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Leaving New York never easy… oh no, hold on, it was pimpsy. Just had to get a cab to JFK.
We popped out for lunch before we left, having a burger and a milk shake, because this is America and it’s important to only eat the national dish of whatever country you’re in at all times. On the next table a woman sat with her nine year old son and New York put on another mini play for us as she recounted to him the story of how she’d met his dad (on a blind date set up by a friend of hers who went to the same gym) and how he had proposed (in Spanish apparently) and where they lived before they got married (they had separate apartments, but apparently sometimes they stayed over at each other’s). It wasn’t clear if she was still with the dad, or indeed if he was still alive, but it was quite a conversation to inadvertently witness. It was hard to avoid, but also I am a big believer in eaves-dropping. It’s the best way to get stories and to find out how people really speak. My wife heard an amazing one in Chicago about a mother punishing her son for lying by getting Santa to leave him a note instead of presents, but that’s now here story to tell.
And then to add a bit more drama to the personal conversation the kid ate a pickle, didn’t like it, and half threw up, half spat up on the booth he was sitting in.
I will miss you New York. And forever wonder what happened to the dad and whether he was Spanish or just enjoyed speaking Spanish (his son looked like the Milky Bar Kid, which doesn’t mean he couldn’t be Spanish). Catie thought the husband must still be on the scene because the conversation was measured and unemotional, but I thought a good parent would do her best not to try and turn a child against their other parent, regardless of what might have happened. And if they were dead to talk about them without mawkishness or sorrow, so that they would live on.
I wondered when I (or if I was dead or estranged, my wife) would be telling our own origins story. I made the mistake of writing a book about it (and all the other disgraceful things I did beforehand) which I will do my best to hide from her until she is 35.
We had to move away from the living theatre full of a billion tiny plays and come back to Shepherd’s Bush where nothing theatrical ever happens. We were taking a flight through the night which was going to be interesting for lots of reasons. Would our baby sleep? Even if she did it wouldn’t be anything like a full night. Would we sleep? That’s partly dependent on the answer to the first question, but in any case it seemed unlikely that we’d get much shut eye. I had woken up at 3am today, to add to the jet lag disaster if I didn’t. Another meltdown in the departure lounge had the rest of the passengers looking at us with dead eyes and fear, but actually once we were on Phoebe mainly slept. We had secured a coveted spot at the front of economy with a special table that you can strap a travel chair to. Christ knows what would have happened if we hadn’t.
I didn’t sleep, but instead chose to watch the last Hunger Games film (marvelling how they have managed to make so many long films in which all the characters talk in the same hushed tones of seriousness about everything) and the Dad’s Army movie, which was not as bad as I expected, but didn’t really work, I think, because it’s not just the characters and the situations that make the original work, it’s the actors too. Seeing others doing a vague approximation just plucks out the heart of it all. All the actors in it are great too. It’s just like resurrecting a corpse and hoping it will dance as well as it used to. Then I gave up on sleep and watched most of Deadpool, which I liked much more than I expected too. Again maybe because it dented the faux seriousness of all the other Hollywood blockbusters about palpable nonsense.
The holiday is over, but how long will it take me to recover from the lack of sleep/jet lag?
