Poles, Nigerians, Muslims, and Hispanics are all getting their own parades and dressing up accordingly.  Then, in November, will be the biggy of them all, The Thanksgiving Day Parade.  The floats for this are inflated outside my building causing all sorts of havoc in the streets but not as much havoc as the parades themselves cause.

Back in London we had Notting Hill Carnival for the Jamaican and other Caribbean population, the Lord Mayor’s Parade and the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen’s Birthday.  There were probably Chinese New Year goings on and Gay Pride certainly had parades but I really can’t think of anything else.  Reminders welcome in the comment box.

I realize that New York is a melting pot.  But if it is a melting pot why haven’t these people melted into the general population?  The Statue of Liberty is standing out there saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” NOT “give us more reasons for parades every other day of the week.”  Pride in your ancestry is one thing but dressing up in costume and marching down Fifth Ave. ? As someone recently said, my grandparents didn’t get on a boat and come all the way over from Europe just to be faced with a nation of Immigrants!

So I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing at all to do with pride in one’s ancestry but rather the innate desire to be another person, to re-invent oneself and to let go of your persona for that brief moment.  To dress up and be someone else.

Maybe New Yorkers are fed up with being New Yorkers?

Gym-bore-ee

    Going to the gym in London used to be a rather staid affair.   I belonged to a small but, dare I say, select club on the Fulham Road in Chelsea whose members included the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Felicity Kendal.  It was well-kept, its women’s changing rooms included a lovely sit-down make-up area with rows of hairdryers, showers with plenty of shampoo and conditioner, a Jacuzzi, sauna and steam room.  It had the very latest equipment and, even better, a tiny but completely adequate women’s gym on the second floor.   There was a pool and coffee shop; trainers were always around to give one a hand and were always courteous and informative.

The dignified aura might not have suited all.  I, for one, chose this club because it was within a five minute walk of my apartment and, if you need encouragement to go to the gym as I do, having it on your doorstep, so to speak, is a good start.  I even managed to get down there for evening salsa classes which is saying a lot.  About the most controversial thing to happen at this gym was the time they decided to face the Abductor machines towards the wall because certain ladies had complained they didn’t want to be facing the general public while repeatedly opening and closing their legs.

The good ladies of New York have no such qualms.  While I am not a member of a city gym, I do go to one out in Sag Harbor for the six months I am out on the Island.  How different can going to the gym be?  Well, first of all, instead of a five minute walk I am now faced with a six minute drive followed by a ten minute search, in the summer at least, for a parking space.   No pool—really not needed out here anyway, but neither are there the other relaxing bits and pieces.  The gym itself is rather run-down, the changing room grotty and the trainers…well, the trainers I’ll get to in a minute.  The bottom line here is that people mean business:  they work-out, they go home.  There is none of the lazing in the sauna showing off your glorious bod, or quiet chit chat you want everyone in the changing room  to hear about your last fabulous holiday.  You get the same assortment of bulimics mixed with fatties but no one seems to care about either.  What you do get is a trainer with the loudest mouth in the world and the worst case of verbal diarrhea I have ever encountered.

For some reason I always encounter this man with a client when I am there and it is always in the supposedly quiet mat exercise room.  I have never seen him with the same client twice---and no wonder!!!!  They probably cannot stand him any more than I can.  I now know all about his hip replacement (yes, I did say he is a trainer), his double knee replacement surgeries in Colorado, how he got into training for them so he would have a shorter recovery time, how he hated being on Coumadin after his surgeries and how it changed his taste buds, his various escapades on boats, his trip to St. Louis, and a good part of his sex life with his wife Sue.  What I have not learned is any of the exercises in which he is apparently instructing his clients.

Last Monday, however, things rather came to a head--- no pun intended, this is the only way I can express this.   He was telling his male client how he had “accidentally” got into a porn site on the internet and then went on to describe, in some detail, the various things he had found there.  Now I’ve never  been on a porn site but I am on the internet a good part of my day and if I’ve never unexpectedly found myself in a porn site I really can’t understand how this person could.  But the game was up.  “Yeah,” said the other guy, “that’s happened to me too.  But trouble is, once you pay them, even if it’s for the one time, you keep getting notices to renew.” 

Trouble with the gym is, it doesn’t exercise your brain.

Telly Me Something I Don’t Know (or Pt.2 TV)

First of all, the answer to last week’s mystery question was “Mary Martin.”  She played the male role of Peter Pan!  All the contestants had answered Julie Andrews for some reason.  I guess they weren’t as old as I; this was the first theater production I had ever been to and I remember trying to fly after the show by jumping on my brother’s back  Anyway…

Many, many years ago, someone once said to me, ‘If you want to know Britain you must listen to its radio.’  And I did.  Even now, when I see the clock hit 12.57pm, I’m ready to turn on Radio Four and listen to the weather report prior to the mid-day news and an afternoon’s listening.  Dinner preparation has never been quite the same since leaving the U.K.; now I am dependent on my iPod for company and at other times, Telly rules.   OK?  American television isn’t quite so bad as Italian where a mother was recently told on live TV that her daughter had been murdered.  In America, we only have to deal with a certain lack of intelligence.  So, back to my viewing diary from last week when I left ‘Jeopardy” which was followed by “Wheel of Fortune.”  To this I said ‘no thank you,’ and moved on to:

“1,000 Ways to Die’:  this might possibly be the funniest programme on television.  It is preceded by the warning, “Do not attempt to try any of the actions depicted…”  This programme is exactly what it purports to be:  a compendium of weird and wonderful ways people have died in these United  States.  First up is a guy on the lam in Montana who’s been robbing banks in an attempt to get the money together to open a meths lab.  Wanting a high and out of booze, he siphons off the gasoline from his Harley believing the ethanol will give him his alcoholic high.  Subsequently he pukes into his camp fire and---guess what? 

Next on this programme is a Japanese couple who, after 7 years of wedded non-bliss have still been unable to consummate their marriage.  The husband comes home plastered one evening and gets his wife to join him in his drunken stupor leading to…  At that climactic moment, they both die of heart attacks.

And then there is the woman who wants to lose weight.  Guess what she does?  She buys a whole load of tape worm larvae from Venezuela… which might not be such a good strategy.  The longest worm they eventually found in her body was 20 ft……..

Joy Behar:  the comedienne, whom I know from catching “The View” in the mornings at the gym, is today interviewing one Jenny McCarthy.  I’ve never heard of this person previously but she is describing to Behar, in graphic detail, a most intimate relationship she had with a stuffed bear called ‘Tubby.’

Swamp People: This is on the History Channel.  Apparently there is not enough history to occupy the channel full-time so we have this series about people with accents so thick we need the provided subtitles to understand anything they are saying.  It would also help if someone explained why they do the job they do---which is hunting snakes and alligators so that the rest of us can look at lovely shoes, belts and fabulous handbags we cannot possibly afford.  Unfortunately, one guy still doesn’t know the difference between venomous and non-venomous snakes which is something of a liability in his line of work.  I leave them frying frog fritters…

American Pickers:  This is about a firm called ‘Antique Archaeology’ who go around the country looking in barns, sheds, run down houses, fields and other unlikely venues where junk that could possibly be sold as antiques might be found.  This week they find a pinball machine with cowgirls on it and we are told that in 1942 Mayor LaGuardia banned and destroyed pinballs as games of luck---or gambling.  History on the History Channel at last!  The men also find the ‘Alien’ dummies used in a film about Roswell.  It’s pointed out that a UFO sighting is reported somewhere on the planet every 3 minutes!  As they load the dummies into their van, one man asks the other, “Do you believe in Aliens?”  His reply?  “I gotta believe there’s gotta be something smarter than us…”

And last but certainly not least:

Better Off Dead:  When I hit the ‘Info’ button on my remote control, it says, “Follow Mark Lilly, Social Worker at the Dept. of Integration, as he helps new citizens…adapt to hectic life in the Big Apple.”  BETTER OFF DEAD????

 Are they trying to tell me something?

T.V. or Not T.V., that IS the Question

One night during the summer I was dining over at my brother’s home when the conversation came round to television.  “So what do you watch?” I was asked.  After a momentary silence and a procrastinating sip of wine I had to tell the assembled guests that, in actual fact, I didn’t watch American television very much at all.   On neither side of the pond have I ever been a great one for the Box; I simply cannot sit and do nothing while staring at a screen.  Since I started living on my own, my television watching predominantly consists of a half hour over lunch and a further half hour or so over dinner.  Sure, I catch the news and turn the damn thing on while dressing in the mornings or getting ready for bed, but actually sit down and watch?  I used to exercise in front of it which added an hour or so to my viewing time but, since I took up gym attendance, that too has gone by the board.

In the UK I used to record programmes and films and watch them over a period of time.  Most of my watching consisted of documentaries, historical dramas and the odd human interest programme such as “Who Do You Think You Are?” which traces the ancestry of various celebrities.  I did watch a few episodes of the American version (did you know Sarah Jessica Parker is descended from a Salem witch??!) but unfortunately circumstances eventually overtook me on that.  I tried watching a few programmes my brother recommended; “Monk,” about a detective with OCD, was my firm favourite but I got there just in time for its last season.  I tried “House” for a while as I used to love Hugh Laurie when he was teamed with Stephen Fry, but after a few episodes I realized how very formulaic this series was and gave up. My nephew recommended “Glee” saying he was certain I would love it; next time don’t be so sure of yourself!  “The Closer” I can happily watch and “Project Runway” I’ve been watching for years as I rather enjoy the cut and thrust of the competition, not to mention the weird fashion---but in a country where I could have some 900 channels from which to choose, this is all slim pickings indeed.

Therefore, in the interests of Investigative Journalism (i.e., this blog), I decided to subject myself to arbitrary television viewing over several days.  In fact, my first inclination was to try to watch for 12 hours of prime time viewing but I’m afraid I soon ditched that idea in the interests of my own sanity.  I set myself certain parameters for this experiment:  I would not watch any of the programmes previously watched as cited above; there would be no films and  no news or current affairs to which I would have normally gravitated; furthermore, there would be no British imports so Masterpiece Theatre was out--- no masterpieces for me!  Finally, there would be nothing with the words ‘Real Housewives of…’ in the title (nothing real about these women since they are 90% plastic and 10% hair extensions), simply in the interests of saving me from regurgitation.   So, here, this week and next, is my viewing diary:

6.30pm: “Flipping Out” is about a gay guy with OCD who does remodeling and home re-designs on a very grand scale.  He seems to have major management issues, particularly with his maid, Zola.  In this episode, his biggest problem was dealing with a 90 year old woman who wanted door handles designed as nude figures throughout the house and he had to explain that this might not be in the very best taste.

7PM:  “Jeopardy”:  this long-running game show basically entails contestants being given the answer to questions and they have to come up with the question; therefore, their replies must always start with who, what, where, or when.  So, the M.C. says, ‘the mortar between tiles’ and the contestant replies “What is grout?”  Or, “A condition in polar regions where snow makes visibility poor.”  Answer:  “What is a ‘white out’?”  But really, if someone asked you, “What is jumping?” would you truly reply, “Miriam Rothschild discovered that a substance in the hind legs of fleas gave them this amazing ability????”  Or if someone demanded, “What is Murder on the Orient Express?” would your answer really be, “Hercule makes a bust on a choo-choo out of Istanbul?”

By the way, the major-grossing question for the night was “In 1955 she became the first and only female star to win a Tony in a male part.”  Out of the 4 contestants and me, I was the only one to know the answer.  Anyone who replies with the correct answer below in ‘Comment’ will get $1 from me.  If you can prove you didn’t Google it, of course.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…..

STREET SCENES

Summer is over and I’ve come to realize, once and for all, how very different the streets of New York are from the streets of London.  I don’t just mean the very obvious differences, such as the grid system that characterizes NYC, or the lack of ancient buildings.  The whole experience of walking is totally different.

     When I first brought my daughter over to New York for a visit many years ago, I carefully explained the numbered streets going north and south and the avenues going east to west.  I devised “Men Pay Less” so she could remember Madison, Park, Lex, and CAB for Columbus/Amsterdam/Broadway.  Now she knows her way around even those areas my generation once feared to tread:  the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, Hell’s Kitchen are nothing to Kit. And I never get asked for directions here.  In London between May and October I might as well have opened a booth on the Brompton Rd. for all the directions I was handing out.   The winding streets, the leafy squares (many more trees in London!), the haphazard connection between what were once an assortment of villages are nothing like the calculated and deliberately planned street system of the Big Apple.

     New Yorkers walk differently too.  Maybe it’s the broader pavements/sidewalks but there’s definitely a difference in walking the walk.  Londoners tend to play a never-ending game of chicken with one another.  You head directly for the on-coming person and see which one of you will step out of the way first, generally at the last moment.  New Yorkers can’t be bothered with that; they have no time for such games and want to get on, diving in and out of the oncoming population like a mountain climber looking for the next foothold.

     Since some form of English is the native tongue of both cities, one would expect to hear that language on the streets.  But how times have changed!  In NYC you are likely to hear almost equal parts Spanish and English with a smattering of other languages. Since Britain entered the EU, you are most likely to hear almost any language in London other than English.  OK, so a few people still speak it but only just. 

     But it’s the actual people on the streets who are so very different.  First of all, Londoners just do not eat while out and about.  I’m not talking sidewalk cafes here; I’m talking hot dogs, pretzels, and the myriad of ethnic foods available from street carts in New York.  In London you might possibly see someone surreptitiously licking an ice cream cone or taking a gulp of their Starbucks on the way back to the office but that’s about as far as it goes.  Londoners are just not that big on that touch of carcinogenic ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ in their food.

     Finally:  men in Bermuda shorts?!?  Alright, I admit London hardly has the weather for it, but even when it does you just don’t see this.  And what I want to know is this:  where are these men going in NYC wearing their Bermuda shorts?  Are they going to the office dressed like that?  Maybe it’s because New York has easier access to beaches than London and therefore the men get tanned more readily that they feel they can go out and about wearing shorts while their London brothers would die of embarrassment before showing pale white knobby knees.  I pointed out the Bermuda short factor to Kit once and she replied that in London men who went to Ibiza wore shorts.  Obviously, they were tan!

     But here’s the thing:  the Brits actually invented them!!!  Once, many years ago, I was staying at Reid’s Hotel in Madeira with my parents.  It was then a very grand hotel, a sort of last outpost of the uncrowned heads of European dynasties and was exceedingly formal with 5 course lunches and 7 course dinners for which one naturally “dressed.”  My parents and I were waiting for the lift (elevator for you Yanks) when the door opened and there before us was a gentleman in his evening attire:  dress shirt and dinner jacket (tuxedo jacket) and DRESS Bermuda shorts with knee socks and dress shoes.  Even Wikipedia describes this:  

   “Bermuda Shorts, also known as walking shorts or dress shorts, are a particular type of short trousers, now widely worn as semi-casual attire by both men and women…. They are so-named because of their popularity in Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, where they are considered appropriate business attire for men when made of suit-like material and worn with knee-length socks, a dress shirt, tie, and blazer.”

     We couldn’t stop laughing as soon as we were out.  Maybe that’s why Londoners don’t wear shorts on the streets?

     

Tatler Tales

For Christmas my daughter bought me a subscription to the British magazine Tatler so that I could feel that I hadn’t quite left everything English behind. While we’ve had Branston Pickle, Savlon, Hob Nobs, TCP, Temple Spa cosmetics and Ormande Jayne perfume brought over by visiting friends, something was still lacking; my body was well cared for but apparently not my mind.
For any American who has never read Tatler, it is a sort of Town and Country meets Vanity Fair with a touch of Vogue thrown in. It is basically a highly incestuous magazine being written by, for and about the stratosphere of society. My sister-in-law, inheriting my copies, once said she loved to read it for the names alone: names like Ticky Hedley-Dent, Balthazar Mattar, Fleur Chenevix-Trench and the Hon. Peregrine Pearson. Established in 1709, the names these days are slowly but rather surely losing their very English edge and a good dose of Pop Culture (only the very wealthiest of course) is being met with a decent smattering of Russian. Social climbing continues unabated no matter what the century.
Since my departure from Britain and the necessary gap in my Tatler reading, the Editor has changed thereby affecting various columns and features. One new column is by Andrew Roberts, the noted historian, who like myself has recently been relocated to the Big Apple. He has many of the same complaints I do; in his Sept. column he notes “They don’t have electronic boards on the subway telling passengers when the next train is coming…; they don’t have chip and pin for credit cards—instead you still have to sign slips of paper; and you can’t catch a cab between 4pm and 5pm…” Right on! What is it with this place? The City of London is just as hard-up as NYC—after all, they have all those historic buildings to maintain—yet they seem to have been able to beautifully maintain the Underground. Credit cards? I’ve had to change one of mine twice in 6 weeks due to identity theft; please bring in chip and pin! And as for taxis, well, I have to plan my day around the 4pm change if I know I’m going to need a cab.
Still, there is one thing on which Mr. Roberts and I don’t agree. He states, “Despite living in the so-called ‘city that never sleeps,’ New Yorkers like to be tucked up in bed by 9.30 and have lights out by 10pm…” Huh??? A small exaggeration perchance? A wee white lie? Dinner at 6.30? Well, Henry Kissinger is getting on a bit these days so if Roberts is dining with him, maybe---though I truly can’t see the Kissingers going in for the Early Bird Special. My own dinner is around 8pm. I may not have to be awake for a power breakfast at 7, but believe me those guys don’t need nine hours of sleep. Maybe Mon.- Weds. is a bit on the quiet side but once we hit Thurs. here in New York the movie rolls continuously until Sun. evening. My daughter has been known to stay out until 5 am. Could it be that Mr. Roberts at 47 is just mixing with the wrong crowd? Those historians, you know, and those busy making history, can be a bit of a stodgy group. Or can it be that he actually prefers sitting at home with the chocolate Hob Nobs?
Me, I’m dabbing on the Ormande Jayne and heading out….I’ve got dinner booked for 8.30, music starting at 9.30 and the main attraction probably not on until at least 10.30. And actually, it’s a Tuesday night!

Meeting My Waterloo

I just finished reading an historical novel set around the Civil War which is, quite possibly, the worst book ever written. For obvious reasons, I cannot tell you the author or title for fear of slander but, believe me, this has given me thoughts of running a Creative Writing course in which this book is the prime text for students to dissect. In fact, it is so awful that when I thought I would discontinue reading it, I had to decide to go on just for the sheer joy of seeing how truly awful it could get and how many anachronisms I could find. I continued with irresistible fascination or possibly an obsessive compulsion and I have got so many laughs out of this that I am now thinking of recommending it as a comedy. Just to clarify how I came upon this opus, I found it on Amazon and only after purchase did I discover online that it seems to have been published by a vanity press. Caveat Emptor, folks!
I haven’t as yet figured out what the story line actually is because two of the main characters have magically disappeared after 14o odd pages--- pun absolutely intended. However, there are quite a few gory battles of various kinds, as one might expect, and endless campfire meals and ---of even more interest--- endless descriptions of ‘making water’ or, in modern parlance, relieving oneself. Not to be too clever and sure of myself, I have read all of this with easy access to the online Etymology Dictionary.
Now, when one character answered another with the acronym ‘O.K.’ I had a great laugh. I had always been made to understand that OK came into usage during the period of the great ocean liners (along with ‘posh’ which stands for Port Over Starboard Home---although this etymology is disputed) when papers were marked OK as in ‘Oll Korrect’ by uneducated seamen. Apparently not! According to the Dictionary it came out of a fad in 1839 for using abbreviations for words and is the only survivor of that craze. Furthermore, there was an OK Club which supported Martin Van Buren’s Presidential election in 1840. One point to my author then, although I dispute whether a poor dirt farmer turned Confederate soldier would have used the expression.
However, when the character goes on to look at a revolting meal and comment “Ugh, gross!” I have to wonder which fraternity he belonged to. The use of the word ‘gross’ as meaning disgusting did not come into use until 1958, apparently, as part of student slang.
Finally, when one of the women politely says she needs to go to the bathroom—oh dear, oh dear. The Etymology Dictionary says “used 20c. in U.S. as a euphemism for a lavatory and often noted as a word that confused British travelers.” (Italics mine)
When I first moved to the UK I learned rather quickly not to use the expression as it produced gales of laughter from friends or mild confusion amongst the general public. Many years later I have returned home wired to say, “Excuse me, where is the Ladies’ Room?” If I remember, I may occasionally ask for the powder room but that term seems to now be archaic and since “ladies’ room” is understood I persist in using that. My daughter and I have both on occasion been corrected and directed to ‘the restroom’ or ‘bathroom’ but old habits die hard.
But at home, it’s the loo: “lavatory," 1940, but perhaps 1922, probably from Fr. lieux d'aisances, "lavatory," lit. "place of ease," picked up by British servicemen in France during World War I. Or possibly a pun on Waterloo, based on water closet.” (from The Online Etymology Dictionary)
After all, when I say I’m going to the loo, I’m not going to have a bath, I’m jolly well going to “make water.”

HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND WISE

I have been avoiding writing about this for weeks now but like the Sword of Damocles it has been hanging over me--- only this time the horse hair has finally snapped. Health Insurance. A subject so vile, so hated, so fear-inducing one only need whisper it to give me migraines, ulcers and palpitations all at once. And then I’d have to figure out if my insurance covered me for any of those.
When I decided to return to live in the USA I realized at once that this was something I would have to sort out before even sticking a toe out of the plane. On previous visits I was able to purchase travel insurance which gave excellent coverage for even extended visits. Back in Britain we have, as everyone knows, a National Health Service which makes visits to doctors, stays in hospitals and just about everything, except medication, free. Your prescriptions cost a set price so there are no sky high charges for medications. But---and this can be a big BUT—this does not mean there are no problems. There can be long waits to see specialists, hospital wards can be unpleasant and certain medications can be denied to you. Enter Health Insurance UK style.
Yes, I admit it, I had Health Insurance in the UK. Why? Because like most sane people I prefer staying in a hospital that resembles a luxury hotel rather than one that is like a bunkhouse, I prefer choosing my own specialists to see rather than the ones with whom my doctor is associated and I like seeing them as soon as possible. The charge for this when I left the UK was about one quarter of what I have to pay here in these United States.
In the US if you are buying your own insurance you first have to decide whether to go for an HMO, a PPO or, at a certain age or with pre-existing conditions, a POS---the 3 different types of insurance which dictate which doctors you may see and what you will pay to see them. I was channeled into the POS (Point of Sale; don’t ask me why) so that I could go out of network. If you are reading this in the UK you may not be able to follow this by now. But wait! There’s more! You then have to find what your coverage is. This includes figuring out co-insurance, co-payments, deductibles, in-network, out-of-network, out-of-pocket. … Did someone run a course in this which I missed when I moved to the UK? What idiot sat down and figured out how to make health insurance so complicated? You have to remember to get referrals to see your specialists (unless they are out-of-network), authorizations for certain procedures and pre-certification for hospital admissions. In Britain I picked up the phone to call the Customer Service Rep at my health insurers, told them my GP (who over here is a PMP---Primary Healthcare Physician!!!) wanted me to see a specialist or I needed an op and that was it. Finito! End of story! And I never heard that their shareholders were complaining about not earning enough dividends. You wonder why I have palpitations??
I have a theory: America is run by the Pharmaceutical companies who are in cahoots with the Insurance companies. Unless a drug goes generic the insurance rarely covers it. Medications are what will put you in your grave --- the cost of them that is. And medications are now permitted to be advertised on television! If you weren’t a hypochondriac before, you’ll certainly be one after an hour of television viewing in the USA. If the little green men ever come down from Mars one day, the pharmaceutical companies will go into overdrive in an attempt to get them hooked on some drug to make them breathe better in Earth’s atmosphere. And then those little green men will watch an hour of telly and come away believing that Americans are a race of constipated, dry-eyed, impotent, depressed, heart burnt folk whose women all suffer with PMT and don’t mind sitting down with Jamie Lee Curtis to discuss their irregularity problems while both desperately needing to pee and suffering with restless leg syndrome…
Restless leg syndrome? Didn’t that used to be called “boredom”?

A BRIGHTER SMILE

A few weeks ago Kit and I went off to Radio City Music Hall to see Willie Nelson & Family, “family” being what the accompanying bands and instrumentalists were called as well as those persons brought along to prop up the ol’ fella. Now I must once again hasten to say that none of this was Kit’s doing; this was purely my own indulgence for Country and Western music, an acquired taste no doubt and one that virtually my entire family and circle of friends does not understand in the least.
Be that as it may, Radio City is a place I have only been to previously for Christmas and Easter extravaganzas and then only as a small child or as the guest of my daughter who wanted me to relive being a small child. In those shows the Rockettes kick out their 7 ft. of leg and a Wurlitzer rises up out of the pit like Godzilla over Tokyo Bay. None of that took place with Willie Nelson. The closest we got to that sort of thing was iridescent blue straws provided with beers and by the time Kit bought a beer, the straws were all gone.
Anyway, we were handed what I thought were programs but turned out to be advertising booklets for upcoming shows. An article aptly called “Under the Influence” by one Sophie Harris begins, “The Brits are sometimes puzzled as to why—or really, how---American people can connect to quintessentially English bands. You know, the sorts of bands who drop in kitchen-sink lyrics so specific as to be nonsensical to anyone not brought up on fish and chips and bad dentistry.”
Now hang on a second there, pardner. First let’s deal with the bad dentistry. It is absolutely true that some years ago while in conversation with a stranger at a bus stop in NYC, I was suddenly told that I had very good teeth for an English person. But the days of the Beatles staring out at us with crooked, gapped and somewhat buck teeth are long gone and, Nanny McPhee aside, one can now find in London as many teeth whitening centers and cosmetic dentistry salons hoping to part you and your money as there are in New York. English news readers can blind you with their smiles in HD in just the same manner as Sade Baderinwa on ABC7.
Moving along, I also have to wonder why BRITS –which is to say, English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish—are wondering only about ENGLISH bands and Americans? Don’t the Scottish bands also have appeal to Americans? Irish? Welsh? Hmm?
Finally, getting back to the essence of this quote, regarding Americans relating to the kitchen sink (John Osborne where are you now?) lyrics of English bands, well, here’s the thing. Back in Radio City with Willie Nelson I spotted but 3 cowboy hats ( my own not being one of them since we had dined at Gordon Ramsey’s Maze before the show and I thought a Stetson slightly inappropriate). True, the puncher sitting right behind us announced in a voice Willie could’ve heard backstage that he had just flown in from Casper, Wyoming, for the show; there’s dedication for you! But if this concert had taken place in the UK??? Dude, I’m tellin’ you right here, right now, there woulda been Stetsons as far as the eye could see. You hear what I’m sayin’? The Brits unnerstan the Yanks’ kitchen sink lyrics just the same: dirt roads, pick-up trucks, swimmin’ holes and rodeo in Cheyenne. To paraphrase what the old man sang, Mammas are lettin’ their babies grow up to be cowboys all over the dang place. And with good teeth too.

Lacrosse to Bear

Back in May I returned to London for a fortnight’s holiday. Obviously, I wanted to see my friends; whether or not they wanted to see me was another matter. Maybe all those tears that were shed at my departure were tears of joy; I have no idea. But in any case, I went back to have a wonderful time of reunions, theatre, dinner at The Ivy, museums and the earlier mentioned upholstered seats in the underground.
But I had another reason for this return. Unless I go back into the UK every 2 years I lose my right to residency or, as the Immigration officials put it, “leave to enter and remain in the United Kingdom.” Just as an aside here, let me tell you that many years ago when my parents were visiting me while I was doing my M.A. in the UK, my father’s secretary told someone on the phone that my father was in the United Kingdom. “Oh, dear,” came the reply, “when did he die?”
Ok, so there I was in the queue for Immigration, two passports at the ready; one passport was my current one, the other had the magic stamp in it which gives me the “right to abode” which I wish to maintain in case my daughter, a British Subject, ever goes back to live there. So to get this over with as quickly as possible, I approached the officer when I was called and explained that I wished to maintain my rights and have the usual stamp of ‘right to abode.’ He looked over the 2 passports and then said, “But Madam, you’re only here for 14 days. And even if you want that stamp, you were last in the UK in September ’08 so you have gone past the two years.”
There was a m0ment’s silence while I stood staring at him trying to figure out which one of us had Alzheimer’s. Since there is no song for the months the way there is for the alphabet, to help you get those months in order, I had to spend a bit of time figuring this one out. However, years of experience told me that May came before September so in the end I gently but firmly pointed out to him that I still had 3 months to go. He gave me the stamp.
Now I have heard about the problems faced by the Iroquois Nationals, a Lacrosse team headed to the UK for competition in Manchester. The Iroquois apparently invented the game and they have always been considered a nation, just like the USA or Canada. But unfortunately, security being what it is these days, the UK does not recognize their hand-written documents and also sought assurance from the USA that the Nationals will be re-admitted into the US airports…since the Reservations obviously do not have airports of their own. To put it bluntly, this sucks. But it also raises an interesting question. The map of the USA would look something akin to Swiss cheese if the Indian reservations were pulled out of it, yet Oklahoma, originally Indian Territory, is a state and no such holes exist. Tellingly, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico who was all in favour of the Iroquois travelling on their handwritten tribal passports, said, “It’s a matter of tribal sovereignty and respecting the rights of the Native American population of this country.” ‘Of this country?’ What country is that exactly? The Iroquois Nation or the USA???
Are they Americans or Iroqouis? Am I British or American? Does anyone know?

SALT (8)

No, this is not about Angelina Jolie with a bad wig in a bad film, this is about the actual mineral one may or may not put on one’s food. In my case, it’s generally ‘may not.’
Back in June, my daughter and I headed off to Colorado for4 days to a spot in the NE corner where the prairies meet the mountains. This was completely my choice and my daughter bears absolutely no responsibility. The reasons for my choice are varied and personal but one of them was that I wanted to see the prairies to the east, visit Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the north and get into the Rockies to the west. (Just as a note here you may wonder why anyone would wish to see the prairies. I am not a Willa Cather groupie nor do I have a horticultural interest in grasses but the mere fact that there is a Pawnee National Grassland sort of sent alarm bells my way that what once covered 60% of the USA now has to be protected and is fast disappearing.) The epicenter for this momentous visit therefore had to be a place called Loveland. I kid you not.
Loveland is perhaps best known as a town to which romantic geeks send their valentines cards in order to be hand-stamped “Loveland” by a bunch of OAPs, known as Senior Citizens in the US, who need to supplement their social security (pensions in the UK). Since I am not far off from this predicament myself I bear them no ill will. But that is the heart, you should pardon the pun, of Loveland.
Anyway, we decided on a motel that met our travelling needs and selected a Marriott. This turned out to be situated in what in Britain would be called an ‘Industrial Estate’: a purpose-built horror of single-story office spaces intermixed with ‘inns’ and restaurants in the most sterile environment known to man. One could have sworn that the Stepford wives were about to hold a reunion there. This was not an area for fine dining; in fact, if you look up restaurants in Loveland you’ll find the choice so limited as to make Wendy’s look a firm possibility.
So one night we decided to go for gold and mosey on over to Lonestar. Lonestar may not be known east of the Mighty Mississip but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what their cuisine and ambience will be. Daughter Kit (well that’s not her name but she will die of embarrassment if I mention her real name) ordered a salad, being the more sensible of us two, and I went whole hog for the chicken burrito featuring TWO whole chicken breasts and more sides than the entire team of the NY Knicks puts away in a year. It also featured, unbeknownst to me until I took my first forkful, more salt than is mined from the Dead Sea in a decade. It was definitely a case of ‘have a little burrito with your salt.’ And not only was there salt in the burrito but the baked potato had a crust of sea salt, thereby ruining my favourite part of the spud. I could literally feel my blood pressure going up about 5 points per bite.
When the young and overenthusiastic waitress came to ask us how the meal was, I turned to her and asked if the cook was in love? This won me a good kick under the table from Kit. But here’s the thing: a few short years ago Kit and I were dining after the theatre in London when a similar problem occurred. We had decided to share a side dish of vegetables which came so salty neither of us could eat them. Not being highly original and holding the belief that forgetting how much salt you are throwing in food means your mind is on other matters, I said the exact same thing to the waitress there, a young ‘resting’ actress no doubt, who looked at me and laughed and simply took the dish off the bill.
Back in Loveland, however, our cheerleader friend looked at me, her face slowly caving in as if invisible hands were pushing her cheeks. “I’m sorry your meal wasn’t to your satisfaction,” she whimpered. I sat there in some disbelief while Kit stared angrily at me and kicked me again. “Oh, no, no,” I hurriedly apologized, “It was fine. Just fine.” And then I gave her what was no doubt the biggest tip of her young life.
Could it be possible, I wonder, that (a) she was actually in love with the chef and my comment was too close to home? Or was it (b) she knew a little tear would elicit a bigger tip? Or am I just too cynical?