sluts, soup & the land of the vague…
Well it seems a long stretch since I padlocked the largest of my (many, and in various states of disrepair) suitcases and headed for the capital, but that’s possibly because it is – sorry!
Two weeks ago this afternoon I was marching down Piccadilly with fellow sluts (more here from the Huffington Post, and I’m actually in the picture below for anybody who excels at those Where’s Wally-type puzzles) and managed to sing and chant myself hoarse – my throat just had chance to recover over an action-packed few days back in Waterloo before, yes, a transatlantic flight which managed to not only wreck it altogether but do for my sinuses as well. Hey ho.
Thus I arrived in New York on Thursday morning, snuffly and husky-voiced but only moderately jet-lagged, and with now-retired-but-not-from-shopping Kinky La Rue in tow we sallied forth to our midtown digs for the few days, a task initially made far easier by the executive decision to get a taxi instead of the subway and then harder again by the UN’s decision to hold a conference a couple of blocks away which meant we had to drag bags further, but thankfully not through narrow turnstiles and troublesome gates or heaven forbid, up any stairs.
The usual (for Manhattan at least) punter-shenanigans followed, in the predictable form of a deluge of both the one-liner and lengthy type emails containing useless and irrelevant information of all kinds and still, incredibly, managing to leave out anything that would be even remotely helpful or productive (such as a proposed appointment day, time and duration). Fortunately, and as ever, the common-sense-imbued few found their way along as well and a lovely time was had by all, although I continue to be mystified by the rest; why American gentlemen think we would need to know a punter’s age, height, weight, ethnic background, hair colour (I’m not making it up) and occupation before the moment he steps through the door is something I don’t think I will ever understand – we don’t even need to know after, in all honesty. Answers on a postcard?
Given that at least a few if not half of these correspondents may well be genuine (if labouring under at least one and probably several complete misapprehensions regarding what we do and why we do it, not to mention a complete inability to grasp how an appointment system works) I can only speculate as to the purpose of such mails, but I tried hard not to take the assumption that I had nothing better to do than read them to heart, politely answered each and every one (with a frightfully daring and maverick question regarding whether the sender actually wanted to arrange a visit, and if so, when?) and went for some more Italian Wedding Soup and a walk instead (down Fifth Avenue, mostly). We also covered 34th Street, home of a large branch of an eternal favourite Sephora (if you’re reading this, please come back to the UK), Macy’s and discount favourite Old Navy, where I ran amok gathering up fluorescent pink skinny jeans and T-shirts until I could carry no more for a tenner or less apiece, plus a new bag from Fossil (again) and a few bits from an unexpected street market we encountered on Lexington Avenue on Sunday morning. Happy days (at least until the moment I had to lug the lot up the staircase at Leicester Square tube, but more about that shortly).
Fast forward to home time, and our plans for a peaceful stroll before departing were scuppered by the complete inability of Vue cinemas to operate an online booking system properly, which prompted not only two hours pressing refresh on the laptop in the hotel lobby and two phone calls to their worse-than-useless ‘customer service’ line costing over £28 but eventually, and just what I needed after an overnight flight, a trip to the Vue West End in person to purchase my newly on-sale ticket for the upcoming Frightfest Halloween all-nighter (despite the better efforts of those who insisted the place was shut and the box office didn’t open until eleven am; nice try, folks). Anyway, this makes it three Saturday night horror-thons in a row from the 20th including this year’s Night Of The Dead in Leeds on November 3rd; I will miss it’s daytime counterpart this year on the 10th, and will instead be watching a slightly different type of carnage in the form of Frankie Boyle at the Hammersmith Apollo – woohoo!
Plenty more odds and ends to report, but enough for now – as the vigilant will have noticed I have spent time this week arranging my movements up until Christmas; a long overdue trip back to Scotland is in the offing plus a few days in the heart of the Square Mile for a change – yay! The coming week will be mostly pottering and planning, but as ever, appointments are on offer with the appropriate notice. For now, a bit of a rest.
More soon…
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