"I'm a very restless person. I'm always doing something. The creative process never stops." - Oscar de la Renta

I feel like I have been neglecting you - I have not been 'blogging' as much as I would have hoped in this last week... however I have been so unbelievably preoccupied with life, I feel this justifies my lack of senseless ramblings for at least a few of those days.

So to update on said 'life'...

I am settling in nicely into my humble abode - However there are a few little things bothering me about the apartment.

Firstly - at approximately 5am every morning without fail there in a man in a large souped up american style 'garbage truck' (thats bin man for all you brits reading this) who likes to make as much noise as is humanly possible in his truck by revving his engine to an extreme degree and clattering about like a bull in a china shop with his array of bins and refuse he must clear from the 'sidewalk' - thus waking me up stupidly early every single morning.

The worst part of this daily morning disturbance is that my roomate Lauren can sleep through it...

Lo! and behold... each and every morning I am cruelly awoken by this child catcher like man (I imagine) I sit up and look around... confused and wondering where I am - and there she lies - The angelic snoozing virginian angel - peaceful in dream. YET I have to endure the epic whirring sound of a man in a very large van with a very large exhaust but a very small amount of concern for the sleeping east villagers. I can almost picture him as one of the giants in Roald Dahl's childrens' classic 'The BFG' with a large trumpet which steals my dreams and wakes me up. Infact I wouldnt be surprised at all if it was a snozzcumber eating oaf walking along the street in his humungous boots peering into my lower east side apartment with his big hairy nostrils stealing my precious few hours of sleep...

So on thursday Lauren kindly booked tickets for us and some friends to go to the baseball... my first proper sporting event experience in America... it was the Yankees versus the Tampa Rays... at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and it was incredible (well for the first 3 innings at least) - The yankees were losing so badly by the 4th inning that most of the stadium decided to leave before the game was even half way through. HOWEVER. A piece of advice for anyone who may decide to go to a Yankees game ... I highly recommend you invest $6 in an ice cream in a helmet. This is the equivalent of Mr Whippy 99 icecream in either chocolate or strawberry or both - served in a small plastic Yankees helmet... yes thats right - its dessert in a hat. Priceless. Such a shame i didnt take a picture but you can imagine... small hat, icecream, hilarious.

Baseball is very much rounders... however the men wear silly trousers and the bats are really long and someone spends hours and hours mowing a perfect diagonal grid design into the grass...

Here is a snapshot of us at the yankees game... as you can tell its a screen shot from the yankees website... i refuse to pay $25 to have a copy so this will have to suffice!

On saturday I assisted at the ODLR lookbook shoot for the recent collection - it was at Zoom studios on Vandam near soho... An incredible studio - and an insane day of around 140 looks in 7 hours... you can only imagine how much my feet hurt afterwards!

Possibly the greatest sticker ever!

And here - finally are 2 little pics of my apartment... it is adorable... 

So what else to tell...

On tuesday evening I went to the opening night of Noel Coward's 'Brief Encounter' at studio 54 - it was possibly one of the most incredible performances I have seen in a long time... I will definitely be going back for seconds.

After the play - we went to the opening night afterparty at planet hollywood. which was hilarious. 

I have never graced planet hollywood with my presence before... Nor do I intend to ever again - not because i didnt have a wonderful time - I really did! But anywhere that places 'the jonas brothers' handprints and memorabilia at the front of their staircase instead of Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, WILL SMITH etc etc... should not be revisited.

So we arrived at this restaurant surrounded by rubber prosthetics in glass cases and various framed pieces of costumer to be greeting by loitering catering staff who had clearly been shipped in from around new york state. They each had badges with their names on. We took a particular shine to a girl named natalie who was from somewhere which i think was called Ithica... I may be wrong but she was priceless... her shirt was untucked and her hair badly brushed and bless her cotton socks, on being asked whether a friend of mine could have a pint of the free flavoured vodka - she looked like she wanted to run back to Ithica at full speed in her blue nylon waistcoat without even the time to say 'Robert Pattinson has 4 fingers from the looks of his plaster cast imprint of his hands we have screwed to the wall by some cheap wall brackets'. However she did bring me a wonderful apple martini - twice infact... but I was tempted to complain to her when we reached the buffet...

The buffet was all you could eat. HOWEVER. the food was intended to be eaten out of small boats made from banana skins which had been coated in some sort of horrific smelling preservative/varnish... and sadly... my Mahi Mahi salmon tasted like Turpentine.

Ho hum - it was a wonderful evening, one i shall never forget...

I seem to be having many of these styles of evening - and moment which I feel will remain with me forever... but im starting to realise that actually I am getting rather old. 5 days a week working full time is enough for me - so i have decided to turn my hand - in order to make some dollar - to looking after wayward american children whilst their parents wine and dine each other... Watch this space for tales of unruly brats and naughty nine year olds... 

Those kids had better watch out though...

Nanny McPhee has arrived

Sesame Street has been brought to you today by the letters O, D, L and R and the Number 2

The Brooklyn Bridge on my way to my first apartment

Before I start off on another jovial update on my life as an illegal alien I would first like to share with you some snapshops taken from my trip so far (taken on my blackberry so apologies for the crap quality)

Yes this honestly is part of the form for my customs entry into the US...
I bloody well forgot the bloody soil!

Following our night of $5 martinis I stopped off at the Carnegie deli on 7th avenue for a bagel
On returning to my hotel room I opened my paper bag to discover this BEAST.
And NO... I didnt eat it like that... I obviously scraped pretty much all of that cream cheese out.

Possibly the greatest cupcakes I have ever seen... yes thats right kids... Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch cupcakes
Saw these in Ruthy's Bakery in the Chelsea Market in the West Village

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6th floor walk-ups are my worst nightmare. Following an unproductive few days of apartment hunting (I keep saying flat and apparently according to a girl I spoke to today 'nah that just means flat - like, you know, flat' and gestured her hands in a manner with which to suggest horizontal - she was precious.) Lauren and I yesterday ended up going to see a place which had 6 full flights of stairs you had to scale in order to reach this godforsaken place... and then when we got there we were greeted by a menopausal cat lady with the tiniest hobbit hole of a flat who, now a retired hair and makeup artist from the 90s, is a tourguide of New York. We were shown our room which we would be sharing... and it turns out - it was a cabin bed with a chest of drawers underneath - literally not even enough room to swing her god awful mangey cat.

At this point I was ready to break down, to do a George Michael - sadly there's no sign of a snappy snaps in manhattan... nor do I own a car nor do I 'Smoke da Ganga' but the intention was there.

Instead I hugged a tree... literally... As Lauren and I downtrodden and disheartened sat outside our final flat to see of the day I hugged a tree and prayed. 

We actually got the wrong place at first, turns out the lady we were looking for lived in the building right next door, so having stalked the woman with her groceries (yes folks, im an american now dont you know) for 10 minutes, and casually waited for her thinking we should give her a few mins to put away her fruit loops and her skippy (smooth... yum) - we looked rather idiotic when we knocked on her door to find she was infact not Buket the lovely Turkish lady who extracted us from her neighbours doorway a few seconds later.

So we walked into this apartment - Between Stanton and Clinton in the East Village - And a tear came to my eye. It was perfect - it is perfect! I will post some photos up here as soon as I can. It was as if all my tree hugging had paid off and finally, finally things were looking up!

And as of tomorrow, I am never putting tomato in my sandwiches again - I cannot stand how soggy they are by lunchtime.

'These Vagabond Shoes, they are longing to stray' - and stray they did

$5 Dollar lychee martinis are lethal, lethal I tell you... well not only lychee martinis, but lychee martinis combined with cherry soda and vodka (I usually hate cherry flavoured goods), red bull and vodka and lager (I usually hate lager). What has happened to me?! I have been here a mere 48 hours and already I am succombing to dabbling in beverages that I would have previously turned my nose up at the very thought of. I am living the american dream, clearly - anything really is possible in the land of the free - I drink BEER in the land of the free!


Lets start from the beginning shall we? - I left London on thursday morning around 8am - bleary eyed after finishing packing at 3am... took the tube to terminal 5 with the boyf and nervously downed a lemon granita at carluccios before heading through security struggling to keep it together after a rather emotional farewell. I managed to control the tearducts purely because I was overcome with frustration as the people in front of me (an entire family of about 12) had stupidly left at least 10 varying types of liquids in their hand luggage... oh for gods sake.


Went to the gate and sat down to find myself surrounded by what can only be described as 'the world and his wife' - it was excellent; a hisidic jew, an obese man, a heavily pregnant lady, some old people, some african americans, some asian americans for that matter, a weird ginger looking bunch of 6th form age kids with more freckles than the weeslies and ofcourse myself (as well as others less distinctive) - we all congregated together and eventually boarded the plane.


On board I took my seat and was shortly greeted by a very unhappy looking pregnant woman and her husband who was shocked and appalled to see that the extra seat they had requested was infact filled by a 5 4" rather emotionally fragile looking, bleary eyed, stephen fry reading me. 


They asked me to move and I did of course because Im a nice person. I moved to a seat in the middle of the cabin, and by jove, it was the best decision ever - way more leg room, and the two seats next to me were empty so I had no-one to bother me during 'cemetery junction'.


We landed in New York at 4pm local time, by which time I lost most feeling in my limbs, and struggled through immigration - to be greeted by an equally freckly man who regailed me with tales of stella mccartney and anna wintour having passed his desk the week previous. He stamped my passport with a 'have a nice day' and I was off!


Before I go any further - 'morris' the fat ginger cat living in this apartment i'm staying in has just started wailing like a 3 year old who has been told it isnt allowed an icecream... Terrifying.


So after half an hour of waiting for a cab we drove up from JFK towards manhattan to be greeted by a tornado. yes thats right - a bloody tornado hit queens just as we passed though. there were apparently 3000 trees uprooted in the process and the roads were completely flooded to the point at one stage where it felt like we were driving through the ouze (thats a river) cars had been hit by trees and the sky turned green and I have to say it was all very very exciting!


So I will admit I felt like a complete tourist driving through manhattan, my jaw dropped to the floor as I passed numerous diners, dunkin donuts, huuuuuuge skyscrapers, yellow taxis, big school buses and SUVs (anyone know what that actually means?) and arrived at the park central hotel on 56th and 7th avenue. Possibly one of the nicest hotels i've ever stayed in. I had a super kingsize bed. I could practically swim in it, it was LUSH! 


Dropped off my bags, spruced up and jumped in a cab to 7th and perry street to meet Lauren, my soon to be room mate who studied at st martins for a term with me. She took me to this insane mexican bar called Tortilla Flats in the west village, where we were greeted by possibly the perkiest waitress in the world, 'what can I get y'all' - oh yes, I had arrived in america! A jug of sangria and a quesadilla later I crawled home to my superkingsized bed and didn't surface until flat hunting the next day.


Flat hunting in New York is like pulling teeth, it is neither easy nor particularly enjoyable, you meet weird people and see equally weird looking flats. So far we have found a perfect flat in Williamsburg which is in brooklyn (think dalston/hackney) off manhattan but we have to wait to be told if we are suitable or not which sucks bigtime. 


'Rich' the 18 year old real estate agent who dragged us across manhattan was a particular highlight for me. We went to the offices of a real estate agents called HH real estate on madison avenue to be greeted by a toad like man called stuart, who sat us down and then sent us away with his friend Rich, who it turns out was a bushy eyebrowed 18 year old kid in a badly fitting suit with possibly the gangliest limbs in history. He could only be described as awkward, for those who have seen it, he walked like Christoffersen in Fantastic Mr Fox. he had NO sense of humour. we had to take the subway with him, and Im sure his lack of sense of humour may have had something to do with my slight childness at laughing in excess when seeing a sign that said 'freshly tossed salad' or when he told me his name was richard william and I exclaimed he should call himself 'dick willy'. But seriously, come on, thats quite funny.


Blueberry pancakes are literally incredible. On friday morning, Lauren took me to Bonbonierre (a greasy spoon) where literally the weirdest guy served us. He would just come and stand over our table mumbling something incoherent to the human ear and practically pour our refills in our lap. But the PANCAKES.... wow they were something else :) I think Lauren was slightly concerned for the sheer amount of syrup I doused mine in, but hey when in rome, or in NY for that matter :)


So there are some musings from my trip so far, on a general note, my jetlag is pretty bad, which coupled with a hangover and possibly a lack of proper meals, I am pretty exhausted. Thank god I have my emergency british chocolate rations to keep me going! Hitting soho today to find some suitable attire for Oscar De La Renta which starts tomorrow... so nervous but reeeeally excited too :) 


Blog blog blog... well here it is my first entry - from now they will, i'm sure, be more exciting, and less rambly.


Over and Out.


The illegal Alien.