April Sun

We had the first really, really nice day of the year on Saturday. I went rowing and thought beautiful thoughts. As I dodged beer cans and debris, I could almost block out the sound of the surrounding motorways and imagine myself on a pleasure boat in the Passaic river's distant past:



It was really a day for dreaming - you could almost imagine that summer might just be around the corner. And when I came back into the city, exited the subway at Union Square, and found a throng of pallid, under-dressed skinny student-types (known as 'hipsters' here - although that word may exist in the UK these days too...) I almost thought I was in England. It was like these people had never seen the sun before. All of New York was out in their summer best, hanging around on street corners. I wish I could have taken some pictures because I saw some sights commonly associated with sun-starved Northern Europeans, confronting their first 30-minute gap in the clouds since last year..... I thought New Yorkers were above such sun worship but it seems a long winter can make anyone go crazy for warmth and light.

For once, the weather more-or-less held out over the weekend until this morning - when it started raining, the wind returned and grey skies appear to have moved in for the foreseeable future. It might be a while until it warms up again but when it does, I'll certainly be less ashamed of baring my whiter-than-white legs than I was before witnessing some spectacles in Union Square on Saturday.