THE GLAMOUR OF NEW YORK

So today began at a leisurely 10am with a $1,000 caviar omelet at Le Parker Meridien followed by a little Fifth Avenue shopping. Next up, champagne cocktails and a light lunch under a pagoda at the Spice Market, then a relaxing afternoon at the Trump Tower Spa. This evening - dinner with Andy Garcia at table 14 at the 21 Club.

Yeah right.

So today began at 6am (I was really hoping to have added another hour onto this by jetlag-day-7….), with a total f**k up download/upgrade to itunes5. By 8am I had definitely downloaded/downgraded to itunes0 and several other applications had decided to take today off as annual leave too.

A long walk (read - swim) in 91 percent humidity to the kitchen for an apple and a cup of mint tea. The phrase ‘a watched kettle never boils’ does not really work as a statement in the US. It is simply ‘a kettle never boils’. If I’d been on the case and not still slightly jetlagged I would have put the kettle on BEFORE downloading itunes, then it might have boiled by the time I’d failed to download it.
Hell no, I’d have put it on last night.
I used to think it very quaint that Americans boiled pans of water on the hob for their tea, (‘haven’t you heard of electric kettles in the US?’) but now I understand - it is MUCH QUICKER! This, I am assuming, is due to the low voltage in this country (which also, incidentally, transforms the power of a hairdryer into something resembling a sleeping baby’s breath). The irony is that the kettle comes with about 25 danger warning tags attached to it –  ‘don’t operate whilst under the influence of alcohol’, ‘don’t let a minor into the same state as this appliance’, ‘don’t, God forbid, plug this in!’
I got tea in the end, but in so doing probably caused a massive zip-code power surge.

But I digress.

I then embarked on cleaning and rationalizing the kitchen and unpacking boxes.
A light salad lunch, sitting on the floor, without the aid of wondrous salad dressing purchased yesterday, because said dressing had a child lock on it. And by that I mean one of those like you get in cars, where someone definitely has to be on the other side to let you in. I don’t have children so who am I to comment. I can only presume salad dressing is really really dangerous to them.

Then I emailed the tactile helpdesk a lengthy explanation of itunes problem. I should know better really, having spent almost the last year in an email relationship with him. Let’s put it this way. Unless the email is approaching the importance of a stock market crash, then he might manage to skim one line of it before either replying or deleting. A minor bit of itunes domestic stress therefore, is about as low on his priority list as Katrina was on Dubya’s. So to my 2 paragraphs of lengthy questions, I get the reply ‘yes’. Yes what? I have to admit that this is still an improvement on all the times he signed his emails ‘regards’ and the once when he actually DELEGATED my domestic trauma email to a very confused colleague, but nevertheless – end result - no music for me today.

Back in the kitchen this afternoon I discover the highlight of my exciting day. A hole in the wall.  It has a door and it’s metal. And I have no idea at all what it’s supposed to be for and may end up recycling it in the wrong way and get a fine….all suggestions more than welcome.

I still can’t quite believe that I’m going to be here for at least a year. 50 percent of me thinks I’m on holiday and wants to go out to play. The other 50 percent knows that unless I get this place into some kind of order it’s soon going to really bug me.
Kitchen is now as sorted as it can be.
The tactile helpdesk arrives home with ‘Time Out’.
Yay.
Later.

Executive summary: (still for Phil) – rationalised kitchen.