Ah Yes, The Garden - Oh No, the Weather

The storm visible up 3rd Ave from the terrace 

The New York Stock Exchange- perhaps they are expecting Guy Fawkes on 4th July

Well the plan of doing the garden was a good one, and we did start with the best of intentions, buying four sacks of 'Miracle Gro' potting compost from the hardware store down the street and carrying it home like a pair of pack horses - one bag each in a rucksack and manhandling the other like a slippery drama queen. when we returned Mrs Blue jay was warbling away eating a banana in her new bowl, but with the temperature in the 80's, I figured it was best to wait until later when it would be cooler to start planting and re-potting.

So Amanda and I set off for the southern edge of the island, to return some items to 'Century 21', a large discount department store, where I would suggest Marines could be trained in urban warfare, especially at this time as there was a sale on. Geez it was scary. I asked the security guard - the one with the alarmingly blue contact lenses - not even old 'Blue Eye's' himself had them that colour - where we should go with returns, which turned out to be the 3rd floor. Once on the third floor we could see nothing but a sea of shoppers and you could barely make your way through the hundreds of rails of clothes. I asked another member of staff and she said something unintelligible to my northern ears, but Amanda interpreted and it was to the back and then right, apparently.

The deed was done in a relatively short time and soon we were out of the Guerrilla warfare training camp, and on our way to Battery Park to see if we could find the farmers market. We gave up after several viewings of the 'not for tourists' guide to New York, two attempted sales pitches of Michael Jackson RIP T-Shirts, and several attempts to sell us fake goods of many sorts. Our final view of the guide hastened us to one of the back streets of the financial district near Wall St and soon we found our way to 'Sophies Cuban Restaurant'. Iced tea was followed by  Tamales, Cuban beef stew with fried plantains and rice and a Cuban sandwich which had more meet in than the Bay of Pigs, all for the princely sum of $24. Replete we stumbled upon a small market and purchased some plants. White Gazanias, pink Bizzie Lizzies, and Cosmos, to fill any gaps there might be later in the garden.

While walking back to the bus stop, we noticed a lot of policemen and probably representatives of other agencies - nudge nudge, wink wink say no more, but they were wearing ear pieces in the close proximity of the American Stock Exchange building, which was wearing the most outrageously large flag, and underneath a row of more stars and stripes, and one solitary Chinese flag. I commented that they must have used the Union Jack to its full potential and were now moving onto bigger fish. Amanda said I should be careful they might come over and lift me - yeah well I doubt I was much of a threat with a dozen bedding plants.      

When we arrived home later we noticed a rather dark and threatening sky gathering, and in the time it took us to enter the building and get to the 19th floor, the rain began, along with the thunder and the lightening, so gardening was cancelled. Three hours later and it's still raining and gardening is still cancelled. 

unfortunately tomorrow is my last full day - sniff sniff - so if the weather is bad tomorrow I'm just going to get on with it regardless - so fingers crossed the weather is better at the end than it was in the beginning.

At Liberty in Central Park

Amanda and her friend 'Ms Liberty' outside Central Park.

A day of highs and lows today. Post-pride come down this morning here, but then the emails started to fly in, some insults - naughty people, and some offers from even naughtier people. Just for the record I'm doing nothing for less than $5 an hour plus benefits and as many pretzels as I can get down my cleavage.

That aside, Amanda and I went on a little trip to the American Museum of Natural History. An impressive and beautiful building on the west side of Central Park. The main entrance has a huge entrance hall decorated with vast, murals depicting Theodore Roosevelt's life, as well as quotations engraved on the walls. In the centre of the room are two dinosaur skeletons, a Brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which tower into the vaulted roof.

It's not my sort of museum, but the families of the little Bart Simpsons running wild, and the little Bart's themselves looked as though they were enjoying it. We had booked tickets for the Hayden Planetarium, and were treated to a vast video spectacular on the ceiling of the auditorium, with a show entitled 'Cosmic Collisions', which was as much a history lesson as a preliminary lesson in astro-physics.

Before leaving the building we had to negotiate the five different gift shops in order to get to the exit. All manner of over priced clutter and trash in there, from glow in the dark stars for your ceiling to astronaut freeze dried food - I was semi-tempted with the 'Indiana Jones' hat but, but not alas in my size, and besides they didn't have any whips to go with it.

We took a cross town bus to 5th Avenue for a leisurely stroll, to 'Jack's 99c Store' for garden supplies. Alas no buckets, but I did get a dish cover for a microwave oven that will make a neat bird feeding platform, as it has two steam vents, so I inverted the dish, opened the vents and fastened it to the top of the railing. Not only does this keep it steady, but it also allows and rain water to drain away - yeah I know I missed my calling I should have been on Blue Peter.

So tomorrow is gardening day, time to finish off the work and officially open the terrace........watch this space.

Just Little Old Me - New York Pride Style

Now you can see why I don't like the 'predominantly whites' rule for croquet - haha

And keep the comments clean you lot back in the UK.

Not One But Two - Woohoo!

Ha ha finally met my my NYPD policewomen on duty at pride. Officers Morris and Alvarez, or 'Peaches and Tina' to their friends. Couldn't buy them coffee and doughnuts as they were on duty, but I'm holding them to that rain check for next time.

Gay Pride In New York

Wow where do you start? Weather was perfect, crowds were huge, colourful, friendly and very noisy. The pavements were five or six deep down 5th Avenue and it was so nice to see the taxis being held up for a change.

The parade started up on 55th street at noon and went down 5th Ave and then into the West Village. There were thousands of people taking part in the march itself, groups of varying persuasions, colours, faiths, sports, political followings, and genders - but all one happy party, that paraded down the route in around 4 hours.

It was great to see such diversity, and especially so many, older, or I should say, 'mature' gay people. Sometimes it's easy to loose sight of the fact that it is only within my own lifetime that it has become some way towards acceptable to be gay, in the society that I live in, other are not so lucky, and all of us continue to hope that we see the day when there is true equality for everyone, regardless of their sexuality.

The UN Took My Sister

At some point during cocktails on Friday evening my sister told me she had had the day from hell and had to go to Geneva for 3 weeks - the next day. So here I am in New York, and now she is in Geneva - way to go United Nations.

Even better when their mission statement is 'Global Association of Governments, facilitating co-operation in international law, security, economic development and equality for all' - bloody bureaucrats!

Economically it's cost them around $7,000 in expenses alone to send two people from New York to Geneva for an annual meeting that takes place every year - enough to maintain a village somewhere for a very long time - so it's not just the British Government that couldn't organise the proverbial party in a brewery.

The UN Representatives wear blue hats, but then so did 'Thunderbirds' - see where I'm going with this? "F.A.B." - you can make your own acronym - mine is too bad bad to publish.

Croquet: day two

That very nice chap, Stuart Lawrence, manager and host, gave me a late start. I gave him the nickname of 'Master Yoda', as he had been giving the New Paltz crowd some coaching. I used my time wisely, and walked four blocks extra on the way in to get not one but two Large cappuccinos with extra shots of espresso.

It didn't do me a lot of good, well either that or Russell Brown had had more, as he set off like a train and left me in his wake for some time. The were mutterings, and even Master Yoda, commented on my lagging behind. Hoop four was my nemesis, could I get through it or in front of it - more chance of finding a New York Policewoman with 'Take me for a pint of Guinness' pinned to her uniform. Then when I finally conquered hoop 4, bugger me if it didn't bite me on the way back and give me a good kicking at 3-back. Eventually as time approached - oh yes the ignominy of it, went to time - haha - 'am I bothered', to coin a phrase - we were level. Sudden death, the golden hoop. I saw a tiny crack in Russell's armour and finally took the innings and 4-back to take the game by that wonderful score of +1t.

I happily lost a rather long and drawn out semi-final against Chris Patmore. You name the cardinal sins of croquet, one of us surely committed them - took off into hoops, cross wired ourselves, clanged hoops - good D Class spectator stuff - oh and Stuart told us we went over time too - haha.

I said my farewells and left as Gay Pride the following day was going to have my full attentions.