FIVE DAYS IN PROVENCE - DAY 1

The bug has bitten again and I'm off on my travels again – this time to Provence in the South of France. The family have been here several times, with the last time being, rather frighteningly, around 20 years ago. I'm here this time with my Brother in Law, and we're spending 4 days in a small town called Vaison-la-Romaine, which is about 30 kilometres from Avignon.

It sits dead in the centre of the Cotes de Rhone Wine region, and for those drunkards who can recite the names of the 17 or so villages which qualify for the Cotes de Rhone Villages Appellation in Wine Making, most of them are only a few minutes drive from Vaison.

Vaison has one of the the largest set of Roman Ruins in Europe, but they were discovered under the edge of the town, so the ability to excavate the full remains is limited by the need to flatten a large part of the current town sitting on top of them, which the locals are, perhaps understandably, finding difficult to come to terms with.

Anyway, we drove to Birmingham Airport, and got on an Air France Canadair jet. This was operated by a company called Brit Air, which seemed to indicate the possibility of yer actual cooperation between a French and a British Airline. Now this is something which struck me as a complete No-No. Remember Agincourt, and all that. But on searching around, it seems that Brit Air is actually a French company – very odd.

Lyon was reached early thanks to a bit of a tail wind, and we drove down the Autoroute du Soleil (why don't we name our Motorways) – towards Avignon, and branched off for the last few kilometres of the journey. Vaison was reached at the rather sociable time of 5pm, and we booked into the hotel. We had reserved the "Apartement" which was at the very top of the hotel, and reached after climbing four flights of stairs (no lift) with no rhyme or reason to the directions they randomly went off in. The good thing was it led onto a private balcony which overlooked the square in the centre of the town, which is great because you feel really in the middle of things, which actually you are!

The best word I can think of to describe the place is "Bohemian". Really off the wall art on the walls, which are painted in very distinctive colours, none of which seem to match. And a new thing for me - my bed is made of Wicker, and looks a bit like a gondola, except I don't think it would float for too long!

My ploy is always to chat up the receptionist, who thawed a bit when she heard my distinctive and rather individual approach to the French Language. We had been given half a ham roll on the plane, and apart from this, lunch seemed to bypass us, so we were on the gannetty side of ravenous by about 7 o'clock. Mademoiselle Receptioniste advised us of a decent restaurant near the river, and off we set to talk them into giving us a meal without having made a reservation.

A small degree of smiling and my idiosyncratic French aimed at the girl who seemed to be Head Cook and Bottlewasher there, secured us a place, whereupon the scale of our achievement was immediately made clear by her turning away the next couple who came in asking the same question we had. One up to us.

We ended up having the best overall meal I'd had in quite a while – Thyme smoked Duck on Balsamic Salad leaves, perfect Veal Fillet with wild mushrooms in a really zingy reduction, and a local goats cheese called Picodon, which is served with Peppercorns in a light peppery olive oil.

The wine list went on for a few pages, and none of them, apart from the Champagnes, were produced further than 20 miles away from where we were sitting. That's the way to support your local industry.

Back home to bed, except we seemed to end up in a café outside the hotel, drinking a couple of beers until just before midnight, when the hotel shut the door. The temperature was 17 degrees, the whole place still had a buzz about it and was sitting around just chatting to friends, and it all felt really rather pleasant.

Tomorrow is Market Day in Vaison, and Provencale markets are a bit special. I decided to get up early, and be on the streets before the market people arrived in the town, so I could photograph the build up, as well as the market in full swing. That meant being out of the door around 6am, which given we'd just arrived today from England, was actually 5am.

Ho Hum – we'll see.

Tags:

provence,
diary,
vaison la romaine

LETTER FROM AMERICA - DAY 6

Guess what the weather was doing when I looked out of the window this morning. Yup, you got it, it was raining, not hard, but that insistent fine rain the Scots call a "har". Rats!

But before I went out, a bit of boring Admin first - Pack and check out. I left my stuff in the hotel, and went out present hunting for the family, complete with all my camera gear in a rucksack on my back, looking decidedly like Quasimodo. I decided to try one of the big Department stores just to see what they're like, and went off to Macys.

There's one thing you can say about it. It's big. They claim it's the biggest Department Store in the World, and they may well be right. I have to say though, it didn't impress me as much as I had expected. Selfridges in London, for instance, is much better, And it looks as if a lick of paint and a bit of TLC wouldn't have gone amiss. It's got a really weird layout. In effect it's two shops, one for Men separated from the other which is for Women. Odd!

Anyway, presents having been bought, I had about 4 hours left before picking my belongings up at the hotel and heading towards JFK. I wanted to have a look at Chelsea Village, which is about 15 blocks to the South. The rain had just about stopped now, so I decided to walk. I noticed before when walking down 5th Avenue that the stratospherically posh bit stopped around 35th Street, and the further you walked South, the more, well, either real world or tatty are the words that comes to mind, it became. Now I was over on the West side, the same impression forced itself on me. The buildings get lower, and less grand, there are more general purpose shops, and the gloss seems less glossy.

That's not to be critical, it just changes. As you walk, the nature of the surroundings take on different styles. You pass through a district which has a collection of Flower Shops, one after the other. It's called, not surprisingly, the Flower District – at least it's not FLODI. Predictably, the flower shops are bigger than any at home with much more produce on sale. The area is a really bustling, and rather charming little bit of the City. The flowers, trees and ornamental bamboos and grasses spill out onto the street, and you find yourself walking through an avenue of green – like a 100 yard long Garden Centre.

You can feel the scale of everything reducing as you keep walking, and 10 blocks further on you reach Chelsea Village, which has a bit of a yuppy, slightly Bohemian feel to it. It's much more residential now, and the shops show a more individual, arty crafty side which you don't get at the top of 5th Avenue. I headed for a place called Chelsea Market, which is one of those old warehouses very trendily turned into artisan shops.

One was a rather good Wine shop where the balance of wines is very different from what you'd find in the UK. It had a huge stock of rather pretentious looking American wines, almost all of which were foreign to me (I've just realised how stupid that last phrase is). A large range of Italian wines dwarfed the French section, and they had a good collection of German wines – a dying breed in England. I asked the guy there where he recommended to eat and he pointed me to an Italian place located in what looked like a 5th scale tryout of the FlatIron Building. So, in we went to feed the inner man. The comparison with the Italian Pizza place yesterday was comical. This was smooth, suave American Italian, rather than Italian Italian. But it looked good, so in we went.

It was full of people who seemed to want to be seen – heaven knows what they made of a damp, black cagoule covered individual with a large rucksack on his back. I chomped my way through baked Asparagus, Crab, Salmon and Sea-Bass cake in a brioche, and two rather delightful home made sorbets – Poached Pear and Blood Orange. It was really rather good, and at $45 (£25) was not expensive.

And that was about that. I found my way back to the hotel, picked up my bags, and got on the subway to JFK Airport. They've built one of those little Overhead trains which runs the last bit, but it does seem odd, that from the centre of Manhattan, there is no direct route to get to the City's major Airport. That's the way we Brits would have done it!

Back on the last plane out at night, we had the pleasure of a 45 minute hold-up on take-off because they'd had an emergency when one plane's brakes had overheated on the runway, and 42 aircraft were sitting in a rather dismal traffic jam.

Still, we got going, and the pilot had clearly decided to try and get as much of the delay back as possible, so he put his foot down a bit.

I managed to get the two English hooligans behind me. As a race (or is it a tribe?), we do let ourselves down sometimes. They were from Liverpool (they always are in my experience), and they managed to drink far more than was sensible very quickly, and the arguments at 2 in the morning UK time increased to the point where I thought we were going to have one of those "Come outside and let's sort it Out" moments. That might have been a very satisfactory solution from my view point. But the stewardess, by threatening them rather forcibly with potential legal proceedings, managed to defuse the situation. And then, bless her, taking pity on poor little me, she suggested I move forward to spend the rest of the flight in the posh end of the plane, with miles of leg room.

Excellent. And when we arrived in London, what did we meet?

Rain - by the bucket-load.

Tags:

diary,
new york

LETTER FROM AMERICA - DAY 5

Got up to find it wasn’t raining like yesterday. It was absolutely bucketing down. How truly wonderful.

So, following the Billy Connolly dictum, that “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes”, I put on my Designer Bin Liner cagoule, nicked a Hotel umbrella, and waded out for breakfast.

Being a few yards from Wall Street, this place is littered with Delis, where the earnest Financial wizards grab something on the way to their toils. And they are earnest – looking resolutely forward as they stride on (they don’t walk), phone in one hand, talking very loudly as they go, coffee and a bag of breakfast goodies in the other hand, and somehow they’ve got the laptop and other paraphernalia in yet another one.

There is a slight guilty pleasure, which actually I don’t find all that shameful, in walking past them with a guidebook in my pocket, an umbrella in my hand and mentally rehearsing the Gene Kelly impression I am about to unleash on the unsuspecting public.

The Deli chosen to receive my custom this morning is called “Au bon Pain”, so the possibility of a decent croissant wafts naughtily into my mind. These places continue to amaze me – you can get just about anything food-wise in them. But the locals don’t like some gitoid who doesn’t know his way around, who can’t navigate the menus in a flash, and frankly can’t make his mind up about what to eat. Especially, as he’s still wearing this black plastic bag, and looks as if he’s from another planet, let alone another country.They want to be in, shout an order, fling the money across the counter, and get out.

The food looks enticing, so it’s an egg and bacon and Bagel, Fresh Orange Juice, a decent looking croissant and a Small (ie enormous) Coffee. 6 out of 10 for the food – falling to 3 if you only mark the croissant. As far as the croissant was concerned, the “pain” was anything but “bon”. It looked perfect, but didn’t taste of much at all.

Being Monday and raining, restricted the possibilities a little. My plan to go up the Empire State Building fell at the First. With a Mist Ceiling of around 300 feet (estimated by counting the number of floors I could see on a convenient Skyscraper), the idea of standing on an Observation Platform staring down into 900 feet of absolutely nothing didn’t turn me on. So an Inside Day beckoned, but you need to navigate the opening times of the Museums a bit carefully, as Mondays and Tuesdays are closing days. I decided on MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) as we New Yorkers call it.

They’ve got a passion to shorten the names of all these things. Even the names of the Manhattan districts contain a fair number of truncations. SoHo is not like London, it’s South of Houston. And to make it worse, here Houston is pronounced House-ton, not Hoose-ton. Tribeca (what a stupid name) is Triangle Below Canal, Nolita is North of Little Italy, DUMBO (I kid you not) is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, and so on. It’s the lack of history, you see. The gorgeous Pastry shop in Little Italy, Ferrara’s, claims to be the oldest in America – and that dates only from 1892. I considered suggesting to them that if they want an old coffee shop they should try Mrs Miggins one on London – but I don’t think their minds are ready for it.

So, back into the carwash, and onto the subway, taking an Uptown 6 to 51st and Lexington, and swimming the rest of the way. In spite of my cagoule, I got soaked. Of course, if I’d bothered to think just a little bit about it, I would have realised that the other million tourists in the city had thought through their day in the same way I had (or more accurately hadn’t), and come to the same inevitable conclusion. I went to the entrance of the Museum, and was pointed very politely to The Queue. Which I walked along. I then turned right at the end of the block, and carried on walking to the end of that block, and turned right again, and halfway along, finally reaching the end. Don’t you sometimes want to hit those smug bastards near the front of the line, who leer knowingly at you as you trudge past – the ones who know something you don’t.

Anyway, the bouncy young MOMA Attendant doing the “Gid-em-up, Move ‘em out” bit at the back of the queue told us we had a 40 minute wait. So I waited for 25 minutes, and found myself inside the Museum. That’s not so bad.

On the outside it’s nothing – a dull, square, black façade with not a lot to recommend it. Inside, it’s something else. It’s laid out on 6 floors , and in summary I spent 5 utterly fascinating hours wandering round. There’s a large outside sculpture park, and each floor has a theme, Media, Drawings, Architecture and Design, Photography (the swines had closed that today – they must have known I was coming), and two floors dedicated to Modern Paintings and smaller sculpture. The top floor is reserved for special exhibitions.

The place is designed around a large Central atrium, with each floor being a series of connected rooms, all different sizes and shapes, giving a large range of canvasses to show off the works. It’s a light and airy place, with masses of space, much better suited to the job of showing pictures than the Guggenheim, whose quirkiness is actually quite restricting. And here, I didn’t have to spend the whole time leaning slightly to the left.

There’s some very serious money at play in this Museum. Many of the rooms have names, like the Ethel J Cheeseburger Room (I made that one up) which gives you a clue both to how this museum was funded, and how rich Americans want to be immortalised.

The quality of what’s on show is fabulous. If I’d thought about it, I’d have started at the top, where the “Modern”, ie older than Contemporary paintings are, and then drift down the floors of the buildings ending up with the stuff that is happening today. But I didn’t, so I went jerkily back in Time Machine mode. But No matter.

“Modern” to them starts around 1880, and their collection of Modern paintings is stunning. If you like Picassos, there are about 50 of them. Van Gogh, Cezanne, Seurat, Matisse, Monet, Chagall, all are well represented. And then it goes through the whole range of painters up to Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, Mark Rothko and the like. Some of the most iconic and well known paintings on Earth are on show here.

There is a lot of unsmiling suited attendants roaming around constantly, whose vocabulary seems to be limited to “No Flash” – photography, not exhibitionism, I assume. But, apart from that, you can get as close as you like to most of these masterpieces.

There’s an awful lot to like, and a lot which does not strike such a chord, at least in me. You can’t help being overwhelmed by a 60 foot panel of Monet’s Water Lilies, as well as the huge canvases by Jackson Pollock, though, not in my case for the same reason. My favourite painting there, the one I would have on a (very large) wall at home was one by Henri Rousseau, of a Gypsy sleeping. Quite exquisite, and you (or at least I) couldn’t take your eyes off it.

The Contemporary Floor was a real eye-opener. Some of the ideas there were weird, zany and very Left-Field – call it what you will. But if you took the time to read the little captions about them, and try to understand something about the author’s intention, quite a few drew you into them.

You do have to be a bit careful here, though. One exhibit in this section was an umbrella, leaning on the wall. There were quite a few people staring intently at it, and walking around it with quite an earnest attitude. That is until some kid rushed up to it and yelled “It’s all right, It’s still here”, picked it up and disappeared. Actually, having thought about it, it may well have been a very clever way of stealing a priceless exhibit. It’s that sort of place.

About 4pm, I reached the end, and went into the street. My stomach was making the usual demands, but I decided to walk the city a bit more, since the rain had now almost stopped. I went sort of South East, because something inside me was whispering “Pizza” rather insistently, and Little Italy seemed like a good idea. Some places you instinctively like. I ended up roughly in the area I had been a couple of days ago, and ambled down Mulberry Street, the heart of the district.

Rather than stick a pin in a restaurant map, I asked a local where the best Pizza was made, and he pointed to a rather dilapidated place on the corner, painted rather unsubtly in red, white and green. But then an awful lot of the place was in that colour. Parking meters, Fire Hydrants, and much of the road hardware seemed to have had a makeover – Italian style.

Posh, it was not. There were four or five rather dissolute looking Italian guys sitting around inside, looking as if they could easily play bit-parts in a gangster movie. But they did have a proper pizza oven, so I lived in hope. One sidled up, and waited for me to order. My attempt at chatting to the natives was not a great success. I watched as the head honcho spun the pizza dough very expertly in his hands, while chatting away to one of his mates. Ten minutes and a bottle of Peroni later, the Pizza appeared. It was predictably excellent – far better than I can make at home – and he wasn’t even concentrating. I’ll put it down to the Pizza Oven, although I suspect I’m kidding myself.

The other good thing about this restaurant was that it was 20 yards or so away from Ferrara’s where previously I had that gorgeous Tiramisu. So I trooped over there, and bought a Chocolate Canoli to take back to the hotel and trough my way through with a cup of coffee, when I got back.

Now back at base, it had turned 6pm, so I forced down a couple of beers in the bar, and I watched the Mets playing Baseball, irritating the Barman by asking him a stream of inane questions about what was going on. It was in truth a scrappy game, with neither side managing to get going. So, by about 9pm, it was Coffee and cake time. Well, it wasn’t really, but you can blame the body clock. Actually, having thought about it, you can’t, because it was 2am in the morning in England. Oh, well.

And that was about it for the day – I didn’t even give any thought to tomorrow – my last part day.

Tags:

diary,
new york,
moma

LETTER FROM AMERICA - DAY 4

Today, the weather changed, and it was chilly, windy and raining. An inside job was the order of the day. So off on the subway, up to 42nd Street and Grand Central Terminus. Being Sunday, I thought it would be a good place to look around and have some breakfast there.

I had seen many pictures of the station before, with the iconic (mid Fifties?) image taken with the very moody shafts of light cutting across the concourse being the one which stuck in my mind. But today, I wanted to see it for real. You approach it through a low, wide tunnel from the subway station, and enter directly onto the concourse.

What a magnificent structure. It hits you almost physically as you enter the huge space, with a really confident feel to the vast Concourse. The whole building has recently been subject to a major renovation project, costing something approaching $200 million, and it absolutely shows.

All the walls are newly faced with a thick, expensive coat of creamy, beige marble, giving it a lovely light, airy feel, and the roof is amazing. It has been painted in a soft green, with a gold, illuminated zodiac showing all the stars painted over it. I'm no astronomer but I understand the constellations were painted, possibly unintentionally, back to front – this being hurriedly explained, it seems, as representing "God's view" of the heavens. You had PR and spin in the 30s, so there's nothing new there. There is one small roof area which has been left unrestored, presumably to show the extent of the restoration work done.

In the exact centre of the vast concourse floor is a booth topped by a beautiful 4-faced gold clock, It's one of those things where if you said to a friend "Meet me by the clock in Grand Central" there would be no chance of getting confused – it acts as a real focus to the building. And, almost inevitabably, to commemorate 9/11, there is an enormous Stars and Stripes hanging down from the ceiling.

Even downstairs, in the Food Hall, the same opulence carries on. I bought my breakfast there – Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Bagel, a very French tasting Croissant, freshly squeezed orange juice, and half decent coffee – all of it of very good quality, and costing £6.

The whole impression is excellent and gives great credit to its original designer, as well as those who undertook the restoration. It's a bit like a Twentieth Century version of what's happened to St Pancras Station in London. Here though, it's not a new futuristic railway line they're symbolising because the station is only used now for local New York Commuting trains and the days of the Twentieth Century Limited steaming into town are long gone – I looked for the Chatanooga Choo-Choo in vain. A really great feel to the place though. And Highly recommended.

This flag thing is everywhere. On a previous visit to New England, we reckoned, driving around, that 1 in 10 of the houses there had a large flag in the garden. Here, it's the Municipal Buildings where it happens. The New York Stock Exchange near Wall Street has three largish flags hanging from angled flagpoles across the front of the building. But the whole of the front of the building is then covered by a gigantic one which must be 75 feet across.

All the Americans I've had a decent conversation with, are overtly proud of their Nation and maybe this is what's behind it all. But maybe also, it's a confidence issue. They do all seem, to a man, to be really scathing about their politicians. They all have said the same thing to me – "How are we going to get out?" or "There's no way out". Meaning Iraq. It comes up time and time again. They are also, and they don't talk anywhere near so much about this, very fearful of the economic situation. They are almost ashamed of the weakness of the Dollar, and you can feel a sense of personal failure here. They are strangely reticent about it all, perhaps on the basis of not wanting to talk it down, but the Elephant, most definitely, is in the room – and it's a Big One. "It's real, real tough, out there." was the most I got out of one of them.

But, back to the Grand Tour. There was no decent light for pictures today, and it was coldish. So a bit of culture was called for. Off to Museum Mile Uptown on Fifth Avenue, and the Guggenheim. This is a remarkable looking building, and it caused a huge shock to New Yorkers when it was built in the Fifties.

Everything in Manhattan is at right angles, at least when you get above the Southern Tip. From 14th Street up to 135th Street (which is where my Map stops), the Grid system is absolute. And mixed in with "square" buildings, the architectural signature of New York is clear. Square is Cool - Curves are Out.

Until you see the Guggenheim. This is a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, built as a slowly rising circular spiral building, which makes a real impact when you see pictures of it. I had huge expectations, and expected to be wowed as I walked round the corner of 88th Street.

But No. The impact this morning is very muted, because it's covered in what looks like the biggest Bin Liner in the World. Now, when you see these things, you think - It's being restored. But this is an avant garde museum, so I did wonder if it was being used for one of these "Installations" where they wrap the building up in Clingfim or Tinfoil to make a huge artistic point, like they did with the Reichstag in Berlin.

So to avoid looking like an idiot, I kept schtumm and approached it very noncommittally. You could imagine chatting to a bystander, and commenting that the builders are making a bit of a mess of the place, and "Are they going to get it finished on time?" only to find that he's the artist, and has just won the New York equivalent of the Turner Prize with his efforts.

There has even, I found out later, been an argument between Those Who Matter here about the colour the outside should be painted when the restoration is complete. When it was built, it was in Yellow, but this was later replaced by a Pale Cream. It would seem that Committees were formed, arguments were had, faces were scratched and Prams were completely emptied of Toys, but the latest Stop Press news is that The Creamists have triumphed.

Picking up a leaflet in the queue to get in, all is made clear. Yes, it's being restored - for a Fiftieth Year Old celebration in 2009. So, that's bit of a shame for those of us here in 2008. But inside, it's OK. It really is a most unusual space. The walls run in a five ring spiral, like looking outwards from the inside of a large Apple that an Accountant has peeled. All the exhibits are mounted on the walls of this spiral, which means that you view them at an angle of around 2-3 degrees off the horizontal, and spend the next hour leaning slightly to the right. Being the said Accountant, I had to suppress a constant desire to level them all up.

I'd read beforehand that the special exhibits on show were a selection of Early Twentieth Century paintings by the likes of Kandinsky, Klee and Kokoschka, and some works by a Chinese Post-Modernist artist named Cai Guo-Qiang (I've got the Microsoft Red wiggly line under that, and it won't go away!). I arrived expecting to love the pictures and hate the Chinese artist's work. It turned out exactly the opposite. I was going to say that, in the end, I leaned towards the Chinese part of the Exhibition, but I'm not going for the cheap jibe here!

There were a few pictures with which I connected – Paul Klee, Joan Miro, and a couple by Kandinsky, but the rest left me cold, and strangely unmoved.

But the installations by Cai were brilliant. One was a stream of 99 life-size tigers, teeth bared and all different. Hugely dynamic poses, which were quite frightening. You started walking through them, as if you were taking a pack of dogs for a stroll. They looked real, although they had all been made for the exhibit, and they gradually got closer together into a tight Tigerstream, and "took off" (they were mounted on wires) until at the end there was almost no space between them and they rushed headlong from above your head into a glass screen tumbling to the ground in a mass of distorted shapes. I think it's meant to be symbolic of the lead-up to Russia pulling down the Berlin Wall, but my Audio cassette had stopped working, and I was on my own in working out what was going on.

This exhibit led into the next, which was an icon of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 102 lifesize clay models of Chinese people, some workers, some women, some children, some soldiers, all bringing the feel of fear, decay and deprivation literally in to your face as you walked through them – inches away from your face. They never stopped coming at you, and it built up in intensity as you walked through. It sounds depressing, but the quality of the sculpture, and the looks on the people's faces, as well as the sometimes agonising poses completely held you. They made a real impression on me.

I'd literally never seen anything like it, and it keeps coming back into my mind. It really, really surprised me.

Lunchtime now, and a walk across Central Park to the American Natural History Museum. In retrospect, after the Guggenheim, this was a bit of a mistake. You were brought down to earth with a bump. I had a so-so containered lunch of Chicken Caesar Salad which they managed to make without any dressing on (different!), and set off round the Museum. It's vast – a bit like our Natural History Museum, or even the British Museum.

The exhibits are Top Drawer – the Biggest This in the World, and the longest That, but it lacked sparkle to me – all a bit worthy.

You tended to rush around to try and see everything, and ended up seeing far less than if you'd picked one bit out and concentrated on it. But the sight of a full size 50 foot Blue Whale is not forgotten easily!.

It was about 4pm and I was flagging a bit now, so gave up and decided to return to base. I walked along the Avenue bordering the Park, past the Dakota building, outside which John Lennon was shot in 1980, and onto the Subway, and back to the hotel.

I went for a "peace and quiet" evening, and strolled down to the Waterfront for a leisurely evening meal. I found an old, slightly decrepit Italian place, where the menu looked as if it was of the "Whatever's delivered today, We'll cook for you" sort, and gave that a go. Apart from the massive portions, it was a good choice. Antipasta, and Seared Scallops on Garlic Pasta, Lemon Sorbet, and a couple of Beers. Had a long chat to the guy behind the bar about this and that (He hates Bush, as well – that's Six out of Six, so far). The DJ on the radio was playing songs from the Fifties and the Sixties, and rather depressingly he and I were the only ones there who knew the words. So we had a rather low key, geriatric Karaoke session until the programme finished.

We then put the world to rights, and they shut up shop and threw me out. He went home on the Staten Island ferry, and I went back to the hotel.

A lower key, "inside" day, with Grand Central Terminal and the Guggenheim being the star attractions.

Tags:

diary,
new york,
guggenheim

LETTER FROM AMERICA - DAY 2

Up bright and early on Day 2 mainly because my body still thinks it's in Shropshire. Weather bright and sunny, with a good forecast for the day, so stuff the scarf and gloves – Yippee! Out and about around 8am without breakfast, taking the subway to a station near Times Square. The plan was to potter around Times Square, and walk "Uptown" as us locals say, to Central Park on the Western side, returning down the East side along 5th Avenue. My map, rather usefully doesn't have a scale on it, so it all looked a bit of a doddle. I think my feet might just remind me to return to that last sentence.

Times Square is a madhouse. You've never seen so many electronic advertising hoardings in your life, all competing for your attention, which of course they don't. They all seem to cancel each other out, and I can only remember one – the depressing thing for a 62 year old is that it was for M&Ms.

If it had been raining and a bit darker, you could be forgiven for thinking you were on the set of BladeRunner. Sirens wailing, taxis blowing their horns, traffic everywhere and people shouting incessantly led to a real "Wall of Sound" feel to the place.

Suddenly though, over all the noise, there was the concerted shrieking of a serious number of young kids, just like you get at a pop concert. Around the next corner, and blocking the road off completely to the traffic was a temporary grandstand, and as I shuffled past (due to weight of pedestrian traffic, not my age!), a band struck up and a girl's voice started singing. It sounded like Mariah Carey to my untutored ear. And talking to another of those neckless, twirly black headphoned, cuff talking guys stopping us all from using the King's Thoroughfare across which the stage had been erected, his reply to my clever little "Sounds like Mariah Carey" comment was "That's because it is Mariah Carey."

And it was. There she was in a very tight, short, bright pink dress and a grey cardie, obviously made by her Gran. It was clearly unfinished, only reaching down just to her sticky-out bits. And yes, they did stick out! She started to sing, accurate to the second, just as I arrived. I never knew she cared (or is it Careyed?), and it was really good of her to wait until I had just arrived before starting. Who gave her the signal? Am I being watched? It's BladeRunner again. I've no idea why she was there, in a New York side-street, belting it out on a freebee at 8.30am on a Friday morning. But, there you go. You don't get that in Walsall.

Wandering around taking pictures of the world at large, it got to 10 o'clock, and my stomach sent messages that some food would not be rejected were it to be sent down. I asked a doorman on a posh looking Apartment Block were he would go for his breakfast, and he pointed me in the direction of a Deli round the corner. So off we (actually I) went. It was run by an Italian guy who looked as if he'd played a bit part in the Godfather, but the food was excellent. Freshly squeezed (and I mean Freshly Squeezed) Orange juice, Eggs and bacon on toast, with potatoes, and a halfway decent cup of coffee – coffee is one thing the Americans are C- at, in my limited experience. I sat at the counter and watched the world go by for half an hour, then off Up North.

It was a serious walk, made longer, by photographic detours up many of the side-streets, reaching Central Park at around noon. It's a massive place – some 850 acres or about the size of 5 golf courses stitched together. And there was an amazing number of people there, most doing some form of exercise - Joggers, Walkers, cyclists, proper runners, all belting their way around the inner circuit. God, they're keen and wholesome. Although I'm not so sure about the guy whose sweat stained T-shirt said "Do I look like a fucking People Person?" on it.

The blossom was out on many of the trees, and it looked really pleasant in the morning sunshine. Whoever put the Park there in the first place knew precisely what he was doing – it acts like a green lung for a place with so many people living and working so close together.

I headed for a part of the Park called Strawberry Fields, which was an area set up recently to commemorate John Lennon. As a centrepiece, a circular memorial made from Mosaics simply said "Imagine". It was decorated very stylistically with flowers, and looked simple and impressive. No graffiti, no vandalism – someone was looking after it really well. I managed to suppress the thought that in England, that would be a tad more difficult.

Rather spookily, I turned round, and, out of the 8 million people who inhabit the place, who should I meet but the Turkish Brain Surgeon who had been sitting next to me on the flight from London. Ooo-er. I know it's only statistics and random maths, but it still felt a bit strange. Perhaps he wasn't a Brain Surgeon. Did he know Mariah Carey? I took a picture of him, in case I disappear in mysterious circumstances. You can't be too careful.

Anyway, the meanderings continued, back along Fifth Avenue, with various sorties off onto the side streets. The street naming and layout is immensely logical and efficient in this main part of Manhattan. You start to understand the bemused looks you see on the faces of Americans whom you meet looking at maps and trying to find their way around back in Shrewsbury. They’ve got no chance.

Anyway, back to the plot – Fifth Avenue. If you want a physical definition of Conspicuous Consumption, this is it. I've never seen so many shoes, or handbags, or scarves, none of them even remotely being sullied by a price tag. It goes on for about 20 blocks before the tone of the shops starts to come out of the stratosphere. There are two or three "showcase" churches/cathedrals along the drag, and it strikes you the impact of these buildings is completely the other way round from where we live. At home, the church, architecturally at least, dominates the towns and villages. Here, it's the complete opposite. I went into the Roman Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral, and a service was in progress. All amplified and recorded choirs, and I have to say, it didn't give anything like the same sense of occasion as say York Minster where I went a few weeks ago. All a bit smooth and synthetic, at least to someone who pokes his head in for a few minutes. Perhaps I'm biased.

I pootled further down the Avenue, and did a detour into the New York Public Library. I'm pretty well Skyscapered out by now and this long low building is a welcome change. It's a bit special. A terrific 1911 white stone edifice on which lashings of Sponsor Money (all listed VERY prominently) had been spent restoring and keeping it up to scratch. Apparently it has 88 miles of bookshelves – we are in America here! But the Reading Room was stunning – an absolute gem. Serried ranks of long tables, with an amazing range of varied people, young and old, all races, beavering away, in total silence.

The ceiling in this massive room had been painted very ornately to look like the sky with clouds above you, and as you went back into the room where you ordered your books, the ceiling was the same – clouds and sky again, but much darker. I asked a girl whether one room had been restored and the other not, but she said that it was intentional. Where you sought for knowledge, it was dark, and as you went into the Reading Room, read your books and gained enlightenment, it all got brighter, and clearer.

I rather liked that.

Back outside, and a slice (American style –about an acre) of thin crust Pizza, eaten dribbling Tomato juice along the sidewalk. Not, I suspect the prettiest sight, but needs must, and anyway I pretended I was German. And, as an aside, while getting rid of the detritus, you realise how clean much of where you walk is. It may be the showpiece areas, but the difference from, say, London, is very marked.

This part of town, around the Empire State Building, is a lot less posh, and I went to sort out the logistics and opening times of getting up the Empire State Building, as I planned to go up and photograph the city from there one evening. The building is undergoing a massive restoration, and is frankly, a bit of a mess at present. And the queues….. We'll see.

On to a subway, and back to Wall Street. It's now 4pm, and my feet are in full Whinge mode. It's warm, and I want to lie in a bath. So, back to base, a bath, and a beer. I know it's only mid afternoon, and the sun is not yet over the American Yard-arm, but my body tells it to piss off – the bit that wants a drink is still firmly in the UK! I got talking to another fellow from a group in the Bar who ran a Software company. He ordered a Newcastle Brown, and when I said my mother was born there, and that I had spent most of our childhood holidays in that part of the world, his eyes glazed over. I had clearly become a God in his view. Or maybe, it wasn't the first one he'd drunk that afternoon.

He shared with me, in typical forthright New York terms his views of George Bush – there seems to be a trend appearing here. I know I'm 50 yards from Wall Street, but they all hate him – what they are all uncomfortable about is that, all of the potential successors are real lightweights, and not the man for the job. This Iraq thing has really got to them.

He did suggest that what America needed was someone like "your man Blair". I put him right on that.

I was a bit worried that the previous night's pictures may not have been as sharp as I wanted, so I decided to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, into Brooklyn and take some shots from dry land, on the river bank, with the Bridge in front of the Manhattan sky-line. So, more mad cyclists, and over the river into Brooklyn. It was a pretty decent walk, so my feet told me, but "Il faut suffrir pour l'Art". That's French for "You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before a Prince turns up" – I think.

I ended up in a park, by the side of the river, where there were piles of people lying around, doing not a lot. Kids playing, guys reading, the odd couple snogging, and about a dozen photographers, who'd had the same idea as myself, but all grouped together on a little viewing platform. I thought they'd got their position wrong so I started a pincer movement, and located myself on some huge rocks, lower down and closer to the river and put there to minimise the bank erosion. I'd picked the Prime Location here, and was soon joined by a few like minded geniuses, with the original group now looking decidedly Second Division.

The gradual change as the sunlight went down, with the colours gradually changing, the way the lights in the skyscrapers come into prominence, it all takes a good hour and I thought it quite magical. I know it's man made and all that, but it's very, very, impressive.

And as a sideline, since it was Friday Night, and presumably POETS Day works over here as it does at home, why do they leave so many lights on. It's a prodigious and profligate waste - but very good for taking pictures.

A long walk home, picking up a really scrummy Chinese take-away – Total $5 – the last of the Big Spenders. And a cold beer!

Another day over. What will tomorrow bring?

Tags:

diary,
new york