Love, peace and slippers.

On Wednesday evening, I took me down to Strawberry Fields, where everything was real. It was the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder, and Strawberry Fields is the memorial area of Central Park, right across from the Dakota Building in 72nd Street (or ON 72nd Street as US English has it), where he lived and was shot down, and where his widow Yoko Ono still has apartments.

Susan was working, so I went on my own, riding up on the subway on the A Train. There were hundreds of people there, some lighting and holding candles, all singing Lennon and Beatles songs. The age range was from teens to seventies: John and his band have universal appeal. There was a minute's silence at 10.50pm, the time he was shot, and another at 11.10pm, the time he died, or anyway round about the time he died; a couple of people had turned up by then whose idea of fun was to disrupt things by yelling. There were those who wanted to do some damage to the people shouting. I thought "right; if they won't give peace a chance, split their heads open..." and a woman behind me said, surely rightly, that John would have been with the disrupters. But more or less a minute of more or less silence we eventually got, which is an achievement in itself in Manhattan.

People were relaxed, calm and peaceful, talking to one another about John, the Beatles, what the lyrics meant (I know, I know, but it's inevitable), the history of it all; and singing, always singing. Everyone seemed to know all the lyrics and we were all singing along with great gusto. We sang Imagine (of course), Strawberry Fields Forever (of course), A Day in the Life, which was the moment I choked up-- well, okay, one of them-- and many others. It was at that point that I looked down at my feet and realised that I hadn't changed out of my slippers before I left the house. Well, do you know what? My feet never felt cold or sore, so they must be damn good slippers, well worth the twelve quid I paid for them, so that's a result really. I'm glad I went, glad now that I was there, glad that from now on I can say I was there, that after thirty years I've finally been at a Lennon memorial at Strawberry Fields. And that I have a fine pair of slippers.

More New York stuff

I've edited the poem I sent in the last post but one.



MANHATTAN
There's a car that isn't yellow.
Hail it anyway; you never know
what might happen.



Quite a dramatic edit by my standards. Anyway, there's more stuff to tell you about from the trip. We'll start with Sunday the third of January.



There was a football match in Glasgow that day, between Rangers and Celtic. The New Year Old Firm game, one of the big events of the year. And I was on the wrong continent. But modern communications are a wonderful thing, and I looked up the North American Rangers Supporters Association on the internet. Sure enough, there was a pub on 2nd Avenue showing the game: The Blue Room. It's a Rangers bar, seems to be owned by a Rangers fan, and it is also the home of the Big Apple Bears, New York's Rangers supporters' association. Now, the game was kicking off at 1230 British time; that's 7.30am New York time. So, we got up at 6.30, went out and hailed a cab after buying coffee and muffins to go. We were there by just after seven. Went in the side door, as advised on the website, took breakfast in with us (the kitchen isn't open at that time in the morning, but they have no problem with people bringing food and hot drinks in with them), paid our $20 a head and sat down. The place was jumping, with a wondrous mix of accents. My favourites were the broad New York accents shouting Scottish football insults with Glaswegian terminology, presumably belonging to Scottish guys who had lived there for decades. Susan and I were both wearing Rangers shirts, it was her first ever game, and we had a great time. At half time we each had a beer with our free meat pies, at around 8am, which tickled Susan no end. She got really into the match, which bodes well for the future of course, and even avoided saying anything daft or embarrassing while joining in heartily. I think she even understood when I explained the offside rule to her, which is one for me to boast about.



After the game we headed to Port Authority and caught a bus to New Jersey to visit the family again, to wish everyone Happy New Year and to have a pretty impromptu engagement party. Not many people showed up-- it was very impromptu and they'd not had any notice to speak of, 24 hours at most-- but we had a lot of fun; it was another deeply pleasant family occasion. Actually we had been out there on New Year's Day too, back to the River Edge Diner for the traditional family New Year lunch. I had a plateful from the salad bar and a turkey leg with veggies and coleslaw. That leg was BIG, man! I couldn't eat it all and took some away with me.



I first visited New York in 1999, for two days on the way back from Pennsylvania. It was my first trip to the US and, as I was nearby, I wanted to verify that New York really existed. Also I wanted to visit the Museum of Modern Art to see Vincent's beautiful Starry Night, but when I got there the museum's workers were having a strike, the cause sounded reasonable and I didn't cross the picket line. So I had waited another ten years to finally have the opportunity to see it in the flesh. It was worth the wait. MOMA is wonderful. We might have spent a lot longer in there, but we were using a wheelchair and it was hard on Susan; still it was a great day. We saw Starry Night, of course, but much else besides. She wanted to see the Jackson Pollock room, and there was a wonderful energy in there; it was a very pleasant surprise for me. Got to see some Andy Warhol, including the famous soup cans and a Marilyn head, some Roy Lichtenstein (not a favourite of mine but always worth seeing) and a lot more, as well as having a pretty decent coffee on the fifth floor. After leaving we bought ourselves some gyros from a street vendor, and it was absolutely delicious and very warming in the cold weather.



But the best middle eastern food we had (well, kind of middle eastern, north African really, but hey, it's a link) was at a Moroccan restaurant on Ninth Avenue, called Tagine. Tagine is also a traditional Moroccan dish, well THE traditional Moroccan dish, and we had one, as well as a sort of vegetable stew, and some Moroccan spring roll like things as a starter. Before even the starter, we were given some very fresh, very warm bread with dips, one of which was a sauce called harissa. This was one of the hottest foods I have ever tasted, truly beautiful, but so hot it would have completely killed the flavour of the rest of the meal had I eaten more than a couple of small spoonsful of it. It was Great food (note the capital G), and Susan had a $25 voucher, so it wasn't as expensive as it might have been.



The only movie we saw, other than on TV, was Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It is an excellent film, grabbed a couple of Golden Globes and will surely have a fistful of Oscar nominations. Jeff's performance is stellar, he is absolutely the centre of the movie and everyone orbits him to great effect. I heard Maggie describe it on The Daily Show as "a tiny movie", which is about right, but in this case tiny doesn't mean small. It is well worth your time and money to see. After it we crossed 42nd Street to a Mexican restaurant called Chevy's, the queue at the Dallas BBQ having been too intimidating in the cold, and it was pretty damn good. Mexican isn't my favourite cuisine, still isn't, but it was well prepared from fresh ingredients and you can't complain about that.



All in all, we had a long succession of wonderful days, some wonderful experiences, and an awful lot of wonderful, wonderful time together. I do believe Eliza, the cat, loved her daddy, which is just as well as she'll be moving over here with Susan come the autumn. Mainly she just thought it was a really cool idea to have TWO humans to pet her instead of just the one, but the one with the hairy face didn't seem to mind petting her more or less constantly, and she was well happy with that.

Finally for this post, and probably for this New York trip, a poem. I wrote it in a cafe on 42nd Street just before we saw Crazy Heart, while waiting for Susan to come back from her apartment with the movie voucher she had. I like this one.

TEA
When I was a boy, I drank cup after cup
of tea, hot and welcoming and satisfying.
Then I had an Earl Grey. It had no milk,
but it smelled of beautiful flowers, heady
and exciting. It was like Times Square on
a good night, bright smiling and fierce, at
once bewildering and innately understood.
A few hundred gallons later, feeling bloated
and streamlined, wise and indescribably
foolish, I found a woman who was in the
same place. We sat down together, put the
kettle on, and watched until it boiled.