Midnight Train to Nowhere 12/4/14

When I was last here 23 years ago, I travelled on the subway just once. Quite how I almost ended up in the Bronx while trying to make it to Times Square is anybody’s guess, but I managed to alight before arriving in the place whose name to me, back then, meant certain kidnapping, if not death.

  

I am well used to adapting to travel systems in new countries. I have my father’s instinctive sense of direction (my mother and brother share theirs, too, but in their case it is always the wrong direction) and make sure I am familiar with routes and times before venturing out. In that, too, I am like my father. When I buy any new gadget, I read the instructions thoroughly before attempting to use the thing; that way, when it goes wrong, I know which faults to look for. Mum and Nigel want it working NOW. And when it stops, they call me.

  

In Paris, I walk or use the Metro, which is among the most efficient in the world. In London, I rarely venture below ground – the King’s Cross Tube fire of 1987 that killed 31 people still haunts me. In LA, I walk everywhere or take the bus. I am considered something of a freak there. In Cardiff, I sit on my backside at home watching TV because it’s always raining too much to go anywhere.

  

So, yesterday, having walked several miles on day one, I decided to brave New York’s transport system again. Having been promised that New York is now the safest city in the US and that the subway is both clean and safe to travel, I headed for the B and C line just three minutes walk from my apartment.

  

It was easy. I bought a weekly travel card and travelled Downtown (not Downton; if I hear another word about that bloody Abbey, I will torch the place myself).

  

I wasn’t really heading for anywhere in particular and chose the Rockefeller stop because it was the only name I recognised en route. A short walk took me to Bedlam, an arena of flashing lights I quickly discovered was Times Square.

  

Blimey. It makes Piccadilly Circus look like the Three Day Week of 1974 (restrictions of power for those of you too young to remember. Note to self: if you have to explain a joke, it ain’t funny). This must be the “buzz” and “energy” that everyone had told me about. A moving statue of Liberty of about ten feet tall nearly beat me up when I was taking a selfie because he thought I was taking a photo of him. You have no idea how angry a statue can get when trying to separate you from your dollars. “Not you! Selfie! Me! Reverse shot!” I yelled, in that way we have of talking to foreigners (and statues) who can’t speak English.

  

I found my way from Bedlam to the highly recommended Bar Centrale, above Joe Allen on West 46^th Street, but it was shut, so I took the bus (yes the bus! Get me!) down to the private members’ club, Soho House.

  

It’s really terrific. A cross of old style gentlemen’s club style leather and dark wood, and modern French brasserie. Despite the many chandeliers, you still need a miner’s lamp to find your way around, and I needed a ladder to make it onto the bar stool, but apart from that, I loved it.

  

How to get home was the problem, but I quickly found the subway and leapt on the first train.

The electronic system in the carriages is very good at showing you where you are and is accompanied by a speaker system, just to reinforce the route you are taking. Unfortunately, said voice does not say: “You silly woman, you have done exactly the same as you did 23 years ago and are heading for a part of town where you will certainly be hung, drawn and quartered before dawn.”

  

Having nearly thrown myself into the arms of the baddies once again, I had to get a train all the way back to where I had started, only to discover that the trains to my area of Lower Harlem were no longer running. Everyone who told me that the subway runs all night were clearly lying, and I stood alone on the platform as train after train for Coney Island came and went.

  

Interestingly, there were so many women travelling alone. In bars and restaurants, too, the same thing: women totally at ease in their own company, even chatting with each other, enjoying their food and wine and feeling totally safe. There are, by comparison, fewer men by themselves; they are either with women or other guys – and I have never heard so many men in pairs talking about trying to understand their girlfriends.

  

It’s a very different culture from London, where nobody speaks to anyone, and women by themselves (certainly ones of my age) are treated like second-class citizens.

  

I finally made it home, by the way, after giving up at 53^rd and hailing a cab – very loudly.

I felt so Sex and the City, I started humming I’ll take Manhattan.

Which I will.

All supposing the bandits in the Bronx don’t take me first.   

Sex and Cheap Beer - the Journey Begins 11/4/14

The apartment I am staying in at the top of Central Park is so close to Harlem, I am a blade of grass away from starting a Civil Rights movement.

The park itself is glorious and, in afternoon light, rather beautiful. It is also very long. Very, very long. So, when I set out to walk it from 106^th wearing my Malcolm X T-shirt (well, not really, but I might as well have been), I quickly realised after 35 blocks and reaching just 72^nd that I would have to save the other 71 blocks for another day and stop for a beer.

  

I chose the AG Kitchen on Columbus and, wouldn’t you know it, it was Happy Hour. Hours, as it happened: 3.30pm to 6.30pm. That’s what I call very happy indeed. The place was a mix of European ex-pats and Americans, and, inevitably for me, within a short space of time I was a local with a whole new set of friends, debating American politics. I don’t need much encouragement to come out of my shell. In fact, as crustaceans and their shells go, I am more crab cake than hermit crab.

  

My apartment is also close to Whole Foods. Ah, yes. Whole Foods. You can’t beat it: the focal point of any neighbourhood guaranteed to make you spend your two weeks’ holiday money in half an hour.

  

It was with some trepidation that I set off to the store, also on Columbus Avenue. I tell you, Columbus himself could not have been more thrilled at his discovery as I was alighting upon this Cornucopia of riches.

  

There isn’t just a wine section – it’s a whacking great separate store next door. As for the forest of salad greens, it could feed an army of rabbits through two world wars. And beans - red beans, yellow beans, pink beans, spotty beans, fat beans, thin beans . . .

  

Whole Foods has a new health drive (“the healthiest store in America”), which would be all well and good, were it not for the wine sale a couple of yards away. I stocked up on both food and wine and, because of the exchange rate, was not horrified by the bill.

  

Far more frightening were the individuals en route. I have never encountered so many individuals singing to themselves before 10am. And I don’t mean humming. I mean full numbers, complete with arms flailing and, in some cases, accompanied by a few dance steps.

  

The area is a bit like Tower Hamlets in London – high rise buildings and the feeling of a giant shadow consuming anything that comes within its grasp.

  

I was impressed, however, by the number of “gourmet delis” – until I went inside. Upper Central Park, or Lower Harlem as I like to call it, has a plethora of the things, all of them filled with so many men packing shelves, you can’t make it through the store without sat nav.

  

As for the quality of the goods . . . Let’s just say that as gourmet delis go, Harrods Food Hall they ain’t.

  

I’m now on day two and planning my next adventure. The subway beckons, as does Downtown, where I might visit Soho House, the private members’ club I joined in London over 25 years ago and which now has clubs all over the world. The LA club, with 360 degree views of the city, is the best; the Miami venue, where smoking is allowed indoors, the worst.

  

I have to fit in a museum, too, so am heading for the Museum of Sex (known as MoSex) on 5^th Avenue. The last sex museum I went to was in Amsterdam 30 years ago, and sex has come a long way since then - unlike my sex life, which hasn’t. It’s been so long, they might well make me an exhibit in the museum, so if you don’t hear from me for a while, you’ll know where to find me.

  

I have just one memento from the Amsterdam sex museum: a photo of me cradling a 20 foot, circumcised penis (not real, should you be a little frightened at this point) with my tongue hanging out. Funny how most people return with a pair of clogs.

  

The rest of my time there was spent throwing Dutch guilder into a machine in a small booth to watch a movie. It featured a woman threatening to take her kit off and then, just at the key moment when the money was about to run out, stopping. There were no men to watch, alas.

  

As museums go, it wasn’t exactly Natural History (well, it was in one way, I suppose), so I eagerly anticipate what MoSex has to offer. Having lived in LA for five years, my experience of American men so far is that they pay for everything.

Everything for every other woman in the bar, except me.

I am hoping that the Museum of Sex will offer me some tips.

And not those of the circumcised kind.

Welsh Newbie in New York 10/4/14

Until today, I had spent just two nights in New York, 23 years ago. I was in my early 30s, not very well travelled, and very, very scared.

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.

  

“When you were born, somebody cut off a lock of your hair and put it in a dead woman’s hand.”

  

Given that I was bald until I was about three (think Yul Brunner), I very much doubted that this would be possible, but it unnerved me.

  

“You’ll always lose love,” she added. Geez. This day was just getting better and better.

  

“How do you know I haven’t found it?” I asked, in my best Agatha Christie style interrogative voice.

  

“You’re not wearing a ring.”

  

“That means nothing. Anyway, I have my work.”

“You’re gonna lose that, too.” Boy, she sure knew how to cheer a girl up.

  

As I was writing for Today newspaper and needed amusing stories for my column, I agreed to pay her $20 and we went to a bar where she continued to unravel the little I had left of my life. When she left, the waiter brought me a free beer as he had noticed I was in deep shock.

  

Today newspaper went bust and closed and I never found love. Well, that’s not strictly true. I’ve always been very good at finding love; it’s just not very good at holding on to me, and all the dollars in the world aren’t going to solve that one.

  

I was so distressed at my New York experience I flew to Canada (yes, that distressed) and thought I would never return to the city that had promised so much from the movies. But, having been living in LA for five years (and I love it there; I really do), I suddenly became restless for the bustle of another city. Despite my financial advisers telling me that I should buy property in Las Vegas or Miami, where the best deals are, neither place offered me much. The former has just slot machines and sand, the latter just has Judge Alex. Even for me, buying a property in Miami would be a stalk too far.

  

So, I thought I would try New York again. Everyone told me it was a very different place now – cleaner, safer, and with nicer people (they were horrible to me when I came here before; apparently, because I looked as if I came from Brooklyn, which is now very cool).

  

The journey, paid for with my Virgin Atlantic points, started well (once I realised I was at the wrong terminal): a massage, champagne and prawns in the Upper Class lounge, and a lovely conversation with an executive coach who was going to Boston. As one of my exes ran off with a nurse from there, I hate the city and everything about it (I can be mean like that), despite never having visited.

  

The flight was marred only by two women who chatted for the entire seven hours. So, I took refuge at the onboard bar (I love that Upper Class service) and also watched a couple of episodes of The West Wing, which I somehow managed to miss when it was first broadcast.

  

I nearly got sent home at Immigration for reasons I will not put into print (nothing sinister, I promise), but as I had greeted the officer with “You are so much more efficient than LA Immigration”, he smiled sweetly and explained what I should and shouldn’t say regarding the purpose of my visit when travelling on my particular visa.

  

With a trip straight back home narrowly averted, I looked for my pre-booked taxi in a melee of cars, while talking hysterically on my mobile to the car company and begging people to show me where zone C was.

  

Finally, I was in the taxi and heading for Central Park West, where I was going to be staying at a friend’s apartment.

  

First impressions: it’s just like bloody London, I inwardly screamed, as the driver filled me in on his family from Bangladesh (VERY like London, on that score). At one point, I could have sworn I was in Mayfair. A friend, who hates New York, says it is “London without sky”.

  

But I am going to persevere. I had a good night’s sleep and am now going to go exploring. The apartment is gorgeous – very light, sunny and with a well-equipped kitchen, and there is a Whole Foods nearby.

  

I might head back to where I was 23 years ago to see how it’s changed. Anyone got a spare $3000 to hand? I’m determined to get that damned curse removed once and for all.

  

I’m a Welsh Newbie In New York. Here I come.