Slobbing in is the new going out...

New York is an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Problem is, when faced with a smorgasboard of choice, if you try and eat everything it just makes you really sick-best to have a little nibble now and again.

So last week I didn't leave my apartment for three days. Not as tragic as it sounds, although I was wearing sweatpants for most of the time. This was a real treat for The American, who no doubt wanted to jump my bones every time he caught site of the grey marl fabric caressing my unexercised backside.

There are many thing I should be doing in New York. I should be going to musuems and exploring Harlem and jogging around Central Park. I should be finding the perfect cupcake and getting to know Brooklyn. I should be, but very often I am not.

Asides from the sub zero temperatures I have another justified reason for my hermitation and that is "Getting serious about my freelancing" because now I am now "Freelancing full time". This is a phrase I will repeat over and over until It becomes actual reality. I do this in accordance with the advice in 'Six Figure Freelancing'-a book written by a former lawyer who approaches her writing with the organisational skills of a Whitehouse press secretary.

The thing with New York is that as well as facilitating a great social life that means you need never need be home, it also facilitates you never leaving home. I mostly blame delivery.com where you can order everything from Thai curry to a pack of toilet rolls.
Why walk to the corner shop in minus 2 degrees when you can get a man to deliver you a pint of milk and a loaf of bread right to your door? Or as delivery.com puts it 'Why cook when you can click?'. Even though I love to cook, it's a sentiment I find hard to disagree with.
On delivery.com you can even get bars of Dairy Milk delivered. They should use that as their advertising slogan.




In any case my corner shop's not much cop. It's a Yoga health food supermarket that sells Acai berry smoothies and tortillas made of sprouts. The receipts say "Om Shanti" at the bottom in place of "Thanks for your custom". It may as well not be there for all the good it serves on weeks like this when I'm hormonal and would step over human flesh to get at chocolate. They don't even have anything with sugar in there. The closest is Agave Nectar, which is something to do with a cactus.



But it's not as if staying in means I have to become an unhealthy slob. This is what I tell myself on day one of not leaving the apartment as I order a new diet book from Barnes and Noble online while inhaling a Hersheys Cookies and Cream bar. The only flavour that doesn't taste of vomit.

I then go on Fresh Direct to order food required by the new diet book and begrudgingly some other stuff for The Teenager and American to eat. I work full time now, they should shop for their own dinner.

Next I open the box to the Davina workout DVD that Paul sent me for Christmas. And they I shut it again. And open. And shut...

On Wednesday while procrastinating some pitching emails I buy myself a vintage coat from Etsy. It's for Fashion week, so technically purchasing it is 'work'. It will serve the function of keeping me warm on days when sweatpants won't be part of my ensemble. Days I look forward to with mixed emotion.

That night I realise that I don't even need to go to the video store as I can order films from the tele or from the 'Roku', which is one of 657 unfathomable technical gadgets that The American has bought into the apartment-the result of which is a kind of electrical version of Day of the Triffids.

On Thursday The Teenager sends me an I.M. from her bedroom next door and when I get up from the sofa I realise my arse has gone numb



In the summer I will take myself to parks. In the spring probably even coffee shops?

On Friday I am forced to leave the house to go to Connecticut to work with my NYFW partner. That's short for New York Fashion Week. Did you like that acronym? It's amazing how quickly you can become a wanker when fashion is involved. Anyway, I get out of the house super early (well, before 8a.m.) and I am like a newborn blinking into the daylight.

I skip around to 8th avenue and hail a cab to Grand Central station in 3 seconds flat. When I get there I come in through one of the second floor entrances I am greeted with the sunshine streaming celestially through the floor to ceiling window ahead. I stop. It makes my breath shorter. New York buzzes it's business around me. It's how I imagine heaven would look, well a busy heaven anyway.

I breathe it in and it tastes all the sweeter after my enforced starvation.

Now eat me New York.

Coming out to play...

If Manhattan is an adult playground then we've defiantly earned our turn on the swings.

After tears, tantrums and some elegant accounting we have been deemed just about good enough to pay huge sums of money to rent our dream apartment, nestled on a tree lined street tucked inside the West Village. It has 5 whole rooms and proper doors and a kitchen that you could swing at least a kitten in. The walls are white and the floors wooden and shiny, a perfect blank canvas I think.

"It's a blank canvas!" says the American. I scowl and begin to worry that phrases like that mean he might want to take an actual interest in the the interior decorating.

Unlike many of the luxury prison cells for rent, It has windows in every room. It sits opposite the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community centre, which is hands down the cleanest and most aesthetically pleasing community centre I have ever seen.

The American has been preparing a top drawer for this very day. Except it's seemingly full of nothing but electronics.

''So I got us a TV.'' he offers a few days before the big move.
''But we have two TVs already,"
''Yes but there are three of us, so we need three TVs.''
''No home needs three TVs.''
''Huneee, we need one for the living room, one for our bedroom and one for the Teenager.'
''We don't."
''Well I got it anyway.''
''How big is it?''
''Huh?'' he says and tries to busy himself by fiddling with the air-con.
''The tele. How big?''
''It's kinda big'' he says distractedly.
''How big is kinda big?''

There is a worryingly long pause.

''52 inches.''

Oh. Dear. God. I swallow the orange sized lump in my throat.

''Okaaaay. So show me how big that is Matthew?"
''It's 52 inches big.''
''Yeah, I get that, I am just saying, show me with your arms.''
''I can't.''
"Why?''
"Cos my arms won't stretch that far.''

The American is 6ft 2.

My sulk is only halted by his promise that if I leave the electronics to him, I can do the rest of the apartment how I like.

*
Before we flit to Manhattan in a cloud of Marc Jacobs and cupcake bakeries I bid a fond farewell to Astoria- cheap rent, elevated trains, the Korean deli that smells of cat's piss, the 99c store and the Brazilian neighbours that put Christmas decorations up in September.

I want to go out in style so take a long overdue visit to the PS1 gallery, MoMa's hipper, younger sister located in Long Island city.

As I cross the road an amazing smell is wafting in the air, like sugary doughnuts baking in the oven. I assume it is coming from the cafe. I wonder how quick I can rush through the art in order to sit in down and eat whatever the smell is.

I needn't have worried. Aside from giant Woolly Mammoth skin suspended on scaffolding in the courtyard there appears to be not much actual art to look at.





I pay $5 to get into a building that looks like a deserted asylum and spend the next 20 minutes wandering into empty rooms or stairwells that lead nowhere, debating whether they are part of the art. I walk under the famous swimming pool exhibit and marvel at a giant room full of 2822 records. Aside from that the only art I can find is from a man who emptied his entire Berlin apartment and stacked all the furniture on top of each other. According to the blurb, everything will return to his home once the exhibition is done. I wonder what he is doing for furniture in the meantime-I hope he didn't have to go to Ikea.

I spend 20 minutes trying to locate the cafe, to no avail and then am back outside sniffing the sugary air again. A little way up the street a group of hipsters are doing to same. Is this part of the art? Smell-a-vision. It beats the usual drains and garbage smell.

On the way home a woman next to me on the subway starts breastfeeding while a homeless man snores loudly opposite her wrapped in a sleeping bag. A group of Mexican buskers in full national costume then get on and start singing. Who needs museums when New York city is like one big art installation?

*

I make an unscheduled visit to the American's office. There are several ginormous cardboard boxes stacked up in the corner.

''Oh Christ. Is that the tele?''
''Umm, no.'' he tries to look busy on his computer.
''Where's the tele then?"
''In storage."
''What are these things then?''
''Just a few things essentials for the apartment.''
''Oww cool, like plates and cups and stuff?''
''No, not really..Hey, did you know we have Reese Peanut butter cups in the kitchen?''
''What is in the boxes Matthew?''
''Umm. Speakers.''
The boxes are 5 foot high.
''5 foot high speakers?"
''They are really slender.''
''I don't care if they are anorexic, they are five foot high. And what else?''
''An amp."
"Anything else?''
"Maybe a blue ray player?"
''Is that it?''
"I got an ipod doc too....well, 2 ipod docks actually."
''Did you order us anything to sleep on by any chance?''
''Umm, no, but hey huneee I got us these really cool all-in-one remote controls!''
"We don't have a sofa. We don't have anything to sit on to watch and listen to all this shit''
''Don't call my electronics shit please hunnee''

I stomp off to contemplate a new look for the apartment- chav lottery winner chic.

*

The night we move into the apartment and I am sat on a chair we stole from The American's former housemate looking at the unwrapped beast that is the 52 inch TV.


Matt has hired two PAs from the office to help us move. They keep bringing boxes and they all have electronics in them. By the time they have finished the living room looks like branch of Comet.

At 3 a.m. we finally flop onto our inflatable bed.

''We did it." I turn to The American with a huge Cheshire cat grin.
''I know huneee. We got a place in the West Village. Me and you. In the West Village."
"In the village that is West?" I ask
''The village that we live in. The West Village.''
"The West Village where we live?''

This game goes on for at least 10 minutes until we fall asleep wrapped up in a duvet with no cover on and mismatched sheets. A few hours later I have a nightmare that a giant black beast is attacking me, until I wake up properly and realise it's just the TV I can see peeking at me through the crack in the bedroom door.

I get up and rifle through a suitcase until I find what I need. Several hours later The American gets up for work to see 3 Cath Kidston strawberry print tea towels draped over the giant TV.

In the adult playground, let the games begin...