My route to 66...

Much like Joaquin Phoenix I've had a strange and surreal 12 months.

It's exactly a year since I packed up my life in Cardiff and arrived at JFK with a sobbing Teenager. She shedding tears for the boyfriend she left in Wales, me still in shock at my Dad's death a month previously. At my feet some seriously bulging excess baggage.

The American picked us up in a rented SUV and we drove into Manhattan. I was all broad smiles and endless chat, but with a belly groaning with nerves. This is home now. Excited and scared for what lay ahead. Bye bye Cardiff. A fresh start packed to the brim with hope and blindness to any troubles that may lay ahead.

There was no time to ponder on my grief. No pontificating on the enormity of what I had done-giving up a great job at the BBC, renting out my beloved house to strangers, leaving my recently widowed Mum. I was the project manager of this whole new family life and there was a lot of gluing to do, or things would fall apart.

The work started pretty quickly with enrolling The Teenager in school, which was swiftly followed by finding another school, as she hated the first one. Next, the blistering footwork to find an apartment, followed by ploughing all our savings into securing the right one-which then had to be decorated and furnished. We moved from our temporary digs in Queens to our permanent bijoux box in the West Village and wondered how we were all going to live in harmony in such a tiny space.

There was then the small matter of getting married in Central Park by a naval captain in the freakish hot Autumn sunshine and then a rodent infestation in our perfect apartment in place of a honeymoon. Then began immigration and all the ridiculous, comedy bureaucracy that accompanies it. Have you ever been engaged in vice? Are you planning a coup against the U.S. government? Were you a member of the Nazi party between 1939-1945?

When the excitement wore off and it no longer felt like we were here on a long holiday- the missing came. Missing my Mum, missing my friends, really missing my Dad, missing working, missing Corrie and Cadburys, missing the NHS and missing someone knowing what a wanker is.

I had to find my way around New York and my new family life and there was maps for the first but not for the second, but in both I got lost frequently. Some real personal stuff happened, that even I as a chronic oversharer didn't want to blog about. Winter days got shorter and darker and colder and then snowy. Then there came some even bigger problems which I  couldn't blog about and then there was some money problems due to the stuff I couldn't blog about.

Throughout it all I missed not having girl mates to talk the extra 15 thousand words a day that women need to say. Finding them became my mission and I was horribly desperate at first, a girl's girl starved of female company. But by the time there was spring blossom outside our window the friends came. Then the friendships had to be fostered through NY girl activities like toxic cocktail drinking and $20 manicures from women who bitch about you in Korean. But mostly it was about the drinking. There is little that cannot be forged over a Manhattan mixed Martini.

Summer, the last season in the cycle. (More) Tears (than usual) for my Dad on the anniversary of his death, temperatures of 100 degrees giving birth to an obsession with air cons. Our green cards arriving in the mailbox and the U.S. immigration service using the worse photos I have ever seen of The Teenager and I. A deliberate ploy I believe, so immigrants will not commit crime and end up with an unflattering picture of them on the news. 

I blogged about most of what happened over the year here on Welsh Alien. In fact, I wrote so much I didn't actually write my book, but then I have not been writing my book for at least a decade, so at least that's one comfortable consistency to keep me warm at night. I can safely say I penned at least a book's worth of blogs, except none of you paid 12.99 for my hard work on Amazon. Although I'd like to think you would, given the chance.

I have written 66 blogs so far. This one makes 67.

66 would have been nice. An even, rounded number that evokes World Cup wins and famous American roads. But then that's not my number.

My life here is far more of a 67. A lovely, odd imperfection.

Snowmageddon

If frenzied local TV news reports are to be believed New York is on the verge of becoming a real life version of 'The Road'.

"It's a big time storm people!" NY1 has been screaming for the last 24 hours.

If Ny1 had pants it would be wetting them right now. This week they've had a City councilman charged with fraud (Larry Seabrook claimed $170 for a bagel), the last fashion week at Bryant Park and snowmageddon-all in one week. There is even the possibility of these stories colliding-should the accused decide to turn up at the tents and become trapped by a giant snowdrift while trying to get a receipt for $120 for a can of coke.



The fervor was fed by mayor Bloomberg who called a press conference yesterday about the snow, which he kicked off by declaring the closure of all NY public schools on Wednesday. After that annoucement from the NY Department of Knee Jerk Reactions came this advice from The Mayoral Ministry of Stating the Frickin' Obvious:

"Wear hats, scarves and gloves"

Bloomberg then looked serious before decreeing:

"Don't shovel snow if you're not in great shape, we don't want anyone having a heart attack"



This all smacks of British weather panic and brings back memories for me of sitting at news desks writing headlines like "Batten down the hatches", even though I was always pretty sure no one had hatches and I remain unconvinced 'batten' is a word. I expected better of hardened New Yorkers.



Meanwhile on the lovingly low budget NY1 there's some more advice for the advice frenzy machine. Just to make sure you get the message they are running them over some cheap snowflake graphics:

'Find your snow Shovel'
'Plan your parking'
'Be ready for airport woes'

Telling New Yorkers how to deal with snow is a little like telling Brits how to deal with rain.


As I write this evening Bloomberg is doing another press conference live on NY1. He's telling us all how well he's dealt with the snow and how justified he was in closing schools.

Just in case anyone should think he's making a icy mountain out of a snowy molehill he's chucking in a serious news angle. New York blood banks have lost 1500 donations today so Bloomberg is urging us all to go and donate.

Then for viewers bothered by the serious tone, there's some light relief from the Mayor-Fear not fans of musical theatre! The likes of Jersey Boys and Wicked won't let 10 inches stop them! Oh no!

"All Broadway performances will go on as planned."




The show must go on. Thanks Mike.

That's more like the New York I know and love.

Just a prawn in the game...

Tuesday 1st September 2009. My new life in New York begins with me arguing in a Queens branch of Subway over a tuna mayonnaise footlong.

I ask the woman for tuna mayonnaise, but she looks at me blankly, so I ask for it again and point to the tuna, but her expression remains. So I say it again...
'Tuna. Tuna Mayo."
She exchanges confused glances with her colleague. I am hungry and jet lagged and want my $5 footlong.
''Tuna? Tuna? TUNA?'' I say pleadingly
''AHhhhhhh." says a man with a strong Indian accent 'You mean TU-na?'
"CHOO-na." I say
"TU-na." he says
"CHOO-na." I shout
"TUUUUUU-na." he enunciates as if it is I who is the newcomer to the English language ''We call it Tuuuuuuu-na here.''
''It's a fish.'' says the girl
"Are you Australian?'' he asks cheerily
''No! I am British! And I know it's a bloody fish. And we call in Choo-na.''
"Just give the woman her goddamn footlong!'' interrupts a native New Yorker in the queue.
''Thank you.'' I sigh.
"You should get some To-may-toes on that.'' she suggests
I don't even start.

*
By Thursday morning we are in Manhattan enrolling the Teenager for school in a kind of NY city educational sausage factory. I forget the passports, so we can't even progress past stage one. The American gives me evils while I protest that no one actually told me I had to bring passports. He then has to go all the way back to our pied a terre in Queens and is gone for over and hour.

When we finally get to progress to stage two they tell us we need a sworn affidavit to confirm that we are living together. And it has to be signed by a notary.

I am not even entirely sure what a notary is, but The American seems to know so we all follow him as he goes careering off down the street in search of one. This being New York there is a notary just one block away. So we pay a bespeckled Jewish man $2 to put a stamp on the affidavit and then it's all apparently official in the eyes of the New York city that The American and I are co-habiting.

When we return to we have to get back in line to wait for a 125 year old woman to single finger type into a laptop. It's ok though, because she loves my accent and her equally octogenarian colleague is asking where I am from and pretending she knows where Wales is.

Amber is finally in the system after 4 hours and I learn that bureaucracy is not the sole preserve of the British.

*
On the weekend we go to the cinema. Except I have to call it the 'movies' now. As we pay $36 for tickets for the three of us, I lament the loss of my cineworld card and it's unlimited films for 13 quid a month. There is no American equivalent. What with this and marmite and Coronation Street I have a sudden pang for the homeland. It lasts about 30 seconds until I see a tranny in a micro mini queuing for popcorn, then I love New York again.

We see District 9, a film about aliens in South Africa. They nickname them Prawns. More fish. There is a theme emerging here.

No one understands the Aliens or knows where they are from. I know how they feel.

I am, after all... a Welsh Alien in New York.