The Collector

He's dreaming, Cloquet thought, as he stood over him, revolver in hand. He's dreaming, and I exist in reality. Cloquet hated reality but realized it was the only place to get a good steak." - from Woody Allen, "The Condemned".

My first husband (I LOVE writing that - it sounds like I've had dozens) used to collect cats.

Not just any cat - they had to have something wrong with them. I remember a small grey chap with a ragged ear that reminded me of the frost-bitten rabbit-ear plants that lined the nature strips of my childhood in Bathurst. Another had one eye. Another only one ear. It wasn't that he particularly liked cats, or that he wanted to make them better. I think it was because he thought it made him different and interesting. He aimed to be like Camus' "Outsider", or a minor character in a Dostoyevsky.

It is not uncommon for someone to have a strange husband. I know plenty of them, and I am sure you do as well. A strange husband goes with getting married, being alive, eating. But strange friends?

Last week a friend who I have known for one hundred years phoned me from Australia. It was late in New York, but I picked up the phone thinking there might be some family drama requiring my immediate attention.

I recognized my friend's voice immediately. But what WAS she saying??? "Can I speak to Joe the Plumber?" "It's me! Kate", I replied. "Oh", came her vague answer, "I'm looking for a plumber; there's a problem with my Carlton house." "This is Kate", I reiterated. And added, "Joe the Plumber is a joke person here in the U.S.". That did nothing to deter her and on she went, on and on about some leaking pipe. Whatever ...

I posted this little experience on the - Australians Abroad message board, only to be told by a very serious member of the X generation, that I have "strange friends".

ASIF! My friends aren't so strange. Take Rachel for example. Rachel is a good example as she fits in with last week's "Letter", about men and Home Depot.

Rachel should have been an entrepreneur. She has the knack of getting the best out of any situation, no matter how desperate it is. When she has a tenant she doesn't like she has them committed, and then sells an article to the Sydney Morning Herald on how hard it is to get services for the mentally deranged on a Sunday.

I admire Rachel. In the eighties she bought a run-down house in an inner-city area with a 56% Muslim population. This suited Rachel's political convictions She regards herself as far-left and believes that only the far-left support multiculturalism. Rachel supported the local Muslim community's demand for segregated bathing for women in the communal swimming pool. When I asked her how this stood with her feminism, she looked at me pityingly. I didn't pursue it, as I dreaded being written about in next Monday's Sydney Morning Herald ...

But back to the men and Home Depots. Rachel naturally wanted her house to be renovated. But she couldn't afford it. So she found a new live-in lover, one with a tool-box who belonged to the notorious Builders' Labourers' Federation. This also fitted well with her political convictions.

Nothing unusual so far. But no sooner had the floors been re-sanded and the new family-room built, than Rachel dumped her BLF man.

Within two weeks she had another. This time he was a part-time carpenter and full-time pot smoker. I went there for dinner. "Poor Rachel," he said, "Look at the mess that X made of the floor. It'll need re-doing. I'll also need to re-model the kitchen!"

Which he did. You can guess the rest. His tenure lasted only until the finishing touches were put on the new Jarrah counter-tops.

At the next dinner party I met John. John was a gardener and an active member of Greenpeace. Excellent. He was horrified at how the pot-smoking carpenter had done the floors. "I'll redo it, love", he said to Rachel. And he did.

Others followed. The house is now a delight. Not a capitalist nail in its foundation. Built by honorable men, who remember Rachel fondly.

I have to say, this fondness surprises me. Once I came across one of her former lovers in some shopping centre. After we'd exchanged the usual haven't-seen-you-for-ages comments, he asked me how was Rachel. "Fine", I replied.

"Lovely woman," he mused. "I'll never forget her. A real battler. Single mum doing a great job!"

You can say that again!

Readers of New York

Continuing my "Readers of New York", the following photos were taken on the eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

If I Had A Hammer

"I can't imagine him in Lausanne, what is he going to DO there?" she worried. "Do you think there's a Home Depot there?"

She was of course, talking about her husband and their proposed trip to Europe.

Now I don't know the Lausanne equivalent of Australia's "Bunnings" or America's "Home Depot", but I know what my friend meant. And I am sure that the men of Lausanne are no different than the men of New York, or the men of anywhere for that matter. Look at these guys on Second Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan for example.

There's a new subway being built here, "the Second Avenue subway", and unfortunately for me, I live between Second and Third. Second Avenue is a mess, but the local male residents find the digging and construction fascinating. There's always some of them peering through the wire.


And this is what the two men in the photo were looking at. What's the fascination? All I see is mud and men, most of whom are standing around looking at other men.

Perhaps it's the machinery that they like. Trucks and stuff. Memories of Tonka toys ...

Women like me, women of a certain age, can take men in their stride. Very little surprises us. Not so the women of the younger generation. They still have, "Expectations".

The Wall Street Banker and the Connecticut Wife

SHE is the Wall Street Banker. He is looking for a Connecticut wife. Or so we worked out, the two of us, over brunch, over-analysing, over and over.

"He's wonderful and interesting," she introduced him to our conversation. "I really like him". She prattled on. "Great", I replied. "Sounds good". So did the "Oeufs Benedict" as the Lower East Side Cafe pretentiously described them. I looked for the waiter.

"No it isn't great," she continued. A beautiful intelligent young woman, working on Wall Street. "I don't KNOW if he even likes me! He doesn't return my calls." And she went on to describe a relationship of a few months that started promisingly, but has recently faltered.

She described a man who wants a woman to care for, a woman who will live in the suburbs, stay at home and raise his children. A woman who "needs" him. A submissive tee-totaller.

"Doesn't sound like you," I commented dryly. "You're right", she said, "but a person can't have everything".

I was puzzled. "Is he good in bed?" I asked. "Oh no!" came the answer. "He's DREADFUL".

I didn't really want to know anymore, but for some reason I asked if he was circumcised.

"I don't know! I never look at THAT! My God. No way!" The very thought of "it" seemed to shock and repulse her.

We laughed. We walked on. There's always something to look at in New York.

We passed the usual Village people, shoppers, run-aways. People with metal in their nostrils and despair in their eyes. We passed a wedding show-room. "Stop", I said, "I need a photo".

"Is that what you want?" I goaded her, and instantly regretted it. Was I imagining it, or did her eyes fill with tears? I changed the subject and started to walk on. But she lingered and took photos of her own.

"It's not so easy", she told me, "to get a man in New York".

Duly humbled, I hugged her, and we parted. Me to the gym and my newly found healthy life-style.

She to dream of wedding dresses and the loneliness of not having the loneliness of a housewife in a Connecticut suburb.

Last Rites for the Vegemite

Ten days ago I made my final step in becoming a New Yorker - I enrolled in the local gym and got myself a personal trainer.

With black gym-wear and a white hair band I look like everyone else in New York on a Sunday afternoon. Now I only have to master the art of reading while I work the tread-mill, and I'll be a super cool New Yorker.

For those who have not met me in person, this change is something of a miracle and has surprised my friends who cannot comprehend how such a thing could happen.

How did a tea-drinking, chain-smoking, eat-whatever-you-like sort of person turn into a coffee-drinking health freak? How could a woman, who before she came to New York, could never stoop to eating something as wholesome as an apple, now not only eat the things, but own Apple stock. Apple shares that is. I used to think stock was a bunch of cattle, but now I know better. I also used to think that a "CD" was a music album. Now I know it is a "Term Deposit". I put my return address on the FRONT of envelopes and order in instead of take out. I think the F word is part of normal everyday speech and have forgotten in which country to say "napkin" and in which to say "serviette".

I save for my retirement. Oh how easy it was in old OZ. You'd get your pay cheque, bank it, pay a few bills and the one credit card and Bob was your uncle. Maybe put a bit aside for that annual four week holiday in Bali with the kids. Now I have automatic deductions from my pay - into 401Ks, mutual funds, health insurance, travel cards and loan repayments. I used to think a portfolio was a collection of ones paintings. Now I know it is something to worry about. And as for the four weeks in Bali ... don't even go there. Instead, perhaps a long weekend in Kennebunkport. Time permitting of course.

For a while there I made sure that I always had a jar of Vegemite in the fridge, even though I never eat it. Now it's place is taken by a jar of protein supplement - gotta tone up those muscles.

I have stopped referring to Americans as "them". Now they are "we".

Scary stuff!

And now for the next installment of, The Readers of New York

The Ghost Who Walks

A Whiter Shade of Pale

When I was a kid, I used to smuggle comics into my bedroom. Comics were banned in our house. My favorite was the Phantom. "The Ghost who walks cannot die". I used to dream that I could buy myself a Phantom ring by mail order, but I knew the risk would be too great.

I remembered my secret comic days today while watching John McCain on the telly. He looked so white. "He's SO pale!" I remarked to my husband, Joe Six-Pack. "Does he look so pale because he's ill, or because Obama is black?"

McCain reminded me of Casper,the friendly ghost. The "Angry Ghost" more likely. Comic book time. The U.S. elections ...

The Hype that is Art

I read the reviews the other day - oh boy! There was a review of an exhibition somewhere in New York, showing a number of videos taken with a cheap cell-phone, of people looking at pictures in an art gallery.

A couple of the videos were linked to on-line, and so I took a look. Not bad, black and white, Guggenheim backdrop, no sound. Sort of like an early Bergman without the sound or picture quality. The Guggenheim backdrop certainly helped. But after I'd seen one video I'd seen them all. And I wondered.

As I've often done on some of the manifestations of "art" I've seen in Manhattan. I remembered the girl peeling onions in a SoHo performing arts exhibition. A lettuce being mashed by a grinder at the Guggenheim in the nineties. A sign near a ladder in some major gallery, stating, "This is not an exhibit".

How does one get accepted in today's art world? Maybe it's who you know. Perhaps it's the originality of the concept? Or is art now a democratic "right", like the right to arm bears? What could I contribute to "art" of the early 21st century? Obviously talent is not a pre-requisite. And who chooses good art over bad? If the man who exhibited the shredded lettuce had used a used a cabbage, would he have made it to the Guggenheim? What if I wanted to exhibit a work consisting of a ladder and a sign stating, "This is not an exhibit?" And then used my cell phone to make videos of people looking at it? Would that work? I think not.

Hey, what about this? Amateurish photos of "The Readers of New York". I'll add to them over the weeks to come. In truth, it's one thing I really notice about New York commuters - they, like me, love to read. And so here are the first in my series.

The Readers - October 2008




Stand by - these were all taken within three minutes, at a bus stop on the Upper East Side.

La Vie en Beige

Memories of memories. It's back in 1996 and it's winter. I'm sitting next to the Aga stove in the house of my earliest friend. Buxton, UK 1997. Two women of a certain age. Once state-school friends, then Mac Rob girls. Working class. Academic. Innocent. Now mothers.

"Remember," my old friend said, "when you taught my mother the word 'beige'? She was describing some TV person's outfit and called it fawn. And you said, 'It is beige!'".

I didn't remember but her memory struck me as true. The 1960's Australia, when fawn became beige, dissent became protest and for the first time in its history, the women of Australia aspired to equality.

Yes Di and I were both working class girls with ambition. Not ambition in terms of high-paying jobs - that would have been beyond our comprehension. But an ambition and determination to leave the world of fawn.

Deeply competitive, we spent our high school years waiting with anticipation for our exam results. I just had to beat Di, and she me. We both did well.

Then university and beyond. And Di and I both left the fawn-beige world behind. Between the two of us we added 10 children to the world. Di definitely won that count - eight to two! We are both now expats.

Looking back we've both done well. And we both still remember the coming of beige - Melbourne circa 1963.

Beige - a non-colour, but always either in, or almost in - fashion.

I once lived in Hoboken, New Jersey. a city exactly two miles square where the buildings cannot exceed a certain height. Giving the city a look of uniformity, only outdone by its citizenry - 28 year olds who uniformly wear beige shorts and white tee-shirts. I found it most disturbing and as soon as I could, moved back to Manhattan where there's black, white and gray, and where the skyline is jagged, and gap-toothed, post 9/11.

I've moved beyond beige. Or so I thought.

Ten year's on from the Aga stove and the memories - it was with surprise that I read in an essay written by my daughter,

"All my heroes had been complete junkies. I relate to the 12 year-old Dando’s vicarious drug use. I too [in my early teens] sought out such literature and music but given the eclectic array of such at my disposal, the only reason I hunted out Jim Carroll’s 'The Basketball Diaries' as opposed to the shelf devoted to Lessing [...] was due to a pre-existing intrigue with drugs and a naïve but unwavering inclination if not determination to escape the beige nightmare that was my middle class reality"

"Beige nightmare"? Sure. How about a fawn one? And since when did beige couples with shag-pile beige carpet have bookshelves of books by Doris Lessing? The "Basketball Diaries" - must have been my first husband's choice. He was always into sport.

One woman's beige is another woman's fawn.It just goes to show though - there you go through your life - a rebel at heart - defying the values of your parent's generation. Fighting against war, inequality, racism and injustice.

And after all that - you are beige.

I suppose there are worse outcomes. The Beatles, Warhol, Woodstock, Joplin, Woody Allen, Polanski, Scorsese, the Stones. All beige. Joni Mitchel - beige. Hendrix - beige. The Fugs - beige. Dylan - beige. Velvet Underground - beige, Martin Luther King - a darker beige. Moon Landing - beige. Neal Young - beige. Ingmar Bergman Beige, Robert A. Heinlein - Beige, A Whiter Shade of Pale - very beige.

We boomers are in good company. And so dear friends, I'm left with one thought - "Fellow Baby Boomers - Maintain Your Beige!"

Playbill: The Australian Cast of the U.S. Election 2008

But first - congrats to our outgoing President, George W Bush. I'm surprised nothing much has been made of what must be the major achievement of his two-term presidency. - The solving of the illegal immigration problem!

The number of illegal immigrants arriving in the United States has dropped from about 800,000 a year earlier this decade to about 500,000 a year from 2005 to 2008(Pew Hispanic Center October 2008).

There's doubt about it - and what's more it was achieved without recourse to any draconian measures. Of course the solution was simple and it's amazing that no one thought of it before.

Make your country unattractive - increase unemployment and ensure that basics like gas and food cost more - and no one wants to come!

Back on topic - Like many others, I've been intrigued by the run up to U.S. elections for the past year and a half. This is my fourth US election experienced in situ. It's interesting itself but ... just what would it be like with ... a cast of Aussies.
I got the idea of an Australian themed U.S. election when I heard Joe Biden's comment comment on Guiliani. Biden: "Rudy Giuliani... I mean, think about it! Rudy Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else! There's nothing else! And I mean this sincerely." Paul Keating redux!

The Rest of the Cast

Some were easy - Kennedy Edward to be played by Edward Gough Whitlam. Both grand old me of yesteryear. Others were more difficult. Take Sarah Palin for instance ...

My first thought was Pauline Hanson. But no, Pauline has no kittenish sex appeal and I can't imagine her winking at the camera Palin-style. Or IS IT a wink. Could it be ... a twitch?

Hanson wouldn't do, which is a pity as their names have the same number of syllables and there's something eloquent about that, if not about the names' owners.

So I thought a bit more and came up with an Australian politician, one that everybody old enough to remember has forgotten about. Cleaver Ernest Bunton. His name even sounds American! But I dismissed him, for although in some ways he was a maverick and although he knew little about his own country's constitution, there the resemblance ends.

Then I got it! No one better to play The Governor of Alaska than our own ... Bindi Irwin. She's got all the qualities. She loves playing to the camera. She's photogenic. Female. I'm sure Bindi could learn to wink if she thought it'd help her TV persona,

and she's always got something to say. So Bindi Irwin it is - and again, the same number of syllables in their names.

Now for Obama - a difficult one. For some reason my first thought was Australia's Andrew Peacock, for his charm. But nothing else fitted. Malcolm Fraser for his arrogance? Maybe, but the politics are all wrong, and Obama looks nothing like an Easter Island statue. Neville Wran perhaps? Probably a bit far to the left for Obama. Bob Hawke was supposed to be charismatic, though I couldn't see it. Same as I don't see Obama's charisma. Both arrogant. Both intelligent and academically successful. Bob Hawke it is.

Last, but not least, we have George W. I couldn't find any Australian politician to equal him. I thought of Jeff Kennett (seen here coming out of his "Rubbery Figures" mold - Nicholson's Sculpture Gallery). Jeff came close with his frequent gaffes. And of both it has been said that they are great blokes to have a beer with. But Kennett was a statepolitician and made no mark nationally.

Unlike Bush who (almost) single-handedly solved the United State's illegal immigration problem.

Maybe Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson who was for many years Premier of perhaps Australia's most Texas-like state.

Australian columnist Phillip Adams, compared Sir Joh with Peter Sellers' character, the moronic Chance, in the movie, Being There: "Both (Joh and Ronald Reagan) have visions as limited as their vocabularies, yet both these grotesque garden gnomes are seen as colossi by their deluded followers. The louder we laughed at them, the more powerful they became. The more improbable their careers, the more certain their ascendancy."

I read the Adams quote, and read it again. And again. Stuck on these words - "The louder we laughed at them, the more powerful they became.

Now why does the image of Sarah Palin pop into my mind?

Hockey Mom, Joe Six Pack, Hockey Mom, Joe Six Pack.

Let the play begin!

You Know You've Been in America Too Long When

Don't people think you CAN been in America too long? There's all sorts of lists - "You Know You've Been in Sweden Too Long", "You Know You've Been in Japan Too Long", "You Know You've Been in Germany Too Long" ... but when I Googled "You Know You've Been in America Too Long " nothing came up.

I will fill the gap. Here is my personal, "You Know You've Been in America Too Long", as well as ... well read on ...

You know you've been in America too long when
you don't know the name of the French President.
if you DO know the name of the French President, you cannot pronounce it.
you go to the bathroom when you aren't having a bath or shower or brushing your teeth.
you don't get surprised when the flight attendant announces, "we will be landing momentarily".
you don't get surprised when the landing-momentarily-plane takes another 90 minutes circling while waiting to land.
you say, "You're welcome" instead of "ta", "no worries" or "prego".
you think $600 per month is cheap for health insurance.

You know you've been in New York too long when
You organize to go to social engagements when you intend to cancel.
You only wear white between Memorial Day and Labor Day
You give your hair stylist a $20 tip and think nothing of it.
You say "hair stylist" instead of "hairdresser".
You don't even notice that people use the F-word as much as Australians use 'bloody'.
You NEVER say "ta", "prego" or "you're welcome".

You know you've been in America far far too long when
You don't even know that France has a president.
You think CNN is a left wing tv station
You know that a dime is five cents.
You use the phrases, "It's my dime" and "Don't nickel and dime me".
You know it's time to get out of Dodge.

It's time to get out of Dodge!

Sliding Doors

Who IS this woman? Watch carefully!

The Stress of Quitting

I'm getting tired of being a social leper. I've sort of decided to quit - smoking that is.

Well, I HAD decided, and I'd always promised myself if I ever did decide to quit, I'd tell nobody. Not a soul. So already I've gone back on my word. This does not augur well!

I used to find militant non-smokers amusing. Such as the bike-hire person who informed the Australian film director Paul Cox, that he could not hire a bike at the beach in Los Angeles. These are "no smoking bikes", Mr. Cox was told.

People standing on a curb, next to a bus exhaust idling toxic gas fumes, and at the same time waving histrionically at a wisp of smoke emanating from my cigarette twelve feet away. Or when I was very young and sharing a house in Carlton, Melbourne, with two young men who thought that loud farts were extremely funny. I could barely breath from their smelly farts. Yet they asked me to not smoke around them. Sure, I told them, when you stop farting, I'll stop smoking. They couldn't. I couldn't. And I smoke to this day.

I think that non-smokers do not understand that we smokers would love to be non-smokers like them. When I took up smoking you could smoke in hospitals, on airplanes and in the UK in theaters. You could smoke on Melbourne trams. In university staff meetings. I can't think of anywhere you couldn't smoke. So heaps of us took it up, not knowing that one day we'd be social lepers.

The more people would rant, the more I wouldn't even think of quitting. Drunk SUV living-in-the-suburb people at dinner parties scorning the few of us left, who would politely go outside for our fix.

Then it really started. Some time in the eighties. Before it was forbidden by law to smoke in public buildings, a number of non-smokers started putting up signs up in their offices, "No Smoking". A friend of mine put up a sign, "Only people smoking allowed to enter".

Yes we KNOW that it's bad for you. It's disgusting actually. It stinks out one's home, clothes, hair, lungs, and costs a heap. You think we LIKE it? No way. We are addicts and every smoker I know freely admits this.

So it was an unexpected moment two weeks ago, when I decided to decide to quit. The date for actually quitting - 9/9/2008. I chose that date as I don't have to remember whether to write the month first (American) or second (rest of the world). I'd read about Chantix - a medication that supposedly takes away the urge to smoke. It's prescription only.

My first step was to make a doctor's appointment. I had to wait two weeks, so needless to say, my enthusiasm had somewhat wilted by the time of the appointment arrived. But I turned up, nevertheless.

I explained my need to my doctor. She was keen and started to write the prescription, then hesitated. "There's been reports of this making some people suicidal", she murmured. She was clearly torn by thoughts of a law suit and upholding her Hippocratic oath. She handed me the script.

Next to the pharmacy. Rite Aid. Corner 96th and Second, Manhattan. DO NOT GO THERE UNLESS YOU HAVE TIME ON YOUR HANDS!

I waited and waited to hand in my script. The attendant was packing boxes and made it quite clear that the customers should wait till she'd finished. Which she eventually did. "That'll be ready in two hours where's your health insurance card write your name address, phone number, date of birth, social security number and health insurance number on the back of the prescription", she said without drawing a breath. Clearly she was not a smoker.

I did as she required, and asked could they deliver as I was busy and didn't want to go back in two hours. "Yeah", she replied and blew a gum bubble, "where do you live?" I showed her what I'd just written.

"Credit card number", she retorted. I obliged. And off I went to work.

Four hours later. No delivery. I phoned the pharmacy (did I tell you NOT TO GO THERE?)

"Name?" I told them. "Please hold." I did. Four minutes later, "What did you say your name was?" I repeated it. On hold for five minutes. "Oh the prescription is here. You must have told one of our young people; they never remember", he said as if it was I who was at fault.

No worries, I'll come now, I said and dutifully turned up at Rite Aid. Corner 96th and Second, Manhattan. There was a line (queue). When it was my turn I gave my name and was greeted with a blank look. So I said it again. "Do you have a prescription?" said the helpful Rite Aid attendant. It occurred to me he was nothing like the friendly pharmacist in Rite Aid's TV ads. I explained, and to cut a long story short as I wish no one the horror of my ordeal, I got to the stage of him finding the packages of Chantix.

All over? No such luck. "The computer can't read your health card". "Why not?" "You have the wrong date of birth." "Do not." "Do so." On and on.

So there I was, arguing and stressed, trying to convince my friendly pharmacist that I was not born seven years later than my own daughter. Another customer, a big-bossomed woman with long-flowing hair, was also having trouble. They thought her birthday was wrong too. "They think I'm 29", I told her. She shrugged. They thought she was her own son. At one stage they asked her for her sex. I kid you not.

In the end it was all sorted out, if you call paying out $240 being sorted out. After all the fuss about when I was born, I was told it wasn't covered by my insurance anyway.

But wait, I couldn't take the package. The labels had to be re-done. "Why?" I asked. "My birthday isn't on them". "But they are wrong", I was told. It being late in the day I accepted that. I wasn't up to arguing any more. I was exhausted.

And of course I was dying to get away from the place. To step outside. And smoke a cigarette.

How Could Anyone NOT Love New York?

"What a wonderful thing, to be conscious! I wonder what the people in New Jersey do."
Woody Allen "No Kaddish for Weinstein" 1975
"These little town blues, are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it - in old New York"
Frank Sinatra (born New Jersey) "New York, New York"

I have a friend who truly believes there is no culture in America. He's not otherwise an unintelligent man, but there's nothing on earth that will convince him otherwise. He lives in a small city in Europe which I am sure thinks is the center of civilization.

I've given up arguing with him, as there's no point. But every workday I wake up in an apartment within walking distance of the Guggenheim. Andy Warhol had his town house not far from here. I walk past the Serendipity Café where Warhol sold his drawings in the sixties. And then over the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge of "Feeling Groovy" Simon and Garfunkel fame. Crosby, Stills and Nash played in Central Park last month. And tonight there's a revival of "Hair" in Central Park. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's works are featuring at the Museum of Modern Art this month ...

New York, home of Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Tennessee Williams, Edgar Allan Poe, George Washington, Paul Newman, Jacqueline Onassis,Humphrey Bogart, Lauran Bacall, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Art Garfunkel, Whoopi Goldberg, Stanley Kubrick, Carly Simon, Robert Strassburg, Lou Reed, Al Pacino, Eugene O'Neill, Bob Dylan, Neil Simon, Chris Rock, Meryl Streep, Andy Warhol, Denzel Washington, Frank Sinatra, Peter Carey and John Lennon.

But it's not the sheer number of cultural events, or the hundreds of famous citizens that New York can call its own, that I love about New York. It's the people, the buzz of the place, and the fact that any time, day or night that I can emerge from my comfortable cocoon that is our apartment, onto a street full of activity and life.

There's a history to the place, not the far-away history of old Europe with is gray cobblestones and medieval churches, but the history of my own culture. John Lennon, pop art, Dylan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Blondie, Michelle Shocked and CBGBs. Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon". Peter Cary and his recent novel, "Theft". Woody Allen's "Manhattan".

Yes we live in tiny apartments, but the city is our playground. The boundaries of our lives are not merely the office and "home". The city of New York is our home. Our apartments are where we eat, sleep and recover from the hectic life in our playground.

And it's not all ghosts of the past haunts of Dylan, Bogart and Warhol. It isn't just the feeling of what WAS here - that awe-inspiring feeling that you get when walking in Shakespeare's footsteps down Southwark Street in London, or visiting Stonehenge, the Colosseum or Carthage. New York is about NOW.

It's not about ruins, although our gap-toothed skyline has its own. It's been only seven years since we lost out Twin Towers - the city sprang back into action, within days. It is about the vibrancy that is the city, the humor, the people, the diversity, the wealth and the run-down subways. The contradictions that that exist everywhere but are blatant in New York; not hidden under the carpet as if things of shame.

We are what we are. We don't have heaps of friends, we don't have dinner parties and picnics and drinks after work. We don't have "friends". But we do talk to the person sitting next to us on the bus. We chat to the doorman, the janitor, the people on the subway platform, other patrons after a movie, our fellow customers at Bloomingdales and bodegas. There's a democracy of strangers which is human contact nevertheless.

New Yorkers speak up. They don't avert their eyes like people on a London tube; they confront. We have our "New York moments".

The last one I had was on Thursday, on a bus going up Third Avenue. A very elderly black man got on the bus round Sixtieth Street. He sat down on one of the few remaining seats. For the next ten stops he gave up his seat ten times - for a pregnant woman, elderly ladies, a very fat forty year old, a boy on crutches ... anyone slightly not quite up to standing. Eventually he sat down next to me, only to give his seat up yet again, to a man with a cane. "I'm getting off soon", said a woman two seats away, "You take my seat". No sooner had she stood up than a young woman slipped into her seat and the elderly black man remained standing. "It's OK", he said. "No it isn't", said the woman who was about to get off. She spoke to the seat-taker. "This man has give his seat ten times. Stand up and give him that seat!" The young person hesitated, glued to her IPod. "Give him the seat!" chorused about six nearby passengers!" And eventually she did.

Reluctantly the elderly man sat down, and there were tears in his eyes. "I get sad when people are kind", he explained. "But you deserve it," a man opposite called out. The elderly man was wearing an Akubra hat. "I like your hat", I said to lighten things up and to distract him from his tears. "It's Australian", he told me, "like Crocodile's". "Where did you get it?" I asked. "In New York of course", he answered. "You can get everything here. I love this city".

So do I.