20th January 12
I was in Brussels for almost exactly 24 hours, so I can’t tell you with any surety what it was really like. But when I was there, it was cold. The NATO bus stop, where I spent an hour and a half waiting in the freezing cold in my insufficient single pair of tights and a skirt before finding out there was a bus strike, is totally rubbish.
It’s barely even a proper bus stop.
People in Brussels seemed nice. Their police force appears very efficient. I saw a whole bunch of them rushing towards some anti-austerity protestors, and another time a non-uniformed member was directing a criminal’s face towards the pavement at great speed. It was a firm deterrent against any crimes I may have thought about committing there.
Out of the whole trip, the only serious day of jetlag I suffered was after that flight from NY to Brussels, so I don’t really don’t remember much else. I remember a very comfortable bed at the B&B, an impressive-looking main square with lots of old buildings, buying Tintin figurines and having potatoes for dinner that were poached in butter. They were yellow and sprinkled with herbs and delicious.
It was only the beginning of my love affair with proper butter.
19th January 12
These are the only two photos I took during my five days in New York. One is a night view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the bridge, and the other is of a delicious meal I had in Koreatown on my last full day.
You might think that I only took two pictures because there was nothing else worth photographing in New York, but this is incorrect and really makes me question your powers of deduction.
There are so few photos because my hands were otherwise busy assisting me in eating, drinking and gesticulating wildly to signify my approval of the city.
This was my third trip to New York, but the first in the company of a knowledgeable friend, so it was even more fun than usual. There was Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican and Korean food. There was also, predictably, bagels, pizza and and a stop at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. To burn the many calories consumed, we walked to various places where entertainment was available.
There was high-flying cabaret with aerielists and sexy tap-dancers, David-Lynch-themed burlesque (where we won the raffle!), storytelling and improvised music performances,a night visit to Coney Island, massage parlours that moonlight as bars and a jazz club that also had Scrabble, chess, ping-pong, pool tables and arcade machines, as well as a bonafide trio of Jazz Guys, complete with turtlenecks and enthusiastic head-nodding. There were also the kind of meaningful conversations that can only be had when there’s a drink or two in you and it’s a long walk to the next subway station where there might be a train heading in the vague direction of Queens.
I’m kind of sad there aren’t more photos of all of that, but I guess I’ll always have my memories.
And a book on fishing and transcendental meditation by David Lynch.
12th January 12
Thanksgiving is more than just a time to enjoy seeing family and take advantage of in-house laundry facilities (more information on the danger of public laundromats to come in later entries). It is also a time to eat as much as you can and lie around watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. If this is what real Americans do, you may as well dress me in stars and stripes and give me my free citizenship rifle right now.
But besides all the food (and my family cooks a mean turkey), it’s always nice to potter around North Virginia, a very pretty part of the east coast. On this trip, we made a day excursion to Frederick, Maryland where we ate too many chocolate samples and looked in some seriously huge antique stores. It was a much better option than being trampled in Walmart on Black Friday.
And back home, we celebrated post-Thanksgiving with the traditional leftover turkey sandwiches and the watching of 50’s sci-fi films about giant ants.
10th January 12
Los Angeles continued to exist for the remainder of my stay, except for when a bit of it fell into the sea after heavy rain. That was the same day I scored an invite to the Playboy Mansion so large amounts of umbrellas and waterproof mascara was needed.
Once there, we consumed delicious food, watched a movie about J. Edgar Hoover, and girlishly capered about the grounds. Hugh Hefner looks more like pictures of himself than I could have believed possible. And yes, I got to see the monkeys*.
Other notable Los Angeles events included a fun shoot with Zoe (where Niles the cat proved himself to be a lousy studio assistant), going to Topanga Canyon thrift stores where it was possible to get high just from smelling the shop assistants, and Zoe and I staying up all night before my early morning flight. We painted our nails at 3am to stay awake and I am pleased to report that I didn’t even smudge the polish.
*Not a euphemism. Actual tiny monkeys.
9th January 12
Week Number One was Los Angeles.
I was stayed in Topanga Canyon with Zoe - which is where the Manson Family committed their first murder. I can only assume the location was chosen because of its picturesque and laid-back qualities. There is even a lake in Malibu, where rich people can pretend they’re at their lakeside holiday homes when they’re too busy to actually go to their lakeside holiday homes.
Zoe and I hung out, drove around and I achieved my Ultimate Goal of going to In’N’Out Burger on the very first night. It was delicious and cheap and there was an actual guy in an apron taking orders on foot from the cars in the drive through. I had my cheeseburge animal-style and I would like to give thanks to Kenji Alt-Lopez for alerting me to the existence of the “secret” menu.
Our food adventure continued the next night with a dinner excursion to El Coyote, LA’s oldest Mexican restaurant, where we sat at the table Sharon Tate ate her last meal, continuing the culty-murder theme. We attempted to shake this off with a photogenic excursion to LACMA and the giant lamppost installation outside.
It worked because after that, the Manson Family quit haunting us. Unless it turns out that they really liked frozen yoghurt, because I ate a lot of that. Did you know that you can get peanut-butter flavoured frozen yoghurt? This is the kind of thing that helps a country become an economic superpower.
