I was just thinking about this.

When I was in the middle of writing that last post, I started worrying about whether I should asterisk out the title, for when my now regular-reading Little Mother now reads, or if I should just start the whole thing with an over the top ‘Well Excuse My French, ladies and gentlemen!‘. But I just couldn’t, because it’s a horrible phrase, because it’s swearwords and not French at…

But what if it IS? What if it is, and I just don’t know, because my French isn’t good enough?

Luckily, I have a plan.

I happen to be going to France tomorrow (A birthday present. I am going on the train, environment-fiends, having possibly eschewed flying for a bit (unless something fun/I feel like doing comes up, obv) and I am going first class which is good, because I think they give you free stuff. Like free biscuits. And I like free stuff. And biscuits. Where was I? Oh! Going to France.)

I happen to be going to Paris tomorrow, in France, and it just occurred to me that if I have been underestimating the phrase, and all those nasty words I’ve been spouting all these years ARE actually French, then I’m fucking set!

I’ll just wander from place to place, letting forth the bluest stream of joyful swearwords you ever did hear, and I will be fine! Because on some level, perhaps, who knows, it IS French! That phrase that meaningless litttle ‘Excuse my French’ that British people say after swearing - it has to come from *something*. Perhaps on some base level, French people and English people understand each other, but only while swearing really fulsomely. And loudly.

I will test it out for you.

I will go and swear at the Parisians, merrily, with my best tourist face, and check if that really IS French.

I will walk in to quaint Parisian coffee shops, and order quaint Parisian coffees by unleashing a full stream of really hilariously nasty swearwords on the quaint Parisian coffee-person (or barista, obv), and then say ‘Excuse my French!‘

And all the French coffee-person will think “Yes! That IS French! How silly of us! Ah! She wants a Venti Skinny Latte Frappacino with a sugar-free hazelnut syrup and and extra shot! I see!” And he will turn to his fellow authentically Quaint French Coffee Shop Attendant, and say “Hey! Marcel? Can I get a Motherfucking Rimjob Tippywank Knobbadger, with a sugar-stick muff-nuzzling mansquizz and some rummycunting fistsex for the English lady by the collect point?” Because it IS French, and then his attendant will will mumble something, and he will say “Oh, hang on, I’ll find out. Madame? Come now, would you like to suck my dog-sodding salt-tipped lovesausage? Yes? Yes, Marcel, she would like a straw. Thanks.”

You see how clever I am? A-switching between languages, like a born native?
Yay! I am set!

Or something.

[Excuse my French, Jan.
PS go and read the post below, it's far more sensible]

Sorry. Please excuse my brevity, but I am cross, and needed to make a point, and make it somewhat quickly, before the lazy fucktards in question got bored and wandered off.

This is not a new issue, I have mentioned this before, in fact.

But it just so happens that it pissed me off again today - and what else is a blog for? And a holiday? Yay! I’m on holiday! - so here we are. Hello.

A woman was appointed home secretary today. Meh, whatev, etc.
Yes, it’s a good thing to happen if she’s a qualified and intelligent person who will do her job well, but I have no idea who she is, so will have to reserve judgement for now. She may well end up being as much of a slap-happy cockfarmer as some of the others who have passed through in the last few years or she might be very good, but let’s just wait and see, shall we? Anyway.

Anyway: she is a woman.

And on the front cover of one London newspaper this evening, it was celebrated with a joint front cover with the Spice Girls, with the strapline above the photo: ‘A momentous day in politics AND pop!‘ (don’t even get me started on the word momentous and the story about the Spice Girls reuniting, that’s a whole other can of … oh anyway) and then, under the pictures of some desperate career-floundering celebrities and one successful politician: “GIRL POWER!”

Well whatever. Yes, I can see what you’re doing there, you’re using the popular catchphrase of the old pop group to sum up the two pieces of news about these very separate groups of people who all happen to be female. None of them are girls any more. Not even the ‘girl group’ no, but especially not the new home secretary. She’s the new Home Secretary. She’s had a long history in politics, and probably quite a few qualifications, and…

And that brings us neatly to the second evening newspaper.

The first paragraph on the first page was a very simple who what where when:

“New prime minister Gordon Brown today announced that his reshuffled cabinet would include Britain’s first female home secretary”

All well and good. Well, it was better than that, obviously, I’m shit at writing news stories. Really terrible. But it was something like that.

Anyway. It was the second sentence, the beginning of the second paragraph too, that pissed me off.

“Mrs Jacqui Smith, a 44-year-old mother of two…”

For the love of anything that is good and holy and sensible, people, yes, of course she IS those things, but that is not what has qualified her for the job in hand, so perhaps, just perhaps, you could mention something I might want to know more about my incoming Home Secretary - her career path up to now, perhaps. Her stance on civil liberties. Her commons voting record if she has one, whatever. I am perfectly happy for her that she has two kids, but in this story, I honestly don’t care: it’s just fucking meaningless, patronising and just plain lazy in this context.

Most importantly, there’s no WAY that that kind of information would ever make it into the first 19 paragraphs of a story about one of her male colleagues.

And … Oh screw it, I haven’t got anything intelligent to say about any of that, really, I’m just fucked off.

So that’s it. The end.

[Oh, and just as a side note, I don't often brag about where I work, but as the first place I naturally look for information, I looked there, at the story about the appointment and the reshuffle for the correct age and kid-number of Ms Smith for this post.
And couldn't find that information.
Fucking right I couldn't, too. Hurrah.]

Normal service will resume once I stop being fucked off.

Give me a minute or two.

There have been several people confused as late about my most recent Tagline, which proudly announces to the world that I’ve been ‘Not knowing as much about ladybirds as everyone thinks I do since 2005′, or some such.

“What?” They say.
“But no one thought you DID know anything about ladybirds, did they? And anyway, hasn’t this site been going since 2001?”

Why yes it has, and thank you for noticing.

Sadly, people do think I know something about ladybirds, or at least that someone around ehre might, and that is mainly, I think, down to the fact that this post has been No.1 for ‘Ladybird infestation’ in major search engines since pretty much the day it was born.

All comments ont his site get mailed to me as they’re added, so it’s a matter of quiet amazement that I watch, in among the lovely comments from all of you lot, and the spam, and the assorted ‘other’, the steady slow flow of people going to that post, and looking for some kind of answer to their ladybird problem, or just someone to talk to about it. And they get nothing.

And I feel sad, because I can’t help, because let’s face it, I know cock-all about ladybirds.

No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know about them. If you want to leave a useful lovely comment with helpful advice, can you go and leave it on that post from two years ago, when I was living somewhere with four ladybirds (not strictly, I admit, an infestation in anyone’s eyes) (unless it was actually IN ANYONE’S EYE, in which case it might count as an infestation)(And also count as ‘gross’, obv)?

Anyway, if you have anything useful to say, you could say it there on that post, where the people-in-need are? And not here? Now? When I’m, you know, not? Infested? And that? Thank you. Thank you ever so much.

So. That was all it means, anyway.

I hadn’t meant to have it up that long, either. But I don’t know anything about ladybirds, and I haven’t done. Since at least 2005.

When I was a child, my mother, an endlessly resourceful woman, would counter cries of ‘I’M BORED!’ by making up fun games to keep me amused. Brilliant new, exciting games that contained elements of other games that I already knew, and yet had the whimsical twist of using unexpected and comical everyday objects, replacing the mass-marketed cards and plastic figurines of the boxed games.

And thus did I spend many happy rainy summer holiday days playing games like ‘Sock Pairs!’, or ‘The Washed Jam Jar and Lid Matching Game!’, or ‘Loot The Treasure Trove!’ (involving me, the kitchen table, and the top drawer of the dresser; which traditionally contained a mix of paper clips, cracker toys, elastic bands, loose playing cards of several packs, and random other crap that people would throw in while tidying).

Being a quite solitary, indoorsy child with mildly obsessive mania for organising things into piles according to size, colour, type etc etc, these would keep me busy for, well, if not hours, at least several score minutes, until I lost concentration, wandered off to do something else and left them almost-but-not-quite-done.

I was thinking about that the other day while contemplating the sock pile. While the other sorting tendancies lie mainly dormant in me - though I almost missed the train the other day when, while over-tired, I stumbled upon a large pile of my Beloved’s mixed change on the coffee table and couldn’t leave it until it was sorted into neat piles of currency and denomination - I’ve given up on socks. Life’s too short for pairing socks, frankly.

With both of us owning a lot of black cotton socks of *slightly* different design and wildly different size, it’s basically impossible to find two the same flavour, texture or sex. Thus in the rush to leave the house in the morning, I’ll frequently end up with constantly collapsing footpieces, and he’ll frequently end up with something that cuts off all blood circulation to his toes.

Anyway, I briefly considered having children, just to have someone young and impressionable hanging around that I could get to pair our socks for us. Or just breaking up with my beloved, just so we’d have to sort out our socks in big dramatic, tearful ceremonies, and then just get back together again, because hell, at least we’d sorted have the damn socks out.

But we decided, at the end of the day, that these were not the best ways to progress; we don’t need the drama, and it’s a difficult reason for bringing a child into the world to explain to our more worthy parent-friends, and that, in fact, we should just sort out the socks.

So I have decided to make up a game.

SOCKS!

We will get all the socks, his, mine, the random ones from god knows who, or where, and put them in a pile in the middle of the living room. Player One will have to stick their hands in, and pull out two socks. If the two socks they happen to pull out are a pair, they get to drink a shot of nice drink.

If the two socks they pull out are NOT a pair, they have to place the two socks in two carefully considered, separated places within five metres of the pile. And THEN they have to drink a shot of nice drink, and then they have to have a chaser as well, because being a loser is always more fun in drinking games, and it would be a shame to break with tradition.

And then Player Two has to pull out two socks, and it’s the same, except that if either of the socks is recognised as being the same as one of the socks that has already been pulled from the pile and hidden within stumbling distance, then you get to fetch that other sock, make a pair, have both your valedictory drink AND the two loser drinks for the other sock you’ve pulled from the pile, which you then hide, unless you can by some miracle make a pair from that one as well, in which case you only have the two drinks.

At the end of the game, you have no pile in the middle. This means one of two things:

a) You either have no pile of socks, because by some Act Of The God of GrownUpIsm you have all-paired socks, although you’re lightly hammered.

b) You have a small pile of neatly paired socks. The other 74 are stuffed down the back of the sofa at 6 different angles. You will be finding them for the next 18 months.

Every time you find one, you have to take a shot of nice booze.

See?! It’s not only the growed-up way of dealing with a problem, but it’s the drinking game hat keeps on giving. Even before breakfast, occasionally. Yay!

I will write something properly later, but unusually, I’m linking to something I wrote somewhere worky.

Mainly, I admit, because it was something I meant to write about here, and then after some pub conversation, I wrote it up for a friend elsewhere instead.

So because it was content that little.red.boat was cruelly cheated out of, I thought I should link to it instead.

So there’s a little piece on the unparalleled excitement I feel for airline food here. And if you’re not registered to comment over there, you can always comment about it over here if you like.

And yes, you *have* heard one of those stories before.

And yes, yes, I will write something proper later.

It is an endlessly interesting subject, which I will no doubt expand upon a length, someday.

Things it is difficult to do when you have fangs
1. Blow up balloons.
2. Whistle.
3. Drink out of drinks cans. Like Coke, or Irn Bru. Or beer.
4. Hum, contentedly.
5. Take surreptitious bites out of bites out of anything without getting caught.
6. Impressions of Mick Jagger.
7. Drink through a straw. Although this maybe easier, depending on overbite/underbite situation.
8. Wine Gums.
9. Oral Sex.
10. Bubblegum.
11. Bite one’s lip, while dancing. (Or any other time) Well, it’s possible, but will leave a mark.
12. Other.

On the other hand…

This it is EASY to do with fangs
1. Open boxes. Heavily sellotaped boxes.

(says driedfrog) Forever negate the need for a hole punch.

____________

I feel sure I am underselling vampires. I will work on this when I get home.
I will have a think on the train.

UPDATE:

I have had a think on the train.
I have nothing.

Vampires have a hard life, I have decided, and probably don’t enjoy parties very much.

UPDATE UPDATE:

But are quite useful in offices, I think.

I’m still not completely sure what Facebook is for, though it does certainly fulfil the ‘being easily stalked’ and ‘making one feel a bit old’ criterion that were suggested whenI asked about it a couple of months ago…

Namely this:

I found a Facebook group relating to my dreadful West London secondary school, for example. I read a thread of comments about the teachers at the school. I added to it. I recieved a comment responding to my comment.

“Hahahahaha, that’s MENTLE! That must have been Such A Long Time AGO!”

Or something like.

To which my immediate response was of course

“Ha ha ha! Yeah! Actually, it wasn’t a long time ago at all, really! It was only 1992!”

At which point I realised that the person I was responding to probably hadn’t started school - nursery school - at that point yet, so yes, it probably was quite a long time ago after all.

______

I have been repeating this story to people over the last few weeks, in the shameless hope that they’d say ‘No, you’re absolutely right, Anna, it’s barely last week, 1992!‘, but they haven’t.

They’ve said less helpful things. Like ‘WHAT?’ And ‘No, not REALLY? Was that Allowed? Even THEN?’

When all I’d told them was the simple story of our annual school musicals. There is nothing special in the news that not that many young boys in medium-rough inner city London state schools are that interested in demonstrating their skill in the arts of musical theatre - so I don’t think that can be what they were shocked at.

And what else were they going to do, in that case, but draft in the male teaching staff to play the parts the boys did not want to play?

Which I suppose would have been fine if we’d stuck to the safer fare, like Oliver, and Annie, and all those safe asexual shows, but we were more ambitious.

So the year I took took the lead in Guys and Dolls (see how I just dropped that in there? Subtle. Subtle like a fox, that’s me), my romantic lead was also my PE teacher. I had to snog him. Several times.

Did I have a problem with this at the time?

Well, yes, of course I did.

The amount that I bunked off PE meant that this was a very embarrassing casting for me indeed. I mean, he barely recognised me, but you could tell that he thought he should have been able to.

It wasn’t just me, of course. One of my best friends at the time had to snog the other PE teacher (PE teachers and musical, eh? Who woulda thunk it?). Several other skimpily dressed dancers (pupils) were groped (and that) by gangsters, who otherwise taught them French, Maths, History etc.
wrong.
Now I’m explaining this all again, I can see how it might be considered, well, a little wrong.

I mean, you can get in trouble now if you’re a teacher for just patting someone on the head, can’t you?
You certainly couldn’t have shared a small darkened backstage area with a pupil of the opposite sex without four chaperones and a signed consent form from eight members of the student’s family, in triplicate.
You probably couldn’t even SAY ’small darkened backstage area’ without getting sued for something…

And there we were, up on stage, pretending to be lovers, acting like equals, singing, and everything.
I know this was 1992, but how on EARTH did they get away with having us doing that?

Kissing, and canoodling, what would now be considered basically putting on an annual live pupil-teacher sex show right there in the assembly hall (over a run of four nights, concessions for unemployed and under-16s) - My God! How did we cope?

Well, I suppose the shock might not have kicked in yet. What with it being two weeks ago and that.

______________________

Still, all joking aside, and looking back at the idea. Well, it does seem a little tiny weeny bit wrong, doesn’t it?
Even if it WAS a long long time ago…

In the morning, an argument bubbles up in the station newsagent.

Me: Approaching the counter with a bottle of water) Just this, please.

Newsagent: (Holds up a newspaper) The water’s free if you buy this newspaper today, you know.

Me: I don’t read that newspaper.

Newsagent: Yes, but the water’s free if you buy it.

Me: I don’t want to buy it. I don’t read that paper.

Newsagent: But the water on its own is £1.40. The paper’s only 70p. So the water’s half the price, and you get a free newspaper.

Me: Yes, but if I buy it to get the water, I add to the circulation figures of that newspaper - which I don’t like (so don’t read) and I don’t want to do that. Can I have a Guardian instead?

Newsagent: What?

Me: Well, a Guardian is the same price as that paper you’re trying to give me free with my water, so can I have a Guardian instead, and you can keep that one?

Newsagent: No. It’s not free with a Guardian. It’s free with THIS paper.

Me: I don’t read that paper.

Newsagent: Just the water then, is it?

Me: All right, how about this: I give you one pound forty, which is the price of the water - which I was willing to spend anyway - , but also coincidentally the price of the Guardian and the paper you’re trying to thrust upon me combined. I get the water free with that paper, but I don’t take that paper, I just take the water and this Guardian, which I’ve then also paid for. You keep THAT paper behind the counter, and the next time someone wants to buy a copy of that paper, you give it to them free, as a present from me, but not their complimentary bottle of water, because I’ve already taken that. That way I don’t add to their circulation figures, because that person was going to buy one anyway, and I get my water, and my Guardian. Can we do that?

Newsagent: Um….

 
(more…)

My head has not exploded!!!

Thank you if you were worrying but no, after vocalising - and loudly - all the swearwords I didn’t vocalise here yesterday (for fear that if I started, I would never stop, my head didn’t explode after all) my head did not really explode.

But I am tired.

I am tired in a way I do not even understand.

This weekend is blog weekend. Be afraid, be very afraid.

____________

I was very touched, though - should you be reading, Mr Actually C Randomizer - by a comment that some may have termed a ‘SPAM’ comment earlier this week. It read:

“Your site is a refreshing change from the majority of sites I have visited. When I first started visiting web sites I was excited by the potential of the internet as a resource and was very disappointed initially. You have restored my enthusiasm and I thank you for your efforts to share your insights and help the world become a better place.”

Now, coming from a person trying to encourage visitors to their site, a haven of full-colour images of young women’s lady-gardens and invitations to play shonky online card games, I thought this was a pleasantly altruistic sentiment.

Sadly I didn’t feel the same upon entering his own portal. Although that’s a phrase we probably share, in some way.

________

I’m tired.
I predicted a burnout several weeks ago.
It’s scheduled for 23 hours from now. Almost exactly.

Sweary sweary sweary swear.

Swearword swearword swearword.

Large, aggressive angry swearword.

*head explodes*

You know, occasionally, in the course of conversations, drunken getting-to-know-you-sessions or one of those occasions where people ask you questions on blogs, or in comments, or to print on bits of paper or things, someone asks me the question “What’s your biggest regret?”

And I’ve always been quite proud of saying:

“You know what? Nothing. I don’t regret anything. There may be things I sometimes wish had happened differently, but if they hadn’t happened the way they happened, then I wouldn’t be where I am today, and this is a good place, and I am happy so no, I couldn’t possibly regret anything”

And that’s what I have always said.

Sadly, this weekend, I have decided this to be a lie.

I don’t have many regrets and certainly no big or great or momentous ones.

But I do have one. It is one thing of no consequence, but nonetheless regretted.
And it is one that matters to me no little amount, though mostly in the summer.

So for the record, and to all the people I have given the la-la-la-floaty-love-in-blissed-out answer above:

I would like to announce that I sincerely regret geting curious and thinking it might be a good idea to shave my big toes when I was 12.

It wasn’t, and I know that now.

So there.

I’ve shared.

I feel better.

Now you.

Please?

Oh come on, there must be something of no great consequence that you regret.
One stupid, annoying little one thing?

No don’t lie, there must be one thing.

Oh. Just me then?
Bother.

Fucking stupid hobbit toes. Mumble mumble mumble.

If there’s one thing I love about travelling to new places, doing new things, forced into new situations, it’s all the new lessons that you didn’t know you were going to learn, but learn anyway. I wanted, I knew, to go up one of the tall buildings in New York. Not the Empire State because - let’s face it - if there’s one thing you want to see, it’s the Empire State Building. And what’s the one building you definitely can’t see from the Empire State Buliding? Yes. So, all over excited, we went up another one, the Top of The Rock observation deck. I was very excited. I knew this was a city that would be beautiful from above, I knew that from movies, from hearsay, from looking at the damn place, so I wanted to see it. And I would be fine; I’ve always loved flying, I’m fine with heights, all of that, and…

And I hadn’t taken into account that weird sense of dizziness I had suddenly encountered while looking up at the skyscrapers from below. And I didn’t even imagine how that might affect me when… Well, start from the beginning, eh?

The lift at the Rockerfeller Centre, the GE building, goes up 65 floors, or something like, in about 45 seconds. That, for the record, is both very high, and also very quick.

In order to impress upon us, their paying audience, that they were going up very high very quickly, the operators decided to make the ceiling of the lift glass, so you can see both how high, and how quickly.

IS this a good idea? Well, I don’t know.

My reaction to looking out over New York City from almost a kilometre up in the air:

“WOW! This is amazing! Look at all the buildings, and the park and where is the interior wall, can you let me to it, please, I need to touch it but Hey!

Hey look! That’s where we were yesterday, that’s the East village, and down there is the Public Library and my GOD someone’s replaced my knees with custard, how odd, can you hold my hand please and oooh!…

Look over there! Wow! And yes! It IS cool! But can you please stop saying the words ‘high’ or ‘up’? Or ‘down’? For some reason, whenever you say them, I quite literally think I’m going to vomit. Yeah, I know, it’s weird but you know what?

I should get a picture of the park. I will do, as soon as I stand up. Why am I sitting down? Did you notice me sitting down? No, I’m FINE up here, silly. I love heights.”

Turns out I might think I’m fine with heights, but my knees disagree. Which seems a little contrary and frankly a bit rude, since they’re the customary property of me, being housed generally in the middle of my legs, but whatever, I’ll learn’em. Eventually.

How can I not? The thing it brings it Too Beautiful to be foiled by stupid knees or stupid nausea, or the stupid spinning and spinning and spinning of a silly, silly brain.

The worst moment came when we eventually got back in the lift down. Though I in all logical mind knew that any reasonable tourist company would think twice before making a glass-bottomed elevator in the same manner as their glass-topped one, something in me didn’t put it past them; every business in New York has a gimmick that raises them one heel above the others and, thus it took me quite a while to be persuaded to get back in the lift: What IF they had made a glass bottomed lift, created so we could watch ourselves dropping through the floors, one floor per second till we hit Rock Bottom?…

Getting in the lift, it turned out, was more of a scary prospect than being up in the air.

Which was annoying, as being up so very high, though very beautiful, wasn’t proving, well, very pleasant, so going down was the natural thing to do. If I could only…

We got in the lift. And, through 60-odd floors, I buried my head in My Beloved’s chest and closed my eyes, and pushed myself hard into the corner and, when we got to the bottom, felt the air lift off me as, one after one, everyone got out of the lift to carry on with their lovely touristing day.

But not me. I was experiencing a weird thing. Only for a few seconds, but for the life of me, I couldn’t make my legs move.

Everyone left the lift. My Beloved, every tourist in New York, and eventually, an elderly couple from Birmingham, the last-people-but-me walked out and, worried about leaving the shaking woman clinging on to the corner rails in an elevator in the basement of a very large building, turned and spoke to me.

“Are you all right, love?”

“Oh I’m FINE!!!” I said “Fine. Thanks. I’m fine. Now”

Not moving.

Half a dozen more seconds of leaden legs, and suddenly I managed to kick one into life. Painfully, me and all my limbs made our way into the cellar of the Rockerfeller Center.

So it was great. The whole experience. Amazing. I recommend it, thoroughly.

And here’s me taking a picture while curled up on the floor next to a wall unable to get any closer to the plexiglass screen than full-back contact with the wall would let me.

Which is weird, because me? I’m FINE with heights.
Love’em.
Don’t listen to my knees.

[Yeah, well it was take two, but then I closed the window by mistake, so now it's take three, ok?]

In the rain, any tourist touristing in any city at all knows what to do - head for the nearest museum and/or gallery. And this is what they all did on Monday, as the rain poured down on New York, that’s what they did. They poured into the museums and/or galleries. Well, to be exact, they poured into the gallery, and I can even tell you which one. Because it was same one as me.

Still, at least I learnt what art galleries are for: they are there to provide cheap backdrops for holiday photographs.

There were some amazing pieces in there, but it is very difficult to see them, on a Monday in the rain, and so once I was bored of views like this…

I was feeling a bit weird, because I’ve always felt odd about taking pictures in art galleries - I go to look at the pictures from different angles, in the context of the other things around them, and if I want a memento, I will buy a postcard.

Still, aestheticethics be damned, I decided that there was no point stoically keeping my camera in my bag if no one else was going to fucking bother being stoic, so I got it out and started having a whale of a time.

Mainly, I discovered a great way of amusing myself for a while, when I found that by the Warhol’s Campbell soups cans:

Which were really striking and lovely and beautiful and things when seen all together - yes, all right, leave it, I know I’m one for my conceptual and pop art and things, let us agree to not-agree - but I swear to you, that shot up there was the only unfettered look I got at the damn thing(s?), because the rest of the time, it was being used as snapshot fodder for the second-dullest holiday snaps in the world…

(The dullest are clearly these)

Seriously, though, that kept me amused for about half an hour.
I was like a spy or something.

THAT is what to do with a wet afternoon in New York.
Or a wet morning. Whatever.

As long as the museum is open.
(New York, the city that never sleeps, except on a Monday in the case of most museums, and a Tuesday in the case of others. 10-6 every other day. Other than that, no sleep).

God, I love those pictures. I wish I’d spent another hour or few there, I really do.
Annoyingly, it then stopped raining.

On Sunday afternoon, just as we were taking a walk in Central Park, it started raining. ‘It will pass’, we thought, ‘This kind of pissing down never lasts long…’

In London. It never lasts long in London.

When it decides to piss down in New York, we soon learnt, it is Not Pissing About. I realise I’m using ‘piss’ in many very Anglicised ways right now, I assure you, it’s not *entirely* coincidental.

I’m just, you know, reclaiming my language, after a few days of saying:
“Just some water please”
“I’m sorry ma’am?”
“Some Water?”
Waitress tips head quizzically.
“Some tap water?”
“I’m sorry ma’am?…”
“Water?” (Makes the universal sign for turning a tap on)
“Um”
“Look, don’t worry about it.”
“Ok!!! Now, Would you like some waddda?”
“Yes! Yes, I want water!”
“Oh! You want wadda?! Certainly!”
“Yes. Um. Thank you”
“You’re WELCOME!”

Because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that where Londoners and New Yorkers may say ‘Thank you’ the same amount, New Yorkers certainly say ‘You’re Welcome’ more - and more; they sound like they really mean it. It’s disconcerting. I thought I was the most polite. Clearly not.

Oh, I’ve got completely lost.

I’m going to start this again.