Footballers Follow Me Around The World

In Chelsea, where I used to work, you can't walk down the Fulham Road without tripping over a footballer (read "soccer player" if you're American). More prevalent than Marc Jacobs handbags; more priapic than Bill Clinton in his Arkansas days; the footballer is a uniquely arrogant and fascinating breed.

I dated one, briefly. He wins the award for the stupidest person that I have ever met. I'm not even afraid of him reading this, because I'm pretty sure he can't read. Or google himself. When I worked in the restaurant, footballers used to come in, drink champagne, tip generously and then sweep us all off to nightclubs. It was superb. So imagine my sadness at leaving all my WAG-iness behind when I moved to New York. Or so I thought...

Monday night, I was pretty exhausted from Vogue and the weekend's exploits, but I missed my girlfriends and it was happy hour so we went for a drink at Phebe's: a sports bar on Bowery. We were sitting quietly when Res suddenly went rigid. A group of men had walked in. This reaction isn't uncommon from Res when good-looking men are around, but it was a little more extreme than usual. "Dudeman!" she hissed, teeth clenched. "That's Steve Nash." Not being American, I had no idea who she was talking about, but I was pretty sure one of the guys in the party was Robbie Fowler. And they were all talking Scouse. Before long, the manager comes over, all fawning and scraping the floor, and asks them where they want to sit. The tallest member of the party, a shaggy-haired ginger guy, points at us and says "let's stick right here by the gels." Then I realized he was Steve McManaman.

So. Two former England players, one basketball superhero and a former Liverpool legend. And us. In Phebe's. We got talking. They were in town, Steve said, to play in a charity game on Wednesday. Then Steve and I discussed journalism, Robert Mugabe and South African sanctions against Zimbabwe, amongst other things. I had to keep pinching myself. "You should come to the game on Wednesday," Steve said. "Bring some oranges at halftime. Like in England." I'm pretty sure the only oranges at Anfield are the spray tans of the Liverpool WAGs, but never mind. The journalists among us were sniffing a story. So we went.

Turned out, it wasn't just a quiet game of soccer. Also playing on Steve Nash's team was Thierry Henry, footballing legend and all-round supermodel. Best of all, and completely unexpected: on the opposing team was Solomon Kalou, who is my favorite, favorite Chelsea player and the cutest thing since Gary Coleman in Diff'rent Strokes. And Barron Davies, and Juan Pablo Angel, and some other people who are apparently big deals in the MLS or the NBA. Who cares? I got to see Robbie Fowler and Thierry Henry play keepy-uppy in a tiny park in Chinatown, about five feet away. It doesn't get much better than that. And it's reassuring to know that even footballers go to Phebe's.

J. Alfred Prufrock, and the love song I forgot to write

I was reading Richard Rodriguez this week. One of the essays from his third autobiographical trilogy, “Brown,” pays homage to T.S. Eliot, Milton, Shakespeare and Madonna among others, and it also (I think) borrows heavily from Joyce’s “Ulysses”- fragmented narrative, shifting authorial voice, heavy use of allusion. It’s a beautiful piece of writing: esoteric, and comical (Rodriguez goes from quoting “The Wasteland” to spouting cockneyisms like Oi mate). In the intellectually barren world of news journalism, reading Rodriguez is like discovering the coordinates to something hidden long ago. I took the shovel and started digging.

And then I was struck suddenly by thoughts of Eliot. I loved Eliot. I loved him with a fierce, metaphysical desire that somehow got obliterated overnight. How did this happen? In my final year at college, I even abandoned my scholastic apathy to write an A+ paper on Eliot and songs: probably the one decent paper I ever wrote. I used to read The Wasteland to myself, Four Quartets, Prufrock- ah, Prufrock- not quite understanding it but not quite needing to. There is more in Eliot than I, or you, or academia, will ever comprehend. It’s saturated with references that both alienate and suffocate the reader, but reading Eliot can be one of the most searingly beautiful things that you will ever do. Why did I stop? How did I forget him?

Then I remembered. It was in the middle of class- Richard Rodriguez was talking about heritage over the speakerphone, and I suddenly had to take a deep breath and stop Lawrence Weschler’s hot tears from creeping out of my eyelids. I remembered the last time I read Prufrock. This is where I stopped, because I could not go on:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

My father and I used to get drunk and quote Prufrock at each other. It was always the same lines from both of us: he remembered the mermaids singing to each other, each to each, I remembered the evenings, mornings, afternoons (there was something soothing to my Starbucks-addicted soul about the idea of measuring out your life in coffee spoons). We loved Prufrock. The last time I read the poem, my father was undergoing chemotherapy and shrinking before my very eyes, like a post-modern, cancer-riddled Prufrock. His hair fell out, his arms and legs grew thin. He aged a decade in a year. I could not read Prufrock without seeing the endless analogies: a patient etherised upon a table, a pair of ragged claws, scuttling along the floors of silent seas (Prince Hamlet and Prufrock wonder if time, like a crab, can go backwards). And the eternal footman holding a coat and snickering. I hated that footman: a disdainful, disrespectful and discourteous reaper. I did not want to see my daddy riding seaward on the waves, away from me. I wanted the mermaids to sing to Prufrock because I loved him so. So I stopped reading.

Grief doesn’t ever forget you. You can ignore it, or anesthetize it, or put it somewhere inaccessible, but it lingers. Sometimes it smacks you in the face with a resounding thud. I feel it now, reading Prufrock, heavy on my chest like a deadweight. I can choose not to read Eliot, or Keats, or Saint-Exupery. I still listen to the Beatles, but Canaletto is dead to me. I haven’t watched Monty Python in years and I dare not listen to Ravel, or read Playboy. These are things that make me think of my father, like the tang of Eau Sauvage, or a stubbly embrace in the morning, or lying very still on someone’s chest, listening to them breathe, trying not to disturb the rhythm. Prufrock is my loss. He worries about death, growing old, being forgotten. He also has more earthly concerns, equally pressing. In hospital, my daddy said that one of the hardest things was being in terribly close proximity to young, beautiful nurses as they fussed around him. Is it perfume from a dress, that makes me so digress? Or, The arms, braceleted, and white, and bare. But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair.

I write this now, not because I think it says anything, or will be a weighty addition to my journalistic achievements, but because I had to. I could not stop thinking about Prufrock all day. Like a neglected lover, he hustled for my attention. And I too didn’t realize how much I missed him.

(PS I just realized an hour after posting this that today would have been my dad's 73rd birthday, which scares me in ways I can't even begin to think about. The subconscious is a powerful thing.)

My mom being funny

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/boris_johnson/index.html

(And "50")

I am fatally attractive to vagrants

Two days ago, I left my apartment building early in the morning. As I walked down towards the subway, a shabby-looking homeless man clutching a vitamin water yelled out,
"Hey! What fragrance are you wearing?"
A little taken aback, I stopped. "Chanel," I yelled back.
We were yelling, not because it was particularly noisy, but because he was all the way across the street. I was a little surprised that he could smell me from over there. Maybe he was a tramp equipped with super nasal powers: a sort of supertramp, as it were (boom boom).
"I guess you're lucky the wind's blowing in this direction," he shouted, a little sadly.

What do you say to that?

The same day, walking home, another tramp asked me for change. I apologized and carried on walking. Then I remembered the half-eaten club sandwich left over from dinner, so I went back to offer it to him. Once he'd established that there wasn't any mayonnaise, he accepted it gratefully. Then he asked my name.
Looking at his hand, then deciding not to shake it, I told him. His name was Monty. He said he lived just nearby, in a veterans shelter. I was making my move to go home, when he asked me if I had a boyfriend.
"Sure," I replied, a little cagily. "Too bad," he replied. "I was going to ask you out on a date."
Part of me wanted to accept, just to see what exactly this date would comprise. Dinner out of a trashcan? A shared glasspipe? (I'm not being vicious- his eyeballs were brown and I'm from Brixton where crackheads are ten a penny). What a great story that would be to tell my mother. Plus, he only had two teeth. I know dentistry in Britain is bad, but still.

And people say I'm too picky...

Why are Feminists so Divided Over the Democratic Race?

Who’s more of a feminist? Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama?

This is the unexpected question that’s dividing feminists more and more as the race for the democratic nomination drags on to the bitter end. On one side, we have Feminists For Barack Obama. Almost 2000 noted feminists, including women’s rights historians Linda Gordon and Alice Kessler Harris, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt and author/activist Ellen Bravo have pledged their support for the Illinois Senator.

But Hillary’s not exactly being spurned by the Big Girls either. She’s received endorsements from some of the Grande Dames of feminism: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Gloria Feldt. Steinem’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” has proved almost as divisive as the race itself. It’s deeply troubling. As feminists, don’t we all have a common goal?

Maybe we don’t. Katha Pollitt, like many of her peers, was originally rooting for Edwards, even though she admits she doesn’t particularly like him. “The interesting question is, why isn’t every woman on earth for Hillary?” says Pollitt. “But why should they be? I think Hillary has done a B/B+ job for women. She’s been good on feminist issues but she hasn’t been great on them.”

The debate really got going in February, when 150 New York feminists signed a petition endorsing Barack Obama. “War and peace are as much “women’s issues” as health, the environment and the achievement of educational and occupational equality,” said the statement. Almost all of the feminists I spoke to cited Hillary Clinton’s initial vote in favor of the war as their main objection to her, and beyond that, her subsequent refusal to admit that it was a bad decision.

“It wasn’t just a vote,” says Ellen Bravo. “It was a couple of years of vigorous support and many speeches. I felt Obama on the other hand took a stand when it was unpopular, at a time when it could have cost him. That gave me more confidence about his judgment.”

“New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama” rapidly attracted media attention, and was opened up for feminists across the country to sign: people who resented the mainstream media’s assumption that all women, by virtue of their gender, supported the female candidate. “I think it’s very important not to fall into the identity politics trap,” says Linda Gordon, women’s rights historian, and one of the authors of the petition. “We shouldn’t think that the body people inhabit is the most important thing about their political identity. A lot of very conservative and extremely anti-feminist women have been elected to office. Just look at Margaret Thatcher.”

Feminists for Barack Obama took their stand. But Feminists for Hillary held their ground. Geraldine Ferraro asserted that Obama was only being taken seriously as a candidate because of his race. Gloria Steinem said that his race wasn’t as important as the fact that he wasn’t a woman. And Linda Hirshman really rocked the boat in the Washington Post, declaring that wealthy, educated women were supporting Barack Obama because they could afford to. “College-educated women don’t need the social safety net as much as their less fortunate sisters do,” Hirshman wrote.

Ouch. When did it become an internal war? Not that divides within feminism are anything new. “There are internal divisions in anything- that’s what politics is,” says Katha Pollitt. “But it’s only within feminism that the fact that people don’t agree is news.” Pollitt says that she was “horrified” by Gloria Steinem’s op-ed. “I don’t think you can look at Obama, can look at a black man in America as simply representing “the man” against “the woman,”" she says. “I also don’t believe that sexism in politics is a bigger force than racism in politics. Today there are sixteen women senators and one black senator, only the third in our modern history.”

Shortly after Linda Hirshman’s damning appraisal of Obama feminists, Ayelet Waldman retaliated in the Washington Post with a piece titled, “I’m Not an Obamabot.“

“Clinton proved herself willing to betray core feminist values,” Waldman wrote. “Hirshman’s class argument is specious and depressing, especially since the candidate she lionizes as the working-woman’s choice is a member of the very social elite of which she is so disdainful.”

When I spoke to Waldman, she questioned whether the divide between feminists for Hillary and feminists for Obama wasn’t, in part, generational.

“Us younger women (and at forty-three I’m hardly ‘young’) view Hillary’s “35 years of experience” claim as self-aggrandizing,” Waldman said. “We’re embarrassed by it. Older women, especially women who didn’t have careers, take very seriously the idea that their husbands wouldn’t have succeeded without their help and support. They all identify with Hillary. Her implied message, that she’s owed the presidency, resonates with them.”

Like Pollitt, Waldman was “embarrassed” by the Steinem op-ed, even though she has enormous respect for Steinem ’s contribution to the feminist movement. “I haven’t been too crazy about Erica Jong’s pieces either. Nora Ephron, however, cracks me up. She’s awesome.”

Whatever happens come June, the worry for most Democrats is that the battle for ascendancy between two groundbreaking presidential candidates, a black man and a white woman, will have puts supporters of each irrevocably at odds. “People get so invested in a particular candidate that it makes them extremely bitter to think about that candidate losing,” says Linda Gordon. “I too have bitterness about the fact that so many people think there’s no longer a need for a feminist movement. It’s just that I think thinking strategically about politics and what we would like to have happen in this country requires you to become a little more measured, rational and perhaps intellectual in your opinions rather than emotional.”

And are there any regrets? Katha Pollitt thinks so.

“I’m not happy about not supporting ‘the woman,’” she says. “It makes me sad. But then Geraldine Ferraro comes out and talks about how lucky Obama is to be black, and I think, Oh Thank God."

New Eyebrow Stuff

I'm in London, doing family stuff. I promise to update this site after Spring Break in Texas. Until then, please check out my new stuff on eyebrow:http://www.eyebrowmagazine.com/Politics/hillary_clinton_comeback

Watching the Football in NYC (a travel story)

Where do you go to watch the football in a city that refers to it as “soccer”? In New York, there’s one thing that Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United fans will agree on: namely that Nevada Smith’s is the closest thing to home this side of the ocean. The beer is warm and flat, the only “appetizer” on sale is a bag of Walker’s crisps, and you’re more than likely to get in a fight with someone. For an expat, naturally, this is all part of the charm.

I turned up at Nevada’s at half past nine on a Saturday morning with a hangover, and my cousin James. Both Chelsea fans, we were there for the Carling Cup final between the Blues and Spurs. Half an hour before kick-off, the bar was rammed with ex-pats guzzling pints and jostling for space. Reassuringly, a huge Chelsea flag saying “New York Blues” hung on one wall. Not so reassuringly, I was the only girl in the place.

What makes a place feel like home? Normally I shy away from congregating in large groups with my fellow countrymen abroad. It’s all a bit too much like a gap year. But when you’re talking football, there’s nothing more frustrating than hanging out with neophytes.

Luckily, New York is filled with Englishmen. You can find them smoking on the sidewalk, spending their pounds with glee on Fifth Ave, toasting their bread on one side, etc etc. And on Saturday mornings you can unfailingly find them getting drunk in Nevada Smith’s.

It’s not for the faint-hearted. James recalls bringing his American wife Stephanie to her first Chelsea-Arsenal game. A Packers fan, she dismissed the notion that it might be too rowdy for her. But after the third fight broke out, she conceded that, yes, soccer games could get a little aggressive. The combination of beer for breakfast and Setanta leads to a distinctly pugnacious air.

I accosted the most unruly group I could find. Phil Stevens, a British student at FDU was downing pints as his father cheered and his mother looked resigned. “This is the only place in Manhattan to watch games,” he said. “We absolutely love it.” His friend Nick Canderan, one of the few Americans in the bar, agreed. “Look around. All the true fans are here,” he said.
And what about the state of American soccer? “All our good players go to England,” he said, sadly. “But I still think the US is going to win the World Cup before England does. You guys haven’t got a chance.”

Avoiding the almighty ruckus that was about to start after that statement, I went back to watch the second half with Tom Delaford. A Spurs fan. “I’ve only been here a month,” he said. “I googled ‘Soccer New York’ and this place was one of the first hits. I’ve also been to watch the Rugby at The Kinsale Tavern. Rugby’s a bit highbrow though. This place is great.”

Gritting his teeth to the chants of “We hate Tottenham,” he cheered up as Berbatov equalised. “It’d be nice to get some silverware,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to get any playing like Chelsea do.” I changed the subject. Was he starting to bite the bullet and say “soccer”? He laughed. “I am, unfortunately. You can’t help yourself.”

But what makes Nevada’s so popular? It isn’t the only Anglophile football bar in the city by any means. Owner Tom McCarthy puts it down to dedication and longevity. “We are absolutely dedicated to football, from non-league to top flight,” he says. “And we’ve been doing it for fifteen years now.” For Brits abroad, if you’re looking for a game(or a fight), it’s a good place to visit.

In Which Great Times in London are only slightly marred by the fact that I keep getting solicited.

The first time it happened I was waiting for Kingsley at London Bridge train station. As he was late, I decided to go and wait for him in a nearby bar. It wasn't the first time I'd sat in a bar by myself, but it always makes me nervous. For some reason, people (by which I mean sleazebags) seem to think that going to a bar on your own as a woman is akin to offering yourself up on a plate for unwelcome attention. Having said that, it was the Pitcher and Piano, a notoriously middle-class haunt for office parties and Australians. How bad could it be?

Within five minutes of sitting down, a dark-haired, greasy-looking man shuffled up to me, brazenly. "Are you looking for custom?" he asked, as I looked up from my cellphone. "I'm sorry?" I asked incredulously. "Are you looking for CUSTOM?' he repeated, as if I hadn't heard the operative word, and was hard of hearing, not aghast at the proposal. "I have absolutely no idea what you mean," I replied. "Sorry," he murmured. "Ignore me." He then walked away to the bar. I got up huffily and stormed out.

Still slightly stunned, I asked one of the policemen on duty in the station if the Pitcher and Piano was a known spot for soliciting. "Not at all ma'am," they said. Then they marched down to the bar in question, hauled said sleazebag out of the bar and gave him a stern talking to, while I peeped out from behind an awning, simultaneously self-righteous and sniggering.

It was a weird experience, but, sadly, not unique. A few weeks later I was waiting at a bus stop. A bald man in a flasher mac muttered something furtively whilst proffering me a grubby fiver. Humph. I would like to speculate that should I be a "lady of the night" my going rate might be a little better. "No thank you," I declared haughtily, hastily jumping on the first bus that came. As I rode away, he looked back, crestfallen.

Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I look like a prostitute. I frequently cast aspersions on what Britney is wearing (fishnets are bad enough- torn and laddered fishnets are strictly verboten). Having said that, I recently wore fishnets and shorts to lunch at La Famiglia. Lord Snowdon was inside with a woman, and they gaped as we waited for our table, clearly under the impression that they were talking quietly. "Good Lord," his date said. "She must be freezing." "She's very young," Snowdon replied, as if this was an excuse for both imperviousness to cold and slutty outfits. I listened, elbowing my sister in the ribs to shush, and then waved at them as we walked past. Snowdon waved back. His date looked appalled.

Nobody offered to pay me for sex that day. It's only when I'm wearing jeans and duffel coats that it happens. Which leads me to conclude again, that men are BIZARRE. And inappropriate. The next time it happens I'm going to use my pepper spray, so I am. Spray first, ask questions later.

My brush with the law

It was only really a matter of time, given my propensity for imbibing alcohol and getting into "hilarious" scrapes. Really, it was relatively minor. Late Saturday night, or early Sunday morning if you prefer, I left my metrocard at home, and so purchased a two dollar ticket with my handy Citibank visa card. Said ticket did not work. I swiped it, it made funny beeping sounds, I swiped it again, it told me to go see an MTA representative. Who has time for that? It was late at night and I should have been in bed. So I, cockily and with great aplomb, leap-frogged over the turnstile, bag in hand, and landed gracefully in the arms of two NYPD officers. Oops.
"Ma'am, we really should arrest you," they said. "Wouldn't be the first time," I replied. Then burst into tears. "But I HAVE a ticket!" I wept. I even showed them the stamp that had time, date and location on it, proving that I had just bought it two feet away from where we now stood. My arguments may not have done much good, but my tears helped (they always do). "Please don't cry," one of them said (the younger, more attractive one). The other one hastily shuffled away to see if anyone was urinating in public, or drinking out of brown paper bags. Then young cop/good cop told me I was caught on CCTV, so he HAD to issue me a citation, but if I contested it by sending them my ticket, I could escape the $60 fine. Then he proceeded to write me the world's slowest ticket, whilst I shuffed my feet awkwardly and Resalin (very good friend) waited patiently nearby. The highlight was when young cop/good cop offered to write his phone number on the ticket, but then realized it would be very unprofessional and started tutting and shaking his head. I laughed. I probably would have gone out with him though. He was nice looking and he had a gun. Who's arguing with that?
Thus did I escape being arrested. Just. Don't jump turnstiles. If nothing else, it's a boring waste of time and it's kind of embarassing having to make yourself cry in a public place at one o'clock in the morning.

Grad school is hard, bitches

It really is. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be easy. But I didn't think I'd become so absolutely well-acquainted with fear/abject horror. Anyone in my reporting class knows what I'm talking about. It's that moment of absolute paralysis you have when you see a person, know you have to approach them for an interview and you just freeze.

I'm British, yo. I'd rather sharpen my own finger and use it as a pencil than talk to a complete stranger. In London you do not EVER talk to people you don't know, unless you're in a bar and you're hammered and you feel like humiliating yourself by hitting on a random man when you are too drunk to realise that he is a chav and lives in Bromley. Capisce? People get on the tube every day and sit there, and the profound silence of people not talking to each other has only been ruined in recent years by the persistent thud of ipods. You just don't talk to people. I find it liberating. The silence is blissful and nobody annoys me with their moronic gibberish. I could happily not talk to people all day. You might call it sociopathia, but luckily I don't care what you think.

I am a writer. I told myself this two years ago when I was trying to make excuses for spending fifty hours a week waitressing. It's something to do with the power of positive thinking. But seriously, I like to write. I love to write. But the one thing I really hate hate HATE to do is talk to people I don't know. And when the job in question entails talking to people I don't know who absolutely do not want to talk to me, I become apoplectic with fear. It's like that time in 2002 when a rat jumped on my arm, and stayed there for ten seconds despite me screaming and trying to brush it off. Worse actually.

So take my weekly six-hour class, which is mistakenly called WRITING and reporting. Forget the writing. They really don't care about that. As long as you turn in clean copy without punctuation mistakes, you can write as soberly and dully and badly as a funeral reporter on Valium, and no one cares. What they care about is reporting. In order to get even an A minus on a paper, you have to talk to fifteen million people and get twenty million billion quotes from them. Never mind that this might take up a good thirty percent of your week (including sleep) and that you also have to read/write for other classes, do your laundry AND write the goddamn article. This is all irrelevant in the great big world of reporting. As long as your spend half your week walking in the cold, pissing off people by approaching them when they don't want to talk to you, and completely ruining your shoes, then it's all just wonderful.

Please also bear in mind that my beat for school is Astoria. Astoria is 78% immigrants. Overwhelmingly more than half its residents speak a language other than English at home. This means in practice that they (a) do not want to talk to this lady reporter and (b) physically cannot, even if they are willing to. Odds are not in my favour. For one thing, Astorians have an inherent suspicion of the press. Lord knows why. I'm hardly Anderson Cooper. Then, when I manage to get through their hard shell of suspicion with sweetness and charm (believe it or not I can be charming), the first thing they do unfailingly is ask, "Who do you work for?" Which is not really a question I'm qualified to answer. "Um, I'm kind of freelance..." I say, wriggling uncomfortably. "But I've been published in the Astoria Times! Twice!" This inevitably fails to impress. God knows why.

So this week I've mainly been spared the humiliation of having to approach people cold. Kind of. If it was up to me, I'd only ever interview people by email. This way I'd never have to put on makeup and I could do it in my pyjamas, while at home, not talking to anybody. Get the picture? But this week I only had to interview lots of very nice British people who were running the marathon. Oh goody. At least with my compatriots, they understand the discomfort of spending time with strangers and usually get to the point relatively quickly. Quelle relief...

The first interview took place in the Four Seasons, where my subject had a business meeting. This means that Sophie (being a good journalist) arrived early and prepared and had to wait in the lobby for twenty minutes while people mistakenly assumed she was a prostitute. (Don't ask me where the third person references are coming from. I'm not channeling Norman Mailer, I'm just exhausted).

Second interview was in Starbucks in Astor Place. I have one tip for budding reporters. Never, ever, EVER interview people in Starbucks. When you play back the tape, (or the MP3 in my case) all you will hear are excruciatingly bad songs by Keith Urban and Paul McCartney, and very little of your interviewee talking, unless you have Bionic Woman ears. It's not good.

Then, extremely hungover from Friday night, I had to walk in the cold to the very edge of Manhattan. The Jacob Javitts Conference Center to be precise. It's not Hell but it's pretty close. There, at the 2007 Marathon Expo, I searched around for English people to inteview. You can tell immediately who they are. Their teeth aren't blinding you with whiteness and they're the only ones not wearing North face anoraks. Easy.

For a good half hour, I walked around, procrastinating. I kept hearing English voices, ignoring them and persuading myself they were speaking Dutch. Eventually, with the voice of Tim Harper in my head screaming, "DO. MORE. REPORTING!" I shyly approached some nice looking men in leggings from Bristol, and they gave me some quotes. Hard hitting reporter? I couldn't report a reporter's conference where the theme is "Reporting." I'm dreadful.

It looks like a future in criticism lies ahead. Anything where I can sit quietly and not talk to people. Sweet.

Me and my Wayfarers take a break

More Language Barriers (and bad dates)

I think it was George Bernard Shaw that said England and America are two countries divided by a common language. This is a charming and slightly nonsensical statement, but it's also true. For the last month and a half I have been learning to speak American, and I would love to say that this is the reason why this blog has been so infrequently updated, but that's just laziness really.

When I arrived, all British and naive and confident in my communication skills, I had no idea of the problems that would face me. For years, I've been struggling with Microsoft Word when it consistently tried to Americanize my spelling. "Colour" became "color," "realise" became "realize" and most confusing of all were "skeptical" and "defense" which just look plain wrong to me. My writing professor (an Anglophile himself) sent me the first of many emails saying, "When in Rome, Sophie..."

So I tried. Not only with the spelling. When I went to Paris, I spoke French (or something very like it). In America, I would speak American. This entailed not only calling football "soccer," but also altering my pronunciation in a variety of nauseating ways. I stopped ordering water in bars after the third week of mystified servers and bartenders, and just called it "warder" instead, complete with transatlantic-Zeta-Jones obnoxious drawl. Then I started calling wellies "galoshes" or "rainboots." I'm not really sure how as the weather has been at least in the high seventies since moving here, but never mind. But the final, the most difficult, really, really hard thing has been losing jam. I love jam. Confiture, maramalade, you name it. I finally had to surrender and call it "jelly," which it quite clearly isn't, and that has been one of the hardest things about living in New York thus far.

Apart from that, it's great. I've almost got the hang of the lingo. Now I just need to pick up the mating rituals of the locals. And stop going on dates with pirates, but that's another story. I'm pretty adventurous though. You'd be surprised. I will go on a date with almost anyone, as long as they have all their teeth. I am, after all, a graduate student, and I miss eating non-bagel related food.

I promise to update this more frequently so keep watching.

Soph xx

Language Barriers, Taxi Strikes, Mosquitoes on the Subway

I made it! After my misadventures at the American Embassy I had begun to lose my faith. People do, in that place. You sit in a stuffy room for four hours, hearing the same recorded announcement over and over and over again. All they sell are American snacks like oreos and peppermint patties, and they don't take credit cards, so woe betide you if you forgot cash. People have actually starved to death in there I believe, waiting in vain to hear their number called. When eventually I made it out, I was determined never to go back. Congratualtions, America. You've managed to turn me against your country before I've even arrived. As if you hadn't already done enough what with Dick Cheney, pro-life campaigners, the death penalty and root beer.

When my visa still hadn't arrived on Friday, and I was due to leave in Monday, I panicked. Phone calls were made. My lawyer told me to beg. 'Ring the embassy and cry', was his advice. 'Sometimes the personal touch helps'. Now I'm all for using tears and emotional outbursts for personal gain, but I've never found them very helpful in really serious situations, like being arrested, or having your car towed away. So I called the courier company to see if they had any idea where my visa was. 'Gilbert? We're delivering it today' they said. Five minutes later the doorbell rang. Lucky I was at home really, although it would have been nice if they'd given me some warning. But with a visa for five years, who's complaining?

So I packed up and left, rather abruptly. Mama dearest drove me to the airport, laughed at my enormous luggage and then watched sadly as I tried to go through security to departures. She then watched nervously as they marched me back out on suspicion of having too large a carry-on bag (it squeezed into the metal size guide. Just). Then we said goodbye again, and got a bit teary until I got distracted by Aggie from 'How Clean is Your House' sauntering past me through the barrier. That woman has CLASS I tell you. And her house is very clean. Clive Owen was there too, on my plane, but nobody cared about him. Then I got on the plane and watched Spiderman 3 three times. It was great until Spiderman became evil and started tap dancing. What the hell was that all about? Peter Parker's alter ego is a jazz fiend? Seriously.

I am in New York. It is very hot and beautiful, and my feet hurt from walking. School is wonderful, but more on that later. I think I have found a place to live, but ditto. In the meantime, now I have finished my first assignment (ironically enough, covering a protest by disgruntled restaurant workers on 64th and Broadway) I am going to go and read on the sundeck. Maybe in my bikini, if New York is ready for that. Probably not. Shorts then. More to follow....

TREY IF YOU HAPPEN TO READ THIS...

Your email address doesn't work. Actually none of them do. How are we supposed to contact you? Send me a myspace message or something with an email address that I can actually get you on, and then I will let you know when I come to California (maybe around December).

Downsizing, AKA OMG where did all this rubbish come from?

As we speak, I am trying to pack up my room, which has about fifteen years' worth of stuff in it. Most of this stuff is rubbish. I am actually sitting at the moment in a big, huge, enormous pile of rubbish. Bearing in mind that I pride myself on not being a hoarder, and regularly throw a lot of my crap away, here are some of the (surprising) things I have found:
-One hundred and eighty two pens. (I'm not kidding)
-Eighty nine books/boxes of matches.
-About fifty thousand of those tiny Clinique free samples of 'pore minimiser' my mum gives me when she gets those special offer packages. They clearly do not work because (a) I would have used them and (b) my pores are still oversized.
-Three identical black wraparound wool tops from three different stores, none of which I think I have ever worn.
- Three pairs of worn down Gola sneakers with rainbox/safari/stripe pattern on that I for some reason refuse to throw away even though the last time I wore any of them was 2001.
-A 'crystal' deodorant Father Christmas gave me when he was being eco conscious (unused).
- A pair of my dad's glasses (???????). This creeps me out for some reason. Glasses are so personal. I feel slightly odd and yet also slightly attached. I then spent a while trying them on and looking at myself in the mirror. They are actually pretty similar to the Kate Moss ones in Topshop. Daddy was a hipster. Who knew?
- Some of those 'worry balls' that you spin around in your hand and use to meditate with. After I found them I sat on the floor for a while, meditating. Then I realised that I have ADD and cannot meditate.
-My collection of minidiscs. So nineties! I love it.
-Five, unused Nokia handsfree earphones, and a number of old mobiles, all consistently larger in size than the previous one.
-A lot, lot, LOT of plasters, which is ironic because whenever I cut myself there aren't any.
-Some Minnie Mouse ears from Eurodisney (I have never been there).
- A Von Dutch trucker cap, from my WAG wannabe Chinawhite days.
And finally....
-Three thousand handbags. I will be getting rid of these on August 11th. Along with the identical black tops. If you want any of them, please come along. The proceeds will be going to the Sophie Gilbert Scholarship Fund, also known as the Save Sophie From The Catering Industry Collection. Tax deductible!
So basically, I have spent the day trying on everything I have ever owned and then putting it in a pile. I am currently also wearing a lot of things, including an Hermes belt, a white mohair trilby, the aforementioned Minnie Mouse ears, my dad's glasses, three scarves and all my rings from when I was twelve. I will try and take a picture because I think it will be funny. I may also now go to Tesco with my lovely things. I wish I could be more ruthlessly efficient, but this way is also fun. Toodles.

Waiting for Godot (Or DRM)

I am currently at home waiting for a man to get in touch with me. Unfortunately this isn't unfamiliar territory. The man in question is Dean Robert MacDonald, Assistant Dean of Admissions at Columbia University. I haven't slept with him, although I am starting to consider it if it will provoke some kind of response. Dean Robert MacDonald, like so many of his kind, is playing hard to get.
Like many of my liasons, it started out well. I started my application, DRM sent me a nice email reminding me of deadlines, I completed it, he sent me another nice email saying thank you. We had a brief blip when he promised to email me the dates of the writing test by a certain time, and failed, but apologised the next day and we made up. Then our relationship nearly came to blows when he decided to come to London the exact same weekend that I was scheduled to go to New York to meet him. But I laughed it off as bad luck, and took the writing test, and then completed my financial aid application well before the scheduled deadline. In short, I have done everything he has asked me to. I have been a model applicant. I have impeccable references, good clips, funny application essays and a hot body (actually he doesn't know about that bit, which is probably why he's playing so hard to get). I am even in demand, which according to 'The Rules: how to meet and marry an Ivy League University' makes me more desirable. I have two very good offers on the table, one from NYU and one from American. They both want me. American sent me a rather grovelling email telling me EXACTLY how much they want me. NYU agreed to extend the deadline to which I could accept my place, presumably because they want me. But like the guys that you date that call you all the time, and send you flowers, and offer you scholarships, I am beginning to lose interest in them because I am still hung up on DRM. He is such a bad man. He is clearly playing by the Rules. He emails me packs of lies, telling me that my decision letter was posted on the 2nd April, and that emails will be sent on the 9th, 10th and 11th of April just in case, and then when I finally get annoyed and call him to find out what's going on, he has some crappy standard voicemail message telling me more lies about letters and emails that I HAVE NOT RECEIVED. It is now April 13th. Friday 13th to be precise. I am tired of waiting at home watching Grey's Anatomy and psychotically checking the post every minute. Last week, in Paris, I called my brother every single day to check the mail for me, and now I have got to the point where I refuse to leave the building to go somewhere far from the mailbox or my gmail account. I am losing my mind. I have lost my faith. I am waiting for Godot: a mysterious answer from beyond that is never ever ever going to arrive. I have cleaned my entire house, done the ironing, downloaded the whole of season two of Grey's, and still nothing. Nothing. DRM has a lot to answer for. All over the world there are scores of J-School applicants like me, nervously chewing their hair and obsessively jumping every time they get a new email message. Mine are always from fucking facebook, telling me someone I don't even like has invited me to join a new group! Fuck. Oh Dean Robert MacDonald. What have you done to me? I have to go and see if the post has come now. Jesus.