Damn shame that Thomas says it will be repossessed by the end of February. Can we start a rescue fund?
Tuesday, January 29
A CAR CALLED REPOSSESSION
Our beloved Thomas Tyler arrived at Hogsback in the car you see below. It's not just any car: it's a Porsche; no, wait, it's a Merc; wrong again - it's a BMW 323i something. The most important thing is that Thomas looks spectacular in it. So do we, don't you think: Chip, Jerm, Anthea and I...
Damn shame that Thomas says it will be repossessed by the end of February. Can we start a rescue fund?
Damn shame that Thomas says it will be repossessed by the end of February. Can we start a rescue fund?
WHEN I MISS YOU
This is what I do when I miss you: I look at photographs. I lost all my Vermaaklikheid and Hogsback pics when my laptop was stolen (when I get upset about that, I think of Bea who lost two laptops in one theft), but Debra gave me all her pics, and I found someone's pics of Janine's surprise party on a memory stick that does not belong to me. I think it's labelled "Futuregrowth", and whoever is its rightful owner can claim it back.
So, here are some pics of the brilliant party Chip and Jerm threw on December 31. I wish I could have that party over again.
There's more on the way; unfortunately this post is competing with the Florida primary's results coming in. My favourite, Mrs Clinton, is beating Barack Obama to a pulp: with 91% of the votes counted, she's 17% ahead. Don't get me wrong - I think Obama is completely fantastic. But he's still a ghost in his own story. She, on the other hand, may wail like a banshee sometimes, but she's brilliant. The frightening prospect is of that unspeakably dull John McCain actually having to campaign. Three months of his face on TV and in the newspapers cannot be contemplated. And he is unstoppable, even though he hasn't won even 40% of the Republican primaries.
So, here are some pics of the brilliant party Chip and Jerm threw on December 31. I wish I could have that party over again.
There's more on the way; unfortunately this post is competing with the Florida primary's results coming in. My favourite, Mrs Clinton, is beating Barack Obama to a pulp: with 91% of the votes counted, she's 17% ahead. Don't get me wrong - I think Obama is completely fantastic. But he's still a ghost in his own story. She, on the other hand, may wail like a banshee sometimes, but she's brilliant. The frightening prospect is of that unspeakably dull John McCain actually having to campaign. Three months of his face on TV and in the newspapers cannot be contemplated. And he is unstoppable, even though he hasn't won even 40% of the Republican primaries.
Monday, January 28
GOD BLESS OUR HOME(S)
Jonny’s connection, Ben Carton (he was the seriously attractive man who spoke American at our farewell brunch), arranged for us to squat in his mother’s apartment on the Upper West Side until the end of February. Let’s just say that we live in remarkable turn-of-the-century (the nineteenth, that is) splendour. Ben’s father was an avant-garde abstract painter, who worked in Picasso’s Paris studio for five years after the Second World War, and there are three or four Picassos in the apartment, all done specially for Carton père.
The apartment building, called The Belnord, is a flagship building on the west side of Central Park, and is only three blocks away from it, in line with the southern end of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. About 30% of it is rent-controlled, and apartments not subject to this most civilised of city laws go for about $17 000 a month.
The Belnord, seen from the corner of Broadway and West 86th Street
The Belnord's courtyard. In New York, one can be anything. Sometimes I am Mrs Astor...
(Good God, I’ve just spotted the most obese human being five feet away in the Starbucks. I’ll avert mine eyes… Fittingly, he’s sitting at the table reserved for disabled people. As Charlotte said about Jackie May’s belly the day before Georgia was born: “You could have had a cheese-and-wine party on that stomach.”)
On the first Sunday after we arrived, we took the tube/metro/underground (what do they call it here? “Subway” refers to a take-away chain, but I think that is indeed what they call it) to Brooklyn to start house hunting. We had more or less decided in advance that we wouldn’t be able to afford to live on Manhattan and have space for guests, so Brooklyn it was going to be.
We started off in Crown Heights and weaved our way through Bedford-Stuyvesant towards Park Slope. We were both really polite about the first two neighbourhoods (which were ghastly) – I suppose because we thought there was a real chance that we would have to make a life there. The streets were wide and the buildings low and bleak – a bit like East Berlin in 1992 – extremely unattractive.
By the time we got to Grand Army Plaza at the edge of Park Slope I knew there was no way I could live in any other area. And then Claire Wright and Graeme Simpson came to the rescue.
597 Carroll Street Apartment 1, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215
The mother of a classmate of Jake Simpson’s advertised a floor in their house, just among the parents in Jake’s class, and we went to look at it on the same day we trawled through those depressing working-class neighbourhoods. It was not our first choice because it has only one-and-a-half bedrooms, but it is in Park Slope, three blocks from the park and completely renovated (a “gut renovation” they call it here); also, two days later we saw four hideous apartments that were all more expensive than the one that’s now ours, so we decided to bite the bullet and take it. It’s about two streets from Graeme and Claire, which is another plus.
At least we had the pleasure of meeting Larry, the biggest caricature of the gross estate agent I have ever come across, who took us to see the first three apartments. He drives a huge Chrysler something, with his pudgy diamond-ringed hand flat against the steering wheel. He’s short, with thinning grey hair and a synthetic jacket that peels at the collar. He shouts into three mobiles at the same time, and is a rude bastard to all his callers.
“What’s a ‘walkthrough’?” I ask.
“We talk outside. I meet you at the car. I’ll show you a walkthrough,” is his response.
Swine. I’m so pleased we didn’t have to rent anything through him. I had to give him the evil eye right at the beginning already, just to get him remotely in line. And that line was bloody crooked.
597 Carroll Street. Our apartment is the one that should be called "ground floor", but because everything is higher and bigger and better in America, it's on the first floor
The apartment building, called The Belnord, is a flagship building on the west side of Central Park, and is only three blocks away from it, in line with the southern end of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. About 30% of it is rent-controlled, and apartments not subject to this most civilised of city laws go for about $17 000 a month.
The Belnord, seen from the corner of Broadway and West 86th Street
The Belnord's courtyard. In New York, one can be anything. Sometimes I am Mrs Astor...(Good God, I’ve just spotted the most obese human being five feet away in the Starbucks. I’ll avert mine eyes… Fittingly, he’s sitting at the table reserved for disabled people. As Charlotte said about Jackie May’s belly the day before Georgia was born: “You could have had a cheese-and-wine party on that stomach.”)
On the first Sunday after we arrived, we took the tube/metro/underground (what do they call it here? “Subway” refers to a take-away chain, but I think that is indeed what they call it) to Brooklyn to start house hunting. We had more or less decided in advance that we wouldn’t be able to afford to live on Manhattan and have space for guests, so Brooklyn it was going to be.
We started off in Crown Heights and weaved our way through Bedford-Stuyvesant towards Park Slope. We were both really polite about the first two neighbourhoods (which were ghastly) – I suppose because we thought there was a real chance that we would have to make a life there. The streets were wide and the buildings low and bleak – a bit like East Berlin in 1992 – extremely unattractive.
By the time we got to Grand Army Plaza at the edge of Park Slope I knew there was no way I could live in any other area. And then Claire Wright and Graeme Simpson came to the rescue.
597 Carroll Street Apartment 1, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215
The mother of a classmate of Jake Simpson’s advertised a floor in their house, just among the parents in Jake’s class, and we went to look at it on the same day we trawled through those depressing working-class neighbourhoods. It was not our first choice because it has only one-and-a-half bedrooms, but it is in Park Slope, three blocks from the park and completely renovated (a “gut renovation” they call it here); also, two days later we saw four hideous apartments that were all more expensive than the one that’s now ours, so we decided to bite the bullet and take it. It’s about two streets from Graeme and Claire, which is another plus.
At least we had the pleasure of meeting Larry, the biggest caricature of the gross estate agent I have ever come across, who took us to see the first three apartments. He drives a huge Chrysler something, with his pudgy diamond-ringed hand flat against the steering wheel. He’s short, with thinning grey hair and a synthetic jacket that peels at the collar. He shouts into three mobiles at the same time, and is a rude bastard to all his callers.
“What’s a ‘walkthrough’?” I ask.
“We talk outside. I meet you at the car. I’ll show you a walkthrough,” is his response.
Swine. I’m so pleased we didn’t have to rent anything through him. I had to give him the evil eye right at the beginning already, just to get him remotely in line. And that line was bloody crooked.
597 Carroll Street. Our apartment is the one that should be called "ground floor", but because everything is higher and bigger and better in America, it's on the first floorHOW TO ARRIVE IN NEW YORK
Friday, 11 January: We took a cab from JFK, and, just before we entered Manhattan, it had a flat. The driver did not even consider pulling over on the expressway, so, with the wheel’s rim grinding on the tarmac, we limped along until we got to 1st Avenue, in East Harlem. The cab company’s maintenance vehicle was summoned, and Jonny and I decamped to a Dunkin’ Donut. Tarek, the Egyptian manager, lit up like one of those Christmas trees that now litter the city pavements would have less than a month ago when we told him, no, we’re not from England (the default assumption here the moment we open our mouths), and instantly started talking soccer. I handed over to Jonny. Back at our fixed cab, the driver also wanted to know where we were from. “2010!” he shouts, “2010! I want to see you in South Africa in 2010!”
I am so pleased not all Americans know about soccer. My conversational skills would have had no exercise.
I am so pleased not all Americans know about soccer. My conversational skills would have had no exercise.
THE FAREWELL BURGLARY
On Monday, 7 January I went to bed at 3am after spending the entire day packing – the movers were due to arrive at 10am. Jonny had already been asleep for hours, so I went to sleep on the couch in the lounge.
When I walked into my study at 7.45am, I immediately noticed that my laptop was gone. So were my wallet and my father’s wedding ring, which I had taken to my study to pack. What transpired over the next hour or so is that someone extremely enterprising and agile used a fishing rod to pull a plastic bag over the security camera on the west side of our building, climbed up the drainpipe to the third floor and got into my study through an open bathroom window.
I am trying to resign myself to this most fitting of Joburg farewells. Laurice Taitz reckons losing my laptop is “liberating”. In retrospect I think she may have a point.
When I walked into my study at 7.45am, I immediately noticed that my laptop was gone. So were my wallet and my father’s wedding ring, which I had taken to my study to pack. What transpired over the next hour or so is that someone extremely enterprising and agile used a fishing rod to pull a plastic bag over the security camera on the west side of our building, climbed up the drainpipe to the third floor and got into my study through an open bathroom window.
I am trying to resign myself to this most fitting of Joburg farewells. Laurice Taitz reckons losing my laptop is “liberating”. In retrospect I think she may have a point.
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