It's still not working! All fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

This flash drive thingy isn't working. Somebody gave me some help (see earlier post), and I've tried to find help on a forum (www.u3community.com) I may try to uninstall the offending widget on another pc.

So, that aside, I should address some complaints I've been receiving, apparently I'm not posting often enough about New York. I have this to say. Our records are sketchy for a number of days following the sunday previously mentioned. I hope to further the recollection in order to ensure a complete record is presented. Ordinary service will resume.

I shall review a book instead. "All fun and games until somebody loses an eye" by Christopher Brookmyre. This is the second of his books that I've read in my time, and would say that I'd read another very happily. Those of you unfamiliar with this particular novel would be wise to read a different review. Mostly because mine are a little short and well, don't say very much.

It's a funny, well, lightly humorous more than funny story, in which a young grandmother joins up with a gang of super-cool mercenaries to rescue her son from the evil clutches of somebody nasty that kidnapped him.

But it starts off as an ordinary boring day, looking forward to ironing, cooking and minding grandchildren, when suddenly she's thrust into this adventure by rescuing her grand-daughter first of all. Naturally, that's connected to the group of mercenaries, and they in turn are connected to the rescue of the son. So, that's the plot.

And it is a good one. It's not Tom Clancy, nor is it Vincent Banville. It's well written, holds the attention, tickles the funny bone - in fact as a light fiction read, it ticks all of the boxes, and I highly recommend it.

Sunday in New York

Sorry, if you thought I'd forgotten about my trip to New York...There follows a report on the Sunday there. Am I boring you by posting this way?

Slept in late. It was Sunday after all, and we'd been busy up till then. So it was almost lunchtime by the time we got into town, and we went for lunch in one of those useful places that has counters all over the shop selling all sorts of grub, sangwidges on one side, pasta and pizza on another, salads somewhere else etc.

As the weather was reasonable, we wandered around Central Park, and we hired a rowing boat on the lake. That was nice, and I highly recommend it, as it only cost $12 for an hour, with a $20 deposit. Which you get back if you don't sink the boat. Of course, the muck stirred up by your oars will convince you not to sink the boat.

We wandered some more, and watched roller discos and concerts and baseball and football and all sorts of things that go on in Central Park. If you're buying a pretzel, try one with something on it, as the plain one we bought was a little, well, plain.

Coffee was had in Zabars, as was an intense jealousy of the shops in NYC. Zabars is a deli, but no it's more than a deli. There's a huge array of coffee, chocolate, meat, dried meat and almost anything foody that you could think of all in this huge and pokey shop. Upstairs are any number of kitchen implements, from knives to pots, from pasta makers to bowls. Fantastic shop altogether.

Dinner was had in the Hard Rock Café, where we had a reasonable meal under the watchful eye of clothing, drumsticks and other memorabilia of the stars. Worth a visit, but once is enough. The memorabilia are what make it, to be honest. But then, how do you know if that really was Billy Joel's beautiful Moto Guzzi, or Madonna's knickers from some tour or other? Maybe I'll start a rock memorabilia collection here at home? Hmmmm.... ("that's Elvis' guitar there, those jeans belonged to, eh, Bono, and that sock? That sock belonged to the great Ronan Keating!)

Apologies for the lack of photographs - my camera battery had become well, moderately discharged.

One Saturday on holidays in New York

So, somebody was at work in the UN buildings, and the hordes of NYPD were letting nobody in. Even the road outside was deserted, so we believed them when they told us we should try again later in the week. Drat, I really wanted to see it.... We ambled on to Central Park and sure you'd have to have a look in Tiffanys, wouldn't you?

After regaining our vision, we went around the corner to FAO Schwartz, another big toyshop. This shop you might remember from the film "Big"? It's the one with the stand-on piano (which M eventually got on, after much cajoling).

There was a teddy bear moose for sale at $10,000. There was a man whose job it is to demonstrate light sabers. There's a "Hot Wheels" factory, where you can customise a toy car for yourself. Mad. And there are 2 guys who play the floor piano. Very well. Very well indeed. A good free show in New York!

Moseying continued, and lunch was a hot dog and a corn on the cob from vendors in the street market on 7th Avenue (I think)

Bought tickets to Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, which was an absolutely fantastic show. I couldn't get over the special effects (in a live theatre!) and sets which were just brill. That said, it has been running for a whole 6 years. And yer man, Donny Osmond is in it - he gets lots of cheers from the audience, but is not the best actor on stage...Naturally, it's a production very similar to the cartoon film, and it's probably a carbon copy scriptwise, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless. Find the TKTS booth and you're away with it!

Times Square at night is brighter than the daytime. The shops are all open, doing a roaring trade. The ads are all running, lights flooding the area in red and white mostly. Occasionally the NYPD show up and the hawkers and street traders make a run for it with their high quality genuine merchandise. Times Square was our subway stop, so we got very used to it after a while!

Friday 22 in New Yorkl

The first item we mentioned in the journal for Friday is the Toys R Us shop at Times Square. Very impressive - this is the only shop I've ever been in that had a ferris wheel, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Lego pick n mix station. Cool.

After that we walked across town to the USS Intrepid Air Sea and Space Museum. That's a fair long walk to be honest, but I thought it was worth it. The Intrepid is a WWII aircraft carrier. So it's big. The hangars have been converted into a museum on such things as the Purple Heart medal, NASA endeavours, and a couple of missiles. It's impressive seeing the size of the lifts used to transport ordnance and aircraft up to the flight deck, but you can't see the arrestor cables or the steam catapults or the engine room. On the deck is a slightly rusty collection of aircraft from an F16 Falcon to a Blackbird (not an SR71, an A12 - a slightly earlier model), with F14D and some foreign fighters aswell. There're some whirlybirds too!


Just on the far side of the dock to the Intrepid is a Concorde sitting sadly on a barge. What a beautiful airplane. A very graceful line on what is a surprisingly small plane! You can walk through the cabin, and view the cockpit but you can't sit on the seats as they're walled in with perspex. Shame. And there's also a missile submarine, the USS Growler, which is a bit of fun to scramble through. It's quite warm in there though.

In fairness, the Intrepid was away for refit in October, so we can't really complain about getting to see it while we were there!


After that we headed to the Natural History Museum. The original moans of "do we have to go in" from a certain travelling companion changed to a "do we have to leave" when the museum closed at 6! This is a fascinating and well laid out museum, charting the evolution of animals, explaining certain body structures and so on.



There's a slice from a redwood tree that's 1341 years across. Most importantly, they have DINOSAURS!!!! They have really gone all out with it, and we could have spent a whole day in here. This was a real highlight, and I can't recommend it highly enough for a visit.

After a quick stroll in Central Park (it was getting darkish) we went for dinner in TGI Fridays which wasn't at all bad - if it's good enough for the NYPD it must be good enough for tourists!

Another New York report

Nah, sorry, I lie. Forgot to bring the notebook with me today. Sorry folks. All those who are disappointed, you know where to write it! But sure, there's news nonetheless. We bought a suite of furniture on Saturday! And, my Focus is causing more woes! Had to get a coolant leak fixed last week. That's the 7th return to the garage since June 2005. You know where to vote...

I'm sorry about the notebook, it's rare enough I get a chance to post these days, so I'll have to make a special effort to do another day later this week. Catch you all later!

A New York Post

I thought that was a clever-ish title? Anyway, the first couple of days went someting like this -

Thurs 21 (sounds like months ago!)

We took the subway into town, and the 7-train terminates in Times Square. Whilst I was impressed at the buildings, and the artificial light beaming down on top of us from the advertising, I managed to keep my jaw, and the back of my head off the ground. So we went to find our first NYC breakfast, and found it in the form of some french toast (mmmm - french toast was to feature heavily throughout this trip) and an egg roll.

So there we were, walking down the street, when all of a sudden I spied a large gorilla atop a building, swatting away some pesky airplanes. Wonder of wonders, if it wasn't the Empire State Building! The sign said only 15 - 20 minute queues, so we subjected ourselves to the search, repetitive sales pitch for the audio tour (ignore it, just enjoy the view) and queuing. What a lift. 82 stories in about the same time that you'd get up 6 or 7 in the multi-storey.

Views, naturally, are fantastic - but it's kinda hard to keep interested! It ends up looking so similar from each compass point, but that's not to diminish the impact. It genuinely is a cool view, and such an iconic building too.

So we queued to get back down, and wandered around the ground (first) floor a little, amazed at the number of tenants in a single building, and fell back out onto 5th Avenue. Lunched in one of those fantastic lunch shops that abound in NYC, where you can get sushi from one counter, a sandwich from another, and anything in between! We don't like Cherry Coke.

Our next stop was Saks, on 5th. Brown Thomas has nothing on this place. This is the Department Store to have a bag from, but we wouldn't afford anything in there - a single shirt was $450 and they had a domino set for $175. We didn't stay long in there, needless to say. Wandered on Downtown along Broadway, whereupon we found ourselves at Ground Zero (via Chinatown and a café).

Turning the corner 2 blocks away, it's immediately apparent that there's a huge gap in the city. You can see too far. It's too bright. Now, I think I finally have some tiny inkling of the loss and damage that New York suffered in 2001.

We wandered on, through Battery Park (near the Hudson) watched lucky people going out to learn to sail, and saw the sunset behind the buildings across the river in New Jersey, I think. Headed back to Broadway, and got something to eat in a nice restaurant. Made our way back to the subway, and our feet thanked us for finally giving them a break!

To be continued....