Big Apple, Little Britainer

Candied Peel...

2010-01-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Before ConEd started messing with our gas supply, I decided I'd do some English Christmas cooking. I had big dreams: mince pies, Christmas pudding -- maybe even a Christmas cake with marzipan and royal icing. I started with the Christmas pudding -- and at once hit a roadblock when it came to locating all the ingredients. I used vegetable suet instead of beef suet but then I was stumped when it came to finding candied peel:

This being New York, I thought there must be a gourmet food store somewhere that would sell it. I tried various famous fancy places, plus the English food shops, with no luck. On what I thought at the time to be a stroke of genius, I wandered uptown to an area where there are lots of Indian food stores -- and sure enough, I found a big (and rather expensive) tub of candied peel.

Of course, a week later, I was at the Puerto Rican supermarket across the road from our apartment, looking for ground almonds (for mince pie pastry). I didn't find the ground almonds -- but I did find a whole lot of candied peel, for a fraction of the price I paid at the Indian food store.... So there you go. I am now an expert on Manhattan's supplies of candied peel. And since there's still no sign of our gas, there's going to be a large supply of the stuff in our cupboard until next Christmas (unless I get around to making hot cross buns, I guess...)

(I did actually serve the pudding for Christmas dinner at Bill's parents -- and we managed to set it alight quite successfully. I think the Americans present didn't really enjoy the taste of it (I'd like to claim that's because it's an acquired taste, not just because of my cooking) but they appreciated the theatrics of it.)

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a wonderful New Year. I woke up at 6am on our sofa, fully clothed and with my contact lenses still in... So I think it was a good night. I began partying fairly early since it was the new year in the UK at 7pm here and I felt it was only right to celebrate with all the friends and family that called then. One of the dubious benefits of living in another time zone is having (sort of) an excuse to celebrate New Year twice.

I'm now looking forward to an extremely lazy three-day weekend since we STILL have no gas:

(Neither Bill nor I were responsible for the graffiti, in case you're wondering)

The building management people gave us all some electric hotplates -- just like the ones we used to have at uni -- so our cooking has been somewhat limited over the holidays. It's actually been rather liberating, not having an oven and feeling the need to cook huge dinners, and I haven't managed to work up much anger about it at all. This is almost certainly because we went down to see Bill's parents over Christmas and they cooked and fed us all weekend -- I'm sure if I had a family counting on me to cook a roast and we had nowhere else to go, I would not be finding it "liberating". Still, it's been 17 days without gas now and while they managed to get hot water back on pretty quickly, I'm impressed with ConEd's utter lack of urgency here. They're making British Gas look good by comparison.

Apologies...

2009-12-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've been deeply under water with work for a while now and it's had such an effect on me that all I've been able to do when I'm not in the office is sit on the sofa and eat. I've turned into a pallid lump of my former self and I'm now, at the end of the year, trying to get myself back in order and outdoors more (I've seen some daylight on the weekends, at least)...

One of the things that's been nagging away at me is this blog: apart from all those recent comments from the anonymous pharmaceutical sellers and my new-found Chinese fans, I've been missing the therapy of writing here and reading everyone else's blogs. So I'm going to try again. I hope you're all doing well - I'm looking forward to catching up soon! LB

More election fun in Spanish: Jon Corzine

2009-11-02T17:34:00.000-08:00

So, over the Hudson in New Jersey, there's a little battle** going on for New Jersey Governor and the radio ads, even in Spanish, are reaching as far as Manhattan where I first heard this about a month ago on the local Spanish station.

This fellow, Jon Corzine*, is a former Goldman Sachs partner, the current governor, and he wants all the Latinos to know that it's a-ok if they want to vote for him. I mean, he's their friend. He's shown that he's always there to lend them a hand (the lines rhyme better in Spanish).

I've been marveling at it for ages since it struck me as among the most patronizing political adverts I've ever heard. I played it for a friend of mine with some knowledge of politics though and she wasn't as struck by mirth as I was -- she said that politicians (especially those with the money and support that Corzine has) obviously test and re-test every ad they put out, so they must believe this is an effective ad, for all that it might offend sensitive types like myself.

So, apart from admiring the effing hours it took me with my limited computer skills to edit this clip I heard on the radio more than a month ago, I hope you enjoy it -- and I'd love to know if it strikes you as patronizing too (whether or not you understand the lyrics).

* Since the facts I know about Corzine are rather limited (he worked for Goldman Sachs, he's never returned any of my phone calls and he was once badly hurt in a car accident when he wasn't wearing a seat-belt) you might want to read about his campaign elsewhere.

**Apparently, the race is a close one. According to the latest polls, the two main candidates are "statistically tied". This can't be true, however, since in the radio ad they say Corzine es un campeon. And who wouldn't believe an ad featuring such beautiful lyrics....

Alcalde 2009

2009-09-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing worse than political campaign ads...

It's political campaign ads featuring rich, educated, white politicians doing a piss-poor job speaking another language. I guess you could say at least he tried, but apparently he was supposed to be fluent by this year....

To be filed under: things they do better than us

2009-09-22T18:33:00.001-07:00

When I first was on a New York subway platform, I couldn't figure out what these huge black cylinders were:

In London -- in fact, all over Britain -- litter bins were removed from train stations long ago, but New York found some giant, solid scary-looking bins and decided to stick with rubbish collection on its public transit. (Well, kind of. The subway is definitely dirtier than London underground. Possibly this is because the over-sized, iron-cased bins are not only impossible to empty but also difficult to accurately fill, since the hole into which you put your rubbish has just the diameter of a pint glass -- all the rest of that beast is made up of bomb-proof iron cladding.)

I wasn't even 100 percent sure they were bomb proof so in the interests of Journalism I thought I'd do some research. Five minutes using Google didn't produce much in the way of enlightenment -- although I found this article from The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen which suggested they are, indeed, bomb proof (to an extent) and they arrived in NYC's subways a little before I did in 2004.

Some more googling time later and I had found various articles about the arrival of bomb-proof bins in London - is that right Londoners? How things have changed since I left....

An expensive night at our local

2009-09-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

Having cooked for ourselves four nights in a row (which is an act of extreme self-discipline in NYC, where supermarkets are expensive and cheap eateries are plentiful) we decided we deserved a night off and wandered over to a bar across the road... Where we discovered it was NYC Craft Beer Week and they had more than 20 local beers on tap - and free samples, and a raffle... We had a couple of pints each (I had an Otter Creek (Vermont) Oktoberfest to begin with -- which was alright -- and then a Southern Tier (NY) Harvest, which was supposed to be like an English bitter... It wasn't, but it was tasty enough) and apart from somehow managing to order three baskets of fries/chips by accident and looking like the biggest pigs at the bar, we were having a good time. It being Thursday, though, we decided to call it a night after two pints and some samples* so we wandered back across the road...

At which point we discovered that neither of us had our keys with us. Some swear words later, I used my work-issued blackberry (which I had never before appreciated) to google East Village Locksmith -- and 15 minutes later a nice young Israeli had drilled a hole in our lock, put in a new lock, given us two new keys and charged us $285.... Ah, New York.

(To be honest, I'm a dab hand at getting locked out and I'm pretty impressed I've lived in this place for more than a year without this happening before. Growing up, my parents never let us have keys to the house (actually, I think my brothers got keys -- I was spoiled and picked up from everywhere I went -- the benefit of being the only girl, although I whined about my lack of independence at the time...) so I didn't learn to use keys (ie, remember to take them with me everywhere) until I went to uni... Where the showers were outside of my room and I regularly locked myself out while only wearing a towel first thing in the morning. I set some kind of record for the towel-clad 'walk of shame' across the lawn to the porters' lodge at least 10 times in my first term... By my second term, I learned to leave my door on the latch, which meant I'd come back from rowing or even from the occasional lecture and discover half my year group in my room drinking tea.)

*I also tried the Wolaver's pumpkin ale, which I liked a lot. I'm becoming a fan of pumpkin beers - I like the Smuttynose pumpkin ale too, and not just because it's from Portsmouth, NH.

Will you vote for my mom?

2009-09-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

Not that I wasn't sympathetic to the causes of the American Revolution to begin with, but after three years living here I definitely know what taxation without representation feels like.

Tomorrow, there are 'primary' elections for New York City offices including ones I've heard of like Mayor and City Council and ones I haven't heard of like borough president and comptroller. I have amassed such a stack of Vote For Mayor Bloomberg flyers (even though I can't possibly be on the voters' register) that I might have a teaparty to throw them off the Brooklyn Bridge. And as I left the supermarket this evening, a balding guy handing out leaflets with a picture of a blonde and beaming woman on the front asked me if I'd vote for his mom. Sometimes, it's hard to take this democracy business seriously.

Bank Holiday Monday

2009-09-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

Just as our finances started to improve with distance from the wedding, one of our wedding presents needed expensive hip surgery*, I was persuaded to splash out on some swanky new glasses (and a year's worth of contact lenses. I know. But he told me what nice eyes I have....) and I passed an entrance test for a graduate course that I hadn't expect to pass and then had to cough up a grand in tuition... AND THEN we spent the few dollars I had left over from my wages paid on Friday on some tasty German beers to celebrate Bank Holiday Sunday.... So yes, I did indeed spent my Bank Holiday Monday slightly hungover, mostly broke and on the sofa watching a Later With Jools Holland marathon on a channel I'd barely ever made it to before, somewhere up in the 80s.

From time to time, between reflections on what a remarkably terrible interviewer Holland is (he makes me cringe - I almost expect him to forget the name of the person he's talking to) how old the lead singer from James looked, or whether Paul Weller or Spiritualized were being deliberately made to look old by the presence of some young whipper snappers like the Fratellis, I wondered about the BBC. I think I've discussed my mixed feelings about the beeb before, but I just can't figure it out -- their general strategy seems to be to try and sell whatever they can sell to the cable channels, and then they put what's left on BBC America, along with some cheap crap they picked up from ITV (although Footballers Wives is one of my favourite guilty pleasures). I know this, because the quality of what is on BBC America is so dire (their U.S. charter appears to dictate that at least 75 percent of their airtime must be devoted to You Are What You Eat and some or other Gordon Ramsay vehicle). So how on earth did they manage to sell Jools Holland, even though it was to an arty channel I known for showing hours of Julliard rehearsals and not a whole lot else? I do love a bit of Jools, but I hardly think it's the best of the beeb - low quality production, painful-to-watch two-minute interviews and a hodge-podge mix of old farts with guitars and embryonic popsters wearing cast off eighties fashions. Clearly, though, some exec over here thought it would go down a treat, and who's to argue. I watched it.

I just don't understand the telly here - it was so much simpler when I had four channels and none of them had anything I wanted to watch on.

Latent hypochondria

2009-08-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about paying for healthcare here is that you get a bucket load of flattery for every $100 you part with. I went to the optician yesterday after work and once I'd had all my financial information (health insurance and vision plan details, as well as my social security number) extracted from me, the ladies at the desk welcomed me like a long-lost relative and I was ushered into the examination room ahead of schedule. The eye doctor (who must have been given a heads up because I can't believe she sussed my accent at 'hello') gushed about England, the English and accents in general. Noting this failed to warm me up, she moved on to complimenting my eyelashes and my eye colour. I really just wanted to get my prescription, order new contact lenses and get out the door: I wasn't really prepared for a chat about either the aesthetics of England or my eyes.

So she tried a different tack: appealing to my latent hypochondria. Did I realise one of my pupils is bigger than the other? Had I ever been told what an impressive astigmatism I have in my right eye? Did I know that said astigmatised right eye has a remarkable imprint of a contact lens on it? (This one was a bit terrifying, admittedly, since I ran out of contact lenses about two weeks ago). Was I aware my eye pressure is at the high end of normal? Would I like to come back and have a very special person's glaucoma test? (I got roped into this on the basis that my medical insurance should pay for it. I hope they do. It sounds expensive.)

I'd like to think that I'm immune to this bizarre kind of buttering up. But after living in New York City for three years, where everyone has the most special type of illness possible, I'm beginning to feel a bit neglected. It's hard to listen to colleagues and acquaintances telling you about their uniquely irritable bowel disorder, or their truly individual allergies to afghani food etc etc, without wondering what glamorous medical treatment and attention you might be missing out on yourself....I'm coming down with a terrible NYC illness - I WANT TO BE SPECIAL TOO! Or at least until I get the bill.

Weddings, visas and the inevitable green card question

2009-08-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly getting my head around to the idea of applying for a green card and after doing some initial online research last week, I'm utterly confused. I'd like to think it would be relatively straight forward - English girl, legally employed in the U.S., meets U.S. boy, they move in together, have joint bank accounts and eventually get married... and one day she'd like the peace of mind of having residency status that's not tied to her employment. I'd be really really grateful for any advice from all you out there who've been through, or are going through, this process.

-- Is it possible to fill in the forms correctly, without too much stress, without paying for a lawyer? If you've gone through this process without using a lawyer, how was it?

-- Since I plan to change my name, do I need to change my name in my UK passport (which obviously holds my current U.S. visa) before I apply for the green card? If so, how do I get the name changed on the visa? (This seems like a lot of work, but not sure how to apply for a green card under my married name while my passport shows my maiden name... Still, plenty of people must be in this situation so I'm sure there's some answer).

--If you used a lawyer, could you recommend one in New York? (You can email me via the link on the right-hand side of the page). I've been struggling to even get estimates for prices since the lawyers seem to want us to pay for a 'consultation' before they'll even give us a quote...

Any advice gratefully received...

I showed you my ID

2009-08-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

So, after our successful stint of cat sitting, we've moved (arguably) onwards and upwards and we're now both dog sitting and house sitting for some friends in the West Village/Meatpacking district... It's another world for us, where people pay for access to special dog runs via complex electronic keys and keypads. I get to take out the dog early before work and late at night, when there are few people apart from the genuine (who'd have thought) meatpackers around. Bill, who's been working from home, has been making friends (of sorts) with the locals at the dog run during the day. Until I got this email this afternoon:

-----Original Message-----
From: REDACTED [mailto:redacted@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 1:31 PM
To: Britainer, Little (NY)
Subject: I showed you my ID

Had an interesting exchange with a bonafide crazy Lady at the dog run.
I'm wondering if she's not the same person you met this morning. Blue
dress, brown hair, sunglasses, late-twenties to thirties, definitely a
Sex in the City wannabe. Two dogs, one a german shepherd the other a
kind of mottled black, gray, brown mutt-type dog.

She lurked around by the gate for a while and then finally called me
over to explain that she'd just become a member and didn't have a key.
Also, she'd forgotten her code. And anyway could I please just let her
in? Oh, she also showed an ID to demonstrate that she *lived in the
neighborhood.* (She knew the secret neighborhood handshake?)

I said sorry lady I'm just a dog sitter and they told me not to let
anyone in.

At this point some natural instinctive con artist instinct must have
kicked in, because she ran through an elaborate routine, a mix of veiled
threats and attempts at ingratiation. But she ran through the routine
too quickly.

"That's the same dog from last night. What's her name?" (Ok, I'm not
telling you the dogs name so you can pretend you've met before.) Hi
whatsyourname. I live in the neighborhood. I showed you my ID. Any
impulse I might have had toward charity was overridden by the sense that
she was obviously lying.

She must have quickly decided the good-cop routine wouldn't work,
because she rapidly switched gears, going so far as to flash a small
police badge in a little leather section of her wallet and to announce,
in the sternest possible tones, "Look, dude. I'm a cop's sister." Then:
crazy, crazy, crazy. "What's your address. I'll have you evicted."

It was unclear to me what I was going to be evicted from (my house?
the dog run? the Village? My entire Meatpacking District privileges
revoked?) but I knew I didn't want to mess with this well connected
cop-sister anymore. I also knew there was no way in hell I was letting
her into the dog run, or even venturing outside myself as long as she
was standing there, so I went back in, and when there were two gates
between me and her I felt a little safer and I resumed having a catch
with Lexie.

Five or ten minutes elapse peacefully. .

At some point I noticed, rather ominously in retrospect, that Lexi was
spending a lot of time looking off at the entrance and that the Lady and
her two pets must have not given up. She crossed the street at one point
and I thought: maybe we're safe. She was on her cell phone maybe?
Calling in political favors?

Finally the door opens up. I can here it but I dare not turn around and
look. I stand there in the middle of the run throwing the ball at the
wall while Lexi, who has totally given up at this point, stares behind
me, and I wait half expecting to get stabbed in the back with a steak
knife.

Finally a figure emerges in my peripheral vision. She's standing off to
the left of me, about twenty feet away, just barely within range of my
peripheral vision.

Taking a picture of me with her iPhone.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to have you evicted. I know you and I know that dog. You
don't even live here."

"What are you going to have me evicted from?"

"What's your address? I showed you my ID. You're just a dog walker,
right. You don't even live here. That's not even your dog. You're just a
fat guy. Look at your cankles. You should go for a run down by the
river. You're just a fat DOG WALKER."

This remark about my calves stung a bit. Also, I was a little annoyed
that she had managed to best me in my attempts to keep her out of the
dog run. But I think I kept my composure.

"Look, I'm just dog sitting," I said. "All I know is they told me not to
let anybody in here."

"I'm going to have you evicted. My sister started this organization
twelve years ago. And it's only for people in the neighborhood, and
you're not from the neighborhood. What's your address?" I showed you my
ID.

"You're kind of crazy, aren't you?" I said.

"You're right I'm crazy. What's your address? I'm going to have you
evicted."

Meanwhile, I'm trying to mobilize and stage a tactical retreat. But Lexi
is not cooperating. An excruciating, awkward interval ensues where Lexi
kind of half pees (I think mostly out of stress or
sympathy) in the middle of the run and I have to walk over and haul the
hose out and hose it down. Finally I manage to corall Lexi toward the
air-lock.

"You shouldn't call people fat," I said. "You'll give someone an eating
disorder."

"Good," she said. "You need one."

As I'm putting Lexi's collar on, she says and this is the line I've
found most haunting. "Pay it forward buddy."

Was she being ironic? Is this something people actually say or just
people people in Recovery with alcohol and drug issues? Did she know I
was going to be writing this email? Was she really citing that terrible
movie with Haley Joel Osmet? Was that ironic too? Too, too complex.

"Pay what forward?," I said. "My eating disorder?"

And then I left.

Anyway. I hope I did the right thing and behaved as a Gentleman at all
times. I have a natural sympathy for crazy people as you well know, and
I'm as interested in helping the less fortunate as the next person. But
it's not like she was sitting by the roadside with a wooden bowl her
only earthly possession and bleeding eyes. She wanted to use the dog
run.

It was helpful that her appeals to my Robin Hood instincts were always
tempered by an ingrained, reflexive elitism and status obsession. So I
think I'm safe on the moral front. But I might have bigger problems.

There's a very well connected Lady out there somewhere with a fake
police badge, a brother who's a cop, and a sister who's a seminal figure
in the East Village dog run scene, and she wants to have me evicted.

More wedding faff

2009-08-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting hugging-related questions that my mum asked when she came over, 2 weeks before the wedding, was: were we going to have a reception line?

I actually think my funeral count still just about outweighs my UK wedding count, but I remember a cousin's wedding where we were all welcomed to the reception and shook hands with each member of the bride's family (plus my cousin, the groom, and possibly his family - I forget). I've now been to a handful of weddings here and I don't remember that happening once.

Instead, because I was worried about all these different people coming together at the last minute, and because I wanted them to meet each other and have fun on the Saturday (aka Wedding) night, I somehow managed to persuade my most awesome (did I mention how amazing my in-laws are?) parents-in-law to have a bbq at their house the night before the wedding...

They kept referring to this as the 'Rehearsal Dinner'. I'm pretty sure this is a concept that doesn't exist in the UK - but the idea is, that the bride and groom's close family get together the night before the wedding, rehearse walking down the aisle etc etc and then have a fancy dinner. Given that we weren't having any bridesmaids or (as the Americans go in for, GROOMSMEN), it seemed logical to invite all of the out-of-town guests (pretty much everyone, apart from my in-laws' family) (again, did I mention that my husband's family are some of the best people in the world?)

So this was how the 'Rehearsal Dinner' (or, British equivalent of a reception line) started:

(My dad, surprisingly, is the paler, shorter one...)

And this was one of the day-after results, poor Bill:

Brit weddings vs American weddings....

2009-08-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

So, we managed to get married.... We have yet to get the completed marriage license back (that's another story in itself) but it is all legal, we've been promised.

There was a strictly limited mention of God, I didn't have to sign away our first born in service to Liberty or some such, nor pledge my allegiance to anything more than Bill. In fact, the service was really rather lovely, I thought, although I couldn't quite figure out whether to cry or laugh my way through it so not sure if I was in the best state to judge.

I intend to drag out my observations on English vs American weddings, just to ease myself back into blogging. But one thing I will say for now is that I was extremely glad this happened more than three years after I arrived here. Because, oh my god, the HUGGING.... After three years, I've built up just enough stamina to cope with all the hugging while only wincing on the inside. (Even the florist (male) wanted to hug me. Twice.) Seriously. There was such a terrible amount of hugging going on that even the Brit family seemed to catch on after a while. It got dangerous out there, especially if you were wearing a white dress*....

(This is my new sister(-in-law). Quite possibly the second-best thing about getting married was getting a sister).

*I actually didn't manage to spill anything on the dress which, if you knew me you'd realise is some sort of a miracle in itself. It did wind up with a lot of grass stains, which made me sad for a little while, but after some drinking and more dancing it didn't really seem to matter so much.

Are you there fellow expats? It's me, soon-to-be-American

2009-07-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

I know. Long time no speak etc etc.

The cats didn't eat us.

Although we were nearly consumed by their cuteness:

Why hello.

In fact, what's been occupying my time is the business of getting married. And my, what a business it is. I was trying not to get dragged into the whole sorry world of wedding magazines and TV shows, blogs and related consumerism, but, well, I kind of wanted to have a pretty dress and who doesn't want to throw a really big party?

In reality, most of my time has been taken up with diplomatic cross-Atlantic relations. We decided to have the wedding in Atlantic City, where the resident American in the LB household is from. First problem: his parents had more or less packed their bags to go to England the morning after we told them we got engaged (at a Sonic Youth concert in McCarren Park Pool. No water was in the pool though. In fact, I believe it's now being turned into condos. So it will be a good story to tell any really little LBs). Right, so they'd packed their bags, resident American's dad was already planning the outfit to go with the bowler hat he wanted to wear, and resident American's mum (who is terrified of flying) was also envisaging some kind of royal-wedding-type hat. So of course, living instantly up to my terrible destiny as a daughter-in-law, I decided I wanted to get married in AC (if you've never been, it's a coastal town that's seen better days, much like Portsmouth, and it has a very dear place in my heart.)

And more recently, my own dear parents have been doing their very best themselves to sabotage things from 3000 miles away (of course, it was my fault for deciding to have it in this country but still....) They managed to announce their own divorce shortly after the RA and I got engaged (I've been trying not to dwell on the significance of this coincidence) and they've been busy keeping various lawyers and lately also the Hampshire constabulary and U.S. immigration officers well remunerated and in work ever since. The less said about all that the better, because while I'm beginning to find it all very funny it's certainly been a rough few weeks for nearly everyone involved.

That, my lovelies, coupled with a hefty dose of work, friends and family visiting and the inevitable summer cold (thank goodness it's not swine flu) has been keeping me out of blogging touch. I just wanted to let you know I'm still thinking of you all, and I hope to be back and in touch soon, full of refreshment after our five-day honeymoon (Thanks America!)* and the joy of married life. The big day is a week on Saturday, so please pray to the immigration gods that all our remaining friends and family not yet in the country are granted access to it and that all goes swimmingly. Thank you!

* so, we're not really doing a proper honeymoon owing to the fact I have no vacation time and we wanted to take advantage of all our friends and family being around and over here. Instead, we're doing a biggish road trip as far south from AC as we can get from Sunday July 19th and be back in New York by Saturday July 26th in the evening. We're planning on driving along the coast, along the outer banks, I believe they're called, and hopefully we'll make it at least to Charleston. If you have any tips, or know the area, let me know! I'm rather excited that I might make it to an outer bank named Portsmouth, and maybe pass through Portsmouth, VA, thereby ticking off some of the Portsmouths on my planned Portsmouth-in-the-U.S. road trip...

Cats in the city

2009-06-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

We're cat sitting at the moment, which is an eye-opener for a dog person, I can tell you.

I was pretty excited about this little experiment because, firstly, THE MICE and, secondly, ever since I left my brothers on the other side of the Atlantic, I've had an urge greater than Mother Nature's to look after something. I had been hankering after a dog -- but since we have only just about enough space in which to swing a cat, dog-swinging is out of the question. Oh, and, technically, under the terms of our lease, we're not allowed pets at all (although the landlord appears to have a more flexible opinion of uninvited pets, such as mice, cockroaches etc etc).... So anyway, I'd been lobbying for a small animal for a while and although my first choice would have been a dog, I'd narrowed this down to a cat given the space concerns and I jumped at the chance to take care of two cats to realise just how much fun it would be...

It's not like i haven't met cats before. I'm just rather confused by their lack of response to me, brimming over with love and affection for them, and desire to look after small animals. I keep wanting to pick them up and cuddle them and all they do is stare glacially, barely veiling their disdain. I am reminding myself of my youngest brother, who, aged about two or three, had learned the word 'teddy'. The problem was, he couldn't tell the difference between a stationary, harmless, stuffed animal and a mobile, living (and possibly dangerous) animal. I remember him tottering after a family friend's Siamese, arms open to embrace the beast, gleefully shouting "Teddy! Teddy!"... We just about managed to prevent the cat from piercing him with more than just its icy stare.

Anyone for a bacon butt?

2009-05-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

I've been working late shifts the last week or so, which makes stopping off at bars on the way home rather convenient, knowing that I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn the following day... Last night we dropped in on one of NY's few Boston-friendly bars to watch the Red Sox v the Minnesota Twins.

"It smells like they've been cooking bacon butts back there," reported my fellow bar-hopper, on his way back to the bar from the loo.

"They what?" quoth I, images of cigarette butts in bar toilets and the Spanky's pig (for some reason) coming to mind:

It turned out he meant bacon butties, which makes it an even odder thing to have thought the bar smelled of as to my knowledge he's never smelled a PROPER bacon butty made with thick-cut bacon in the U.K. But in his defense (kind of) this bar does do very good BLT club sandwiches.

Visions of England...

2009-05-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

On an exciting bank-holiday Sunday evening at home, we were eating dinner on the sofa and watching baseball in apparent domestic contentment until even I realized (slowly) we were in fact watching a repeat of Saturday's Mets v Red Sox game and I wrestled away the tv switch. I changed to a public tv channel that was showing a programme called 'Visions of England - an aerial view of England', or something like that.

It was narrated by a lovely lady with probably a very English plum stuck up her bottom and a particularly fetching way of pronouncing 'Salisbury' so that even the resident american noticed it wasn't pronounced 'Salizzberry'. She was quite entertaining.

She told us that Stonehenge was constructed around the same time as the Pyramids. I'm sure those in the know would debate this, but as the resident american said it wasn't a very favourable comparison... I excused our ancenstors, suggesting that the colder weather probably retarded our development compared with the Egytians in their desert heat, and fortunately the programme then showed the the Uffington horse, which showed a more artistic side to our ancient relatives than Stonehenge:

But thanks to the plummy lady I can only now think of Stonehenge as a rather clumsy construction by some developmentally-challenged cave people who were probably so chuffed with themselves for getting three stones to stack together that they all went off to sample the best of the local scrumpy and forgot all about decorating their little construction... All while their distant relatives to the south were busy writing great long poems with hieroglyphics to explain their intricate buildings and painting friezes that would have made Laura Ashley proud.

Sailor boys

2009-05-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

There were various groups of men clad in pressed, pristine white bell-bottoms and shirts mingling with the usual tourists, naked cowboys and harassed business types outside the office in Times Square today.

It seems it's Fleet Week again, yet another mystifying and rather awesome U.S. tradition. When I first heard about Fleet Week I really thought it was just some kind of joke -- it seems to provide such reliable fodder for so many locally-based comedians -- I'd never heard of it in a serious context. But really, it's pretty straight forward. Instead of having a few measly days a year (November 11th, say) on which you were bedraggled paper poppies or donate to a veterans' organization, there's a whole week in which U.S. sailors descend on the Big Apple and are treated as royalty by the locals -- they get the best seats at (new) Yankee Stadium, their own parade etc etc...

I went to school in Portsmouth (home to the British navy) but I think the closest I'd ever come to seeing a sailor in full costume dress was an old photo of my dad in uniform for the navy unit of his school's Combined Cadet Force. I'm assuming this is probably because no Royal Navy man would ever be caught walking through deepest, darkest Portsmouth in full regalia for fear of attracting the derision of the locals.

When it comes to respect for the armed forces, it's just another way the U.S. and U.K. are poles apart.

(PS.I'm just saying. Not making any statement on whether or not this is a good or a bad thing. I would say, though, that Portsmouth-based sailors might rather enjoy walking around Times Square in full navy dress -- lots of photo opportunities (and probably more) with fascinated female tourists.)

Cheesy Guest Blog

2009-05-07T20:44:00.000-07:00

The resident American has been moved by a recent living-with-a-Brit life experience to share some thoughts with you, dear readers. Enjoy, as they say ici:

Last Saturday while chopping avocado for a green soup, I smelled, very
faintly but unmistakably, the smell of garbage.

Now, Little Britainer cleans the kitchen like a clergyman nearly every
day, so the idea that something was producing an unaccounted for,
unapproved smell was disquieting. And we were having dinner guests,
which made it doubly disquieting.

I checked the trash can. It had some vegetable peelings in it, but LB
had just emptied it an hour or so earlier, so I thought they were
innocent. Our kitchen window, which opens (in the grand New York
style) onto a brick wall, was flung wide. Was something rotting in the
alley? Impossible to check. Was I smelling, as my dad likes to say, my
upper lip? Doubtful. My worry was that one of the mice (the population
seemed to be recovering last week) had died, and its carcass was
rotting somewhere breezy and difficult to reach. I mentioned the smell
to LB, but she didn't smell it.

Now, as the resident American, I take a lot of crap about this
country's cheeses. LB regards American cheese as an alien and possibly
dangerous substance, best kept away from real food stuffs. My weakness
for mozzarella is a cause for pity. The one time I bought Kraft
singles, to use in the mousetrap, LB looked at me like: and you really
think it's safe to leave that sh*t lying around the house? (Not
really.)

Which is why it was interesting to me...very interesting to me that
the person who later discovered that the source of the garbage smell
was the camembert cheese that LB bought for our dinner was...LB
herself.

And it wasn't in a
you-silly-American-how-could-you-mistake-cheese-for-garbage kind of
way.

She went like this. "Oh, I smell it too [the garbage]!'" and then she
zeroed right in on the cheese/source.

I don't know where I'm going with this anymore.

But I'll tell you when I ate the camembert later that night, I thought
the texture was lovely, the flavor reminding me somehow of
Thanksgiving dinner. And when I exhaled its vapors out of my nostrils,
it smelled delicious.

Really.

On top of old smokey...

2009-05-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

I had meatballs and spaghetti for dinner this evening. Really fat and tasty meatballs in tomato sauce. Delicious. It seems odd now, but I don't think I'd ever had spaghetti and meatballs before I came here. Even though one of the few songs I still remember from Brownie Girl Scouts when I lived here 20 years ago is 'On top of old smokey (all covered in cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed)'.

When I moved here three years ago, I'd order meatballs at every restaurant and want to make them all the time. Meatball subs - long baguette-type sandwiches, filled with meatballs and sauce and covered with cheese (of course) were one of my favourite discoveries. Like American pancakes, I felt I should try and make up for the deprivation of my earlier life and I just kept eating more...

It never occurred to me that beyond pizza and burritos and an entire spectrum of fast-food restaurants, America could introduce me to new foodstuffs. There's a lot I didn't know about. The whole world of barbeque, for instance (not New York's strong point), but also a huge range of Italian and Greek food beyond the pizza and pita that every Brit knows. Indian food is sadly so much better here (in authenticity terms, I think) that it doesn't taste like an 'English' curry - but I don't miss it too much when there's so much other good stuff to eat.

Tagged (I'm it)

2009-04-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

ExpatMum tagged me, which was rather nice of her, as it gives me something to write about. Feel free to play along - you have to answer the questions, replace one of them with a question of your own, and then pass it on. Here's my attempt:

1. What are your current obsessions?
The sterling/dollar exchange rate. Seriously, I check it several times a day. There are pros and cons to relative strength/weakness of the dollar. I just like to know where it is, so either I can tell all my friends and family to come and visit me, or I can start daydreaming about going back home and being able to afford to buy more than one round of drinks and crisps in the pub.

2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?
Hmmm. I've just switched to summer clothes, so I'm enjoying wearing stuff I haven't worn in yonks. I probably most often wear black work trousers from Zara. And even in the summer, it's hard to stop me wearing jeans at the weekend.

3. What's for dinner?
It was Pad Thai from a Trader Joe's packet. I love cooking but the later in the week it gets, the more I tend to cheat. I used to feel guilty about this, but somehow I've slowly got over it...

4. Last thing you bought?
Errr, I just bought a light box. Craft-geek alert. I am hand-writing wedding invitations at the moment.

5. What are you listening to?
The sounds of ESPNs Baseball Tonight on the telly in the other room. (It will never quite make up for Match Of The Day....) Oh, and there's a bus idling outside the window. There are pluses and minuses to having a bus stop right in front of the building...

6. Favourite kids' film?
This is a tough one. I like the Christmas ones like The Snowman (though I still don't like to watch the end) and Box of Delights.

7. Favourite holiday spots?
I fantasize about going back to Argentina on holiday. It always seemed like such a good place to be if you weren't being paid in the local currency. I've been to some pretty brilliant places but some of the most memorable and enjoyable holidays have been just lazing around home with friends. I like camping holidays too.

8. What are you reading right now?
Mostly posters on the subway at the moment. I don't seem to have the focus to read more than two paragraphs in a row. I just finished Go Tell It On The Mountain and before that The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (which I loved). I've been about half-way through Le Rouge et Le Noir for several months, in an attempt to keep my French going. I'm close to abandoning it though, I think.

9. Four words to describe yourself?
Cripes. I had to do a self-portrait in my second year of grammar school. I don't think it was very accurate, but the art teacher said he showed it to everyone in the staff room and they said, "Oh yes, that's the worried one in the second year." I'm going with:

Worried. Keen. Conscientious. Clumsy.

10. Guilty pleasure?
Checking my gmail account at work. It's a very open-plan office and I still feel new enough that I shouldn't be using personal email in work time...

11. Who or what can make you laugh until you're weak?
My friends. I'm very lucky to know a lot of good story tellers.

12. First spring thing?
Bluebells in the UK. Anything that survives the cold in New York.

13. Planning to travel to next?
A roadtrip round Tennessee and Kentucky. Want to come? It's going to take up all my measly holiday allowance, but I'm really looking forward to seeing some of this country, finally.

14. Best thing you ate and drank recently?
A cheeseburger from Royale last night...

15. When did you last get tipsy?
That would be Saturday. I made sangria...

16. Favourite ever film?
I think this might be Wall-E. Although I've only seen it once.

17. Care to share some wisdom?
I had to move all the way over here to relax and learn to be just a little less uptight. If you're insecure and English and you can't get over it (no matter how much you drink) I highly recommend moving to the U.S. Even if you're neither insecure, nor English, I highly recommend living somewhere different to where you grew up.

18. Favourite daydream?
Most of mine revolve around somehow, magically, getting all my favourite people to live closer to wherever I am. I haven't found the perfect place yet, but once I do, and if I win the lottery, I'll be inviting you all over...

Dusty bluebells and other cobwebs of my mind

2009-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

It's been extremely hot in New York and I was beginning to worry we really were going to shoot straight from the depths of winter into air-conditioning-powered summer, but now it's settled into a semi-Spring and the magnolias and cherry blossoms have a chance at lasting more than a week or so... Spring really is the best season of all. NY isn't bad looking this time of year, but I'm not sure it has a patch on the UK. This isn't just the homesickness hormones talking. My dad took some awesome pictures recently and I wanted to share them.

About 17 years ago, my mum went into hospital. She was pregnant with my youngest brother who eventually turned up in early May, but in the meantime we (my dad, my other brother and I) went to visit her (and listen to his baby heartbeat) pretty much every day after school. My mum was in hospital in Chichester, about a 15 minute drive away from home. It was a really odd time in my life, to be honest. We'd been back from the U.S. for just over a year. I'd gone back to middle school with the same people I knew from primary school, but had just passed an entrance exam for a big school in Portsmouth that I'd have to get the train to. I was nearly 11 and all the girls I'd played with at before we had moved to the states were no longer my friends. They'd started talking about boys and stuff, or pretending to at any rate. I remember weeks making endless jigsaws in the hospital with my three-years-younger-brother. I really wasn't sure what to make of the world at all.

Every day, though, on the way to the hospital, we'd drive past miles and miles of these:

Even looking at them as an adult, they make me just feel better about the world.

Finger Food

2009-04-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

I had a cheeseburger yesterday and I shared a portion of fries and a portion of (delicious) mini chorizo sausage rolls. This cheeseburger place is just down the road from the apartment and we probably go there once a week. They're really succulent cheeeseburgers, cooked as requested, served in baskets with lettuce, tomato, a slice of onion and sliced gherkins (which I usually remove).

My only experience with cheeseburgers before I moved here was with the thin, processed, frozen brown rounds that you would get stuck with at barbecues once all the tasty British sausages had run out. A New Zealand (I think) chain of burger joints had just opened in London and they were a rare treat, but I'm pretty sure that if you'd told me I'd eat a cheeseburger nearly every week in 2009 and it would be my favourite meal, I'm not sure I would have believed you. New York has a lot of great burger joints - Corner Bistro and White Horse Tavern are two of the more talked about places - but I'd recommend Royale, our local, over either of those if you're ever around Avenue C.

Anyway, beyond pitching for Royale, there was a point to this post... It occurred to me that I was eating this entire meal (burger, chips and sausage rolls) WITH MY HANDS. Not only were we not served cutlery, I'm not sure there is any cutlery in this bar.

I have come a long way.

Three years ago, my mum came to visit after I'd just moved here. We went out to a pizza restaurant with an American friend and we all ordered pizza. My mum and I set about attacking our slices with our knives and forks. The American followed suit. It wasn't until we'd put our knives and forks down, resting our wrists, having finally sliced through the last of the crusts, that the American casually said, "You know, we usually eat it with our hands." And, sure enough, everyone else in the restaurant was slurping folded slices of pizza from their hands. As I now happily do without even thinking twice.

Things I have learned this week

2009-04-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

--We still have mice. They are now educated enough to spurn cheese (even a good cheddar) and peanut butter, but one succumbed to nutella this week. I can't say I blame it.
--It's still frequently raining and cold but I have made the mental transition to flip flops and I hope never to have to wear a pair of socks until October.
-- If, when leaving your desk of an evening, you accidentally, unawaredly, flick your office-purpose headphones into the half-full (but cold) cup of coffee on your desk, you'll be fortunate enough to discover one ear plug stuck in the cup of stewed, skin-covered coffee the next morning - and it will still work. After you've wrung it out a bit and shaken it about rather.
--It's been over a year since I last went back to the U.K. and almost 3 years since I moved here. I miss home and it hurts. I've never felt like this before. Drinking red wine helps, but, you know, rather impractical as a survival technique on work nights.
--I still have a problematic relationship with the Red Sox (I love most of their team) even though I am still technically a Yankees fan. Oh, and I still don't dare to check in on Pompey's latest results just in case we're about to get relegated.
--I am never going to be Michelin-star chef. I sabotaged some perfectly good salmon fillets with weeks-old cilantro (coriander) pesto yesterday. It was bitter and un-tasty. I must stop dreaming culinary thoughts above my station.
--The guy who works in our local wine shop is my hero. And only partly because he has gold teeth and the shop has a matching gold ceiling.
--I yearn for cheeseburgers. Three years ago, I didn't even know how good a cheeseburger could taste.
--It's still a funny old world, no matter which side of the atlantic you're living on.