Rickbot's diary

Holiday report: Trip to New York, July 2004

In a prompt and timely fashion, here is my New York travel journal. As ever, it is over-long and not entirely amusing, since its primary function is to entertain my decrepit 80-year old self.

SATURDAY - 24 July : London/Manhattan

We had to queue forever at Heathrow, but any worries that we might not get to enjoy a quick drink before boarding the plane soon vanished when we were bumped up to business class, and so were allowed to enjoy six long hours of limitless red wine and champagne, seated in motorised armchairs with buttons that sent them transformer-like into any position we desired (or, with Arkansas at the controls, any position I did not desire).

There was so much space in Business Class that I could barely hear what Olivia was saying, across the aisle from me. Thankfully, we had over seven feet of leg room, and so a pleasant camping site was set up on the floor. The steward kindly let us grab the whole bottle of wine, and the flight was spent pleasantly on the floor: doing crosswords, playing the top ten game and chatting about killing Sam Beckett and marrying John Cusack.

The journey was a breeze, and when we arrived at JFK it didn't feel like we had travelled at all, just spent the afternoon in a comfortable hotel bar. Any feeling of relaxation was soon beaten out of us by a hellish subway journey from JFK to Manhattan. A long journey at the best of times, it was made even longer by our changing trains at every other station in the hope of finding a faster one, only to realise each and every time that we'd made a terrible mistake.

Our hotel for the first night was absolute filth: endless dark corridors led off to a series of broken, brown metal doors, like some crack den from a Whoopi Goldberg movie. Still, the only cockroaches I saw were either dead or dying, and we only needed somewhere to crash for one night. Also, our room locked. Mostly.

New York is such a vibrant and beautiful city it's always thrilling to be in, and so we immediately dumped our stuff and headed off to Greenwich Village for a healthy meal of more Mexican food than anyone could finish and a pint of margarita. We followed this up with a trip to the fabulous piano bar Marie's Crisis on Grove Street, although we lost Seamus and Lani to the ravages of jet lag, which was a shame as they missed one of the best nights ever. They were replaced by Olivia's cousin and her uncle, Julia and Bobby.

We all quickly fell into the atmosphere of the piano bar and had excellent fun. Well, possibly apart from Arkansas who instantly found himself the subject of male attention; either they were grinding their crotches into his ass whilst he tried to escape from them, or he was grinding his ass into someone else's crotch as he slunk back, inch-by-inch, from young Joe, who was determined to get a kiss before the end of the night. Still, Arkansas was too polite to say no. How wonderfully British.

The bar itself was amazing. We expected to stay no later than 10ish, but ended up out until 1am (or, in English, 6am). I conclude one can never have too much beer or sing too many showtunes.

We staggered home drunk through the lower east side, chatting to random people in the street, before finally catching a cab home for sweet, sweet sleep.


SUNDAY 25 July: Manhattan / Dolgeville

I was very insistant before we went to bed that we needed to be up and out by 11am at the very latest: we had a big day ahead of us. As it turned out, thanks to our jet lag, we were all up and dressed by 7am and raring to go.

Seeking a good traditional American breakfast, we somehow wound up at Starbucks, although this was like nothing I knew of the British breed of Starbucks. My request for a white coffee was met with blank silence, and when I described it ("Um, coffee with milk in it?") the best the lady could manage was an americano and a mute gesture that some milk was sitting somewhere on the side. I sent her into further confusion with a request that she toast my bagel, spawning the baffling line "Honey, if I could toast them bagels I'd be eating them myself right now". I guess that would be a bad thing. Seamus also got the raw end of American culture when his tea bag was dipped into a cup of hot water so huge it would, at best, have made a pleasant herbal bath.

It was around this point that Arkansas started to talk about Taco Bell, a fast food restaurant which proved so elusive throughout our holiday that it developed almost mythical proportions - although this is not to say we necessarily believed our own hype; as Darien memorably squarked at one point, Taco Bell has all the best features of both Mexican food and fast food, all in one easily thrown away package.

We arrived to collect the hire car well ahead of schedule, which is just
as well since I needed plenty of time to work out how to drive the thing. We sat in the car for several minutes, blocking the entrance to the garage, whilst I puzzled over the controls. Finally, a sterotypical black mechanic came over to ask what was taking us so long. I could only gesture at the cup holder beside me and whisper in desperation that I couldn't find the gear stick, adding helpfully "You seem to have forgotten to put it in today."

Unamused, he hauled me out of the driving seat and propelled the car into the traffic himself, where upon he abandoned it on the side of the road. So, no longer his problem then. American service.

I finally found the gear stick, in vestigial form, sticking out of the side of the steering wheel. I was a little cautious about driving such an unusual and huge vehicle (it could comfortably take eight people) through the heart of Manhattan, however once we got going the early Sunday morning traffic proved so sparse that it was nothing but a pleasure to rove down the empty six-lane streets.

It seems Americans drive by instinct alone, and so have no need for road signs marking trivial things like destination. Things therefore got a little confusing in the spaghetti of roads just outside Manhattan, and at one point we were just one mile from the island, and yet had double-backed on ourselves so much we had driven a full cubic mile. When we did finally found the correct interstate, I desperately needed the toilet, and so there followed an hour-long diversion involving several mishaps, double-backing and eventually driving off into the boondocks, abandoning the car on the side of the road and urinating into an impromptu lake on a property development estate.

There were three key official roles in the car: the Driver, the Navigator, and
the Watcher. It was the latter's role to keep his eyes constantly peeled for Taco Bell, although this rarely came to anything. We eventually gave up on the idea of some sweet, sweet tacos and pulled into a normal service station. Our first, but far from last, experience of service station food was the humble hot dog. These were pretty bog-standard, but we would still amaze over the fact we were eating hotdogs in America. In fact, for the first few days of the holiday at least one of us would remark "I can't believe we're in America!" each and every hour.

The remainder of the car journey was rather banal, save for a stop in Albany for groceries. For a state capital, Albany is rather under populated: although it comprised a huge number of gigantic monumental buildings, we didn't see a single other human being. We didn't stay long enough to see the famous Albany Box, into which George Washington shat as a gift to the Indians.

Given our diversions and navigating it was fortunate we set off so early, as we arrived at the cabin, on Lake Keyser near Dolgeville, right on time. Owner Gary had warned me repeatedly that staying in his cabin would be very basic, nothing more than "luxurious camping", but although this may have been true for Americans (no washing machine, no drinking water, no pizza delivery or drive-in manicurist), I was delighted by how much larger and cleaner it was than my own house; in addition, it was blessed with a large balcony, lawn, hammock, swing, bonfire, barbecue, jetty, boats, floating island and a range of inflatables. It really could not have been more ideal. Within an hour we had already invented our first game: Float Ball. Essentially, whenever the ball was dropped, it rolled down the slope and into the water and Arkansas had to run in to fetch it.

We went into Dolgeville to do our shopping, and bought anything remotely American and/or bad for you - corn dogs, cookie dough, All The Beer in the World, etc. We came home and played in the water, relaxing out on a floating raft island with our beers. On occasion the ball would develop a life of its own, attacking us from the water of its own accord; god knows where Darien and Arkansas were during all of this.

Relaxing into the night on our balcony, we enjoyed what we imagined to be a Big American BBQ, with steak, sausages, corn-on-the-cob and 'all the trimmings' (ketchup and salad). Gary had warned us not to leave out scraps as they'd attract the racoons, and so we were sure to cook plenty for them too, and leave out a selection of sauces, snacks and marinades.

As the sun set behind the trees, and the sky turned a gorgeous shade of orange, a botboat was dispatched to the other side of the lake in order to light a beacon to announce our domination of the lake. Either we were drunk or the boat was seriously malfunctioning, since we span around in circles and generally went in the wrong direction. Still, we made it to the other side in time to set fire to a paper plate for no one to see, before liberating Lani's Rock and loading it aboard our boat to return it to the sensible side of the lake. The enemy released guard dogs after us to retrieve the stone - and they almost succeeded since the boat was grounded under the weight of Lani's Rock - however after much exertion the bots sailed off hooting into the night.


MONDAY 26 July: Dolgeville / Niagra Falls

We awoke stupidly early again. The weather was very poor, and the lake grey and uninviting. Someone, who was never subsequently identified, suggested we pop up to Niagra Falls to see what that's like. We quickly established it would be an eight hour round trip, and none of us was remotely keen ... until Lani absentmindedly suggested we could grab a Real American Breakfast on the way. Suddenly we were all fired up by the thought of pancakes and special eggs, and clamouring to go see the falls. At no point did it occur to us we could simply get eggs locally. Or, indeed, eat the blueberry pancakes and special eggs we already had in the cabin.

We made haste and did not break for breakfast until Syracuse, about halfway to our destination. Somehow we completely missed the centre of town and ended up driving along mile after mile of strip malls, strip clubs and closed fast food joints. It could have been any road in the US, or indeed Milton Keynes.

I was just pulling a highly illegal u-turn on the freeway when everyone started shrieking and screaming for me to stop. Convinced a juggernaut was bearing down on us - and screeching in a skid to save our lives - I was utterly thrilled to find instead that the Watcher had spotted a Taco Bell. Our American Breakfast Plan was instantly abandoned and we parked in the wrong car park and sprinted through car parks, across slip roads and through bushes to buy ourselves some of those sweet, sweet tacos. Alas, the fucking thing was shut. Disappointed, we ate toasted bagels instead, which was extra disappointing as I also failed to order the fabled squagels, when they were sitting there right in front of my silly face. Only after we were full of bagels did we realise we'd forgotten to eat a Big American Breakfast. Curses! We figured we might as well go to Niagra Falls anyway.

We continued our journey and stopped off at various service stations on the way. I was very struck by how different they were in quality to those we had come across in France whilst Saving Private Spimcoot. There, Ferg, Spim and I had stopped off for a quick snack and had enjoyed instead thick tender steaks, big fresh salads and lashings of red wine. In the US, however, all service stations are alike, and they serve a selection of foods such as McDonalds hamburgers, It Can't Be Yogurt yoghurt and Jesus Shit, Is This Seriously Offal hotdogs. Still, food was wolfed down, waists were expanded and off we went on our journey.

Niagra Falls was about a third as high as I'd expected. Years of hearing how huge and thrilling the falls were had not prepared me for the paltry six-storey effort they'd laid on for us. The fact I know they're just six storeys high is because there was a large elevator built into the side to ferry the obese down to its base in order to see it better without burning any calories. I was utterly unprepared for how domesticated the falls would be. I had figured it was somewhere in the wild, surrounded by forests and mountains. Instead it is slap bang in the middle of the city, with hotels, casinos and lift shafts crowded all around it.

We walked over the bridge to Canada. When the stern faced immigration officer asked my reason for seeking to enter the country, I had to admit we were "only going for a spot of lunch". He was not much impressed, and I'm glad he didn't ask where we were going for lunch. We went to Canada to eat at Taco Bell, a moment now commemorated forever by a stamp in my passport. Oh man, but they were some sweet tacos. It cost us each 50 cents to get back into the states, which I guess is to keep the really poor Canadians out.

Canada is very different to the US: they say washroom instead of restroom, have much neater parks, and they operate red Routemaster buses, going from Acton to Edgware road (the long way round, it would appear). The biggest surprise, though, was that whilst the US side is relatively restrained - with some low rise shops and offices - the Canadian side was a panapoly of casinos, Disneyesque constructions and tacky gift booths. The Las Vegas of the north.

And so - rather quickly - our epic adventure was at an end, and it was time to return to our cabin, even if we'd never had our pancakes and special eggs. The three and a half hour return journey just flew by, mostly because we were playing No-Mime Charades and the Mortuary Game (in which you pretend to be a mortuary owner who has established a sideline business, and we have to guess which celebrity you'd use to promote that sideline).

We got back well after nightfall, and sat indoors listening to the rain, drinking lots of beer and playing Ex-Libris and the Henny Youngman Game (Darien read out a Henny Youngman feedline, and we had to supply the punchline, a task made harder by the fact Youngman is rarely very amusing: "My wife's had plastic surgery…" / "…I cut up her credit card." Or the more obscure: "You wanna know how to really annoy your neighbours?" / "Go round when they're out and fill their bath with jello.")


TUESDAY 27 July: Dolgeville

It poured with rain all day, so we stayed in the cabin, played games and got drunk. The official board games Gary had provided were exhausted very quickly: Ubi, broken Pop Up Pirate, a Jigsaw and Trivial Pursuits. Instead we had to invent our own games: the Melon Omar Sharif game (in which you must name celebrities who are also diseases and fruits), the Pakistan Laurel game (in which you must name celebrities who are also countries), the Miss Marple game (I cannot recall how this worked), and What Would Jesus Do (in which you had the guess the sanctimonious ending to a trite tale, from a book provided by Uncle Peter and Auntie Barbara to Gary's pre-teen daughter). We also decorated Lani's melon which was - we were later to discover - by no means the worst desecration that would occur to the fruit during the course of our stay.

We sent Lani and Darien out at one stage to buy All The Beer in the World (for the second time in three days), and whilst they were gone I was driven wild with cabin fever, ran out into the rain and leaped into the lake. To my utter surprise, the fucking thing was warm! Arkansas and Seamus soon joined me, and we swam around in the rain and howling wind, playing Aquatic Charades and the Estelle-Hitler-Pope game, dodging secret rain sharks and their close cousin, the twig.

Little else occurred during the day: we saw no obese Americans, barely left the cabin, and Arkansas almost melted the main water line when he attempted to generate super-beaconosity from Darien's rum-flavoured lighter-fuel.

Our boats half sank in the rain.


WEDNESDAY 28 July: Dolgeville

Darien, Arkansas and I awoke early and decided to go to Denny's for the long-awaited Big American Breakfast. Denny's was very close, a simple half hour drive and 30 cents at the toll booth. I ultimately skipped both pancakes and special eggs, and instead ate enough French toast to power me for a year. The waitress was the height of repetitive politeness, reponding to any comment in an automaton's voice: "You ARE welcome".

After such a big meal we needed to walk off some of the excess, so we had Walmart fun, which wasn't actually much fun. We were intially bewildered and delighted by the shop's immense size, but soon became demoralised upon realising we had no camping equipment, and so could not penetrate deep into the store. For no particular reason it was here that Darien and I came up with the best t-shirt idea in the world, one that says simply "My friend went to the US and didn't even bring me a t-shirt. I had to make this t-shirt myself. And I got syphilis."

Maybe you had to be there.

Back at the cabin, Seamus and Lani had gone out rowing, so Arkansas and I decided to go swimming, and very shortly a brief paddle became a mission to swim the full width of the lake and meet the neighbours (as it turns out, the same neighbours who had been our enemies on the first night. Two nights is a long time in international relations). Not wishing to be left behind, Darien followed in hot pursuit in the rowing boat, seemingly in the mistaken belief it was easier to row a malfunctioning, half-sunk boat than to swim.

At the other side we met a charming lady called Nosey and her two young, attractive daughters. They supplied us with hot tea, towels and an open log fire, whilst we treaded dirt through their house and nakedly dripped lake water everywhere. She had lived briefly in the UK and was thus an Anglophile, which made things very easy since everything we do is English. We sipped tea, ate biscotti, made light conversation and then braved the tortuous swim home.

Back home, Lani was in a rare bad mood as she had missed out on all the funs. We all headed into town for a walk around, although there was nothing at all to see, and a spot of lunch. Dolgeville is very similar to a lot of the incredibly dull towns I visited at length in Pennsylvania in 1997, and I became very nostalgic for something which - I secretly knew - I actually really hated.

We had lunch in a restaurant which doubled up as some sort of international bingo bar, although I ignored the details in favour of the largest buger ever. Yum. By this stage I was so full of food I wouldn't need to eat for a decade, so of course we headed to the supermarket to stock up on necessities, most vital of all being the purchase of All The Beer In The World. Again. It seems no matter how absurd the amount we bought, it was never quite enough. In the supermarket I also helped an old man find the bananas. "You're doing well," he said "I'll put in a good word with your boss". Alas, Emma has yet to indicate he has called.

Back at the cabin, the sun was out and so we filled a giant saucepan with ice and beer and sailed it out to the floatation device, a raft of barrels and planks tethered ten metres offshore. It was just lovely out there, but after an hour or so its inherent stability becomes a little dull and so we untethered it from its anchors in the fervent hope we'd go sailing off Huckleberry Finn style down river to the dam. Alas, the raft just meandered along the shore towards the neighbour's garden, and so after a while of vainly trying to catch a violently dangerous current we gave up and paddled home to tie it up again.

The weather turned yet again, and it began to rain. Still, it was our last night and we were determined to use the fire pit, so we defiantly built a bonfire around which we sat under our umbrellas, playing games such as the Walk of Shame, and using the balcony lights to signal to Nosey across the waters. Eventually, only Arkansas and I were left, but we made a valiant effort to finish off all of the alcohol before going to bed. Around 3am this was achieved, and we sacrificed Melon Omar Sharif with around fifty pieces of cutlery, some plastic spatulas, the car keys, a potato peeler and a rolling pin.

As I finally stumbled to bed, I poked my head round Darien's door to make sure we hadn't woken him up with our cackling.

"SHHH, DARIEN! YOU'LL WAKE UP DARIEN!" I bellowed, helpfully.


THURSDAY 29 July: Dolgeville / Manhattan

Utterly hungover, Arkansas and I woke up only a few hours after going to bed to find that our bountiful euphoria had been replaced by a terrible, pounding sickness. We also found ourselves in enormous trouble with everyone else for our anctics the previous night. Lani started to throw things at us in revenge for the sad demise of Melon Omar Sharif, which she had been carefully ripening throughout our stay. Although I could barely move without retching, I strained to help clear up, and spent a good half hour crushing all the beer cans for recycling, although it later transpired the machine would not accept crushed cans.

The drive to New York was unbearable, and I felt sick the whole way. At one point I even considered simply bailing out and sleeping on the grass verge. Lani was even more pissed off with us as she had to do all the driving. Since Arkansas and I were too hungover - and Seamus is a terrible driver - the safest option would have been to let Darien drive, but since he is unlicensed and uninsured this was sadly not an option at all.

We again became lost in the spaghetti of roads outside Manhattan, and somehow ended up in some bizarre metropolitan underworld, where Hispanic people warmed themselves with fires in oil drums.

At the Hotel Giraffe we concluded that although it's fantastic getting back to your routes in the countryside, it's even better staying in a four star hotel immediately afterwards. I ironed, I danced on the beds, I showered and then showered again. I didn't want to ever leave my room - until I heard about the free alcohol on the roof garden. This lasted just long enough for me to hear about the free champagne, cheese and biscuits on the ground floor. The hotel was a paradise.

For dinner, Luke took us all to a Mexican restaurant. Olivia became obsessed with the waiter, Jason, and her efforts to attract his attention whilst simultaneously not being noticed kept us entertained for the entire meal. Only the settling of the bill ruined the atmosphere - what should have been a simple split became a complex mathematical algorithm operated by Joel. Dividing a bill this way always takes forever, is extemely annoying, and results in individual bills which rarely vary by more than five pounds. Many of us were willing to throw money at Joel just to make the bill go away, and ideally Joel too.

Still, with the bill settled we were all ready to run hooting into the night, and we were again possessed by the sheer thrill of being in New York. We raced down streets, jumped over street furniture, bounced off the walls and made a hundred new friends. Passing a branch of the W Hotel, we even scored Darien a free new hat.

This feeling soon subsided when our leaping, bouncing and scoring meant we had lost everyone else, and my hangover began to make itself known to me again. I retired to bed just after midnight and slept soundly until 2am, when Olivia decided to wrestle Arkansas into my bed.


FRIDAY 30 July: Manhattan

Because of some curious scheduling, we had only half a day in which to enjoy New York properly. We enjoyed a quick breakfast and headed out into the city to see Grand Central Station, Bloomingdales and something calling itself the New Yankees shop. That was the sum total of site-seeing the others could manage before Seamus and I dragged them all down to one of our favourite restaurants: the Oyster Bar in the basement of Grand Central. Here I enjoyed lobster bisque followed by soft shell crabs, which are a splendid example of naturally-occuring convenience food: small crabs you can eat whole, shell and claws included. I really love this planet.

Just as we were forming plans to go to the Campbell Apartments (one of my favourite cocktail bars in the world) and The Algonquin (one of my favourite hotel bars in the world), I got an emergency call from Luke to return to the hotel and see to my groomsman duties. I'd not heard of groomsmen before, but assumed the duties would be onerous. As it turns out, the main duties were to spend $147 on a tuxedo, run up and down Fifth Avenue trying to find the secret CIA building, and pay for a taxi back to the hotel. It was an exciting diversion.

We also went to a wedding rehearsal, which was something of a farce. So few people turned up that the father of the groom had to step in as usher, which meant that there was no one to play the father of the groom, so he was portrayed in the imagination alone. Moments later we discovered by means of a wedding programme that Arkansas was supposed to be one of the ushers, which caused some consternation since he hadn't even been certain he was invited to the wedding. Much of the rehearsal was spent concealing Luke's poor organisation from Elizabeth.

In the evening we went to the Wedding Rehearsal Dinner, where we were able to practice eating and drinking food safe in the knowledge that this was not the real wedding, and so any eating mistakes me made would go unrecorded. Rob and Jon suddenly turned up halfway through too, which was very exciting, although I was less thrilled by the arrival of a kook called Russell, who didn't speak much and followed everyone around at a distance with his camera.

Afterwards, we headed to a rather bland place called the M Bar, which we hung out in for half an hour before discovering a cigar bar in the basement, where the air was thick with smoke and a jazz band was playing in one corner. I hadn't noticed the New York smoking ban at all - I just took the smokeless bars on face value - but upon returning to our natural environment I realised what a big part of the ambience pollution can be.

With the guys all determined to take Luke to a strip club, and the rest of us determined not to go to one, half the group ended up back at the piano bar, although things were much less fun since it was officially Maudlin Night, and all the songs were slow and depressing. Our group was not in particularly fine form either: Russell lurked outside the bar for two hours waiting for us with his camera, Luke's sister was drunk out of her skull and Olivia ducked home early.

We finally trekked home to the hotel, where a sober Russell challenged a completely trolleyed Arkansas to a game of chess. Although Russell came across as the dark, brooding, intelligent type, Arkansas roundly defeated him at chess in around 20 minutes. And then, we only had to carry Luke's sister up to her room, before bunking down for the night.


SATURDAY 31 July: Manhattan (day of The Wedding)

The morning was spent being unbearably hungover. New York was so hot, humid and polluted that our walk down to the tip of the island to see the Statue of Liberty took a meandering route via any number of air conditioned venues. Thus we saw a range of iPod shops, Cosi and squagels, an austere sushi bar, the Washington Square fountain, a sequence of chess shops, and a lovely iced tea bar with table cloths you could doodle on. On the way back to the hotel in an (air conditioned) taxi, Arkansas spied a Taco Bell, a mere two blocks from the hotel. We all bailed out straight into street and rushed to fill our faces with chicken and steak tacos. Oh man, they were some good tacos.

By this time I was late for Luke and Elizabeth's wedding, and so I raced home, threw on my tuxedo and scampered up the emergency stairs to Darien's room. Of course, things were being organised by Luke, and so he, Darien, Rob and Jon were all still having showers and trying to work out where their tuxedos were. I got to laze on the sofa and rest my poor hangover.

After posing for lots of photos, which curiously came before the marriage, we headed on down to the Fifth Avenue Ballroom for the actual wedding. My duties proved to be to drink free champagne backstage, hold a pen for Darien and stand very, very still during the ceremony and avoid laughing at how appallingly unprepared the officator was. She had boasted backstage about her actor's training and experience at this sort of thing, but was clearly let down by her illiteracy since she stumbled and spat her way through what was - somewhere deep down - a fine speech.

Afterwards, at the champagne reception, Jon, Rob and I gained mastery of the canape trading routes, and so I was completely full up by the time the actual meal came around. I was stuck on a rather dull table, since as a groomsman I was too good for my ordinary friends, but not good enough for my friends on High Table. When the dancing finally started up I was quick to be up and at it, and soon fell into my usual competent style.

My hangover was disoriented by the arrival of so much champagne, and after a brief stop at a bar I headed home for bed. Olivia got back to the room at around 6am, accompanied by Darien, who was determined to get his own back for my drunken 3am behaviour in Dolgeville. He got it a bit wrong, though:

"SHHH, DARIEN! YOU'LL WAKE UP RICK! … I MEAN.. UM… SHHH RICK! OH, I DON'T KNOW."

(Silence).


SUNDAY 1 August: Manhattan / MONDAY 2 August: London

So now it was Olivia and Darien's turn to be hungover. They sat in Central Park drinking vast cups of coffee whilst the rest of us wandered around the Guggenheim Museum. The Guggenheim is an amazing piece of architecture, but full of wank. We spent most of the time running around the spiral-floor and peering down in the atrium, and spent more time in the gift shop than in front of any piece of art. We followed this with a wander in the park, and we each bought a hot dog with ketchup and mustard, our last American act of the holiday.

Thanks to the Hotel Giraffe's incompetence, rather than drowning our post holiday blues at the airport bar we got to run around stressed out by Olivia's missing suitcase, which seemed intent on staying at the hotel. The flight itself was uneventful, and was notable only for the discovery of the first line of the Estelle Gettysburg Address ("Picture it, Sicily, fourscore and seven years ago..."), and for me waking up the entire plane by screaming with laughter at our various euphamisms for Kurt Weill not being a Nazi.

Back in London, I somewhat inadvisably headed straight into work, having not slept since the morning before. I almost collapsed at my desk, but kept going only because I'd been invited to a free meal at Smith of Smithfields for lunch. I was seated next to a new guy, a pretentious oik who crowed endlessly about his cultured tastes. I threw him off guard by dropping a brief allusion to having been in the Guggenheim Museum earlier that morning.

"The Guggenheim?" he asked baffled, "But isn't that in New York?"

"Why yes," I said, a twinkle in my eye.

He shut his fat face for the rest of the meal.


[Editor's note: the final line of my hand-written American journal is somewhat cryptic, however I reproduce it here in case it means something to my future self: "Start of the world handy single floor (skateboard) etc."]