New York, New York

Do you want to know how much can be fitted into the hours between 12.30pm on Friday and 9.30pm on Monday? Let me tell you:

two 6 hour journeys (4 flights), dinner with my old friend and her new husband, visits to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Museum of Modern Art, purchase of nice stripey top in the Museum of Modern Art Design Store, trip through security measures to visit Statue of Liberty (this deserves separate entry), matinee kids’ ballet by the Paul Taylor Ballet Company, lunches and dinners in fabulous eateries, wander around Soho, walk round Central Park, glass of wine in the revolving bar at the top of the Marriott Hotel, walk along the Connecticut shore watching sea birds pick up shells, rise 10 feet in the air and drop them to crack them open (packaging these days can be such a challenge), watching the departure of my sister-in-law on the back of a Harley Davidson with a complete stranger, reading 212 pages of a 273-page book (which I then left in the seat pocket of the aeroplane - grrr), writing a post-card to the friend I visited New York with 14 years ago, and a lie-in.

This leads me strongly to suspect that when you change your watch from Central time to Eastern time, you’re not just moving into a new time zone, but into a whole new time reality. The hours must, somehow, be longer, or fatter, or more flexible. I’m sure I couldn’t fit that much into a week-end here in the Central time zone. Even just having breakfast and getting ready to go out takes half a morning. I feel I must be on the brink of some very clever discovery to do with space, time and astrophysics. Or maybe it’s just that I usually have three kids in tow and a heap of things to do less interesting than exploring NewYork City. Hm. No, I think I’ll stick with the astrophysics discovery. It could be big. Actually, we in the Central time zone had a chance to try it out a few days ago, when we put our clocks forward, but you know what? Those smug East coasters are so sneaky, they put their clocks forward at exactly the same moment. We’ll never find out their secret.

Anyway, back to New York. It was all fabulous, totally totally fabulous. Apart from the obvious things that were wonderful (family, old friends, the buzz of a big city, the inherent interest of the places visited, the freedom of it all), the biggest treat was having someone else organize me. It’s very relaxing not to have to be in charge, for a change. Someone else found places to eat, someone else read the map, someone else made decisions about what to do and when, someone else calculated how long to allow to get to the airport. I begin to see the attraction of those big organized holidays with a tour guide. And no wiping. I didn’t wipe a nose, a bottom or a kitchen counter for four days. I did swipe my credit card a few times though, which is altogether a more satisfying feeling. Swiping not wiping – that was my big city experience.

I just have to tell you about the man I sat next to on one flight. He was in his 80s, and he and his wife were travelling from Florida to Connecticut for the surprise 90th birthday party of his sister-in-law (I just hoped it wasn’t too much of a surprise for her). “Don’t like the French, but I like the English” he said, puzzled by my account of my English brother who would choose to live in Paris. And then he told me why he liked the English. He was serving as a gunner in WWII, and was shot down behind enemy lines in Burma. After he and the two other airmen who survived had been trying to find their way back for a few days, a local man found them, and hid them upstairs in a building, indicating that they were to stay put. They had no idea whether he had gone to fetch the Japanese or the Americans. The next day, they heard footsteps approaching up the stairs. They were at the ready, guns trained on the trap door in the floor. When it opened, there were a couple of British soldiers, who greeted them with “Bloody Yanks. Can’t be trusted to do anything without us, can you?”

So that was New York. Did I mention that it was fabulous? I’m thinking about my next week-end away already… Oh, and that bit about my sister-in-law leaving on the back of a Harley Davidson? It was quite true, by the way. You’ll have to wait till next time for the story, though.