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There are brand-memes that suddenly go into multiplying overdrive it seems, achieving ubiquity. At the moment in New York those are Snapple, Boars Head, Stieg Larsson. The shop and subway-vendor fridges are stuffed with Snapple drinks, Boar’s Head meat and cheese is on display in all the delis and at least one passenger in each subway carriage is clutching a Stieg Larsson book…The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo… The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest…
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JNH harmed something for the first time the other day. It didn’t matter much, but I felt it. He has a mobile of felt dragonflies hanging above his crib. From the kitchen I heard a rustling and crunching sound, and went in to his room to see he’d stretched up and grabbed hold of one of the dragonflies. The whole mobile was a tangle. The round frame was at a jaunty angle, the threads were all twisted and the dragonflies all over the place. The green one had lost two wings.
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C, JNH and I went on a 5 hour bus journey last weekend to join a latte-sipping rabble rallying to restore sanity in the Mall in Washington DC. It was worth it for the evening walk to the White House, the Washington and Lincoln Memorials etc. in fading October sunlight after we arrived, and for the fun and relieved atmosphere among the 200,000ish (Stephen Colbert put it at 6 billion) gathered the next day, with signs saying things like Floridans Against Rational Thought, This is a Sign, Grumpy Old People, Death to Extremists, I’m with Stupid. Though the feeling I’d had before we went – that, while funny, the fact that so many people including us saw a rally organized by two comedians as the only rally worth traveling for this year, reflects a seriously sorry state of affairs.
H having moved back to London, and the Quincy hotel where I’d stayed before being booked up, we found ourselves somehow staying at the ridiculously big and wannabe-posh Omni Shoreham hotel , one subway stop up from Dupont Circle. It’s the kind of place where guests feel like profit-fodder, buying a $3 coffee here, paying a debit card fee there and feeling disproportionately subversive when tipping an underpaid porter.
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Opposite me on the N train on the way back from Brooklyn on Friday, an elderly man from Malta who was here for today’s Marathon got talking to the local man sitting next to him. The former was on his way to a Maltese social club in Astoria – he had the address written down on a little card – the latter was on his way back to his home near Steinway street, where, he described, Egyptian and Serbian communities rub shoulders. “There’s a bit of everything round there,” he said, “I didn’t know about the Maltese social club though.” Maltese guy asked about the Marathon route and whether the boroughs were island or mainland. His neighbor explained slowly, patiently a few times, and Maltese guy repeated after him. “So…Staten Island – island; Brooklyn And Queens, part of Long Island, island; Manhattan – island; and the Bronx, mainland! I get it, thank you.” He looked delighted. I kept an eye out for him today as JNH and I watched some of the 45,000 runners approach the daunting climb of the Queensborough Bridge, but didn’t see him. From his wiry but strong-looking form I imagine he’d already sped right ahead.
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