STOOP SALE

DAVID and Monika had a stoop sale today because he's moving out of the Brooklyn Heights apartment where he's lived for the last year. Being them, it was a very chic sale. Bea's friend, Libby, came as well, and afterwards we cycled with her through Dumbo and Red Hook and had lemonade and key-lime pie at Steve's. Great day.

Libby, David, Monika and Jonny in Schermerhorn Street

From below the Brooklyn Bridge

HAS FACEBOOK HIJACKED THIS BLOG?

I HAVEN'T posted anything here since March; all my secrets and opinions are divulged on Facebook these days. So, there's a lot of catch-up to do, and photos and videos to post. Will get onto it.

CARROLL STREET SNOW

I KNOW this blog contains an inordinate number of references to the weather. I blame my mother for my obsession. But this morning I don't feel too self-conscious about posting a small video of our street, filmed from the stoop at about 6.30am. Everything is covered in about 12 inches of powder; the schools have closed for the day because "near white-out" conditions are forecast for later. It's 9.30am now, and it's still coming down heavily. An e-mail earlier told us to use our own judgment when deciding whether to go to the office or stay at home.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN PHILADELPHIA

WE spent Christmas Day with Claire's family in Philadelphia. On our way back, we drove past the lights put up by residents around 86th Street in Brooklyn.

CHRISTMAS EVE EGGNOG AT MINA & DAYTON'S

MINA Jones and Dayton Clark without doubt are the best landlords we've ever had. And Mina's eggnog was as good as the batch Sunny von Bulow always had at hand in Reversal of Fortune. Their sons, Matteo and Isaio, and their lovely dog, Mimi, are also here.

P.D.T. HOW OLD I AM

Saturday, 7 February: Until this morning, my birthday yesterday was a blur. Late Thursday evening I went out with David Jammy and that wonderful girlfriend of his, Monika Wagenberg. David was intent on getting us into a bar called P.D.T. (they make one swear a non-breakable blood oath not to divulge what it stands for), but we were not among the chosen. Trying to plant one’s butt on a stool at its copper-topped bar counter involves visiting a small fast-food place called Crif Dogs, on St Mark's Place in the East Village, where the staff point you to a wood-panelled vintage phone booth with a white house phone. You press the button on the phone and Miss Chastity Lovely, tall and gorgeous, opens a secret door in the wall of the phone booth. "I am so sorry, but we have absolutely no space available. Maybe I'll have a table in the next hour and a half. Or next week, perhaps?" You crane to see behind her (not an easy thing because she's got a swimmer's shoulders) and there are at least two empty banquettes. David opened his charm tap but it slid off her like a mink coat from bare skin. He tried to convince her that, because I’m so terribly old, I might die of the shock I’d suffer if I had to enter a new year in, oh, say, the Odessa Café. Which is exactly where we celebrated my birthday. Miss Lovely eventually phoned and we had early-morning cocktails at P.D.T. (mine was delicious, even if by now I have entirely forgotten what was in it), and David had a hot dog that arrived via a secret service hatch. Eventually it was very late and it had all been a bit too much, so in the cab home David and I competed to explain to Monika what lovely friends we have in Joburg, and how they adore us so much, and how long we have known them, and where we met each one the first time, and how much we love them, and how much they will love her. A fine, fine birthday.

TED HAGGARD'S POOR WIFE

IT really always is the wife who suffers. Last year it was New York governor Eliot Spitzer's wife, Silda, who had to stand at his side at press conference after press conference, pale and haggard-looking, listening to him confess to visiting prostitutes all over Washington. Now it is Gayle Haggard who has to go on Larry King and every single TV network to stand by her man, Ted, the founder of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, who has had to admit buying crystal meth from a male prostitute and to soliciting men for sex. Here he is on Larry King again, saying he still has "sexual thoughts" about other men and admitting to "sexual immorality" with a male prostitute. But, believe it or not, he is just not homosexual, and Gayle has to suffer the indignity of describing her great sex life with Ted.

His first therapist, Ted says, told him, "You are a heterosexual with homosexual attachments." His current counsellor calls it "homosexual complications". "I don't think these boxes work for me," he self-analyses. "I have some thoughts and processes in my life that just don't fit into boxes. And today I am 100% satisfied with my relationship with my wife."

Ted says he's "over the hump". He's not thought of men, really, for, what, almost a year now? And the Scriptures have really come alive for him during this period of his crisis. (In Ted's church, those Scriptures will, of course, condemn him to eternal hell for practising homosexuality.)

Can't Gayle just give Ted up as a bad job? She tells Larry King, "I really do love this man. He's more than the complications and flaws that he's committed. To restore honour to our children, the best thing I could do is to restore honour to their father. Jesus teaches us to forgive 70 times 7." So what does this mean? Ted can solicit another 68 times 7 men before she gives up on him?

Of course, there is the wonderful irony and schadenfreude of seeing this nationwide spiritual hero, the leader of the 30-million-strong National Association of Evangelicals, who has spoken out against homosexuality (but whose church has a comparatively tolerant attitude to homosexuality and supports civil unions for gays and lesbians), go down for something he has so consistently called "wrong" in his sermons.

Here's Ted bashing homosexuality.

ELEVENSES

JACKIE MAY and I have decided to revive an important tradition that has lately suffered terrible neglect: Elevenses. Winnie the Pooh did it (although he preferred honey or bread with condensed milk); Paddington Bear did it; and so did those brave hobbits. Jackie and I, however, follow in the bold steps of Herman Wouk's Don't Stop The Carnival, substituting Johnnie Walker Red with Stolichnaya vodka, but still planning to get rowdy by lunchtime.

We did question the appropiateness of vodka at 11am, and here are the reasons why I eventually opened the freezer door: Jackie has been blogging and writing non-stop (hardly getting out of her pyjamas, as the photo above shows); I have a slipped disk and am in considerable pain, but have a deadline; Jackie misses her children and husband, and therefore has a sore heart; then there is the general soppiness about being in a country that feels really good right now; and then, of course, as always, we feel our youth slip out of our grasp, fading ever so slightly. There is only one remedy for this: Elevenses.

DOGMATIC SHOPPING

Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times on Saturday, ends her column: "We’re trading a dogmatic president for one who’s shopping for a dog. It feels good."

JACKIE MAY

JACKIE arrived in Washington for the inauguration right in the middle of frigid weather. But she's out there, yesterday waiting at Union Station in Washington for the Obama Express to complete its journey, and today at the concert at Lincoln Memorial. Obama is expected to evoke Lincoln, the Number One historical symbol at the moment, in a speech at the concert: come together, all people, and sacrifice.

On Wednesday Jackie comes to New York. Can't wait.

Read Jackie's blog on her visit.

Here's a pic taken from our stoop this morning...

JOBURG FOR BARACK (4)

AND here is a final pic, this time taken by Anna Claude Bailey.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (3)

MY jealousy of the party at the Troyeville Hotel would have known no end if it wasn't for New York exploding with relief and joy on Tuesday night. Around the corner from our house is a spectacular bar, called Union Hall, and everybody who had watched the election returns there spilled onto the street after Obama's acceptance speech. The neighbourhood caught on in a flash, and a crowd of about a thousand people, dogs, children, the inevitable man with an aviary on his shoulder, firemen, the waste-removal workers and the police gathered to hang from lamp posts, stand on one another's shoulders and form prayer circles to shout: "Yes, we can!" and "USA! USA!" Graeme Simpson and I met each other for a cigarette at the corner to watch, and the rather wonderful Park Slope police simply parked their cars across the street to block off traffic. There was no way they were going to try to break up the party.

Here is a selection of Mikhael Subotzky's pics from the Troyeville. Looking at them I have to believe all those stories that are doing the rounds here about women at the Democratic National Convention trying to rip Obama's shirt from his pants.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (2)

JOBURG FOR BARACK

SARAH PALIN: "THAT COUNTRY, AFRICA"

THE Daily Beast relays a Fox News report that says McCain's Hail Mary thought Africa was a country, not a continent consisting of quite a number of states. Here's a clip about that gem of knowledge; it also holds out the promise of many more stories to come that will demonstrate the depth of her ignorance.

DONNA BRAZILE

I'VE followed Donna Brazil's contributions to CNN throughout this year, and she's become about my most favourite person on TV (she's a Democratic Party strategist, and ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000). CNN just showed a clip of her talking about what it meant to her to vote this morning; what it meant to realise that what her grandparents told her about being anything in America was actually true. For me that's one of the best things about having been able to watch this election campaign: how it energised people who have felt themselves politically marginalised for so many decades. That really is what real democracy is about, I think.

Donna Brazil

LAST-GASP ADVERTS

THE GOP Trust is running wall-to-wall ads about Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright on CNN -- that with only about an hour and a half to go before the polls on the east coast start closing. But there's the after-work voters he can still catch, I suppose. And the battleground states start closing from 7pm ET: at 7.30, North Carolina closes; at 8, Pennsylvania; at 9, Colarado; at 10, Iowa (can Obama do it again?).

FIRST EXIT POLLS IN AN HOUR

CNN says the first exit polls will be out in an hour. The New York Times said this morning:

"In 2004, early exit poll data suggested that Mr. Kerry was ahead began circulating within newsrooms — and leaking out on Web sites, including Slate’s — early in the afternoon on Election Day. This year, the consortium of six news organizations gathering the exit poll data — NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and The Associated Press — have agreed to keep the information under quarantine until 5 p.m.

"Representatives of those news organizations will begin analyzing that information at a secret location beginning in late morning, but will have to surrender all electronic devices at the door; even restroom visits will be supervised. There were already signs on Monday that the additional security was paying off.

"'We won’t call off exit polls,' Mr. Plotz said, 'in part because we don’t expect to get them leaked to us much before the first results.'"

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN IT HAPPENED?

DEBRA is working at home (and keeping an eye on the TV).
BEA has gone to bed, and is getting up at 5.
JACKIE and ANTONY are blogging from The Times, but may have gone to get sushi.
MIRIAM is besides herself with anxiety at Rietpan.
CHIPPY is at Hogsback without CNN (in a way that is a state of bliss).
JEREMY wants to know what to wear to the party at the Troyeville Hotel tomorrow night.
PROSPERO says he won't make the party because he'll be too busy comforting Sarah Palin (which is a comforting thought).
JANINE should be home from Cape Town by now, and may be watching at JANN's.
Debra's mother and mine have strict prayer instructions.

MADONNA ON SARAH PALIN

HERE'S a YouTube video of the Madonna concert Jonny, Dianne Hubbard and her daughter, Kelsey, and I went to at Madison Square Garden at the beginning of October. Some choice extracts:
"You guys have come to my party!
"Thank you for coming to my party!
"You know who's not invited to my party?
"Sarah Fucking Palin!
"She's not invited to this show!
"Sarah Palin has to go!
"Now get the bitch out of here, alright. Nothing personal. She's freaking me out."

(Give it a couple of seconds; the image gets better and the sound's fine.)