New York
1 t's as easy as pie to get through Checkpoint Charlie. The very agreeable Hispanic immigration officer at Kennedy asked me to place
my index fingers, one at a time, on a scanning machine. My prints were instantly checked against the dabs of (I suppose) suicide bombers, anarchists, white slavers, drugs barons, porn kings, and those who, wittingly or unwittingly, have in the past 60 years engaged in genocide (on however small a scale). But. . . no match. I was clean; and I was through immigration faster than on any previous visit to the United States. The new security arrangements may be daft, but they are not yet burdensome. Now that the Feds have my prints, however, I shall have to keep my hands to myself on future visits.
Iarrived in New York on the eve of the biggest freeze for 100 years. In the early hours of last Friday morning, after two days of Arctic conditions, the temperature in the city dropped to 21F below zero, if you take the wind chill into account. The morning news shows loved it. It was so fun. One channel reversed the old fried-egg trick. A reporter cracked four eggs on a pavement, and they froze solid within minutes. But there was a serious side to it. The transit authorities apologised because some trains were running 15 minutes late as a result of frozen points and the like. Fifteen minutes! If such 'adverse weather conditions' were to hit England, the country would close down for 15 days, minimum. There'd be food riots, looting, heated exchanges in the House. Counselling centres would be besieged. No one would apologise.
-Camay friends told me that I had to wrap If up in layers. My brother-in-law suggested skin-tight silk underwear, which sounded nice. But Bloomingdale's couldn't, perhaps wouldn't, help me. So I improvised. I wore chinos over pyjamas tucked into thick cotton socks; walking shoes with leather uppers and rubber soles; T-shirt, shirt, jumper, sports jacket and standard English navy-blue woollen overcoat, scarf, ski gloves, ear muffs ($5) and trilby. In that clobber the walk to the subway (four blocks) was a doddle.
The ban on smoking in public places is a joke when you read about it in England, but it is not at all funny when you see office workers smoking on the sidewalk in 10 and 20F below. Some of the huddled masses Mayor Bloomberg is saving from lung cancer and heart failure may die
instead from hypothermia, bronchial pneumonia or carbon-monoxide poisoning. The nicotine Nazis have such a grip on New York that it is an offence to have an ashtray in your office. When it comes to cigarettes, this is a town without pity, or brains. A manic-depressive friend of my wife's had her visiting rights cancelled because she lit up in the loony bin.
1]) ut you may smoke cigarettes in a cigar 1-.1 bar. I recommend Florio's Grill, in Little Italy. The guv'nor, a self-styled conservative, has robust views, and he is happy to share them. 'Britain is our best friend in all the world,' he says. You nod modestly. Then he hits his stride. 'You seen those pictures of hotels in Baghdad? No potted plants! What kind of a country is that? Those Muslims, they can't even make a clock radio. What have these guys ever given the world?' You acknowledge that the Middle East lacks the creative energy of the US, but mumble something about algebra and the wheel. 'Yeah,' he says. 'But that was a long time ago, right?'
r Clock Radio is not the only New Yorker with robust views, of course. Cindy Adams, the New York Post's answer to Lynda Lee-Potter, reported last week that after a disagreeable encounter with a French immigration officer in Paris, she yelled at him from beyond the customs barrier, 'And screw-ay les Francais to you, too, pal.' The French have an expression for this sort of thing: esprit de l'escatier. Bastards.
f it's full-frontal Francophobia you want, I recommend the Weekty World News, trashiest, and therefore best, of the supermarket tabloids. In the current issue the Revd Sharon 0., of Park City, Utah, reveals that her Church specialises in helping gay couples around the world to adopt primates. In the course of her work, she has discovered that baboons do best in gay households in France, where, as she reports, arrangements are handled by FAGB (the Federation de l'Adoption Gay Baboons).
With the exception of one independent and that fellow in the cigar bar, all the New Yorkers I spoke to (in the city and in the suburbs) were Democrats. Many of them think the President has made America safer. All, however, detest Bush and intend to vote against him. The economy may be doing well, but Bush's spending is out of control, and more and more jobs are being exported. The war for freedom'n'democracy is failing. US casualties continue to rise, and there is no reason to suppose that the resistance fighters and terrorists will call a truce for the sake of Dubya's re-election. Naturally, I bow to Mark Steyn in these matters — his piece this week on Howard Dean's performance in Iowa is, sadly, spot-on — but I cannot share his apparent conviction that Shrub is a sure thing for November. I am going to bet 100 euros on a Democrat to take the White House.
Qne of the great delights of New York is that strangers will engage you in conversation. I was sitting in Union Square, on the day the temperature rose to freezing (and it seemed, in consequence, springlike), when a man of 70 stopped opposite my bench and said, 'Bush's $1.5 billion plan to promote marriage. What's that about?' But he did not really want an answer. (The answer, as everyone knows, is that it is Bush's way of not having to endorse an amendment to the constitution that would outlaw gay marriages.) What my friend really wanted to know was what my star sign was. It turned out that we were both Pisces. It also turned out that he had lived in Britain at the time of the Roman Empire. Over the next half an hour we touched on Greek philosophy, scholastic theology, the Earl of Beaconsfield, Elizabeth Taylor and old English movies. If we'd had more time, we'd have probably got round to Judy Garland.
Back at Heathrow, an immigration officer — a Welshman from the look of his black curly hair and angry, close-set eyes — turned nasty. 'Wait behind the yellow line until you are asked to come forward,' he barked, even though the queue was orderly and moving along nicely. If we are going to have foreigners inspect our passports when we return to England, I think we should employ Hispanics.
Previous page
