HOW TO BE . . . A COUNTRY BUMPKIN (PART II) IN AMERICA

Okay, part II of my new life as a country bumpkin. 

I haven’t taken to wearing dungarees, chewing on straw and belting out Tammy Wynette numbers just yet, but my country living is still in its infancy and there is a lot to learn. 

To be honest, the motivation that led me to seek solace away from New York City was unexpected. As an adult, I’ve lived in cities all my life, in several countries. I love the flexibility that city life offers – of restaurants, night life, people. Coronavirus and lockdown changed all that, and NYC in particular feels less safe. Crime and violence have increased to such an extent, I no longer feel at ease on the streets where I once happily wandered home from my local bar at 4am (always the last order at the food truck en route). Being seated six feet apart from people when dining gives me a sense of isolation that often reduces me to tears. I am very lucky to have work and my health; despite having been sick, I now have the virus antibodies – and yes, I know they don’t necessarily last, so I err on the side of caution. I was just ready for a change of scenery, and one that didn’t involve a trek to the airport for a long flight to the UK or LA and being trapped at Minneapolis airport for eight hours.   

   

I still have my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, but since moving to Beacon, I spend less time in the city. Being in the country brings so many benefits but is not without its stresses, too. So, here’s a follow-up to the last blog, at a time when I am learning how to adapt to this vast change of lifestyle.

1. There are no 24-hour stores in which to buy a pint of milk for my essential morning cup of tea. It is quicker to find a cow and pull on its udders it than wait for Key Foods to open

2. Everyone knows who you are and where you came from within a week. In these isolating times, it’s rather comforting. “Oh, you’re English Jaci,” I get in tones that might mean “Great to meet you”, or “So you’re the nut job we’ve been hearing about”. It seems churlish to correct people on my country of origin, and nobody understands it anyway. I can spend a 45-minute ride to the airport with a taxi driver, painstakingly explaining the geography of the UK, only to arrive at my destination with a parting: “So Wales is the capital of England?” Whaddever.  

3. People are breathtakingly nice here – so much so, that I think they must be bag snatchers, just warming me up for the big SWAG descent. In the city, I take all my belongings to the rest room, just to be on the safe side – the only downer being that the waiter thinks I have left, and I return from the rest room to discover he/she has thrown away my dinner.

4. Unlike most people, I’ve never found NYC that expensive. You have to know where to go, what deals there are to be struck, both spoken and unspoken, and this applies pretty much to every bar and restaurant when you are a regular. By comparison, the country is extortionate. I talked about upstate NY in Part I, but here’s a more detailed breakdown about my visit to Hudson, a lovely town further up the valley, where the cheapest hotel room available was $884.80 – for just two nights! SIX HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX POUNDS. A meal for two of us, with tip, was close on $300, and we didn’t even have a bottle of wine, just a couple of glasses each. I know I am repeating myself, but I’m still in shock. The story is that with the mass exodus from NYC, everyone has put up their prices, although locals tell me it’s always been this way because the assumption is that visiting New Yorkers are the ones with the dosh to throw around.

5. Hiking. Everyone’s a bloody hiker. I’m not. I walk a lot, usually miles a day, but I am not going to head off into the hills in a pair of worn leather boots, nursing a water bottle. Neither am I desperate to hear anyone’s tales of having done that. Unless I can see a Marriott by standing on a small box, I have no interest in the prospect of being trapped on a mountainside, away from civilisation and having to drink my own urine until the rescue services arrive.

6. Alcohol in my local wine shop is close on double the price of what I pay in NYC, where I have 15% off at my local store, Grand Cru, and 30% off on the delivery order I make online with Union Square Wines. The latter recently did a deal in which they offered free delivery anywhere in New York State. I ordered so much to be sent to Beacon, they must have thought all their Christmases had come at once. The number of boxes in my apartment also made it look as if all my Christmases had come at once. All 61 of them.

7. Conductors on the Metro North line I take to and from Grand Central Station are so polite and friendly, I think they must be in league with the SWAG snatchers. When I show them my barcoded ticket on my iPhone, I expect them to whip it from my hand and jump from the moving train, leaping for joy at their latest stash.

8. Restaurant staff are equally polite. After just one visit to my local Italian, Brothers Trattoria, I was greeted like a long lost relative – “JACI! MY FRIEND!” – and even though neither of the brothers is Italian, I greet them with the enthusiasm of Don Corleone after a successful hitjob. 

9. The Hudson Valley continues to astound me with its beauty and, with fall upon us, the changing colour of the leaves warms my heart at what is and has always been, my favourite season.

10. Where do I celebrate my birthday next month? That’s the big question. Most of my friends are in the city, but my new local, the Roosevelt Bar in Hudson Valley Food Hall is such a joy, I’m tempted to celebrate in the country. Country bumpkin or city girl? Decisions, decisions. 

HOW TO BE . . . A COUNTRY BUMPKIN (PART I) IN AMERICA

So, before I upset people from rural areas who might assume I am calling them unsophisticated and stupid, I am not. I have met dozens of unsophisticated and stupid people in the many cities in which I’ve lived or visited the world over; I grew up in the countryside (actually, bad example: the headmaster at my junior school told me that unless you were wearing glasses by the age of seven, you were destined to be one of life’s failures. I started wearing them at 50, you four-eyed twat).

Interestingly, 'bumpkin' was originally the name that the English had for the Dutch, whom they portrayed as small, comic and tubby. Now, that sounds far more accurate, at least in my case. Despite my having lost 10lbs in weight during lockdown, I still have quite a round middle, I am still only five feet tall, and I am still hilarious (although I suspect the phrase means being laughed at, rather than with. That’s ok, poke fun at me at your peril; my pen really is mightier than your sword will ever be, you lily-livered lummox – if you just had to Google lummox, you really need to get thee to a sword-sharpener, pronto).

Under normal circumstances, I’m not very good being surrounded by greenery; even the lettuce section in a supermarket has me running for cover behind the mushrooms. I love the Seine and the Hudson that are the heart of Paris and New York City, respectively, and have now lived for equal amounts of time in both (seven years – and still counting, in the case of NYC). I crave late nights, meeting people from out of town (bumpkins), and having the widest choice in food, drink and ambience. In essence, I like to live life in a Lights, Camera, Action kind of way (I have to be the star, by the way; back of the queue, bumpkins).

Coronavirus and subsequent lockdown changed all that. Initially the epicenter (US spelling with that word now – live with it) of the virus, the state of New York was brought under control by stringent measures that, although tough, were largely adhered to and pushed the state, in particular the City, right down to the bottom of the infection and death rate chart.

But the civil unrest that came following the death of George Floyd has made the City feel less safe; also, hotels being utilised to house the homeless brought a whole new set of problems. I have utmost sympathy with the dispossessed and disenfranchised in any society, but these hotels have become, in some part, safe havens for people who, at night, go out to hound diners forced to eat outdoors, or anyone just out for an evening stroll. Times Square is a hideous theatre of hypodermic syringes. I’ve been harassed for money and have been verbally attacked for being white (never small, comic and tubby, funnily enough).

So, I started to look for an escape in upstate NY – a place I did not know well, having visited the smallish city of Beacon just three times. I returned to take another look in July. Indoor dining had already resumed (NYC doesn’t get it until Wednesday this week, and even then, at only 25% capacity), people largely obeyed the compulsory wearing of masks, and life had returned to some semblance of normality.  

I decided to split my time between NYC and Beacon. I’ve spent the past 25 years living in at least two places at the same time and while I know it’s an extravagance, I prefer to spend my money on that rather than on clothes, shoes, et al. I am not good staying in hotels, where loneliness consumes me, and the number of people who die in hotel rooms, either by their own hand or by accident is never a surprise to me.

I need my nest . . . well, nests . . . and so installed myself in Beacon, in two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment (much cheaper than my place in NYC and $1700pm cheaper – though not so cheap when you decide you need both). I have a balcony with a view of the Hudson, the same as I have in Manhattan, and am slowly adjusting to the pace of country life.

My life has changed in oh, so many ways, and this is going to take a follow-up blog to be able to tell you how. But let’s start here, with just a few thoughts about my new country life.

1. There are no single, successful, heterosexual men looking for a Dutch-like small, comic and tubby woman of a certain age, just as there were none in NYC, Paris, Wales, London, Marbella, Los Angeles. I am fast running out of continents and have now, officially, given up.

2. Why would I go apple picking? There is a thing called a supermarket, where they wrap fruit in bags for you, thereby allowing you more time to spend at the bar not picking apples. And I hate apples. Well, maybe hate is too strong, but they seem to take a lot of effort: peeling, getting the maggots out, de-coring them. It’s why I never got into drugs. How can anyone be arsed to go through the palaver of rolling, sucking, injecting, or whatever they do? A ring-pull on a can of Stella is as much work as I ever want to put in of an evening.

3. I am even more of an All You Can Eat Buffet for insects in the country than I am in the City. In NYC, mosquitoes munch on my ankles; in the country, the mosquitoes can’t get near because of the fleas that seem to have a lease on everything if it stands still long enough.

4. Everything in the country is stupidly expensive, with upstate NY taking advantage of the mass exodus from the City and charging people stupid money: the cheapest hotel in Hudson last weekend came in at $484.80 – for one night. Dinner was between $200-$300 for two, with just a couple of glasses of wine, not even a bottle.

5. Enjoyed train journey back to the City.

More thoughts to follow in Part II. Right now, too busy peeling apples.

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TO BE . . . A SURVIVOR IN AMERICA

This has not been a good week. 

I know that so many have it far worse, especially the sick and those who have not been able to be with loved ones at the end of their lives. And yes, I have work, my health and a roof over my head. But I live alone and there are days when the isolation feels unbearable.

   

It’s not just to do with being alone, though. I spend most of my life by myself and work from home; the major difficulty is the onslaught of news – or, rather, no news other than Covid-related news, or the rants of a president who cares more about self-promotion and fighting Twitter instead of the virus.

   

It’s at times like this I have to remind myself why I decided to come to the USA in 2008. It was November 4^th, the eve of my 50^th birthday and I stood in a bar, crying in front of a TV screen as I watched the news: Barack Obama, a black man, had been voted President of the United States. Tears of joy. I wanted to be part of history; to be in what seemed like a progressive country that appeared to have made steps forward in fighting its history of devastating racism.

   

Fast forward to November 8^th 2016. I am standing in Mr Biggs Bar and Grill in Hell’s Kitchen in NYC. I am watching a TV screen as the votes of each state come through. And when Hillary Clinton concedes defeat to Donald Trump, I cry again. Tears of disbelief. Of despair. I wake the next morning and my first thought is that I have awoken from a bad dream. My heart is so heavy, it has to be coaxed out of bed. I finally drag it into submission, acknowledging that whatever my personal opinions, Trump got the gig. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe he will be surrounded by experts and advisers who truly will, in the words of the campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.

   

Today, my body feels barely able to withhold the weight of my heart.

   

In isolation, I have to keep reminding myself of the greatness I have discovered here in spite of the president, not because of. There is a range of talent - in music, theatre, all the arts, that is truly breath-taking on a daily basis. In New York City, and in particular my area, Hell’s Kitchen, there is a sense of community that I have rarely found in one of the many countries in which I’ve lived. My seven years in Paris probably comes closest; elsewhere, loneliness has invariably been my doubles partner.

   

The beauty all around me is still apparent: the sunsets I see over the Hudson from my apartment window every night continue to fill me with wonder and remind me that the sun will rise again; the Midas touch that alights upon the glory of Central Park in the fall will soon be there.

   

And the people will come back, too. Released from incarceration, NY will come back stronger because, as the Governor of NY state Andrew Cuomo says, we are #NYTough, #NYStrong, #NYSmart; nowhere is this more true than in New York City, a place that has entered my soul; its presence there, and my feeling a part of it in the shadow of something much bigger than anything of us, is what helps me get by.

   

There is currently a level of toxicity in our lives at a time that should be uniting us; where leadership should be strong, it has been petulant and weak, ignorant and arrogant.

   

I have been reminded of King Lear and, while some believe the president does not deserve the accolade of being a Shakespearean tragic hero, to me there are many comparisons that bear examination.

   

Why do bad things happen to Lear? Because he is easily flattered and doesn’t recognise true, honest love and loyalty when he sees it. He descends into madness because of the bad things that subsequently happen to him; and then, because of his madness, he puts into action even worse things that are eventually his downfall. Lear has many flaws – arrogance, ignorance, lack of judgment, and each contributes to the other; he has narcissistic personality disorder. To me, it all sounds very familiar – although the president would probably be flattered at being compared to a king. That’s ego for you.

   

King Lear was apparently written when Shakespeare was in lockdown during the plague of 1606, when all the theatres were closed. It would be nice to think, at this time, with Broadway dark and looking unlikely to reopen anytime soon, that playwrights are busy scribbling away the next generation’s masterpieces.

   

Every time I read or hear an Obama pronouncement, it still fills me with hope. His presidency was not without its problems, but his humanity and ability to lead in times of crisis shines through - still. I miss him. Especially in a week like this one when I feel the shutters of hope in so many areas of life have come down.

   

There is an election coming up in November; I am not optimistic about the result, and the thought of another administration under this president is truly distressing. Just four words come to mind, the final ones from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: “The horror! The horror!”

   

CNN’s Don Lemon said this week that there are two viruses in America – Covid-19 and racism, and the street riots have been labelled not protests, but an uprising.

   

This is a time of disturbing unrest and it’s not being helped by a man purporting to be a leader throwing his toys out of the pram when Twitter picks him up on peddling misinformation. His response? A threat to close them down for threatening his free speech. Does he really not see the irony?

   

And then they picked him up on his glorifying violence by threatening to send in the guns to shoot the raiders and looters protesting the tragic, unnecessary and despicable murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

How does this calm an already incendiary situation? Small wonder the black population of America is angry. Enough is enough.

   

I can only repeat: The horror! The horror!

  

  

  

    

   

        

  

   

  

  

HOW TO BE . . . STRESSED IN AMERICA

Who loses an oven glove in a pandemic? 

Is there anyone who gives two figs about losing an oven glove in a pandemic? But there is something very lonely about a single hand; I’ve never even like one-armed bandit machines, because they seem like amputees.

    

My oven glove’s sister is 16 x 6 inches, black, and, until today, I would have said as unlikely to be lost as a haystack in a hayloft.

   

And yet, five minutes ago, when I opened the kitchen drawer where both gloves have lived for a year, the identical twin sat silently, slightly flour-stained, bemoaning the loss of its sibling. How can this have happened?

   

One of the good things to have transpired from self-isolation (and there have been, surprisingly, a lot of positives) is that I can no longer lose my iPhone. I can mislay it, certainly, and have done, many times, but it always turns up – under the duvet, on the toilet floor, in the fridge – because I haven’t been anywhere that I have to phone at 2am, begging the few staff left to track down the dodgy guy I am convinced has it and who was sitting at the end of the bar (this actually happened and I successfully retrieved it, Poirot style, by the way).

   

My keys, phone and jacket are now always in my apartment, and the absence of thieving venues has made my life considerably less stressful. Ovenglovegate has changed all that.

   

Last year, when I packed up my belongings from Los Angeles, after a brief attempt at being bi-coastal, I moved back to New York and had to make major decisions about what to take. I remember the oven gloves very specifically. Packing up my kitchen stuff, I thought: what person, in their right mind, keeps two pairs of oven gloves, one of which they have never used? I gave one pair away. 

The black ones I kept (I cannot tell you how difficult it was to decide; it was the culinary equivalent of Sophie’s Choice) and they have served me well ever since; given how much cooking I am doing during the current crisis, I really need them. Only if I lost an arm would one glove be of any use and I am now at a loss as to how to solve the mystery.

   

I’ve cleaned out and reorganised my fridge/freezer (not there), tidied my china cupboards (not there), double checked the washing machine and dryer (not there). My apartment is under 650sq ft, so there really are very few places it can have gone. I know I won’t have thrown it out because the bin I keep under the sink is barely bigger than the glove and I would definitely have noticed it amongst the potato peelings (okay, wine bottles, but you get my drift).

   

In the large scale of things at present, it’s not important, I know. I mean, it’s not like I’ve had a ransom note asking for money, or an ear sent in the post. I’ve even become quite adept at lifting dishes with one hand, a bit like last year when I broke my humerus and adapted quickly to opening wine bottles with my knees and one hand (and we’re talking corks, not screw-tops; yes, I’m that good). 

But I’m someone who knows, and who likes to know, where everything is in my kitchen, and I thought that my newly acquired butcher’s block unit that makes my pots and pans more accessible, had changed my life. It has, and I love it; but now the glove has gone. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

   

Was God angry because I had shown so much pleasure in the acquisition of a material object? Quite frankly, he could have cut me some slack. I’ve been banging on long enough about His great sunrises and sunsets and how much joy we should take in nature; was it really too much to ask that He spare me an oven glove for my troubles?

   

As I write this, I am looking over the Hudson at a glorious sunset and, out of spite, I’m not going to give it any publicity; I can be mean like that, God. If you return my oven glove, I might reconsider.

   

LIVE UPDATE: As I am writing (honestly!), I suddenly think that maybe I inadvertently put the second glove in one of the lower cupboards when I was reorganising my plastic and glass sections (come on, people; these are stressful times). 

Lo and behold! There’s glove number two! 

I am happy beyond belief. I’m like Joseph opening his technicolour dream coat (before his brothers threw him into the pit, obviously).

   

You’re still not forgiven though, God. 

The gloves are off. 

Both of them.

    

  

  

HOW TO BE . . . STRONG IN AMERICA

“We’re going to get through this because we are New York.”

   

It’s the message that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been stressing from the start. Despite the state being at the epicentre of the Coronavirus crisis, despite the strict self-distancing and almost complete lockdown, there is a resilience and strength at the heart of this place, and in particular the city, that is its spiritual vaccine.

   

New York suffered the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001, Hurricane Sandy (which hit 24 states in all) in 2012, and both events continue to be referenced in relation to today’s pandemic. They remind us of New York’s ability to fight back: to look defeat in the eyes and come back more glorious than before. Yes, I know it sounds melodramatic, but if there is one thing getting me through, above everything else, in this ongoing crisis, it’s a strange feeling that I am going through it with New York holding my hand. I am in New York City (the borough of Manhattan), the epicentre of the epicentre – and at the moment, there is nowhere else I would rather be.

   

The Governor has constantly reminded those wishing to flout the rules and ignore guidelines that “It’s not about you”. In my neighbourhood, Hell’s Kitchen, I am stunned on a daily basis by the many acts of kindness and offers of support, both to individuals and businesses struggling to stay afloat. I am awestruck by the performers, out of work overnight, continuing to share their phenomenal talents with the online audience, for no reward whatsoever; the restaurants and bars stepping up to the mark with delivery services and coming up with ever more ingenious ways to serve an increasingly desperate populace.

   

In a press briefing last week, Cuomo was visibly moved when talking about people who surprised him on a daily basis – in particular, an elderly man (with a sick wife) who had sent him a spare mask for a doctor or nurse who might need it. Here, there really is a feeling that we are all in this together and we will get through it. Yes, because we are New York; but also, there is just something about this place that brings out the best in people.

   

I’ve been living here for six years now and, while, obviously not a born and bred New Yorker, I have an affinity with it in my heart that in the past I felt only for Paris (I still have that affinity, too; my soul is a tale of two cities). I have never felt lonely here in the way I did when I lived in London or Cardiff in the UK; I was never lonely in Paris, either (well, apart from when I was with someone, but that’s a whole other story).

   

There are a lot of people really struggling, I know; I, too, have my off days – strangely, when I am most in contact with people and then we say goodbye online; it feels like the sun going down and a sudden chill in the air after a glorious day at the beach. But then I think how lucky I am to have such friends with whom I share so much laughter on FaceTime or Zoom; the many things I am learning from galleries opening up their wares; the opera, concerts and theatre productions I am so enjoying that, in real time, I would have to take out a bank loan to attend.

   

Even with all this, I know that many are desperately missing the physicality of going out and experiencing everything for real, and it’s set me pondering what makes one person able to cope more than another in these circumstances. I stress I can speak only for myself in this regard, but today I’ve been thinking that the single, most influential and incredible thing in my entire life that is getting me through this is: my parents.

   

My dad died over 30 years ago, my mum last year. I have one brother, Nigel, and we have always been very close. He is smart, incredibly funny, as competitive as I am (I’ve never won a chess game with him; but then I beat him on the rifle range. Just saying), and a really kind, sensitive person who married an equally wonderful woman in my dear sister-in-law, Kim.

   

Nigel and I had a happy, secure childhood and, while we have both endured difficulties in adult life (as everyone does), we have come through them stronger the other end.

   

My mother did not go to university until the age of 50, when she became a social worker and, subsequently, a play therapist. When she died, it was heartrending to receive correspondence from many whose lives she had touched, greatly improved and, in some cases, I was told, saved.

   

Dad gained many qualifications as a mechanical engineer but lost his business during the UK’s economic crisis and Three-Day Week of 1973-4. Both Mum and Dad worked so hard to be able to hang on to the house for which they had worked so hard. I remember tensions at home while I was trying to study, and at times I thought I would not be able to stand anymore and even thought about leaving school, getting a job and moving into a bedsit. I was 16.

   

But they got through it. Mum did so many things to make extra money including, at one point, selling wigs. I remember her heartache when the operation went bust and the owner did a runner because he turned out to have a history as the Kray Brothers’ “collector”, whatever that was. Mum lost £84, a small fortune in those days, but the leftover wigs kept us winning top prizes in fancy dress fêtes for years.

   

Both my parents had a strong work ethic, which both Nigel and I inherited; but I think we also inherited – partly through blood, partly through observation – a stoicism that is proving invaluable at present.

   

Nigel is a teacher and loves his job, but has got on with the business at hand, continuing to do his lessons online, and doing more cooking (he happens to be very good at it. Better than he is on the rifle range, anyway. Did I mention that?). I am lucky in that I am used to working from home, but, being a sociable creature, of course miss human contact and events. It may be a cliché to say: “It is what it is” - but is no less true for being so. I just keep hanging on to Rilke: “No feeling is final” (Hmmm. Maybe the deathbed one is, but I'll come back to that in a couple of decades).

   

I think what I learned from Mum and Dad is that when something is out of your control, as this pandemic clearly is, the thing to do is focus on what you can control: one step at a time. I am looking after my health, my emotional well-being, and giving my soul some much needed cultural nourishment. 

Truly, my cup runneth over.

   

And so, today, I give thanks for the strength that is my inheritance; and the strength of a city that, even when it is sleeping, still shines.