Take Me Back To New York

We’re really going back in time now, all the way back to my last day. (I know, still. I’ve dragged it out to three posts. It was that emotional).

I went and sat in Central Park with my fave frappe. The day before I’d been asked if I was having my ‘usual’.  It was beyond exciting. I am such a New Yorker. Even the guys trying to flog bike hire have stopped thrusting leaflets at me because I look like such a local. Hashtag proud.

I sat at the base of a tree and leant against its trunk and drank in the park and its people. I tried to take a mental photo and burn the picture into my mind. I looked back on the past two weeks and everything that we’d done and all that I’d completed. I just couldn’t believe it was done.

Then I opened my present. I did it really reallyyy slowly so that I didn’t rip any of the wrapping paper. And guess what Lisa gave me?? Guess, guess!! 

I finally unfurled the paper to reveal the hard back glossy cover of ‘Harper’s Bazaar: Greatest Hits’ with its stunning image of a sheer rose coloured ball gown caught in momentous movement. It’s a beautiful book. I just need a glass coffee table on which to place it now. And a lifestyle that incorporates a glass coffee table.

So I sat in the early evening sun – the hurricane threat had not yet been realised  - and poured over the images. I’ve had so many perfect New York moments it’s actually getting ridiculous.

I headed home in time to meet my partner in NY crime as she got back from work and we went a bit mental congratulating ourselves that we’d completed the whole internship shebang/being really very sad that it was over/generally being overly emotional. We’re both v in touch with our emotions so it was a bit of an emotional mess really. Lots of shrieking.

 Then, once that was done, we had to decide what to do that evening. The storm that had been promised suddenly rolled in across the Manhattan skyline (no hurricane. Phew) so that it got very  dark very quickly and limited our evening options to indoor activities. We pondered and we dithered. Obviously.

And then I remembered that my sister’s boyfriend Billy, who had jealously examined the New York map before  I left and compiled a list of must do activities, had told me that I had to, to make up for leaving him at home whilst we  all jetted off to New York, go to Billy’s Bakery and think of him. So we looked it up and that’s what we did.

The original Billy’s Bakery is in Chelsea (there are now two others in Tribeca and Nolita) so we subwayed off to 24^th and 9^th. Chelsea is a lovely district – really beautiful town houses split into apartments with elegant steps and wrought iron windows and neat little front gardens – with lots of quirky little shops. We found Billy’s Bakery very easily now that we’re so great at navigating the street/avenue/grid system (say nada about a six year old being able to do it. I know it’s easy; still proud) and, although it was tiny, we managed to get seats by squeezing into the quaint corner seats next to a very muscular gay couple. Again with the whole dither dither that follows us wherever we go. There were so many cakes and they all looked A-MAAAAZE-ING. Banana cupcake with cream cheese icing. Chocolate cupcake. Carrot cupcake. Red velvet cupcake. Classic cupcake. Red berry cobbler pie (what we would call crumble) which was on a platter to be sampled and was out of this world. Ice box cake (looked like stacks and stacks of oreos). Banan cream pie. Mini cheesecake. Peanut butter pie (obviously. Looked FAB).  Key Lime Pie. Huge three layer cakes. The choice was immense and entirely overwhelmed us and it took hours. We eventually settled for sharing a red velvet cupcake with a latte.

Omg totally judge books by their covers in this place. It looked delicious and it tasted freaking amazing.

We sat at the cute communal table and watched the storm thunder on outside. We felt so cosy as we nursed our coffees and prolonged the eating of our cupcake. We managed to drag it out for all of about ten minutes. TRUST it’s so hard to resist for any length of time.

Bily’s Bakery stayed open till 11 o’clock in true NYC style. I love that; I love that what is effectively a small neighbourhood café which happens to sell fantastic cakes stays open until nearly midnight. We were so happy and comfortable there, discussing our must have wardrobe additions, that we stayed until it closed. They had to kick us, and the very nice guys who had sat next to us, out. The very nice guys who had sat next to us were a couple of years older than us and lived in the area (we were jel) and one had studied for a year at York (so had lived, he informed us, in both Old York and New York, which I appreciated) and were enjoying a huge collection of Billy’s Bakerys’ goodies. One had the Peanut Butter Pie and promised me that it was heaven for one’s tastebuds. I vowed to return and experience it.

We eventually, reluctantly, left. It had stopped raining and our journey back was jolly, full of plans to try and recreate the wonders of Billy’s Bakery. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Random moment: as we were about to enter the Subway station, chatting away about God knows what (probably still how to make red velvet cupcake and how delicious ours was) a man stopped us to ask where we were from. On hearing London he shook us both warmly by the hand and congratulated us on our ‘damn fine accents’ and then loped off, readjusting his baggy jeans as he did so.

Only in New York, baby.

    

Rainy NYC

Remember how I told you about Brooklyn Bridge in the rain? And remember how I tried really reallyyy hard to describe it to you??

Ok, you don't have to remember. If you don't remember it's fine. In fact, if you never read it, it's totally fine. I'm just imagining some blank faces like the ones my face used to automatically fall into whenever Mr Davidson directed a question at me in physics and so I want to put you all out of your misery.

My description didn't do it justice, so here it is, in physical form.



Beautiful Rainy Brooklyn Bridge...



Me, with no umbrella. It was wet.

True New Yorker

I needed to share this view from my run in Central Park. Not bad, huh?
If only the view in the gym was that interesting, I'd be there a lot more often...

Times Square Relived

Yellow Taxi & American Flag. Living the dream, baby.



We didn't look like nutters at all, takimg photos from the other side of the road...



Kanye felt at home.



Back AGAIN

Golly I'm just such a busy globe trotter that keeping this up is getting tricky. ('This' being informing the world wide web of my galevants, jaunts and adventures in a way that attempts to make me sound vaguely cooler than I actually am).
I got backm from Chamonix today, where I was staying at a friend's house with my group of girls. I know, I'm so Made In Chelsea, me. You'll be hearing all about the glam Chamonix high life after I catch up on NYC. I'm getting more out of a sync than Youtube on my almost antique pc. But, if I'm honest, I am liking the sound of my globe trotting ways in above sentence. My life is actually nothing like how that makes it sound, sadly. Case in point: the family (plus sister's boyfriend) is decamping to Devon tomorrow (talk about packing stress. Fastest turn around I have ever had to do. It was not jolly I have to say) to live in scruffy squalour for five days. We shall return to discover my fate on (whisper it) Dooms Day aka Results Day. Scary shit right there.

We've been going to the same place for my entire life, with various bits of extended family, and I think I do, and will, always carry a cardigan with me because of that place.It holds lots of very fond memories for me and I will always love it. We go to a teeny tiny little place on the sea called Torcross, near Salcombe and we always eat copious amounts of Devon ice cream and cornish pasties which, although consumed in the wrong county, are nonetheless delicious and turn blue whilst hardily swimming in the freezing sea and determindly sit on the beach in gale forces and drink lots of tea and get wet feet and walk along the sea wall.
That's what my summer holidays are normally like; none of this New York/Harper's nonsense which I've taken to like a duck to water.

So, to recap; I'm BACK (again) but hopefully will stick around a bit longer this time because Torcross is like civilisation in a sort of way and so hopefully I should be able to access the internet and so be able to catch up on eveything. the next installment of New York involves open top buses and sushi. Be excited my friends.
Also, photos will be going up, so take a look - at past posts too!

Hang in there folks, we will totes resync, just stay with me.

An Apology (But Blame The Parents)

Firstly, sorry for getting all behind and suddenly dropping off a cliff (in metaphorical blog terms, rather than actual death and tragedy rebel Without A Cause terms). My family arrived and I have suddenly turned into acting tourguide so everything got a bit hectic. So, as ever, you can blame the parents. Just like in Rebel Without a Cause! omg the connections are just coming in so thick and fast; you'll just never guess what we did last night. Actually, I'm afraid you'll have to wait to find out because if I start at the end and then just hop about in time for a bit until I have said everything there is to say about my last days in NY, it might get a bit confusing, and although you're all bright and can definitely cope, I never fully understood Doctor Who so I would get totally lost and feel like I'm floating in a very disorganised and unstructured mess and start repeating things. Which would clearly be awful because a) I can't deal with that amount of chaos (my need for routine again, can definitely blame the parents for that one) and would get all anxious and b) anyone who is using valuable time to read my partly nonsensical ramblings on New York would definitely not appreciate repetition and it would be highly dull and c) catching up might actually take, like, four weeks anyway because I have done so much and there is so much to talk about and so much to catch up on that repetition would make it take, like, four months. And no one wants that. Aaaaand in four months time who knows what I'll be doing or where I'll be and I will probably want to be focusing on that. So to recap; no jumping about in time, Doctor Who style.

So. Where were we??

Oh yes, that was it.
I'd been given my new silk romper and was uber excited to trry it on.
After the designer had left I got back to work, doing some planning for the min Editorial Awards Harper's are entering, getting together all the hard copies and electronic copies that were needed for each category and entry.
I did more of my sad 'last time' rituals. Whenever I go anywhere I get really attached to it and have to, like, say goodbye to my toilet.
I took some photos of my view but I doubt it will do it justice. Standing there, on the 25th floor of Hearst Tower, overlooking the Manhattan skyline on my last day, I felt suddenly empowered. I had been shit scared two weeks ago, and yet here I was, alive. In fact, more than alive; I had totally owned it. The whole experience had been incredible and I had done it and, I think, done it well. I gave myself a pat on the back (in my head. I had, thus far, managed to keep my total insanity hidden from view of the Harper's office and appeared quite sane. I did not intend to ruin that at the last moment).

Amazingly, a hurricane was predicted for that afternoon. Lisa was, she informed me, terrified. hurricanes are not regular occurrences in New York City and I too was not looking forward to that. I'd felt that I was actually inside the eye of the storm whilst the thunder had raged and the lightening struck on Monday (twenty five floors is high up) so I'm imagining that a hurricane at that height would have been scarier. There was mass hysteria. Hurricane-alert was a new fave excuse to do no work.

My last task at Harper's was back with the archives. Me and the archives became bessies. I had another huge list from a woman called Hanna of issues I needed to pull and helped her sort them and take them to her office on the 18th floor. I also made friends with an intern shadowing a scary looking lady in blood red shoes. Typical me to achieve that on the last day.

Then, saving the best till last, Lisa took me on a massive tour of the Harper's office. We saw the production team and the art department and the stylists and the make up artists and the beauty department and the birth place of all the features and a tall beautiful girl with short dark hair cropped close to her face who looked like Audrey Hepburn and was wearing zebra print trousers being photographed. We saw girls pulling out clothes from rails of choice and lying them on the floor to piece together outfits, a feature on denim and diamonds (big next season: you heard it here first folks), hundreds of hats, a wall dedicated to Manolo's, an entire section of floor space devoted to the red soles of Louboutin, belts, gloves, even some fur coats and a cupboard for beauty products bigger than my kitchen. Lisa also got the heads of each department to explain to me what they do and how they do it and show me what they were working on, which was so interesting and quite exciting. I loved seeing the ideas for a feature based on the statues on fifth avenue take shape and develop, and it's so cool to think that it will appear as a fully fledged feature in a few months time, but that I've already seen it. I'm in the know, me, what can I say. I also saw how much putting together the magazine is like piecing together a puzzle. My head hurt a little bit afterwards. But ohh it was so exciting, I loved it!! I felt so like I was actually a part of the magazine and I was all like, ooh I think I can see myself here, in this environment, as a career. Certainly, the features and editorial is something I would love to do, although I am aware that I'll have to do soooo much work to be able to do anything like that.
I do think it's unfair the way the fashion magazine industry is portrayed; it's run by smart, intelligent individuals who have to work hard and think hard. It's not about matching a bag to a coat and it's not run by shallow people obsessed with clothes and being thin and it isn't like 'The Devil Wears Prada'. *Rant over* Ahem. Sorry about that, I'll sit back down now...

My tour ended at 4.45 on the dot and I was suddenly like waaaa this means I'm leaving for the last time! I wouldn't tell Lisa I'd see her tomorrow and I'd never hurtle down the 25 floors so fast that my tummy flipped again. It was all very emosh. No really.
Lisa gave me a card and an absurdly heavy wrapped present and a hug, which was sweet. I logged off and shut down my jazzy Mac a final time and, taking a quick snap of the huge 'Bazaar' emblazoned on the imposing glass door of the equally imposing office in which I had just spent two weeks, left Hearst Tower.

I couldn't believe it was all over and that I had actually done that and that it had gone so horribly fast. I'm an emotional wreck (trust me, that is not exaggeration) so it will come as no surprise to those who know me that, as I headed for my daily post work frappe, I had tears emptying themselves down my cheek. They were neither happy tears nor sad tears, just a complete well-of-emotion-tears.

Always good to be in touch with your emotions, I find.
Yes that includes when watching the Pampers ad. You can probably blame the parents for that too, actually.