I sat, in a crowded room, in complete silence, watching, with disbelief, the sight that has now become one of the most devastating in our lifetime.
Tag: New York
It’s the language interaction I miss. Language is my partner in crime, the thing that is always there for me when all else fails, my one great love. Without that tool of communication, I shrink into the shadows. My voice dies.
For legal reasons, no companies’ names have been mentioned, the locations have been changed, and, for legal and ethical reasons, the identities of the bores, incompetents and lunatics have been disguised.
I’ve reviewed countless numbers of TV shows relating to property; I shout at the screen when yet another couple on A Place in the Sun” have wasted an hour of my life, deciding, after viewing five properties, that they will return “in the future” (ie never) and go home to “discuss it with the family.”
All the abuse did was to confirm for me that the city is everything I said it was, and it reminded me that I’d also forgotten to mention provincial, parochial and, clearly, a haven for expats who have nothing better to do than abuse others on social media.
I stayed in the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park and, on my first venture out onto the streets, was approached by a short, fat, scruffy woman, with a thick, black moustache and a large, ripe pimple on her cheek. She told me I had a curse hanging over me, and that if I went to her house, for the measly sum of $3000 she would remove it.
I am looking after my health, my emotional well-being, and giving my soul some much needed cultural nourishment. And so, today, I give thanks for the strength that is my inheritance; and the strength of a city that, even when it is sleeping, still shines.
Why would I go apple picking? There is a thing called a supermarket, where they wrap fruit in bags for you, thereby allowing you more time to spend at the bar not picking apples. And I hate apples. Well, maybe hate is too strong, but they seem to take a lot of effort: peeling, getting the maggots out, de-coring them. It’s why I never got into drugs.
Unless I can see a Marriott by standing on a small box, I have no interest in the prospect of being trapped on a mountainside, away from civilization and having to drink my own urine until the rescue services arrive.
I genuinely don’t shop a lot. I don’t like the music, the crowds, and breaking the zips struggling in and out of things designed for a bonsai tribe.