This may be the last update for a while...

My beloved laptop is on its way out. The fan is making noises like a jet engine and it keeps freezing and cutting out.

'This drive has a fatal hardware error to disk utility.' Somewhere else the status is displayed as FAILING. As if I needed it spelled out to me it's written in red.

My mac genii (almost exclusively Luke) have explained how to fix it but it is feasible this won't happen for a while and/or I may cock it up.

I think we all know that it is unlikely I will ever have the money to buy another one, especially now I don't know anybody who works there anymore.

Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking.

Kisses

Rebellious Scots to crush

Happy belated St George's Day to all of you. I was terribly busy all day yesterday in English pubs drinking Real Ale and eating fish and chips and singing God Save The Queen and shouting about 1966 and Dunkirk and generally behaving like this. I'm sure you all celebrated in a similar fashion. Patriotism is of course the last refuge of a scoundrel and I am quite sure that there is nobody reading this who isn't one.

Gutted I missed this

I suppose being in New York does have its downsides.

I missed this.



I think being away from London for a while has made me realise the wonder that is traveling on the tube IN SILENCE. Nobody is batting an eyelid despite this ludicrous display. That is literally unheard of here, I'd almost forgotten how to behave in public.

x

No I've never had a job because I've never wanted one

Well I have, more than one in fact but it seems they never last. It turns out after all the jokes I am in fact unemployable.

I am referring to over here obviously. I've had more jobs than I can name back in Dear Old Blighty. I shall be trawling craigslist exhaustively for the next few days and going to every open call and hopefully it will be fine and I will be able to come back/pay rent etc etc


Keanu Reeves' character in Point Break and one of my top three characters he's ever played has a bar named after him. That is going to be my first port of call. Chimene, it's one step closer that wall of Keanu that deep down we all knew was never going to happen.

Kisses

Lazy lazy monkey

I slept for 15 hours last night.

Brooklyn Nights

I came home after 1am tonight and it was still t-shirt/vest weather. It's fucking April. Roll on August; sauna in the city. I'll just have to spend a lot of time in my place in the Hamptons and maybe not buy that faux fur coat I've been banging on about.

I got the Staten Island ferry after dark tonight, partly to visit Alex who is staying with a friend there (fuck all to see-we got the ferry straight back again-see earlier post) and partly to see the lights of Manhattan and Brooky Wook from the water. Mainly because it's free though. It was beautiful. The lights have inspired me etc. and this time no pesky icy wind. Highly recommended.

If anybody is actually reading this can you send me some personal emails please. Nobody is emailing me and it's making me feel lonely and out of touch and facebook only paints half a picture. I want spiteful, malicious gossip about who has slept with whom, who hates whom and why and all the nasty things you all get drunk and say about each other but I'm not there to hear. As you all know it's clareloveday@gmail.com I look forward to hearing from all of you. Also, address on request for care packages of Marmite and chocolate and DVDs of Coronation Street.


Kisses

Vive le difference!

Emergency services vehicles are very loud but very slow, I imagine a bus would get you there quicker, a subway or a taxi certainly would. They also blare their sirens all through the night.

Almost every corner has a traffic light system (which is a red hand and a green person-not 'WALK' and 'DON'T WALK') and looking both ways and walking out into the road if it's clear isn't done, even on a residential street.

If the green person is showing, it is only for cars coming straight at you. Others cars are free to turn the corner and seemingly don't have to give right of way to pedestrians. You need your wits about you.

Hospital staff all wear scrubs in the street and on the subway. Thus negating the reasons for wearing them.

The avocados are massive.

Cottage cheese is ridiculously expensive given that it is just made from skimmed milk.

You can buy cloves of peeled garlic in tubs.

The cheese is disgusting, even semi decent stuff tastes like a Kraft Slice. European cheeses cost the earth and are quite hard to come by. It's been very difficult. If anybody were to post me some Gorgonzola I'd probably weep.

Nobody knows how to sit quietly and behave with any decorum in public. Singing, cat calls, bellowing at strangers, arguing and shouting either face to face or on the phone in the middle of the day while perfectly sober are all completely acceptable; on the subway it is positively encouraged. Luke, it's worse than Stratford. You wouldn't be able to bear it.
 

You can't get proper whiskey ANYWHERE, only Bourbon.

Chocolate here isn't very nice.

The brassica leaves of choice seem to be curly kale, which is way more popular than any other sort of greens. No complaints here, they are delicious. They are sold on the stalks rather than ready cut in bags. I've been eating a lot of it.

They have electrical sockets in bathrooms-often right above the sink. People keep hairdryers and CD players in there.

Bars and restaurants don't have gender specific loos, just little self-contained rooms with a sink and a hand dryer and a loo in them.

Racism is pretty popular. People are quite open about only sticking to their own race or nationality and it's not even considered particularly offensive.

Waitresses don't have to bring the food or drinks to the table or clear it away, the bus boy does that. They are very low down in the pecking order but they actually work much harder than anybody else and probably get paid the least. They are usually Mexican. I tried to make friends with some when I worked a few shifts in a posh Italian restaurant but vis a vis the above post it wasn't feasible. I wanted to hang out in the kitchen to talk to them about Morrissey and eat delicious food but as a white girl that wasn't allowed. I am however open to the possibility that that was a polite way of telling me they don't like me.

Veal is on most fine dining menus. Not being a connoisseur of either meat products or fancy restaurants at home I could be wrong but isn't that put in the foie gras Even-More-Unnecessarily-Cruel-Than-Other-Meat-Products category?

BBC America shows Peep Show, The Inbetweeners and Skins

They don't have wheelie bins on the street. People in apartments and shops and restaurants just chuck scores of bin bags on the road. I assume they are collected fairly frequently but I'd hazard a guess as to why they have rats everywhere.

They don't put cocoa powder on cappuccinos.

They have only have short fat bumpy cucumbers that have a really waxy skin and look like big gherkins.

You can buy cigarettes in Duane Reed which is the equivalent of Boots.

You can buy beer in a corner shop but you have to go to a special shop to get spirits or wine.

Women are quite happy to sleep with their friend's boyfriends and exes (I'm sure it's the other way around too but I've only spoken to girls about it) and don't really mind if they are sharing the same bloke. There is also no issue with hooking up with your mates on a regular basis either, apparently it doesn't affect friendships. I'm not convinced. At least in Britain we have the good sense to have one night stands with strangers.

All cakes and most hot drinks taste like cinnamon.

There are loads more that I can't think of right now but I'll add some more when I think of them so if you are particularly interested in my observations do keep checking this post as I'll go into it and edit it.

Kisses

BushWICKED

Is where my new loft apartment is.

I get the impression that this is what Louis wished Unit 1B was like if he didn't have to share the space with such a bunch of lazy squalid tramps who didn't want to paint everything white and have lovely organic food on the shelves and have lots of plants everywhere. There's not a glass brick in sight.

There IS a massive roof which I've not been on yet but has amazing views of the Manhattan skyline and we have a smaller private roof terrace that you can get to by climbing out of the kitchen window, there are herbs in pots and even more plants and chairs and lights and ashtrays.

Bushwick is in Brooklyn and is just north north of Williamsburg where I was living before. At first I didn't really want to move further away from Manhattan (it's about 5 subway stops further out) and was looking around at places on or around Bedford Avenue but looking for sublets on craigslist is a fucking nightmare; it's easy enough to find somewhere but you have to send emails all the time and try and make yourself seem friendly but not too annoying or needy and distant enough that you won't be in their faces or watching them sleep but at the same time making sure you don't seem like a cunt or a psycho which is all harder than it seems, then you have to shlep across town visiting all these people and then have an awkward exchange at the end where you pretend you have loads more places to see and they pretend they have loads of people coming to look. I looked at loads and the ones I really liked didn't seem to like me and vice versa. I nearly moved in here because it looked like fun and there were loads of artists and musicians living there and they had band practice spaces and workshops and stuff but it turned out not to have a bed in it. There was a single mattress on the floor and no other furniture. As you all know I'm pretty disgusting and more than happy in a hovel/den of filth etc but when the girl who was moving out of the room texted me to say if I give her $100 I can have the mattress and some ridiculous clothes rack it really was lower than even I was prepared to go. I draw the line of having no furniture. Even if all my possessions end up on the floor while I sleep in a nest fashioned from a mix of clean and dirty clothes and bed linen I do like to have the option of an alternative. I'm sharing with two brilliant girls who were drinking beer and eating brie when I came round to view the place so I knew they were good eggs and they both seem like they'll be fun to live which will make a nice change from the two stoned silent boys I was with in March. They didn't even care about my nails.

Anyway, I was chatting to my new room mate Laree and it turns out Bushwick has loads of fun stuff to do and she says it's the best place to be in New York because everybody has roof parties all summer and it seems more relaxed and less pretentious and annoying than Williamsburg. It's not cheap round here and this apartment certainly isn't so I can assume she must be telling the truth. There are a lot of pretty murals and some really interesting graffiti and some bars that look good (they have loads of secret bars that I'm yet to find-I don't understand it from a marketing point of view but it seems no publicity is good publicity as far as bar owners are concerned) and also some nice food shops. No Waitrose or anything but the delis (I am yet to go to a supermarket or even a big shop and I'm pretty convinced they don't exist, with the exception of Whole Foods in Manhattan where I queued for 45 fucking minutes to buy an avocado and refuse to go back to ever again, plus it's really expensive although their express lane is called '10 items or fewer' rather than the ubiquitous '10 items or less') around where I used to live are pretty nasty. They sell horrible looking vegetables and weird food and they all have sandwich counters and they are all full of poor people shouting and they have cats lurking about inside them. The cats are to catch to the rats. This is absolutely true, I was disgusted as well when I first heard. There are also some amazing vintage clothes warehouses round here that have brilliant floor length faux coats in them. There is apparently no stigma at all about wearing real fur coats here, so the fake ones have to look really realistic. The weather may be getting warmer but they are pretty cheap and would fill a hole in my life that I didn't even know was there until I tried one on.

I have also managed to make a few friends that live around here so I am looking forward to the next few weeks.

Kisses