I had a meeting this afternoon just down from Madison Square Gardens and the Empire State building. Neither of them really have the kerb appeal that their names suggest.

These past few days in New York have been frantic. Essentially, a conference about the future of publishing took me there and it was worthwhile, but what stays in the memory, apart from the Greek and Cuban restaurants we went to, is being on a Spinning exercise bike in the hotel gym at 6:50 a.m. overlooking Times Square from the 23rd floor. The bike was so hi-tech that if you plugged your headphones in you could follow a personal video coach saying “you’re a champion” and “feel the burn” as I pedalled up the virtual hills. But I got more of a buzz from looking out the window.

And now I’m glad to be heading back to Boston. I managed to book tickets to see David Sedaris read new material at the Symphony Hall, have somehow agreed to join a book club and karaoke collective called Book Group 1492, and am about to sign Rob and myself up for a 100 mile charity cycle ride from Boston to Cape Cod.

I haven’t been to a rehearsal yet with the Chorus, but once I do I think we can say that the assimilation is complete. For now at least. Tomorrow means a trip to apply for my Social Security number.

View from the office

I drove to the office on my own for the first time this morning. There’s lots of snow on the ground, but the roads are clear. The satnav took me over the bridge to Boston for a bit of a detour, but once I got onto the 93, all was fine.

PS – Driving an automatic is weird! I keep on expecting it to stall. In fact, so far our whole journey to Boston has gone right.

Part of the Family

Today we gave away Charlie. This has been the hardest part of the move without a doubt. Everything else has been about organisation and planning and preparation, but this was about giving up our little companion who has been with us since he was seven weeks old. We didn’t want him to go, but with Robin likely back and forth to the UK, me travelling a lot on business and being unable to find a place to rent that would let us bring the dog, we couldn’t see another way.

Lots of people wanted to have him off us, but they all fell through. It even got to the point where he went on a trial weekend with the person we thought would be his new owner, but she had a family crisis and backed out at the last minute. So, he’s gone to a shelter and they have promised us they have families lined up who will look after him. We were there over an hour and they asked us loads of questions about his temperament and what he loves to do. He was so excited and wanted to go and meet the other dogs.

And now we’re back home and his bed’s still here and his bowls and his toys and I can picture him running over the fields now and diving into a river. Goodbye, fella.

Let us go, then you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky

This week has been a time of real contrasts that’s starting to bring home to me the reality of moving to the US after living all our lives in the UK. We’ve just taken off on flight VS012 back to Heathrow and journey time is supposed to be about 6 hours. The view taking off from Logan across downtown Boston lit up against the night sky was amazing. The towerblocks are shining out, it’s 1am in the UK and I’m about to turn back to reading a fascinating book I found in Borders for $3.99.

The Wild Places is a book which sets out to answer whether there are any truly wild places left in the UK  (as the blurb puts it more eloquently) as the author embarks on a series of breathtaking and beautifully described journeys through some of the archipelago’s most remarkable landscapes.

I never thought of myself living on an archipelago but maybe partly from the thought of our imminent tranistion to the US, I find myself fascinated by the landscape of the UK. The author is a fellow of Emmanuel, Cambridge, but this is not an intellectual tract. It’s more like a meander down a curious river, with the sound of birds in the distance and a crisp frost in the air.

I’ve been dipping about the book all evening and landed on this:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS ELIOT

Oatmeal. Bleeurrgh.

In the words of Joni Mitchell

I slept last night in the Fairmont Hotel/I went shopping today for jewels

Or at least, I spent my last night in Boston in the Fairmont and because of an early start, I decided to order room service breakfast. Well, I am wise to American room service food in that the price they list is about 70% of what you end of paying, once they add the tax, delivery charge, and tip for the breakfast server. I’m also wise to the fact that they are abundantly generous with portion sizes, so the Light and Healthy Great Start breakfast (or somesuch) would probably feed a family of five for a weekend.

I ordered oatmeal, knowing that it would be glorified porridge. I love porridge. It arrived on time and presented in the American hotel style de nos jours ie as if it were being brought to a presentation banquet rather than to me just out of bed in a smelly t-shirt.

If it be porridge, then there be madness in it.

At first sight (you will see from the photo) this was a decent approximation of porridge. In Goldilocks style, it was maybe a bit hot and a bit thin, but looked the part. And yet, the first mouthful showed that it tasted profoundly and somewhat inexplicably of mushroom soup. With black and yellow bits in it (onions?)