Sunday 1st July

So what do I like in BlogWorld?

Well just about everything, really…

The blogs I read all have an underlying theme of wittiness and optimism.  I really don’t enjoy anything too miserable, no matter how worthy…

Saturday 30th June

I have been following a blog discussion about…Facebook.  This is funny because I don’t actually do Facebook.  Not really.  I have a FB account and I get the odd message from long-lost Dutch cousins, which I like very much.  But basically I confine my internet communication to Email & BlogWorld.
Not really much difference between blogs and Facebook.  I just seem to have ended up, very happily, with my own little corner of BlogWorld, and here I sit.

I am nevertheless fascinated by the occasionally strident nature of the Facebook Debate.  Some people get SO ANGRY about what people put on their very own Facebook pages.  “I don’t want to see ANY MORE BABY PHOTOS!” they shout.  Others decry foody photography, or holiday snaps.  I just blink and think, if you don’t like it, don’t look…don’t read it!  (I must say I find it a tad alarming when people put up photos of me, just amongst their casual family/friends photos.  Oh no…do I REALLY look like that?  I must start colouring my hair again ASAP!)

Some of the debate was astonishing:

A friend of a friend posted photos she took of her son in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Other people were very amusing:

I forgot to post on Facebook I was going to the gym.  Now this whole workout was a waste of time.

And still others were so very angry about this, that and the other…I had to cover my eyes!

Friday 29^th June

I have been reading about the concept of home; how deeply attached we are, mostly, to a certain place.  For me that is Tasmania, most specifically Hobart, although I have a sort of atavistic longing for the cold, bleak, beautiful Central Highlands.

This morning Kirsty Rice (Shamozal) wrote on her blog about her mother going to a party in Renmark as a teenager.  As the bus came over the hill crest, she looked out at the vast, empty expanse and thought, with, one would imagine, some horror, “Where am I going?  There was just nothing.  NOTHING!”  This nothing place, little did she know it, was to be her home, because she met her future husband at the party.  Her offspring don’t see it as a nothing place; they love everything about the wide open spaces, vast expanses of nothing. 

I can remember a similar reaction from my adopted grandmother, Laure Wefers-Bettink.  She arrived for a holiday from Holland, where she had always lived in big crowded cities.  We picked her up from the ferry in Devonport and drove her across the Lakes Highway.  We stopped at the top to admire the view of the majestic Great Lake and I can still remember her stunned reaction – I would have been about eight years old… We were all burbling away about the beautiful view, while she stood there, not impressed at all.  “What is the matter with that lake?  Why are there no boats??”  What she saw was…just NOTHING.

Many years later – 1988, in fact – I took a Dutch cousin, Janneke, to the Tasman Peninsula on New Years Day.  It was a glorious day – birds tweeting, sun shining.  We all leapt out of the car and frolicked on the long white sandy beach at the Neck, and plunged into the sparkling sea.  Janneke scanned the horizon, looked up and down the beach, and said, with deep suspicion.  “What is the matter with this beach?  Where are all the people?”  Way out of her comfort zone!

Thursday 28th June

It is very cold and icy.  This morning when I let the chooks out of their cosy little house I could hear squawks of dismay – NO!  Please shut the door!  You expect us to go out in that thick frost!  No thank you!

When I got into the lift last night there was already and occupant – a pleasant young bloke wearing hugely puffy jacket and a beanie.  The lifts in our building are very s-l-o-w so we had time to discuss the beauty of these mobile sleeping bag coats.  He said he has a shack at Great Lake, and that it was minus 9 at Liawenee last night.  His big black jacket comes in very handy up there!

Pete has also bought himself a big thick puffer vest, in a reptilian shade of green.  It is wonderfully warm, just short of Antarctic standard of loft.  I like to think of him keeping warm and cosy, in the cold cold shearing sheds in Ross.  The only thing is…he looks like a cartoon creature in this vest…a cross between a Transformer and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!

Wednesday 27th June

Sleeping2XS cont’d

I may have given the wrong impression, that we slept twelve sold hours every single day on our trip.

Of course this was not possible, no matter how desirable it might have been.

Our many visitors probably didn’t want to sleep twelve hours; some of them wanted to PARTYPARTY PARTY, with glowsticks and music.  And we enjoyed that very much and were quite able to stay up, dancing and waving glowsticks meaningfully around, until 2am.  Others wanted to talk, eat, drink, play cards, and yes, all of that was great.  But…left to our own devices…our pillows sang their siren song…at about 8.30pm, never fail!

And no we weren’t able to sleep in until 8.30 every morning.  Quite often we were up at 4am, getting ready to leave so that we would arrive at our next destination before dark fell again.  Four in the morning is…THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, as far as I am concerned.  But we would be up and doing whatever needed to be done.  First priority – cups of hot tea; after that – whatever Captain Pete said was what happened as we sailed off on the dark mysterious sea.

These early starts were not my favourite thing.  I didn’t quite achieve the levels of crankiness and rage I read about yesterday, but I would wander around in a fairly zombie-like trance until – well probably until 8.30am!

However I am not going to complain about having to leave in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, because what this meant was…we weren’t actually sailing through the night; we were arriving and STOPPING in daylight.  And…stopping in daylight is one of my favourite things about The Sailing Life.  I met so many people who regularly do three-week stints across the ocean, with no stopping at all, and they just love it.  Thrive on it.  I think if I did a three-week ocean crossing I would be wheeled off at the other end with my hair white and standing on end!  Interrupted sleep for three weeks!  Two hours shifts around the clock!  Much harder than having a newborn baby…you can doze off with a newborn baby warmly feeding; you can’t gently doze off while scanning the horizon, checking the radar, making sure the autopilot hasn’t had a hissyfit.  So…4am starts are my friend, no matter how much I complain and how zombielike I may appear…

Tuesday 26th June

This morning I was reading an article about sleep patterns.  Lots of contributions from people who thrive on staying up till late every night, watching movies, reading, solving the problems of the world, and The Others who leap out of bed at 5.30, jog 10 kilometres, cook a pot of soup, vacuum the entire house, and get to work, beaming at 8.30.  (No I don’t fit into either category; I am tired when I wake up and tired in the evening…)

I laughed a lot when I read:

I don’t really wake up properly until 9am and until then my brain is limited to a very basic ‘rage’ function.

At the moment I have to be a morning person, regardless of my true inclination.  I sit at my desk at 8.30am and think, wistfully, of my 2XS days, where 8.30am was a time to be opening my eyes, stretching, and wondering whether or not it was time for that first very satisfying cup of tea.  Pete is definitely NOT an early morning person, so this suited him very well.  I would like to say that we stayed up very late every night, solving the problems of the world, but no…we were usually in bed at…8.30pm, yawning hugely and wondering why our eyes wouldn’t stay open long enough to read more than one chapter…

Yes twelve hours sleep is A LOT for a grown-up… We usually tick along with seven hours; how come we were able to sink so happily and easily into such very long sleepytime??  I actually think it was very good for us.  We had no illness at all while we were away, all though all manner of germs came onto the boat.  Snotty noses, eye infections, coughs, colds, tummy troubles.  And we remained completely infection-free.  I think it was – all the sleep, very restorative to the health!

And now I am back to proper grown-up sleep patterns…well I got shingles, didn’t I!!

Monday 25^th June

The weekend flew by, as they do…

Pete left very early, in the cold and dark just after 5am, to go and crutch sheep with Michael Agnew in a big, cold shearing shed in the Midlands.  I got up, in helpful solidarity, and waved him off a bit blearily.  And no I didn’t go back to bed but…I did fall asleep on the nice warm couch…

He had a big surprise on Saturday night.  We had been invited (many thanks Tim and Jan Abey!) to the annual formal dinner at the Motor Yacht Club in Lindisfarne, homeplace of 2XS.  I knew that Pete had been nominated for the Seamanship Award but…it was a total surprise to him.  I think he started to get a teensy bit of an inkling when many people came up to him and said, “Wow, didn’t you have a great trip!”  The first few times he didn’t think much about it, then he started to wonder how on earth they knew.  Yes maybe I should have given him some warning, to prepare him to make a speech but, hey, this is Pete, who can speak in complete sentences under water! 

The first speaker was Bern Cuthbertson, who was a bit offended when he was introduced as being 89.  “I’m ONLY 88!” he said, with great dignity.  He spoke very well about some of his adventures – he has had so many, over his 88 years, that we would have been there for several days to hear all of them.  Pete also spoke well, once he had recovered from his shock.  Tim had “interviewed” me a few weeks back, asking for all of the details of the 2Xs trip.  I was a bit shaky on some of the details… umm… Peter Kerr design…Lizard Catamaran… 46’… 9,500 nautical miles... but apparently it was all reasonably correct because Pete didn’t shudder at my inaccuracies during Tim’s presentation.  Tim was very well prepared – we all had nifty little maps on the tables!  Pete spoke about the seaworthiness of 2XS, and also the seaworthiness of Marguerite… But mostly he spoke about the people we met along the way, with emphasis on the kindness and hospitality of people in the Pacific Islands. 

We went out into the chilly night air with our tummies full of yummy food, our ears full of kind words, and a beautiful new barometer to replace the dodgy one on 2XS.

(When we told Jeff and Katy about Pete’s glittering prize Jeff said, thoughtfully, It’s not often you get an award for having a lovely long holiday…)

Friday 22^nd June

Cold and dark in Tasmania – as dark as it gets, actually.  From tomorrow it gets lighter every day.

Pete reinforced what I wrote the other day, about how enthusiastic people are about Tasmania.  Everywhere he went on his Small Plane Odyssey he met people who enthused about Tasmania, and said how wonderful it is – beauty, food, people, all fabulous.  Good to hear!

And in the meantime on the water…Canadian Greg and his little cat Ede are happily ensconced in New Caledonia.  He has jumped a few hurdles – the scary female Agriculture Inspector took a fancy to him and didn’t make him throw out all of his provisions, and the vet has come and examined the cat, much to Ede’s disgust.  Greg’s exact words were Ede did not appreciate his abdominal probing and went for him, I then put on the gloves as I am sure she would have gone for me too; what a savage.
In spite of this Ede is going to be cleared and will be allowed to roam around the islands with Greg.  She wasn’t allowed off the boat at all, in Tasmania, which was one of the reasons Greg left.  He likes to go bushwalking with his little furry friend.

Greg is very much enjoying the French food in Noumea and has lashed out on paté, cheese, pastries…I think it is exactly a year ago when we too were eating paté, cheese, pastries and trying our luck with WiFi in the Café Au Bout Du Monde.

Thursday 21st June

Today is the shortest day and Pete’s first day back in Tasmania.  I made sure all the heaters were on in his house, and a big hot diner in the oven, before I picked him and John up from the airport…

They were very happy, thrilled to bits with their fabulous flying adventure.  They crossed such a vast expanse… SO much faster than sailing, where we are delighted to cover 100 nautical miles in one very long day.  They were cruising though the skies at 200 kilometres per hour, gobbling up the distances.

Pete is very keen, however, to take 2XS on a trip across the north of Australia.  He says it is so very beautiful, the crystal clear blue sea, the majestic canyons, beautiful rivers.  But…and it is a very big but…it just isn’t possible to swim.  Crocodiles everywhere!  Not even a quick dip.  Pete would be fine, he doesn’t have the same need as I have to hop in and out of the cooling sea every hour or so.  It all sounds so very wonderful; I will have to sublimate my need for swimming and make do with buckets of water hauled up, crocodile-free, from the crystal clear blue sea and then tipped over my head…

Wednesday 20th June

While Pete has been away I have been very quietly…

lying on the couch reading

sitting on a recliner knitting

watching TV

snoozing

in between fairly hectic moments of working and being with much-loved small children.  I took two small girls to town last Saturday and we somehow – oh no – found ourselves sitting right in the middle of blocked-in- rows of seats (ie no possibility of escape) watching a magic show.  It went for 30 minutes and that was 27 minutes too long for me… The girls, 2 and 4, thought it was great and clapped most enthusiastically.  Ten year old Angus was also blocked in; he didn’t seem to mind at all.  But his mother, Nicky, and I rolled our eyes quite a bit… The magician was just so…weird!  He shouted HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY things at the children, smiling hugely, but the look in his eyes seemed to indicate… I HATE YOU ALL!!!  COME ANY CLOSER AND YOU WILL DIIIEEEE!!!!  Fortunately Angus, Eva and Zoe didn’t seem to notice the murderous gleam so all was well.  While the coast was clear, Jeff, father of the two small girls, slaved away with a chain saw for many hours, creating…a giant wombat for his beloved Katy’s birthday present!  It is indeed a most splendid creature, sawn from an old pine trunk.  I had told Jeff, when he embarked on his project, about the interview I read years ago, where a very famous sculptor, on being asked how he had created a beautiful rhinoceros from a large block of stone, had said, “It was easy.  I just cut away everything which wasn’t a rhinoceros.” 

I have also been…watching TV.  With full control of the remote!!  It has been quite a revelation.  Singing contests, cooking contests, building contests, talent and dancing contests, a few snippets of Reality (I don’t think so, Lara B…) TV – Hunger Games here we come!  The advertisements have also been more than surprising, after eighteen months of no ads at all.  Some of them are very clever, beautifully made, but I have no idea what they are advertising.  Cars?  Food?  Debt reduction?  Weight reduction?  Funerals?  Could be any of the above… My favourite ad, which Katy is also thrilled with, shows a large, plain man, crying sadly and eating deep-fried beige food with lashings of squirty sauce.  I think it is supposed to make us want to eat KFC.  Or something.  (It doesn’t work…)

Pete will be home tonight (calloo callay!) so my days of remote control are over.  No more ads…probably a good thing…

Tuesday 19^th June

Last night I was telling Eva (4) about my not-so-close encounter with a dugong when we were anchored in a bay at Magnetic Island.  Pete, who until then didn’t believe in dugongs, saw it, as did Michael.  Great whoops of joy!  They called me to come and see but…I didn’t even see a tiny swish of a tail.

When Katy came home from Melbourne, Eva was very keen to tell her about my dugong experience:

“Pete saw a dugong, and he called out, Marguerite!  Come here quickly, you will see a dugong!  But when she got there, it had flown away into the sky.”

I obviously missed out a vital part of my description - the aquatic nature of the dugong!

Monday 18^th June

One thing which struck us on our return to Tasmania was how much people love coming here.  Well not everybody… I am sure there are legions who prefer to lie next to a warm pool cocktail in hand… And that is not the Tasmanian Experience!

But on the West Coast we met many people who just loved coming here.  For example, on the Wilderness Railway we met Steve and Emily, with their two little girls who were here for their SEVENTH visit.  They live in Melbourne and have nice lives, nice jobs, nice families, but their goal is to be able to move to Tasmania as soon as job opportunities come up in their professional fields.  And another couple we met, in a queue for something or another in Strahan, in their early 230s, were raving about Tasmania.  All rugged up, Queenslanders, full of enthusiasm and here for their fifth wintry visit… Yet other people we met said they plan to retire here.  We were gratified but slightly astonished.  We expect to love Tasmania, because it is our home.  (Pete has been here for seven generations…well (ahem…) not Pete himself but his ancestors… And I probably feel even more strongly because I am a newcomer, only here since I was three.  Not quite a True Tasmanian…)  But it was amazing, and gratifying – Why thank you!  Yes it is our very own!!  You are welcome! - to meet people – outsiders - who were so enthralled with the beauty and the fascination of our island.

Our New York Travellers were due back yesterday…but where are they, I hear you cry??  I sent Pauline an email checking which day we would have lunch this week to catch up on all the goss and I got the following long, despairing textmessage:

Don’t know when will be back.  Have already been travelling 24 hours but pilot collapsed 3 hours out of LA on way to Auckland so had to dump fuel and return to America.  We have been put up in hotel at Orange County Disneyland.  The only one which could take 400 people.  Got to bed at 5am.  They will fly us as far as Auckland tonight where we will see what happens.  Arrive there 4am tomorrow.  May have to stay in NZ until they can fit all in other planes then we are on our own to get to Hobart as our Jetstar booked flight will by then have left about two days earlier.  So won’t be meeting for lunch just yet.

Our deary me!!  All too unpleasant…all those flying hours and no progress!  And staying so near and yet so far from Disneyland!!  I am quite amazed at all of this – don’t they have a spare pilot or two on board, for just this sort of emergency??  And don’t they have a spare shiny plane or two, ready to fly the poor weary 400 passengers off to where they need to go??

Sunday 17th June
I have just re-read Pauline’s penultimate-day NYC email.  I am so impressed with her ability to spend so much time in The Met!  I t sounds just wonderful but…gruelling!  It makes my back ache just thinking about it!  I am able to walk very long distances quite happily, through the bush, on footpaths, through parks.  But…put me in a gallery or a museum and I get the most appalling backache and I have to limp painfully from one sitting-spot to the next.  (I have just read a novel in which the heroine tries to go to the Guggenheim in NYC.  She gets dropped off by a taxi driver at…the Guggenheim Museum Shop!  She has a lovely time in there and goes home with a big book all about the museum to impress her husband and her friends, and then sends a happy time in a café writing postcards.) 

NYC – #last episode, I think…
This morning when I rolled out of bed (literally, my bedroom floor has a decided slope) I realised that it was our penultimate day (love that word) and that tomorrow will be spent doing such things as trying to stuff an enormous amount of shopping into our bags, schlepping to the post office to try to post stuff home, trying to organise transport to Newark airport etc, so today is our last day of exploring this Very Big Indeed Apple where nothing is easy.  This simplest of tasks, eg post offices and organising cars, is very hard indeed, compounded by the language problem, for example taxi drivers can never understand us.

We have had hot (too hot, really - sorry I know Hobart has been freezing) and dry, sunny weather the whole time we have been here, but rain set in yesterday afternoon and looks like continuing for some time, so we shall have the new experience today of New York On a Rainy Day.  Maybe I have never properly grown up, but the simplest of things take on an exciting new flavour when I am in a new place: "Look, puddles, how exciting, oh, and look, they have different umbrellas to us..."
On Monday Barbara went to walk the High Line Walk, which, by all accounts is an amazing experience involving a 3 mile long elevated walk and garden above and through buildings in the Meat Packing and Greenwich Village districts of New York.  My left foot is so sore that I decided it wasn't up for that and needed to rest it in preparation for a day at the Museum of Metropolitan Art (the Met).  I decided that what my foot needed to do instead was to go and buy a handbag.  So that is what my foot did (aided and encouraged by Becky who said that in lieu of photos - I never did get to find a shop that sold a charger for my camera, despite much searching - I should have a New York bag to aid memory).  My sore foot and I now have a beautiful new Kate Spade (who began her design career in Williamsburg, so most appropriate) handbag.

Of course, I covered a lot more than three miles in search of the Perfect New York Handbag.  But in New York it is the getting to and from where you want to go that takes most of the effort and most of the day, despite a good public transport system.  First you have to work out which subway line or bus number you want (and every single map is in the tiniest of tiny writing and the internet does not seem to want to enlarge the maps) and then you have to decide whether you want to walk at the beginning or the end of the journey, for example, whether you want to walk the ten blocks to get the bus that will drop you right where you want to go, or whether to get the one that leaves from nearby, but requires ten blocks walking when you get off to get to the required destination.  We have bought two metro passes at great expense but inevitably, at the end of our journey, we get a taxi home because we are just so damned exhausted, so we are not getting good value from our public transport passes. The subways are marginally easier, but the subway stops near us are very smelly and depressing.  By the way, New York City closed all its subway toilets because of their use by homeless people.  New Yorkers must have very well-behaved bladders.  Of course, if we were the sort of travellers who could afford to stay in Upper East Side and have doormen to call us taxis to go everywhere, then our experience would be somewhat different, but, we tell ourselves, we much prefer the more gritty Soho experience, and so we do.....most of the time.

Yesterday we went to the Met.  It is huge - it stretches along Central Park from East 80th to East 84th Street - four blocks, which is a big distance.  It is full of unbelievable treasures.  More than two million objects, five million visitors per year and an annual budget of $120million.  You could spend weeks there.  It is a maze, I went from gallery to gallery to gallery and wondered if I would ever find my way out.  I loved the decorative arts and design sections, also the pre-Colombian American exhibits, also the Asian art section, and the European and American wings - oh, all of it.  I would like to go back and spend a whole day in each of the sections.  We were very lucky - the guide books warn of enormous queues, but we just waltzed in and got tickets straight away and then went to a cafe (where you can look though enormous glass windows and watch the joggers in Central Park) and we were shown to a table immediately.  A short time later there were enormous "lines" everywhere, including at the cafe.  When we emerged from the gallery many hours later it had begun to rain heavily and the bun fight for taxis had to be seen to be believed (we got one).

Last night we went to "Happy Hour" (when drinks and food are two for the price of one) to a gritty (all the guidebooks describe the Soho scene as "gritty") bar called National Underground where we listened to musicians-who-will-be-famous-one-day, drank Margaritas, ate totally (as everyone says) delicious burgers (which are available everywhere - even at ritzy restaurants) and then walked the two doors to our apartment at a disgustingly early hour.  The bars stay open until 4am each morning, when patrons bang on our steel grafittied front door and ring all the apartments bells as they walk past.  Such fun.  We looked up National Underground on the net and found that we had been at a famous and gritty place.  We are way cool.

Saturday 16 June

A very local story which amused me no end…

A young chickybaby of our acquaintance works in…Chickenfeed!  This is a bright red LOUD and CHEAP (cheep cheep!) discount shop.  Everything is CHEAP.  Not necessarily cheap and nasty, but definitely cheap.  Michael always says, “Never buy anything from Chickenfeed if you want to rely on its strength, Ma.”  That includes: furniture, hammers, stickytape, glue…I once bought a set of Philips head screwdrivers which bent and twisted most alarmingly when confronted with a very small screw embedded in something quite soft…

So…recently I was walking through Chickenfeed when I heard Emma, at the check-out – “Marguerite!  A man has just been very rude!  He made a complaint!”  And out came the sorry tale… A respectable-looking man in a business suit, in his forties, thought Emma, had queried the price of an item he was buying.  “That is incorrect!  It is $8.95, not $10!” he thundered.  Emma checked and found that it was indeed $10 when the barcode was scanned, but maybe it was on special?  She apologised and called the manager who poured oil on troubled waters while the customer fumed away self-importantly.  He eventually left, still muttering, “It’s not good enough!”  And what was the gorgeous item he was buying??  Well…a zebra-striped slanket!!

If I were buying a zebra-striped slanket I would NOT draw attention to myself at all…
(For those of you fortunate enough not to know what a slanket is…well, it’s a ghastly garment to be worn while slothing about on the couch watching TV, a sort of back-to-front dressing gown.)

Out of order NYC episode – somehow I missed one!

As we all know, Americans are excessively patriotic and insular (someone asked me if Australia was closer than England to the US).  The extreme patriotism is not so obvious when trekking through the streets of New York, but becomes very apparent when visiting the iconic patriotic symbols, two of which we did yesterday.  We passed the Statue of Liberty on the (free) Staten Island ferry and we queued for hours in the heat to get into the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero.  On both occasions I was very moved by what they represented and had a big lump in my throat thinking about the history of both.  (By the way, the Statue of Liberty does not actually belong to NYC, but to New Jersey, which is responsible for its upkeep).
The Staten Island ferry takes thousands and thousands of people each day over to the Island, which is one of New York City's boroughs, and is, amazingly, Republican and has tried (unsuccessfully) to secede from the much too liberal New York City.  Half a million people live there, but it is so disregarded that every day, tens and tens of thousands of people get the ferry for the Statue of Liberty experience, then get right off the ferry and get the next one back, without even leaving the ferry terminal.  We, however, walked through the heat and along some dusty roads and found ourselves in a most depressing and run down working class area, with not even a trendy coffee bar to be seen.  Difficult to understand really, right by the water, near fast, free transport to Manhattan and with breathtaking views of the Lower Manhattan skyline.  However, it is my observation that the views that are sought after are the views of Central Park, rather than water views, with many, many, large housing projects built right on the edge of the water, giving poor people the most stunning of views, by our standards at least.  We were rewarded for our efforts in actually setting foot on Staten Island by the most delicious of salads with shrimp and scallops (each scallop weighing about 200g) at a local pub.  The scallops were so delicious that I bought some more last night and cooked them here in the small cubicle erroneously described as a "kitchen" by the apartment's owner.
I don't understand New York real estate.  Our first four fabulous days were spent in Williamsburg, Billyburg to us Noo Yorkers, which is, frankly, an ugly neighbourhood full of old warehouses and factories, which are now worth zillions and it is the hippest neighbourbood in New York.  We loved it, but it was hot and dirty and all the bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan are constantly gridlocked.   It is hard to work out how some areas are desirable (Billyburg) and others not (Staten Island city-side waterfront).
We began our trek to Staten Island by bus.  I really thought I had the bus thing worked out.  I knew which route to take, we had our metro tickets, we got on at a bus stop which allows you to use your metro tickets (some stops are pay per ride and you have to buy an individual ticket from a machine - we made that mistake once and illegally rode all the way uptown without a ticket), the internet told me the buses would come every three minutes, and would go to the desired destination.  Two hours later, we finally arrived.  We got on the bus with right number, but it only went half the distance.  So we got a transfer ticket and waited for one which would go all the way.  Three passed without stopping, we were, it seems, at a stop at which only some of the buses stopped.  There are Limited buses and Express buses and buses which do not go the whole way, but they all have the same route number displayed.  We will have it all worked out by the time we return (although my taxi-hailing magic is still working.)
The bus took us through Lower Manhattan, the financial district, and we went past Wall Street.  I had expected the streets (canyons) to be full of Gordon Gecko types in suits, striding purposefully along, cell phones (as they are called here) to their ears as they barked out instructions to sell this and buy that.  Not so, it was all very casual, almost vacation-like.  I guess that now the Masters of the Universe have destroyed the world's economy there is not much left for them to do.
Outside the ferry terminal, when we came back to Manhattan, was a team of buskers.  They were an incredibly athletic group of black men who did triple somersaults and the like over hot concrete (and over "volunteer" audience members) whilst keeping up a very funny and racially-based patter that only black people would be able to get away with.
Then we walked to Ground Zero.  There is an amazing construction effort going on, building what will replace the old World Trade Centre.  Tall glass structures reflecting the sky and New York.  There will be a spiral of new towers around the eight acre memorial, one of which will be the tallest building in the United States.  We waited in the "line" for ages to get through to the Memorial, which consists of two pools on the exact footprints of the Twin Towers.  The pools have waterfalls flowing into them.  Surrounding the pools are bronze ledges with the names of all those who died on the day.  One has the names of all the first response people, which was very sad, inscriptions such as "Ladder 11,” "Engine 323," "Brigade 21" and their names.  The other pool has the names of the people who died in the towers, the Pentagon and the planes.  Then there are lawns with trees planted including the one tree that has survived from the original World Trade Centre.  It has been nursed back to health and replanted.   It is all surprisingly low key for America, apart from the inscripted names there are no other words, plaques or anything describing what actually happened, although there is a museum being constructed on the site which will, no doubt, do just that.  Even though, eventually, when it is all completed, people will have free access from the streets, for some reason at this point in time there is a very overt police presence and high-tech screening to get in (of the same nature as American airport screening).  There are also big black vehicles with windows you cannot see into parked in the streets nearby and SWAT teams standing, bedecked with scary hardware, and with thousand yard stares.  Plus hundreds of ordinary NYC police cars and police persons.  Poor Barbara was shouted at for taking a photo during the screening process, although there were no limits on taking photos of the memorial or the construction.  Go figure.
Actually, Barbara has been shouted at by a number of functionaries, and has a particularly bad record with bus drivers from whom she has tried to get information, such as where to get off.  Yesterday, for only the second time, we had a friendly and helpful driver, so she related some of her experiences.  He said to her, "Ma'am, I don't want to be a bad ambassador for my city, but living in New York is hard.  You are nice people who are visiting, but the people who live here, if they speak to us, they just abuse us."  So, he said, they basically try to protect themselves by discouraging engagement with their passengers.  There is a sign in buses that says that if you attack bus drivers it is a felony carrying a penalty of seven years' imprisonment.  I guess those signs are there for a reason.
One last little vignette - when we lived in Billyburg, I picked up a free local newspaper, a bit like the Mt Stuart Times and, just like the Mt Stuart one, there was a half page Crime Watch section.  Now, in West Hobart it reports such things as the theft of power tools from a garage and the damaging of a parked car.  The Billyburg one had two small paragraphs concerning two homicides, another small one about an armed bank robbery, and a large story about a "grand larceny" which was the theft of an iphone on the subway.  Priorities.

Friday 15^th June

Here it is wintry and dark.  I love the early morning crisp clean air and my walk down into the city.  Usually I manage to escape at lunchtime to see what else the day has brought, but occasionally we are immured in internal rooms for the whole day.  This is not so much fun… Last week we were in quite a small windowless room with at least eight people and a lot of fairly high-pitched intense debate about this or that urgent industrial issue.  By three o’clock I was fading fast… I excused myself for a few minutes and when I came back into the room I was met by a whoosh of hot, stuffy air – how were any of us awake at all??

Meanwhile in Darwin, NT…

Pete just rang.  His breakfast, of bacon and eggs, was about to arrive, and yesterday he bought new bathers so he could go swimming.  I asked him to make SURE there were no crocodiles lurking in the pool…there was an enormous one on the TV news last night, with quite a few fluffy pet pups in its big fat tummy.  He says the caravan park where they are staying is just splendid.  There is a beautiful pool, palm trees, a bar, a restaurant.  John, Andrew and Pete are being picked up by ex-Tasmanian Tom Mulcahy after their breakfast, and they are going to an aviation museum and a gallery.  Tomorrow they are going to Lorne Hill, then on to Longreach.  Andrew is racing somewhere along the line (in a racing car…not in the plane!)  It all sounds like funfunfun!

Last night they were entertained by what Pete described as “a big, fat bastard, a real scream,” who did various cheesy impersonations – Elvis, Bee Gees, Roy Orbison, complete with wigs.  Lots of audience participation, with everyone hanging back initially but then getting into the spirit of things and really letting fly.  I asked if Our Pete, Andrew and John were amongst the uninhibited participants and – you may be surprised – they weren’t.  But…Pete did receive a big fat kiss on the top of his head from the big fat singing bastard, all kitted out as Frankenfurter and singing “I’m a sweet transvestite transsexual Transylvanian.”

NYC #8?  I have lost count…but I am enjoying these Pauline & Barbara In New York stories v much, hope you are too

Yesterday was incredible.  All I can say was that you had to be there.  We had travelled (via subway - not something I want to repeat) uptown to experience the hallowed halls of High End shopping, ie Bloomingdale's (son or father of David Jones - not sure which one was born first) and then Saks, which is so far up in the stratosphere that it made Bloomingdale's look Low End.  More of that later.

I had vaguely noticed that the second Sunday in June was National Puerto Rican Day and that there would be a parade somewhere in the city.  Well, we were in the midst of it.  It lasted for about five very noisy hours.  The internet tells me that 80,000 people march and another two million line the streets.  Another site tells me that three million participate.  We were two of those.  From what we could see, probably the only non-Latino spectators (apart from the many thousands of New York's finest who were out in force at every intersection).  Damn my camera for being out of battery because it was an amazing spectacle.  It takes place along 5th Avenue which is closed from 44th Street to 86th Street, which is a very long way.  Saks is on Fifth Avenue and it required an enormous amount of determination pushing through the huge crowds and the heat to make it there, but we did.

(Please excuse any typos because this computer, one of the very few good things about this apartment, has developed a strange pink striped screen making it almost impossible to read what I have written, plus the space bar sticks.  And, yes, I have tried rebooting).

The internet tells me that there is some controversy because notorious gangs now participate in the parade and a few years ago groups of young men marauded through Central Park and there were over seventy attacks on women in the park.  To us it seemed a very happy occasion with millions of Puerto Rican families caught up in national pride and fervour.  There were many dance troupes parading, comprising men, women and children of all shapes and sizes and there was much salsa dancing down the streets.  There were thousands of vehicles and floats and many bands and bedecked Metro buses.  These were the ATU (Amalgamated Transport Union) contingent and they got the biggest cheer, including from me.  I found myself waving and shouting "Union.  Union", but maybe I shouldn't have because these were the very same bus drivers who have been shouting at Barbara.
A word about New York's finest - a sorrier looking bunch I have seldom seen.  They are always slouching and leaning against walls (perhaps from the weight of the hardware they carry around), they almost all seem very overweight and unfit and universally bored.  None seem to do anything except stand on corners and talk to each other or sit and drink coffee.  We saw a group in a coffee bar on a side street during the parade, and one was (almost) asleep at the table.  They drive the tinniest looking cars imaginable and they are absolutely not like on the television.  Barbara has taken a lot of photos of these sad and sorry specimens.  They have to be seen to be believed.  On the other hand, menacingly, at various points around New York, members of the armed SWAT team (or whatever they are called) pop up and just stand there maintaining a very threatening presence.  Machine guns, dogs, vans with blackened windows.  They stand there, looking up and down the street, then, after a while, they get into the van and drive away in order to pop up again in another street somewhere else in New York.

After the parade Fifth Avenue was awash with filth, I have never seen such piles of rubbish, but I guess that's what two (or three) million people cause when they are in party mood.  Suddenly, a huge clean-up operation swung into action, fleets of street sweeping vehicles appeared and an army of orange-coated men with brooms and bags and the like.  When we went home a couple of hours later it was as though the parade had never happened.  I keep being gobsmacked by the scale of things in this city and the size and efficiency of the clean up operation was another such event.

Back to Saks.  Whereas I might, at a pinch, have been able to afford one or two small purchases in Bloomingdale's, I could never afford anything in Saks.  It is hard to believe that this great big store with its many employees actually has paying customers.  The price of everything is astronomical.  Even little coin purses and key rings are hundreds and hundreds of dollars.  And, oh, the handbags!  None were less than four figures.  I spent a lot of time in the handbag and shoe departments and did manage to take some photos of the wonders on my iphone, although, of course, Barbara got sprung doing the exact same thing and so was in trouble again in a polite Saks sort of a way.

I would have thought that the adage "the customer is always right" would apply double somewhere where the clientele would all have to be multi-millionaires, but not so, I overheard the following conversation in the children's wear department:

Salesperson: No Madam, we absolutely cannot allow you to return these garments.  They have been worn and washed and ironed.

Madam: They absolutely have not.  That's not the way my maid irons. And what about the skirt?

Salesperson: We can't take that back either, but our seamstresses are upstairs rehemming it now.

As always when I travel, my spirit is willing but my feet are not.  I have a very sore left foot which feels very much like a return of my old, familiar stress fracture.  The poor thing has had to carry my not insubstantial weight along so many miles and miles of New York pavements that it seems to have given up the ghost.  That won't stop me though.  It's only pain and this is New York!

Thursday 16^th June

I have heard from Pete, the Northern Territory Traveller.  The three-men-in-a-plane have just arrived in Darwin and they are staying in a caravan park.  In a small cabin… Andrew gets the biggest cabin with the double bed, as befits his station as Pilot and Owner of the Plane.  John and Pete will be sleeping, I believe, in small single beds within very close earshot of each other’s snores…

They have just flown in from Channel Point, where they had a wonderful time staying with a wonderful host whose name I didn’t catch but never mind… He was very hospitable and they were very happy.  I have googled Channel Point and have gleaned a few snippets:

• It is also known as “Barradise” (by which I assume that…there are lots of barramundi to be caught)
• If you like you can go on Muzza’s River and Reef Bash (fun for the boys!)
• It is “a small intact sample of the Territory’s isolated coastline” (ie it looks v beautiful, in the photos.)

My own family of Northern Territory Travellers has just returned.  Nicky, Gavin, Hamish and Angus have, I gather, had THE most wonderful holiday.  I think the boys are at a perfect age for a family adventure holiday – 10 and 12.  They have breakfasted at Uluru, swum in waterholes, explored Lichfield Park – I will get all the details when I see them.  (They have also, I gather, caught up with many Tasmanians also holidaying in the NT… It is a very big bit of country but…Tasmanians find each other, like magnets and iron filings.)

NYC #6  

The groovy set come out in great hordes to Soho on a Saturday morning, trawling the expensive and gorgeous shops for the latest of the latest.  We found ourselves in Dean and Delouca, and what a fabulous shop it is.  Apparently it is Nigella Lawson's favourite shop in all the world.  I have never seen such a delectable array of food.  All, clearly, of the most amazing quality.  It has everything - fresh fruit, meat, fish, cheeses from around the world, a bakery, a spice section, cookware, a coffee bar, and well-heeled New Yorkers.  I bought a slice of New York cheesecake (as you must) and ate it standing up at the marble-topped tables in one corner, reserved for just such a purchase.

I was quite alarmed to see that "SALE" signs had sprung up in windows overnight, but was relieved to find that they were not in the shops where we had given some vigorous exercise to our credit cards.

Several blocks of Lower Broadway had been transformed into a street market, with both sides lined with stalls, just only slightly better than the Vic Market variety, and not nearly so good as Salamanca Markets, but there were lots of food stalls selling typically American street food, which is quite different - gyros and churros (I did try to eat a churro at Santa Monica Pier, but a seagull stole it twixt hand and mouth) and "dogs" and halal food etc etc.  It had been my intention to eat often from food stalls but, frankly, it does not smell very inviting.

We found a wonderful independent book shop, complete with coffee bar.  Books are so much cheaper here.  One really great idea, I thought, was that there were lots and lots of comfortable chairs scattered around, so one could sit in comfort whilst browsing.  The best part though, was the overheard conversation in the coffee bar.  I have mentioned before that I am a shameless eavesdropper, but, in my defence, I point out that the following conversation was carried out in such loud voices that it was obviously meant to be overheard.  

Older Man:  In one of the books about me Schoppelhousten said that I was one of the few who understood the Japanese/German problem.  Is the paradigm the Germanish of the Japanese, or the Japanesish of the Germans?

Younger Man:  When I delivered my paper in Seoul, Hiromoto shook my hand and said that only I understood the Korean/Japanese dilemma.

Older Man:  When I was Head of the New York Council I agreed to an article which would discuss my contribution to the body of knowledge of the Budapest dichotomy.  I then decided that it was better to have only one thousand readers who understood what I was talking about, rather than millions who didn't.

Younger Man:  In my seminar in Prague I expanded on my book concerning the Indonesian situation.  Of course, Huggensmunster has had things to say too, not so well, I think.

On and on it went.  What do you think they were talking about?  I think maybe it was film???

Later, whilst eating upstairs at a shared table upstairs at our local Whole Foods store, two young women, tapping away on their laptops and talking loudly -

First Young Woman:  Of course, I had been in therapy for a year before I joined The Program.  So I have been in therapy now for four years and I am beginning to get to know myself.

Second Young Woman:  I am just coming to terms with touch.

First Young Woman:  You see, that is a revelation.  You can build your whole thing around touch.

 Earlier, in a toilet in a department store, two gorgeous, fabulously dressed young black women at the mirror, putting their makeup on:

First Gorgeous Young Woman:  When Jesus calls me, he aint gonna call me by my name.

Second Gorgeous Young Woman:  No he aint, he gonna call you by your spirit.

I love all this stuff.  It so demonstrates the essential nature of the shifts in the contemporary Australian/American paradigm, as I said in my most recent article.

I am sorry to have to report that Our Apartment is Trying to Kill or Maim Us.  Yes, it’s true.  These are its methods:

First: the steep, steep, narrow dangerous stairs.

Second: the clouds of dust causing allergies, sneezing and asthma.

Third: the light globes that keep needing replacing, and the dust and asbestos?? fragments that dislodge when removing the filthy screwed-on light bulb covers.

Fourth: the requirement to balance on rickety chair on rickety bed (no room for chair on floor) when trying to change said light globes.

Fifth: the gas permeating the apartment when the pilot lights on the gas stove blow out (because of the need to open the "kitchen" window to try to disperse dust and smells).

Sixth: spreading any number of third world diseases from the six inch layer of total filth exposed when lifting off top of stove to try to find the source of the gas leak.

Seventh: causing even more diseases because of the state of the plumbing, requiring use of plunger in the toilet (yuk!) and the bath and the mysterious gurgling noises in the "kitchen" sink.

Eighth: electrocution from the electrical wires looped and coiled around the "balcony" (read fire escape landing).

Ninth: likely broken neck in addition to electrocution when climbing out window to get to "balcony".

Tenth: robbery and murder - because of necessity of leaving windows to "balcony" wide open because of dust/stuffiness/gas fumes.

Eleventh: inducing deafness from the noise of bars, cars, emergency vehicles and drunk passersby which continues all night, heard because of open windows.

Twelfth: causing insanity due to claustrophobia resulting from the near impossibility of fitting two women and all their shopping within the apartment's confines (okay, we might have to bear some of the responsibility for this one).

And can anyone tell my why there is a "Carbon Monoxide Alarm Alert" on the "kitchen" wall?

Amazingly, despite these privations, we are getting on well.

We have decided that truth in advertising is not Mandy, the alleged apartment's alleged owner's, forte.

This is how our apartment is described:

"Stay like a real New Yorker in this adorable remodeled two bedroom apartment with balcony...This trendy and cozy two bedroom apartment can accommodate up to six people (!!!!).  It's a very quiet and peaceful apartment plus you can have all the comforts of home....full kitchen with dinning (sic) room table (huh!)......

We did wonder how Mandy, who is only a young woman, had managed to acquire this (and, according to her maid, Trenita), other rentals, given the price of real estate in New York.  We acquired the apartment through a website VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) through which myself and some other friends once got a fabulous apartment in Spoleto, Italy.  Now, you would assume that Vacation Rental By Owner, would mean the apartments were being rented to you by the owner, wouldn't you?  I did think it strange when Mandy said; "If anyone asks who you are, just tell them that you are Mandy's friend."  We have now discovered a sign in the hall on the ground floor from "Management" advising that leases will be terminated if rubbish is not put in the bins provided in the (very smelly) area provided under the stairs.  I think that our friend Mandy has found a nice little earner - leasing apartments and then renting them at a vast profit to short stay overseas visitors.  I wonder if this is legal?

Ironically, we chose this apartment mainly because of the glowing reviews it had been given.  Made up by Mandy, perhaps?  Or are people just mad?

Today I might go visit some nice, air-conditioned apartment stores - Bloomingdales, Macy's, Saks.  New York is unseasonably hot.

 Earlier, in a toilet in a department store, two gorgeous, fabulously dressed young black women at the mirror, putting their makeup on:    

Wednesday 13^th June

I haven’t talked about our other new lone-sailor friend, Jeanne, yet, have I?

Canadian Greg “met” Jeanne over the radio waves across the Southern Ocean waves.  And by a great Coincidence Of The Sea, they turned up in Tasmania at the same time.  We decided it would be good to go to Shippies with them both, on Anzac Day – a good pub for sailors old and new. 

Jeanne Socrates is English and took up sailing in her fifties, with her husband.  She was a lecturer in maths at a university in the UK, and in holiday breaks she got totally addicted to sailing.  She and George sailed together for about five years and then he died, so she continued, on her own.  She is 68 now, still very fit, healthy, happy.  She says her children are totally bewildered by her choice of lifestyle.  Her son is a dentist, her daughter a natural therapist, and I think they are now resigned to the fact that their mother whizzes about the world on her beautiful yacht, Nereida, only rarely setting foot on land.  She has sailed around the world three times now, and has not yet managed to make the record books.  This sort of thing happens:

Of the some 260 sailors who’ve circumnavigated solo, fewer than 20 are women. Jeanne Socrates had hoped to add her name to both lists, but she was shipwrecked when she lay excruciatingly close to her goal, just 12 hours and 60 miles short of crossing her outbound track.

I really enjoyed meeting Jeanne, and was very happy to go back for a shot of Argentinian whisky on her boat, moored in the Royal Yacht Club marina.  But I, like her offspring, am totally bewildered at her choice of life style.  Yes it is wonderful to sail hither and yon but…she spends so much time out at sea, nowhere near land, all alone… When we were on her boat, she showed us how she had stripped it down, for her on-stop round-the-world attempt.  Her boat is lovely but…it was not comfortable!  She had got rid of her big comfy mattress, her cushions, her dinghy – all of these would add weight to the boat and encumber her on the open sea.  So she sleeps on her couches, which are fine, but not as comfy and soft as a mattress, and she has no way of getting to shore other than going into a marina.  She had, once again, not been able to succeed at the non-stop attempt because she had engine problems and had to come into Hobart to get things fixed.  So now she is sailing back to Vancouver Island to start her round-the-world attempt AGAIN!

At one stage she was in the same part of the watery world as Our Jessica.  I am not sure why the media didn’t go wild – the Oldest Woman and the Youngest Woman, all in the same few hundred square (nautical) miles of water!

I have just looked at Jeanne’s blog, and she is in Tahiti, fixing this and that, meeting up with other intrepid round-the-world sailors.  Occasionally people Pete and I meet express great admiration for our sailing exploits, and I have to admit that…there are VERY many much brave and more intrepid sailors out there…

NYC #5

At the main entrance to the magnificent 19th Century building which is the New York City Library there are two huge lion statues - their names and Patience and Fortitude.  These are two essential attributes in this great city, I feel.

Yesterday we began the day with breakfast at Katz Deli, a New York institution which has been in existence for well over a hundred years.  It featured in the fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally".  One needs pre-Katz training before going because the system for ordering is impenetrable (no waitress patiently waiting while Meg Ryan says: "I'll have this without that and more on the side").  A door person gives you a ticket and barks at you to go to the counter, at the very long counter there are about 17 men shouting at each other in Sopranos accents.  You have to order, eg blintzes, in one place and wait for them in another, sandwiches from one person, tea from another, collection point elsewhere and then little squiggles are made on your ticket for payment at the fortress-like cashier's cubicle when you leave.  Meantime there are other men rushing about filling orders of their famous salami to send all over the world.  On the back of their Katz Tshirts is the message "Send a sausage to your sons in the army".  I tried to order my toast from the wrong man (of course) and did so twice - he then told the right man (about one foot from him) who said: "I'm busy - I ain't got eyes in de back of my back".  Eventually, of course, we did get our breakfast and it was very cheap and delicious.  But I want to go back and do what the locals do - that is, order enormous pastrami and rye with a heap of pickles on the side.  The shouting and rudeness is just theatre, I reckon, it does, after all, have the New York equivalent of a Michelin star.  Barbara, who is quite courageous in her photo taking, took many photos of Katz's (and it is indeed worth photographing).  Two patrons who might have been in the foreground of one of her photos told her: "There are parts of New York where you could get shot for doing that".  And I think they meant it literally.

After Katz Deli, a bus uptown to admire the fabulous art deco foyer of the Chrysler Building, which is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.  On the way we passed the United Nations.  Further on, the UNICEF headquarters building where we stopped at the shop (as you do).  I asked if there was a "rest room" (euphemism used here for lavatory) and was very rudely refused.  No more UNICEF Christmas card purchases from me in future.  That'll teach them.

Then to Grand Central Station to look up and admire, with thousands of other tourists, the lobby, ceilings, lights, stairs, the huge size and the sheer magnificence of the terminal, built when rail travel was King.  We saw signs for Rail Line No. 117, but there may have been even more  It is huge.  Many, many thousands of people per day pour through the concourses each day, if not each hour.  The underground concourses are like a mini-city, with many shops and food halls and restaurants.  I achieved my goal of eating at the famous Grand Central Oyster Bar, which was huge, magnificent and very, very busy.  The ceiling and lights alone are worth going for, even without the food.  We had New England clam chowder - delicious and cheap and then I had Oysters Rockefeller, which seemed appropriate, and consisted of cooked oysters with creamed spinach and mornay sauce.  Barbara had garlic shrimps which turned out to be garlic very large prawns.  (Everything is huge - the smallest "cup of tea" is a cardboard container about 20 cm tall).  The Oyster bar is a fairly upmarket place, full of well-dressed people , the maitre d' (s) wore very spiffy suits, the waiters wore smart blue jackets and the table clearers wore white coats (as in France, all men).  Despite all this, when Barbara politely and demurely asked directions to the "rest room" from a blue-jacketed presence she was shouted at very loudly indeed: "Can't you see I'm figuring (adding up). What's wrong with you?"  Poor Barbara, she gets shouted at daily.  All this rudeness and shouting is probably understandable, because, shortly after, a pair of businessmen I had been listening to complaining about their ex-wives and alimony (the tables were very close together and I am a shameless eavesdropper) shouted peremptorily: "Waiter, get me the check".  No smile, no please, no thank you, no acknowledgment of the humanity of the waiter.  The poor buggers must have to put up with this hundreds of times a day and probably they are on that terrible couple of dollars an hour "tipping wage" which has been unchanged for thirty years.

After Grand Central Station, we went to the glorious, glorious, public library, which is huge, one of the major research libraries of the world, and full of literary, artistic and architectural marvels.  Librarian Barbara thought she was in heaven.  There was a wonderful exhibition, called "Shelley"s Ghost" which featured Percy Bysshe’s very own writings in the flesh, so to speak.

As always happens, my feet were very weary by this time and I found a nice bench upon which I stretched out.  Bliss, but only for about two seconds, then I was ordered to sit up.  I guess, even though this library is free to everyone, wherever they come from (Barbara now has a New York City Library card) they still must make sure that it not used as a resting place - that might encourage the homeless....

Back in our Billyburg days we were intrigued on one of our walks when we found ourselves in an Hassidic Jew area, where the streets were teeming with men in their traditional clothes - tall hats, shaven heads, shawls, long side ringlets, black suits, long white sock things and black slip-on shoes.  Accompanying many of them were young boys in junior versions of same.  We tried smiling and saying "hello" but they just looked straight through us as though we did not exist.  They kept striding along very fast, and then disappearing into doors which appeared to be places of learning.  There were almost no women.  Anyway, we thought it all very interesting.  Recently, the newspapers have been full of stories about sex abuse of hundreds of boy children in the Hassidic Jew community and accusations of coverups and ostracism of victims.  That has caused a sad rethink of what had seemed such an interesting sight of the young boys being taken off for instruction.

The politics here are too depressing for words.  Rick Santorum has formed a new group to raise money with the intention of making the Republicans - get this - more conservative.  There is a huge move on not just to ban abortions, but to ban contraception (and Mitt Romney is onside).  Anti "planned parenthood" legislation is being pushed through in various states.  Now, you would think that this would give Obama an advantage; that women would not want governments to take control over their lives in this respect, but right wing women commentators are saying that they are much more concerned about jobs and the economy than about their reproductive systems!  Obama's approval rating is only 43% and some states are busy culling their electoral register to remove possible Democrat voters, despite having been ordered to stop.

Only another six days in The Big Apple before we begin the long trip home.  Where has the time gone?

Tuesday 12^th June

Very nice it was, to have a long weekend.  I can’t say I expended much energy but…I have shingles as an excuse for laziness!  I did have a very nice family reunion day on Saturday, and cooked some pies on Monday, so I didn’t spend ALL of the three days lolling on the couch with DVDs and my ipad…

Just before Pete left for his outback flying adventure he heard news of our Canadian lone-sailor friend Greg, via a ham radio operator in Kettering.  Apparently Greg has reached New Caledonia so…he is now warm and we don’t have to worry about him and Ede, the cat, freezing in the ocean spray.  Whether or not he is going to set foot in New Caledonia is another matter.  He was planning on going straight to Vanuatu; he feared Les Français would be as bureaucratic as Les Australiens and that he would have to pay out lots of money and throw out all of his grains, flour, necessities.

NYC #4

This morning I have sore calf muscles.  Yesterday, after walking a long way from our bus stop to the "Googleheim" (as it shall forever after be known) and after we could not take in any more breathtakingly wonderful works of art, we decided to just "pop across" Central Park to the John Lennon memorial mosaic in Strawberry Fields.  Well, Central Park, as we all know, is just enormous and it was a very long, although thoroughly enjoyable walk.  Then we walked a longish way back to the toy shop whose name I have now remembered (FAO Schwartz - 150 year old) then walked even further to a bus stop and caught a bus which stopped about 8 blocks (a long way) from our apartment.  By this time, a storm was upon us, we had been walking for about eight hours, so we hailed a cab for the last lap home.  I say this nonchalantly, but actually with a great deal of pride.  Having observed New Yorkers at peak hour, especially in the rain, attempt the seemingly impossible task of hailing a cab, I have now scored three out of three successful (within minutes) cab-hails.  Beginner's luck, probably.  As always happens, the cab veered straight across in front of all other traffic to collect the fare, on this occasion nearly collecting a cyclist as well, resulting in a stream of invective (deserved) from said cyclist.  Amazingly, in New York there are many, many cyclists, darting in and out of the chaotic and constantly streaming traffic.  And, here in America, the Land of the Free, they do not wear safety helmets!  No Nanny State for us, folks.  God knows what the mortality rate for cyclists is.

As happens all too often, by the time we arrived back at the apartment we were far too tired to even contemplate going out to eat, and, on this occasion, to even go to our local Whole Foods store salad bar, so had an extremely healthy dinner (not) of fried cheese sandwiches and gin (me) and kahlua (Barbara) and watched yet more CSI episodes on cable TV.  They are beginning to blur, I am not sure whether we were in New York, Miami or LA last night.

At the Googleheim (in addition to the fabulous collection of modern art) there was a lovely exhibition from a year long collaboration with a number of New York public schools, in which they explored questions of place and identity.  It was so beautiful and so well curated.  The building itself is gorgeous, with a huge spiral concourse, so one can just keep circling ever upward, with diversions into different gallery spaces as you go.  It was beautiful.

Central Park is the ultimate in people watching.  At one time, before New York was "cleaned up" and ceased being one of the murder capitals of the world, I imagined Central Park to be a deserted place, in which lone joggers were attacked and mugged.  Well, in the day at least, it is absolutely teeming with people, and, despite the vastness of the park, the chance of anyone being mugged without about fifty witnesses, seems extremely remote.  It is a tad unkempt by the Australian and European standards of manicured lawns, but it is truly beautiful.  People were doing (almost) every conceivable thing that people can do in parks: sprinting, walking, jogging, pram-pushing, cycling, skating, skateboarding, travelling by horse drawn carriage and by rickshaw.  Baseball, football, basketball, frisbee-throwing, picnicking and just sitting in one of the many park seats, all of which have little plaques on them in memorial of somebody or another's lost "loved ones" (I hate that overused term, but I guess they must have been loved in order for someone to fork out the dollars to buy the plaque).

There was nearly a tragedy in Central Park - my red Pashmina, bought by Abi in Hong Kong those many years ago, and which has now accompanied me on many trips to many places, was left in a bag (along with other things purchased at the Googleheim shop) on a park bench.  When I realised what had happened we ran back to the bench (Barbara gamely running ahead, despite very sore knee) and miraculously we found the bag where it had fallen under a seat.  It would not have lasted two seconds if it had been visible.  I was so relieved, that Pashmina is my travel talisman.

Before I left home I downloaded all the photos on my camera onto my computer and fully charged the battery and, foolishly, told myself that I did not need to bring my camera battery charger in order to save luggage space.  Foolish me indeed, of course the camera battery now needs recharging and I will have to try to find an appropriate shop to buy another charger.  This is easily said, but it has been our experience that, despite the millions of shops in New York, it is extremely difficult to find ones that sell the things you really need.  On the first night in our wee apartment we lamented the lack of what seemed like an essential - a bedside reading lamp.  Well, thought I, I will just pick up a cheap one from the first supermarket I come to.  One week and hours and hours and hours of trudging past shops, and I have not found one single place that sells anything like cheap bedlamps.  Maybe we need a Walmart, but I haven't seen any of those, they are probably only way out in the burbs.  So I shall just have to take photos on my mobile phone, which might, in fact be better, enabling me to surreptitiously take photos of some of the more bizarre people one sees in the streets here.

I now know the difference between panhandlers and beggars.  Panhandlers are those who just stay in one spot and ask for money, and beggars are those who move around and ask for money.  There are plenty of both, but more of the former.  Many have props, one woman in Central Park, who was wearing mad crocheted over-the-top hippy clothes, had a beautiful cat, and was charging $5 for people to photograph her with her cat.  Barbara has photographed many, many dogs in New York, but she now has a photo of a cat, too.  I have mentioned before that there are many, many fashion accessory type dogs here.  Yesterday we spent some happy hours wandering around 5th Avenue Upper East Side where the super, super, super rich have their apartments.  This is the land of the dog-walker, where people are paid to walk the dogs who live in squillion dollar apartments.  Just like in the movies, there are people walking six or more dogs at a time - how their leads don't get tangled, I don't know.  And I bet it’s the maids who have to take care of the dogs' ablutions.  There are many black and Latino maids walking white babies in prams (the prams themselves are design marvels) and we watched one family arrive from an excursion, their driver helped them out of the car and not one, but two, liveried doormen rushed to help them carry their purchases from the car, bowing and scraping the whole time.  A little further on a whole street was blocked off to traffic, and there were many people milling around, so we went to check it out.  It was actually the end of the school day, and the street was full (mainly of maids and nannies) picking up the precious children of the super-rich.  "Huh", said Barbara; "I bet they don't block off the streets for the public school children".  And they don't.