New York, New York - The Case For

Earthquakes or hurricanes. 

As I contemplate whether I prefer living on the East or West Coast of the USA, the extremes in weather cannot help but influence my thoughts. Do I want to die buried alive amid a heap of building rubble, or be swept away by the elements?

   

For the past couple of weeks, Los Angeles has been unbearably hot, with a humidity I haven’t experienced in over five years of being here. In New York, where I was due to fly back for July 4^th Independence Day celebrations, there were storms following Hurricane Arthur that swept in from North Carolina.

   

People tell me I won’t be able to bear August in New York (too hot, plus mosquitoes – I have already seen one the size of a bat), nor January (too cold). California, for the most part, is the same all year. When it spits six drops of rain here, it makes national headlines, and for days afterwards people stop you in the street to ask how you managed during the “storm”.

   

European weather has prepared me well for the horrors that apparently await me in New York when I decamp there (more of that anon, for those of you have expressed curiosity). In my home town of Cardiff, it rains pretty much every day of the year (or so it seems), and it’s hard to imagine that anywhere could be colder than Paris (where I lived for five years) in winter. I once sat through a rugby match in the national stadium, and I swear it took my head four hours to de-frost. So bad was the cold, I never went to a match that wasn’t under cover ever again.

   

But I have been assured that in the New York winter, you can’t walk a few yards without having to take refuge in a shop for comfort. It never happens in the black and white films, where women wearing little more than a thin overcoat happily carry their hatboxes out of Macy’s department store and wander the streets for hours under the glare of Christmas tinsel; but then I’ve always had more faith in what I see on screen, despite reality’s constant attempt to prove otherwise.

   

And so, to my decision to leave LA - at least, for a while. At first, I was going to do the bi-coastal thing, but quickly discovered that all I was doing was arriving at one apartment, cleaning it, and then heading to the airport to fly back to clean another. I felt like the world’s most expensive domestic. The cost of two rents, plus flights, seemed a waste, when one place was always empty.

   

I have been in LA five years, and I love it here, but I’m bored. For a woman of my age, it’s tough socially. Sure, you can sit at a bar by yourself, but take drink out of the equation (which I regularly do) and what have you got? Sitting alone at home with a box set of The Good Wife – and now that Will’s dead, even that’s no fun anymore.

   

I have managed perfectly well with buses, cabs, and sometimes, walking, in LA, but the distance is a deterrent to people venturing further from their own front door. This makes them very flaky when it comes to arrangements, which they constantly break. And everyone wants something from you. I can count on one hand the number of times anyone has asked me a question about my life. They just don’t care. It’s a “What can you do for me?” culture – and the expat Brits are the worst.

   

I am probably in the honeymoon period in New York, but Manhattan is a far more friendly, outgoing place. I have always said that LA may be full of bullshit, but as bullshit goes, it’s the best in the world. Now, however, I’m enjoying the bullshit free culture that is much more akin to London mentality. While I have never liked London much, I love the intelligence, humour and general vibrancy at the heart of my industry that prevails there; likewise, New York, where, as an older woman, I am not made to feel like a parasite whom the rest of society wishes would fall off her perch and make room for the younger generation (and, to be honest, I pretty much feel like that in the UK these days).

   

Everyone – and I mean everyone – talks to me in New York. My armour – iPad, two phones, reading glasses – that I take to restaurants and bars quickly becomes redundant among people hell-bent on personal communication. I also love the 24/7 culture - being able to buy a pint of milk at any time – and not having my drink whipped off the table on the dot of 2am. I like the ease of travel – subway, walking or cabs – and everything I want to do being within close proximity from where I live.

   

The stimulus of seeing so many people from different walks of life, together with the incredible architecture (it is the most extraordinarily beautiful city), can also only be grist to any writer’s mill.

   

And, yes, there’s the weather. I hadn’t realised how much I missed rain until I gazed from my living room window at the forked lightning hitting the Hudson River. Utterly beautiful. I had forgotten the calm that watching the beauty of a sunset over water can induce (yes, I could have that in LA, but over an hour’s bus ride away). I had forgotten how much variety fuels creativity. Constant sunshine is great, but it really does become boring.

   

New York is also much closer to the UK, so I will be able to visit family and friends more often at half the cost. Heck, it’s so close, I feel I might even try swimming there.

   

Maybe, at the end of the day, I’m just ready for a change. I’ve always been the same, although I’m keeping my stuff in storage in LA - just in case.

   

However, if ever you read here that Miami has won me over, please feel free to have me sectioned. 

   

My Part in American Independence History

July 4^th is embedded in my memory as the date that nearly got me my first job in television.

   

I had moved to London from Wales in the mid-Eighties and applied for a researcher’s job on The Six O’Clock Show, a light-hearted, evening entertainment show for London and broadcast by London Weekend Television.

   

I was unemployed and receiving state benefits that amounted to £17 a week, which was as little then as it is now. I kept my belly full by gate-crashing events and smuggling chicken drumsticks from the buffet into my empty handbag.

   

My knowledge of television was limited; my knowledge of what constituted research even less. Still, I made it to the final rounds, when applicants were required to put together ideas for a show that would be broadcast on July 4^th. Luckily, a friend pointed out that it was American Independence Day (until that point, in my ignorance, I had gathered a rather feeble offering about British summers), and off I went.

   

To my surprise, I made it to the final six and was invited for an interview at LWT’s offices and studios on the South Bank. As I gazed at the huge tower overlooking the River Thames, I fantasised about the great future on which I was about to embark in the glamorous world of television.

   

Alas, it was all downhill from there. The frivolity of The Six O’Clock Show had not been much of an indication that it came under the banner of Current Affairs, and that what they were looking for was a researcher who could move on to Panorama, the high brow, mega-serious programme that revelled in exposing the foibles of institutions and individuals.

   

As someone who does not like confrontation unless pushed unjustly, the idea of door-stepping a CEO to find out where he was stashing his employees’ pension funds and the like, was never going to be my thing. At the interview, however, I had no idea that I was a bad fit and so answered every question with the flippant, throwaway humour I had seen in the show.

   

The lowest point was a question about my views on The Peacock Report, the subject matter of which was the financing of the BBC. Apparently. Unfortunately, I had never heard of it and came out with: “There’s not enough sex in it.”

   

“Did you mean that in a pejorative sense?” asked a stony-faced producer. I had even less idea what pejorative meant than I had knowledge of the contents of the Peacock Report, but in a gallant attempt to save face, I expanded upon the sexual aspects I felt could benefit its findings.

  

The only other thing I recall was saying that I was looking to be a TV presenter and writer, but was met with the response: “Television is not the place for creativity and talent.”

   

I didn’t get the job, but had a very nice letter saying that they felt Current Affairs was perhaps not my forte, but they thought that the Arts department could make use of my “undoubted talent and ability”. I didn’t get a job there, either, but I battled onwards and upwards, a chicken drumstick kleptomaniac for some years after, until I got my big break as TV Critic on the London Evening Standard.

   

So although, today, I am not a US citizen, I celebrate not only anyone’s ability to gain independence from the English (I wish Wales could do the same), but the date that set me on the writing and broadcasting path I finally pursued.

   

My first television launch as a critic, by the way, was for a programme about Aids, produced by Mr “Pejorative”. I gave it a stinker. I can be mean like that.

   

Subsequently, we started dating. Well, I say dating. We had one Indian meal, over which he announced that he was a manic depressive who spent six months at a time in a darkened room, and he was about to enter that phase now. I had barely taken a bite out of my first poppadom.

   

The development of that relationship is another piece altogether, but every July 4^th I remember the course of events my little programme plan put into motion.

   

So, Happy Independence Day, America! In the tiniest of ways, I feel a part of your history, and it gives me immense joy that I am able to spend so much time in your country, where I have become something of an expert on the subject of your Current Affairs.

   

Basically, there’s not enough sex here.

     

It's the Taking Part that Counts? Sod That!

The majority of women, when asked what they most want in a man, reply: “Someone who makes me laugh”. 

The majority of men will give you a whole list of other things long before they say “a woman who makes me laugh”. 

Their list will usually be dominated by “someone who makes me feel good about myself” or “someone who thinks I’m funny”, all the way down to “a whacking great pair of knockers and the ability to keep her gob shut when I should be the centre of attention”.

   

Lots of people tell me, and have always told me, that I am very funny. I have made a living out of being a funny writer; but when it comes to relationships, most men don’t want funny. Funny women usually go hand in hand with unpredictability, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, getting your kit off for the lads; and while most inebriated men love that (for the duration of any match and a couple of hours afterwards), they want to go home to someone serving tea and cup-cakes.

   

I’ve been in hibernation this week, wishing I was beautiful and not funny, decorous and not funny, feminine and not funny. In fact, if a surgeon had arrived to rip every funny bone out of my body, I would have paid him handsomely.

   

In retrospect, it is ludicrous what threw me into downslide. I had entered for the Southern California Journalism Awards and had been shortlisted in the five categories I entered. These included blogs, interviews and TV criticism. Some pieces were serious, but most were hilarious. I jokingly asked if anyone wanted to come along to the event to see me lose in all five, never for a moment imagining that I would. 

My Eva Longoria “non” interview (she gave me 15 minutes) on my blog LA Not So Confidential was, to me, one of the funniest pieces I have ever written; likewise, my interview with Judge Alex Ferrer (he gave me well over two hours). Eva got me a second place in the Blog Interview category; she and Judge Alex were two of the pieces that got me a third in the Entertainment Journalist of the Year. I was placed third in the other three categories.

   

I spiralled into cataclysmic despair. How could this be? I am bloody hilarious! The same happened in the last awards I entered here, but I keep losing out to people writing about Israel and/or Pakistan (years ago, I emerged from the toilets at a UK awards ceremony and predicted I would lose to the woman I had seen in a hijab. I did). I know there’s not much to laugh about in either place, but it sticks in my gut that humour is usually the poor relation to “worthiness” when it comes to handing out awards.

   

Take The Hangover – one of the most gloriously written and acted movies of recent years. It didn’t even get a sniff of an Oscar for Best Picture. Fast forward its star, Bradley Cooper, to Silver Linings Playbook, and they couldn’t get enough of him. Why? Because it was about the worthy subject of mental illness.

   

It’s still the case, though, that funny men are far more acceptable than funny women, unless you’re Joan Rivers, and you’ve earned your badge for reaching 105 and are still managing to make people laugh, even if you are having trouble excavating your own smile from the iron mask that has become your face.  

   

I am extremely lucky in that I have a lot of very funny, quick-witted and intelligent friends (who, obviously, recognise my own genius – I ain’t that daft in who I pick), both male and female. Gone are the days of our twenties when we sat around whingeing about whether X fancied Y and what it meant for the future of civilisation; for the most part, we live in the moment, laughing about the absurdities of our respective lives, but always in a spirit of optimism. Heck, we’ve got to our 40s and 50s; we’re already achievers.

   

Most of my friends are married, also to very funny, quick-witted and intelligent people and, this week, sitting at the awards table with my certificates of gloom (I am such a bad loser), I wished (and this rarely happens) that I had a partner to share it all with. Someone to tell me I looked nice before heading out; someone to share my blind hope that I was going to win in all five categories; someone to share the bottle of absurdly over-priced wine in LA Downtown’s Biltmore Hotel; and someone to put it all in perspective, throw their arm around me at the end of the night and tell me that it really didn’t matter: that I was loved – and damned sodding funny. It just made me more than a little sad.

   

But I’ve bounced back (and thank you to my Twitter friends for your concern – it meant a lot), because the reality is, if funny hasn’t got me a man in three continents, it sure as hell isn’t going to get me first place when faced with a Palestinian army of journalists in the US.

Happy Birthday, Virgin - Now Sort Out the Socks!

For someone who once spent a decade land-bound out of fear of flying, my addiction to Air Miles comes as something of a surprise.

   

I blame Sir Richard Branson. Travelling between LA and the UK for the past five years on Virgin Upper Class, I have discovered a method to travel pretty much for free for half the year. At the risk of sounding like Sir Richard’s personal PR, I can recommend the Virgin Black Amex, which, if you buy Virgin products on it, clocks you up four points for every pound spent.

   

So (and skip this paragraph if the subject of Air Miles bores you), let’s say you buy a flight at £3000, that’s 12,000 points immediately. Then there is the 8174 miles x 2 (16,348) for each way LA/UK. As a Flying Club Gold member, I then get 100% each way on base miles flown – that’s another (honestly, feel free to glaze over . . . ) 5477 x 2 (10,954). So, we’re already up to 39,302 miles – and you need just 40,000 for an Upper Class ticket between New York and the UK. On top of that, there are booster miles that can be purchased at a relatively low cost . . . Anyway, you get the picture.

   

At the moment, I am able to fly First Class between LA and NYC for 75,000 points and a mere $5. I tell you, airport taxes in the US put the UK’s exorbitant fees to shame.

   

So, I am wishing Virgin a very happy 30^th birthday because I love them. Economy passengers tell me that things are not so good these days, with only one or two drinks being allowed on some flights. One friend yesterday told me that things are so bad, he was thinking of returning to British Airways, so I know that things must be really, really horrendous.

   

But the fantastic Virgin lounge at Heathrow keeps me loyal to the company, and the staff onboard both Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America are the best in the world. Friendly without being over-familiar, and efficient without being officious, they make every flight a joy.

   

The same cannot be said for American Airlines where, on a recent night flight, the crew talked so loudly, I had to ask them to keep it down. They rudely told me that they had to talk to keep awake. My letters of complaint to Customer Service have been ignored.

   

Having had my suitcase raided on an AA flight, coupled with their unsympathetic response and general lack of help in relation to that matter, has not exactly fuelled my desire to travel with them ever again.

   

For the most part, I now love flying, though I still have a few niggles. Socks, for example. I just don’t like the new Virgin Atlantic socks. They are such an odd shape and very uncomfortable. I can only imagine that the designer used a horse’s hoof as a model. I also don’t like the new Virgin safety instructions – a kind of weird rap song that is largely incomprehensible and makes you wish that the plane would go down just to stop the damn thing playing.

   

But here’s my biggest complaint: window blinds. On Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, the captain announces that window blinds must be up for take-off and landing, and the crew check that this is done every time. On internal flights in the US on Virgin America and American Airlines, most people keep their blinds down, and the plane takes off and lands in relative darkness.

   

This really bothers me. Having been told that take-off and landing are the most dangerous parts of any flight, it seems to me only logical that the interior of the aircraft should be visible to both crew and passengers, in the event of any problem. An ex-pilot confirmed this to me and said that his preference would always be for them being up because (1) if there is an emergency, passengers will be better orientated spatially and more likely to get out if they have a reference for what’s going on, and (2) in take-off and landing, there are more turns and manoeuvres, and having visual references to what is happening helps to keep people from getting airsick.

   

Last year, I had a panic attack on an American Airlines flight and was a hair’s breadth from having to disembark (“Are you on meds?” asked the captain. “Meds?” I said. “I don’t even know what that means.”). It did not help that they booked me into a different class from the one I had booked online (again, no response to my letters from Customer Service), but I realised this week, when coming back from New York on Virgin America, what the problem was when it happened again. Most of the blinds in the cabin were down ready for take-off. I started to sweat and felt mounting claustrophobic sickness. I know I stand little chance of changing aviation history, but it seems to me a really important issue.

   

So, Sir Richard, on this your very special birthday, please sort this out for me. This, and the socks. 

Yes. The socks are very important. 

And I have, by the way, Sir, bought the domain virginpointsmillionaire.com, should you wish to know how to make better use of your points.

  

   

   

Straight Pride Day - Let's Celebrate!

Straight Pride Day.

It has a certain ring to it. 

After all the excitement in LA last weekend (yeah, thanks for those Village People hits blaring outside my window at dawn, folks), I realised that nearly everyone in the world is gay, and I am now a minority.

   

As a minority, I must surely be entitled to my own special day, but perhaps I should narrow my status down a little. Straight, female, single, short, menopausal – but then I don’t think that Straight, Single, Female, Short, Menopausal Pride Day has any ring to it whatsoever; in fact, I think I might be the only member.

   

But the truth is, I really feel I am one of a very small number now. Don’t get me wrong. Easily 50% of my friends are gay, male and female; I think it is joyous that we live in a society that celebrates sexual preference and which joins together against rich hotel owners who advocate stoning of gays (no, I won’t be going to the Dorchester or Beverly Hills Hotel again, either); I believe in equality, irrespective of gender, or who one wishes to sleep with. But being straight isn’t as easy as it once was.

   

Maybe I’ve brought it on myself. When I am in LA, I reside in West Hollywood; when in New York City, Hell’s Kitchen – both gay epicentres of their respective cities. My gay friends from the UK visit both often and, when I am in town, I go out and have a blast with them.

   

They all enjoy a very wide social circle and always have somewhere to go, people to see, dogs to babysit etc. I never get invited anywhere. My friends who are in couples, straight and gay, invite only other couples around for dinner; my single gay friends are always out partying; my single straight friends are too depressed or too poor to go anywhere and prefer to stay indoors with their box set of Mad Men, enjoying a night of binge viewing. 

   

So, most of my life is spent among gay strangers. But here’s one of the things I’ve noticed – and I know I risk the wrath of the gay gods when I say this: LA gays are so much more backbiting and bitchy than New York gays.

   

I am not going to try to analyse why that might be, other than to say that a village mentality (and LA is far more a village than NYC) tends to harbour prejudices and insecurities, which generally bring out the worst in people, more than large cities do.

   

It’s not something that I notice in other aspects of LA life. For the most part, people are merely desperate to make it big, and they do not have the time or energy to waste bitching about others; self-promotion is all. But when it comes to the gay life I have witnessed in LA, it is much more akin to the rather infantile nastiness I saw in the UK long before it was cool to be gay.

   

In New York, it just doesn’t seem to be a big deal. If the gay guys there are ogling fresh meat walking on the sidewalk, they are not so rude as to comment on it when they are talking to me (don’t even get me started on the level at which Miami gays do this); I am regularly invited to join groups of gay guys I have never met before for drinks or dinner – which has never happened once during five years of living in LA. Even my gay realtor invited me to his barbecue.

   

There is a general tendency in society at large to regard any older woman as being on the scrapheap, yet I am invariably the last person to leave any bar or event in any establishment. It’s not that I like to keep drinking (I can do that at home if I want to), but I love company and have what has recently been labelled FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I’ve always been the same. Even as a baby, my parents couldn’t get me to close my eyes at bedtime “Don’t she stare?” said my grandmother, during one spectacularly inquisitive moment.

   

I do stare. I listen. I love observing people of all cultures, shapes and sizes, and hearing the stories that got them to where they are. Stories of joy, pain, loss, love, hope – the humanity that walks our streets every day.

   

In the end, it doesn’t matter if those people are gay or straight, but please, just for one day, let me celebrate Straight Single Female Short Menopausal Pride Day. 

And it’s today. 

Officially. 

June 13^th. 

Friday 13^th. 

I’m feeling lucky.

  

   

Rik Mayall - A Young One Gone Too Soon

The news of another friend’s death strikes me more keenly when in the US. It makes me ponder the fragility of life and the time I wish I had spent – and should be spending – with so many people.

   

For the most part, I consider the UK a mere ocean away; in fact, one Christmas, flying from LA, I arrived back at my mother’s house in Bristol in less time than it took my brother to drive there from Clacton, thanks to the joyous M5.

   

But when I receive a call or read on Twitter (which is always first with the news) about another death, that ocean feels very wide, and the UK another planet.

   

The news of Rik Mayall’s death spread quickly on Twitter, and people were quick to pay tribute to his genius and place in comedy history. The suddenness and unexpectedness of it added to the heartfelt sadness among friends, colleagues and fans; his wife and children’s tribute to him on Facebook put them and their loss uppermost in our thoughts.

   

I first met Rik through my first job as TV critic on the Evening Standard in the late Eighties. I had reviewed him in The New Statesman, the political comedy penned by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and raved about him. It was an extraordinary performance: full of menace and, at a time when we weren’t fully aware of just how vile politicians could be (well, I wasn’t, anyway), something of a prophecy.

   

For women, Rik had that rare thing among men: the ability to talk with you, not at you. He was not only a brilliant actor, comedian and lover of life, but a great listener. Having survived a near fatal accident in 1998, he came back from the dead after being in a coma for five days (beating Jesus, he said), and we were lucky for the extra years he gave us.

   

I got to chat to him a lot when he was performing in the West End with Adrian Edmondson, in Waiting for Godot. It was the only time I ever enjoyed the play, and, after the show, I would see him and/or Adrian in the Groucho Club (sans Godot – I tell you, we’ll be waiting forever for that guy), the private members’ establishment in the heart of Soho.

   

I was very new to London, very insecure and pretty depressed. Rik was someone who lent an ear to my woes. Not without his own insecurities, he made me laugh so much at a time when a lot of my hours were spent sobbing.

   

He had beautiful eyes, a gorgeous smile, and a mellifluous voice that brought instant calm. He was caring, sweet, and nobody had a bad word to say about him.

   

His contribution to the world of comedy is assured, but we have lost not only a great performer, but a lovely man.

   

No matter how much we hear about death, no matter how many times we are forced to confront it, no matter how much we acknowledge its inevitability, it still has the ability to shock. 

Hearing about Rik was one such moment.