Tuesday, June 5, 2012

New York missive no 109 - Gluing things together, and City Island

Last weekend I glued various things together that needed gluing. I’d even written a list of them to keep track – ready for when I got around to buying the superglue. They were things that JNH had broken unintentionally at various points through play and exploration (in most cases, through me letting him play with things he probably shouldn’t). They were:

- A fox’s head back on its body. The fox is from a set of china Beatrix Potter characters that I’d had as a child, gathered on top of a little shelf of Potter's books. One day JNH tugged the top of his bureau. The bureau, its drawers, the books, the china fox and his friends, came tumbling down.

- The tail back onto a china tiger (more china!), given as a good luck present when JNH was born by Dad’s business contact in China: JNH was born in a year of the tiger.

- The groom back onto our wedding cake decoration, which despite its tackiness we keep on top of the fridge as a souvenir. Good thing neither C nor I are superstitious.

- A tail and ear back onto a giraffe piggy bank.

- A small joining piece back onto the bridge from a wooden train set.

- I gave up when it came to the fragile ladder from a plastic FDNY fire truck.

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The mind moves like plate techtonics. Ideas grind and slide alongside one another, their movements barely perceptible. Then a clunk, a shift. On occasion an earthquake.

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After visiting the Bronx Zoo JNH’s godfather W picked us up in his car and we drove to City Island. It dangles off the Bronx shore into the far Western hip of Long Island Sound. With the architecture of a quaint New England fishing village, at the weekend it still feels the pulse of the city as Bronx-dwellers come for a getaway. We ate fish and chips at one of the rammed sea-food restaurants overlooking the Sound, accompanied by the roar of revving motorbikes, salsa beats and seagull cries.

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