Never mind the show, let’s watch the adverts
It’s the biggest day of America’s televisual year tomorrow – a day so big that retailers such as Best Buy are ramping up their marketing to capture the trade of all those people tempted to upgrade their televisions in preparation. Food is being readied, beer being bought, and corner shopsbodegas are running out of ice [...]
My name’s A Brit Out Of Water, and I’m a cheese addict
Having been plugged into my iPod each morning on the way to work this week, I’ve realised just how many guilty pleasures I have when it comes to music. Everybody has their own guilty pleasure – that song that you know you really shouldn’t like, but somehow you can’t just help yourself. Admitting to it [...]
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
Living in the UK, I used to love snow. We didn’t seem to get it very often, to be fair, hence the unprecedented excitement about whether a few drops would fall on the Met Office’s roof on December 25th (the official British definition of ‘a white Christmas’, apparently). But back in my childhood, we’d all [...]
What have I got myself into?
I went back to pick up my diary yesterday. I allowed fifteen minutes, but it took 45. I’ve been given reading material now, and been told that I will be moved on to something a little more advanced when I’ve finished it. It’s like being back at school, only without the ever-looming threat of wedgies. [...]
Reasons why New York is great (part 2 in a long forgotten series)
If there’s one word you could never use about New York, it’s ‘predictable.’ The fact is that you just never quite know exactly what’s going to happen when you walk out of the door in the morning. Actually, that’s not strictly true. You know that you will be delayed on the subway for ten minutes [...]
A nasty infestation of Brits
On my occasional trips back to the UK, there’s always one statement of presumed immutable fact that practically every person makes when they find that I live and work in New York. No, not “you must see movie stars on the streets everyday.” And not even “planes land in the river there, don’t they?” No, [...]
Rudeness with a smile on its face
I’ve said before that New Yorkers have a reputation for being rude and surly. The idea is not without some small justification. After all, in just 17 months of living here, I’ve been bashed out of the way with an umbrella, been screamed at in a supermarketgrocery store by an old lady, and been given [...]
A moment of history
Today has been a proud day for United States. A triumph for the American dream, and for the ideal that all men, women and children are equal regardless of colour, gender or religion. A vindication of the dream that Dr Martin Luther King had more than forty years ago, and a redemption from eight years [...]
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Frenchman…
Driving back to New York after Christmas with The In Laws upstate, The Special One and I were listening to the radio in a bid to keep ourselves awake. After a number of alt.rock classics, the DJ launched into a tirade against French music, and made a number of jokes at the expense of the [...]
The British invasion
Some things are just inescapably British – ideas or products that you would just never think to see anywhere else in the world. Try to describe an Eccles cake to an American, for instance, and you’d probably see a wrinkling of features and a look of disgust reserved for farmyard smells and cat vomit. Dandelion [...]
