So, it’s Labor Day in
New York and, as in LA, I have been invited to nothing.
I had a burger at home last
night – my single contribution to what is apparently the last summer barbecue
weekend – although, technically, it was a beef “pattie”, which is not the same
thing at all. Oh, dear me, no.
Can you believe I have not found
one supermarket that sells burgers? Real burgers. None of your Angus reared
stuff with 5% fat, but something juicy and overflowing with non-goodness.
Something that I can, on the very occasions when I eat meat, smother in my own
chillies, ketchup, onions, mushrooms, four cheeses and consume alone, with
gristle hitting the walls.
You can get them everywhere else,
of course – from trucks, fast food chains, restaurants, et al – but I want to
do my own. I don’t really like eating in front of people, as I suffer from
misophonia (literally, a hatred of sound) and, for me, eating with others
creates so much stress, being subjected to their munching and scrunching, my
own stomach tends to batten down its hatches.
So, all I wanted for Labor Day was
a burger. A burger like Bird’s Eye in the UK make. Or a sausage. Like Walls’
sausages. Not a saveloy, which isn’t a hot dog at all in my book: it’s a
flaccid…Well, I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.
Anyway, enough about lack of meat
and invitations; the thing that really fascinates me in the US is how different
Bank Holidays are from those in the UK. Here, they build up to them for weeks –
and I MEAN, weeks – because they have so few holidays. Americans really do work
incredibly hard and most people I meet have just two weeks’ holiday a year (if
they’re lucky); so, when an extra day arrives in their schedule, it’s like the
Second Coming.
It’s astonishing, in the UK, that
there are now two Bank Holidays in May and one in August, not to mention all
the holidays in between. So blasé are the Brits about their time off, they do
just two things on a Bank Holiday weekend: sit in the pub getting drunk, or sit
in their car trying to get to somewhere they haven’t a hope in hell’s chance of
reaching before the next Bank Holiday comes around (as I finished that
sentence, by the way, a “Living Social Deal” arrived in my inbox, inviting me
for a “Tandem Sky Dive”. I don’t even want a tandem Five Star dinner with most
people, so why would I don a helmet and risk my life, all for a picture that
makes me look as if I’m being rogered from behind by an air bag?).
At least there is decent Bank
Holiday telly in the US, days that the UK usually decides to wheel out all the
dross that couldn’t make it into the schedule the rest of the year. Tonight
sees the season finale of Mistresses, a show so ridiculously OTT, silly and
unbelievable, I love it. They’ve done what Sex and the City did with four
friends – they have everyone talking about which one you think you might be. I
am not Savi (boring, and I wouldn’t be so stupid as to get pregnant on a desk);
nor April (I wouldn’t be so stupid as to mistake an FBI agent for a hot
artist); and nor, definitely, Karen, the nymphomaniac, expressionless shrink,
who might actually be dead, for all the enthusiasm she shows during hot sex.
I am so utterly Joss (in the same
way that everyone wanted to be Carrie in Sex and the City), it’s uncanny. Never
mind that she is tall, blonde and beautiful (hey, a dwarf can dream), our
spirits are intertwined in the universe, I just know they are (but you really
need to choose Harry over that dork of a fiancé, tonight, Joss).
It’s now 3.28pm and I’m going to
sit down with my home-made spaghetti Bolognese and watch last night’s Masters
of Sex. I’ve been up working since seven (that’s what I really call a Labor
Day), so I think I deserve it.
Happy holidays, everyone.
And it’s
not too late to invite me to your barbecue.
No comments:
Post a Comment