The truth is, I don’t
know anymore.
During my three weeks in New York, most people have asked just
one question: “Why are you there?”
I genuinely have no idea. I don’t
know why, after 10 years living in Bath, I returned to Cardiff; nor, after 28
years living in London, I decided I had had enough. Nor why, in April 2009, I
decided to move to LA. Actually, that’s a lie: I know exactly why I moved to
LA. But I’ve written a book about that, so you’ll have to wait.
Most of the unexplained, apparent
chaos in my life (though to me, it’s very ordered) can be put down to the
acquisition of pine furniture. And men. It was the purchase of the small forest
that first set my whole moving house ball rolling – a condition from which I
was doomed never to recover. If I hadn’t bought that bloody pine furniture, I
wouldn’t have had the quandary of where to put it when I broke up with Carl
(who made me buy it), wouldn’t have moved it to Soho and had my heart broken by
Phil, wouldn’t have moved it to Cardiff and started up with Steve, and wouldn’t
still be stuck with it by myself in Cardiff over 25 years on at the age of 55,
hoping that pine, like avocado-coloured bathroom suites, might make a comeback.
So, here I am again: despite
experience, financial trauma, therapy, friends’ advice, bank managers’
warnings, in another quandary, wondering if I should move to New York. Or,
rather, when my Cardiff house sells, have a place on the East Coast as well as
the West.
I have several family members and
friends who believe I am “searching” for something; I have friends who think I
am nuts; I have a ton load of people in my life who wish, with all their
hearts, that they could up sticks at a moment’s notice and clear off to another
country with little more than a passport in their bags, as I invariably do.
When I was young, I constantly
changed my bedroom furniture around. It was not unusual for my parents to
return home after work (the days when kids could be left safely at home) to
find that I had swopped the living and dining rooms around. One day, they
returned home to discover the living room walls a different colour, after I
discovered some paint in the garage and thought the room could do with a change
of scenery.
No way is right; thank heavens we
are all different. And maybe, at the end of the day, I just hunger for new
experiences, new people, waking at dawn under a new sky (Cardiff: rain. LA:
sun. New York: you just never know).
New York is astonishing in terms
of being able to meet new people; I have never known such a friendly place. It
may be because everyone is from somewhere else (I have yet to meet anyone who
is from New York – they are all in LA, actually) that makes them want to talk.
Singles, couples, gays, straights – everyone wants to share their story, but (and
this is the major difference between East and West coasts) they want to hear
yours, too.
Nobody in LA gives a flying fig
about who you are or what you do. In five years, I can count on one hand the
number of questions any stranger has asked me about my life; in New York,
everyone I speak to pretty much knows within the hour the name of my first pet
(George, a budgerigar, should anyone else be interested).
It’s what made the city
transform, for me, from somewhere where initially I felt alone and overwhelmed,
to a place so rich in its disparity of culture and people. And I absolutely
love the 24/7 lifestyle.
The service, for the most part,
however, is not a patch on LA, but improves considerably when you move off the
well-trodden tourist traps. In those places, where one quickly becomes
recognised as a local, there is always a complimentary drink; in five years,
that is something that has happened to me just twice in LA, despite my having a
number of regular haunts.
Last night, I found myself in
tears as I made plans to fly back to LA, which I nevertheless continue to love.
After the relative cold of New York, I will welcome the sun, and there are
friends I have missed.
But I plan to return to the East
Coast very soon and have a friend looking after two bags of groceries that I
suspect I left to keep alive the notion of returning. Quite why I bought enough
food to feed an army barracks for a month is anybody’s guess, but it’s still a
little bit of me I left behind: some corner of a foreign field that is forever
New York, New York.
My only thought now, as I wait to
fly, is which objects the airline and airport thieves will decide to relieve me
of before arriving back at my LA apartment.
I already feel a weekend trip to
the Apple Store coming on.
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