HOW TO BE . . . ALONE IN AMERICA

Even before the lockdown, I never found New York to be “the city that never sleeps”. In fact, it’s always seemed a bit dozy to me. 

Having lived in Paris and Puerto Banus (just outside Marbella in Spain), I grew accustomed to staying out all night if I so chose. It was the same in London in the Nineties, but then, my generation seemed to grow old suddenly: they needed their beauty sleep and, where once they would be emerging from Gerry’s Club in Dean St at daylight, they were packing up at 2am (how old am I? Four?). In recent years, everyone had to be out at 3am anyway (even Mike, the owner, was getting older), but I have many happy memories of those late nights/early mornings.

   

In Los Angeles, where I lived when I first came to the States in 2009, the rules were (and still are) very strict. Closing time is 2am, and staff wait for your glass (still half full) like dogs ready to pounce on an available bone. In New York, the witching GTHOH (Get the Hell Outta Here) hour is 4am, though even in my lively area of Hell’s Kitchen, restaurants shut up shop at around midnight and very few bars stay open till 4am. You don’t want to stay anyway, because the smell of lemon-scented cleaning fluid overpowers any lingering aroma you might have left wafting up from your wine.

   

Now, with everything shut, an hour in any hostelry would seem like a glorious holiday; sharing a drink with a real live human would feel like all your Christmases had come at once. As for the idea of going to a restaurant and eating among other diners, your body might now not be able to withstand the excitement; if the Coronavirus didn’t get you, the shock of becoming reaccustomed to socialising could well do.

   

Even in these circumstances, though, it’s hard to feel lonely in New York City. I’ve experienced loneliness in many cities throughout the world – usually on Sundays, when I imagine everyone except me is sitting round a huge wooden table with hams piled high and laughing children running around in gingham outfits, chanting The Wheels on the Bus – but it’s rare here.

   

I am lucky in that I have a spectacular view over the Hudson, where every night the sunsets bring a new art gallery to my window. Despite the quiet of the streets when I go out for my self-isolating walk, the feeling is one of a city in suspended animation, silently reassuring me that it will breathe again, without assistance.

   

In the confines of my apartment, I read, cook, watch TV, listen to music, meditate and give thanks for the respite from car horns impatiently waiting to enter the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour. The non-stop thud of nearby construction no longer wakes me up and has me weeping with stress, come 5pm. I find activities and interests online I would never have discovered before. I’m refreshing my French and having yet another attempt at learning Spanish. I’ve even delved back into Italian, which comes much more naturally to me than Spanish, and I already feel fluent just by putting an 'a' on the end of every word I know and reading about the Mafia.

   

If I put an 'o' on the end of every word, I feel pretty fluent in Spanish, too, but I don’t feel as immersed in Spanish culture (not unless you count the gallons of Rioja in my cupboard) and I’ve always found a relative lack of interest in a country makes language learning more difficult. French, while being a more complex language, came quite easily to me when I moved to Paris in 2001; keeping up with it is a challenge, although I am hugely helped by Quora (which I have in French, English, Spanish and Italian), a site on which people pose questions that others answer or debate.

   

Because my work is essentially solitary, I’ve always been at ease in my own company and while being alone is not the same as feeling lonely, my situation makes these strange and frightening times easier to bear. When loneliness hits – panic moments when I wonder when I will ever communicate with a real live human again – I remind myself that everyone is in the same boat. It may feel like a sinking ship, but we’re all in it together.

   

There is a quote attributed to Scott Fitzgerald (some say wrongly so, but it’s still apt): “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

   

I suspect that is what many are feeling right now and there is a collective loneliness that has its roots in this very helplessness. Whether Fitzgerald said it or not, loneliness lies at the heart of The Great Gatsby – mainly, the loneliness that the pursuit of social status and money ultimately brings. Written in the 1920s, it’s a salutary lesson for our times and certainly worth reading or re-reading, not least for the ending: “So we beat on, boats against the current” but, to me, not “borne back ceaselessly into the past”, but towards a better future in which people have re-evaluated themselves, life, priorities; a world in which we will have learned, in being alone, that we truly never are. 

To quote the poet John Donne: “No man is an island,/Entire of itself,/Every man is a piece of the continent,/A part of the main”.

   

Donne was talking about Europe (and that’s a whole other debate), but knowing that we are not alone in this appalling crisis is what gets us through. Yes, there is, and will be more loneliness; some will cope better than others. There is fear, anxiety, dread, and all sorts emotions we cannot explain in a life that just wasn’t supposed to be like this.

   

While we are denied physical contact, other than with those we live with, it’s important to touch base on the phone and through social networking; reaching out to nature brings so many rewards (it’s very chatty when you give it time). These are precious moments to absorb the world around us – it really is our friend, even though it doesn’t seem that way at present.

   

Today, when I was out walking (briefly), I looked at a brownstone building and admired its colour. I am fascinated by architecture and how it reflects us at any given time. The words of Pink Floyd were singing in my head: “All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.” I found them strangely comforting.

   

Having said that, now I need a drink. Where’s that Gatsby drinking buddy when you need him?  

  

       

HOW TO BE . . . THE NEXT MRS CUOMO IN AMERICA

Are there any circumstances in which an engagement ring could be classed as an “essential” service?

It’s one of the many things that’s been worrying me during the pandemic lockdown as I plan my marriage to the New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Yes, I know that I am very far down the line in a long queue, but a girl can dream.

   

Come on, be honest: how many of you, in the past month, have Googled ‘Is Andrew Cuomo single’? Or ‘Is Andrew Cuomo straight’? Or even ‘Does Andrew Cuomo like short Welsh women who have their own Green Card’? (Just me on that one, then). Every day, the ever-increasing fan club sits in front of TV screens to be soothed and comforted by the one person who appears to have a grip on what’s really going on.

   

The New York Governor (and I am so proud to be living in this state with my fiancé – no, he doesn’t know it yet; minor detail) has captured not only the state’s, but many of the country’s hearts. He is smart, knowledgeable, unfazed when we are all on the precipice of hysteria, empathetic, sympathetic, genuinely caring – he is, in short, everything a President should be. It’s just a shame that he’s not. But at least he’s there. For us.

   

These are frightening times. I am one of the lucky ones. I was very ill at the beginning of the year (there is now research suggesting the virus is older than it looks – unlike my fiancé; yes, I Googled ‘How old is Andrew Cuomo?’ too); I was ill again in March, despite not having had so much of a cold since May 1999 (brought on by stress from the guy I was dating – he is SUCH old news, now I have Andrew). 

But after three months of extreme fatigue, bordering on narcolepsy, I am fine. At present, I still have a job, and I work from home, which I have never found difficult. I am fine in my own company; I talk to friends on the phone and on various social networking sites; I have fun on my YouTube channel, Jaci’s Box (please subscribe); I read, I catch up on TV . . . I’m probably busier than I’ve ever been. How will I ever find time to plan the wedding? That’s the thing that’s really stressing me out.

   

My heart goes out to the sick and the bereaved. Two of my friends have just lost their mothers and were denied the chance to see them during their last days and hold their funerals; another friend who lost her father was allowed just six people at his funeral. As the anniversary of my mother’s death approaches on April 17^th, I cannot imagine how much more painful it would have been had my brother and I been denied those last days and the comfort of family and friends around us.

   

I feel for those who have lost their jobs in so many ways. I have actor friends who have lost not only their main job but their secondary ones serving in bars and restaurants. For those in the travel and hospitality industries, life has come to a standstill. So many jobless people have families to feed, disabled relatives to take care of . . . Conrad’s final sentence – “The horror! The horror!” – in Heart of Darkness (albeit for different reasons in the novel) never seemed more appropriate.

   

It’s the lack of an ending that is most disturbing. We are creatures of narrative; we enjoy a beginning, middle and an end, hence the popularity of fiction, whether it be in books or on the screen. We spend time second guessing the motivation of character and the outcome of plot; even though soap operas are ongoing, storylines are designed to build suspense and high drama before reaching their inevitable conclusions.

   

Every day brings news of more Coronavirus cases, more deaths, optimism followed by despair, currency boosts followed by downward turns; we have no ending in sight; the plot thickens – and thickens. Despite talk of lights at the end of the tunnel, there are days when those lights seem nothing more than those of another freight train coming towards us. We are blinded by the lack of light.

   

What do we do? 

We carry on. Because we are human. Because there is no alternative. The clichés roll off our tongues – “It is what it is”, “What will be will be”, “You never know what’s around the corner”.

   

And so, we must look to the light in the tunnel, not at the end of it; at present, that is all we know. We take refuge and joy in the arts – and if ever there was a time to count our blessings in the creativity of writers, musicians, painters, every artist in every field, this is it.

   

We must also give thanks for the light that shines more brightly than any other – that of our health care workers, putting their lives on the front line every day to save others. I could never do it; I do not know how anyone does. Many have lost their lives so that the sick can be healed; I know of no greater sacrifice.

   

We must be grateful in our dark tunnel for the light of Governor Cuomo, whose daily press conferences have become, to so many, like a meditative space that keeps panic at bay. His brother, Chris, who is an anchor at CNN, contracted the virus (he is on the mend) and the pair have also been entertaining us in their online exchanges. Chris also appeared in a moving interview on the entertainment channel TMZ, which has also been a beacon of sense: presenter Harvey Levin, who warned of the dangers very early on, is exceptional.

   

We really are all in this together, including the queue that has gathered around my fiancé – Hey! Six feet apart, people! Six miles if I had my way! – who has emerged a real hero for our times. Let’s just hope he’s stocked up on Clorox for our first dance at our wedding reception, as I still won’t be taking any risks.  

   

Yes, of course I’m thinking ahead. 

What about when the pandemic is over, and I’ll have the worry if Andrew decides to run for President (as his brother and many have suggested) and I end up as First Lady? I’ll have to put make-up on every day. I’m also not sure I want to be gathering up my husband’s brains from the back seat of a car when he’s assassinated. Will there be Clorox in the glove compartment?

   

Sometimes, I think I worry too much.

     

  

  

CORONAVIRA DREAMIN'

Warm oat milk with a shot of brandy really is my saviour in these difficult times. 

I’ve never been a great sleeper – in fact, I truly hate going to bed owing to major FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I was the same as a baby, a young child, and even at 61 I have a terror that something might be happening from which I have been excluded (actually, that might just be FOBH – Fear Of Being Hated).

   

I thought that in the current crisis, my sleep patterns might become disrupted, but given that there is nothing happening from which anyone can exclude me, bedtime isn’t such an ordeal. But the milk and brandy give me something to look forward to; they’re very soothing, doubtless bringing back childhood memories of warm milk before being tucked up for the night. In those days, though, I hated the skin that formed on the top of the dairy milk; thankfully, there is no foreskin on oat milk and I really do love it (I no longer buy almond milk, by the way, because I learned that the pesticides they use to spray the almond trees kill all the bees. I don’t like bees at all, but hey, they need an office job, too).

   

More than one in five people (22%) say that their sleep quality has suffered since the rise of Coronavirus, and many are reporting an increase in strange or vivid dreams. Mark Blagrove, a leading expert in sleep and dreaming at Swansea University in the UK, also says that a lot of people will be having very emotional dreams.

   

Last night, I dreamt about my mother and her dog, Maddie. My mum’s house in Bristol is currently under offer, but in the dream, I was in the house in Bridgend, where I spent my teenage years. Last week, the neighbour directly opposite that house died. We were all very close and one of her two daughters, Nerys, at that time was my best friend. I bumped into her in Bath last year and it was as if we’d seen each other the day before, despite decades having passed.

   

The dream took me back to that Coity house, where I was disturbed to find that the buyers (for the Bristol house) had already started to move their stuff in, despite exchange and completion not having taken place. They had even glued a rack for utensils to a kitchen cupboard. I was crying and upon leaving the house saw Mum, her back to me, walking up the drive. “MUM! MUM!” I called, but she didn’t answer. I caught up with her but when I reached out to touch her, my hand went through her and she walked on before disappearing altogether. I returned to the house and tried to remove the utensil rack.

   

In the next part of the dream, Mum had died and I was holding her Bichon Frise, Maddie. Mum was always fearful of Maddie outliving her because she didn’t know where the dog would go. In the dream, I decided to take her with me to New York; in reality, she had been euthanised (I still cannot bear to say the words “put down”) 15 months before Mum was admitted to hospital for the last time.

   

It was at least 10 years before I dreamt about my dad, following his death in 1990, but I dream about Mum all the time. As the one-year anniversary approaches next month, I won’t pretend it’s been a good 12 months. My own health, which had been suffering as a result of stress for a while, hadn’t been great with all the long haul travelling, and being hospitalised with a suspected heart attack last year did not help matters (it turned out not to be, but the loneliness of lying alone in a hospital bed, on the opposite side of the Atlantic from friends and family, gave me a lot of thinking time).

   

It is ironic that self-isolation has given me a calm and contentedness that I haven’t felt in decades. I’m sure it won’t last, because human contact is, basically, what humans thrive on. But I am finding the space - physically, mentally and emotionally - rather soothing. It’s a long time since I’ve had such a defined routine in my life (although I could recite the Virgin Atlantic flight schedule by rote) and structure is, for me, the easiest way to survive these bizarre times.

   

Also ironic is that I’m talking to family and friends far more than I ever managed to do in “real life” as we must now remember it. I have been Face Timing, talking on the phone and, yesterday, participated in an online quiz on Zoom with a group of people and made new friends into the bargain. After a slight initial self-consciousness, it genuinely felt as if we were in the same room. We laughed, joked, showed off our different awards (even in the throes of a killer virus, media folk are so competitive) and, after the quiz, stayed online to talk about other matters.

   

Zoom, by the way, is terrific. It’s a conference app on which you can host 10 people for free and, for $149pa, up to 100 (you can have as many hosts and people as you like, by the way; the price goes up accordingly).

   

So, it was quite an event filled weekend. I cleaned my apartment and changed my bed linen (always a Saturday morning job), did my washing, coloured my hair and squeezed the blackheads in my nose (a daily job, but I get a strange kick out of it, especially the squishy ones that lurk in the corners and ooze out gratefully, like inmates jumping a prison wall).

   

It’s now lunchtime here and I’m having homemade chicken curry, a glass of Whispering Angel rosé and looking forward to a quiet afternoon of reading and watching TV. Who knows: I might even decide to speak to another human.

   

Before long, it’ll be bedtime again, and I’ll be hitting the Courvoisier. Incidentally, did you know that brandy/Cognac has no carbohydrates and is very good for “bad” cholesterol.

   

Now if that thought doesn’t give you sweet dreams, I don’t know what will.