The Baby Boomers' Dream

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy. - Oscar Wilde

I was dreaming of the past
And my heart was beating fast
I began to lose control - from John Lennon, "Jealous Guy"

When was typing in the title of this post, I hesitated - on where to put the apostrophe. Was I about to write about MY dream - the "Baby Boomer's Dream", or of our collective "Baby Boomer's Dream"? I decided on the latter.

Lately I've been fixated on something that's been increasingly commented on explored and dissected in the American press. It has taken many forms but is best summed up with the rhetorical question, "What has happened to the 'American Dream'?"

Now I really can't remember, but I suspect there's an Australian equivalent of the "American Dream", and that it means more or less the same thing. The idea that for all citizens of America (or Australia), it is possible to own a house, have steady job that pays enough to raise a family of 1.2 kids, and to retire gracefully.

The reason the question is being asked, in America at least, is that along with the recession-depression, have come foreclosures, lay-offs and a reduction in publicly-funded vital services such as education and commuter transport. But was it ever just "a dream" or was it what could be reasonably expected in reality. My guess is that for the bulk of Americans it has always been a dream, and that the reason that journos are decrying the "loss" of the dream, is that the gap between the dreamers and the dreamed is becoming larger, and that they, themselves, are becoming dreamless. And in any case, a dream is just that; a dream.

Me, in Iran, 35PF (Pre FaceBook)

But I'm not so interested in the American or the Australian "dream". I AM interested in the baby-boomers' dream. And more so lately as I find more and more of my old peripheral friends popping up on FaceBook. The "lefties" of Sydney and Melbourne. Still going strong. Posting YouTube videos of Jethro Tull and Sonny and Cher songs of the 1970s.

Enabled by Mark Zuckerberg, we are all there, on FaceBook, 'liking' each others' music clips that are all pre-circa-1972. The "summer of love" may be almost 50 years away but we are still around.

We have survived. I'm always amazed when I check an old friend's FaceBook friends. There's invariably someone I knew a hundred years ago. I click the "ask xxx to be your friend" link and to my amazement they always accept my cyber offer. Do they remember me, or do they just look at my profile pic and gauge my age, and being people who were brought up in the fifties and sixties to be polite, accept?

Dylan, aka Robert Allen Zimmerman, has been taken over in interest and in "followers" by Mark Zuckerberg. Ever adaptable, we boomers have overcome! No longer rebels or dreamers, today's young have chosen to conduct their personal and political life in cyberspace. And we have joined them.

I remember marching down St Kilda Road in Melbourne in 1969, protesting against the war in Vietnam. We actually had to leave our houses to do this. Now people can Tweet and FaceBook from the comfort of their own bedrooms.

And I have to hand it to my fellow baby-boomers, we have taken to the new media, and have signed up with Twitter and Facebook in droves.

The American and Australian dreams are still - dreams. The Vietnam war has been replaced by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Public health, public schools and public transport are still being pummeled into non-existance by conservative governments.

Like Cool Hand Luke, we shall not be moved.

We shall overcome.

But will we?

Where Did All The Compassion Go?

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago - ©1961 Pete Seeger

Happy happy! - New York Bus People

I am immersed my usual reading daze, sitting on the bus. On my way home from work. Suddenly my concentration is interrupted. Someone has taken a seat one seat away from me, and clunked his backpack on the vacant seat between us. His backpack hits me, but slightly. Enough to wake me from my reading state and I look up.

There's something about the Q32 bus on the west-bound run; the run that transports people from Queens to Manhattan. It is always, well late afternoon at least, partly populated by some very strange people. I've never discovered why, and in the normal course of events it doesn't worry me. But this time it was disconcerting.

I'd seen the man before. He's got some medical condition that causes him to involuntary twitch and move his limbs any which way - inappropriately and uncontrollably. Today he's wearing a threadbare coarse woolen gray coat, and except for the gym shoes, he looks like a character from a Dicken's novel. No teeth. Badly shaven. Tortured. A wild look in his eyes. He has a walking stick. He's about 45. He's one seat away from me and muttering disturbing things like, "God help me I wish I was dead."

Bus Stop

I look around. The bus is three quarters full. Young women are chatting hands-free on cell phones, office workers are gossiping. A business man is reading "New York" magazine. The headline on the cover page is "Are You A Sociopath?". Perhaps I should treat the poor soul a seat away as 'normal'. Maybe that's the politically correct thing to do. His backpack is pressing into my midriff, but I persevere in reading my novel, acting as though all is normal. I have decided not to move to another seat. Why draw more attention to the poor fellow.

Yes, I've seen the man before, so I know the stop where he normally gets off. We are approaching it. I stop reading and look at him. He's trying to concentrate and to gather enough control to stand, to get off when the bus stops. The twitching overwhelms him and he collapses back in his seat muttering, "Please help me!" I pretend to read. The office workers haven't noticed a thing. The cell phone people text and talk.

It's the next stop. Clenching his gums the man manages to stand, and lurching uncontrollably, leaves the bus. It continues on.

New York Women on Bus

At Madison I change buses to go north. There's a line of people, waiting to go north on the M3 bus. I join the line. A few feet to my left is a blind man with a cane. He keeps yelling, "There is no one here; how will I know when the M4 comes?" No one answers. He yells louder. "There is no one here; how will I know when the M4 comes?" The M3 arrives and I'm about four people down-line waiting to get on. No one is answering the blind man, and he's getting louder and more agitated. Eventually I speak up. "We are getting on the M3," I explain. "There is no M4 yet, but one will come and someone will be here to tell you. Right now everyone here is getting on the M3 bus."

But instead of calming him, this just agitates him further. "There is no one here! How will I know when the M4 comes?" he wails.

Dakota Fence Gargoyles

I'm still the only sighted person, the only person answering him. But I'm hassled. "I'm sorry," I reply, "but there are no M4 people here right now; I just cannot manufacture humans for you!" I get on the M3 bus.

"My god," I think to myself. "I'm home. I am a New Yorker again. Compassion has flown out the bus window."

My next bus is a "crosstown". I get on and ask the driver a question, but he just snarls at me and at 72nd and Central Park West I get off. I walk north past the Dakota. It's dusk and for the first time, even though I've walked past it - the building that John and Yoko lived in - many times before, on the very sidewalk where Lennon was fatally shot, I notice for the first time, the gargoyles on its black wrought iron fence. They look evil. Threatening. I hurry on. Too creepy!

And then I arrive. At my therapist's.

Yikes! I am back. In New York.

A Touch of Blue

What was it like when the world was in black and white? My daughter at age 6,  100 years ago, when seeing a 1950's movie on television.

86th Street Sunday 27 February 2011

Today, Sunday, no snow and blue skies. I ventured out. Manhattan at its best. No snow, no heat. People were out in force and I decided to take some photos. Street scenes. I was out to see the Coen Brothers latest film, "True Grit". I wonder why they don't make a movie set in Manhattan. Or have they?

Will they ever do a Woody Allen type film, with a background of jazz music, or are they just a little bit too much into violence and the America of the primitive backwaters? Whatever, they are brilliant.

Waiting outside the movie theater for my friend, I decided to take some photos of New Yorkers. Random photos. It wasn't till I got home and transferred the photos to my computer that I noticed their lack of color. Apart from the blue jeans and blue skies, everything was black and white.

The morning after - man with eye shades, 2nd Avenue

And it wasn't just today. Yesterday when I ventured out from my normal Saturday of sloth and watching pathetic stuff on TV, I passed this man.

The same black and white with blue jeans. At first I thought he was our neighborhood homeless man, who has been here since we moved here in 2003. But on looking at the photo I notice his recently laundered jeans and his well-heeled shoes. I begin to expect he is one of the Tea Party's "middle class". What has happened to the bourgeoisie? If Karl Marx came back today, would the like of this man be his revolutionary? ASIF!

Melbourne, January 2011

Perhaps I've been too random in my photos. I decide to look back at my photos of last month. Of Melbourne, Australia. Of course I'm being selective.

But who says I have to be objective.

In my mind's eye from here in New York, Australia is a land of sun, of fun, of relaxation and to top it all off, of a decent health care system.

A dream, which however unrealistic, is mine to keep.

The Drinking Consultants

The Republican McCain-Palin campaign later applied "Joe the Plumber" as a metaphor for middle-class Americans. - Wikipedia

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

King and Godfrey's, Lygon Street

Sitting in the Q32 bus on my way home from work. I was absorbed in reading Great House on my Kindle. February, New York. Dusk. I glanced up and stared out the window in front of me.

The sunset was a vivid pink behind a postcard silhouette of the Manhattan skyline. It reminded me of those ghastly "paintings" on velvet that bogan families put on their walls in Australia last century. Those "paintings" of horse heads and pretend Polynesian girls ...

I thought of taking a photo, but would the camera catch the outrageousness of the garish scene? And in any case I was too late. The sunset disappeared as the bus descended from the Queensboro Bridge into the depths of Manhattan.

So soon the Australian-ness of my vibe had gone, and though only five weeks had passed since my trip to OZ, my Australian life was once again, history.

Was I really there just last month? What had I left? A land where "drink consultant" is a profession. Where the Sex Party is a political organization. Where people while away their days socializing. Well that's the impression. And even if it isn't quite true, I like to pretend that it is.

As I walk the streets of Melbourne on my all too infrequent trips back home I'm reminded of Joni Mitchell's "Carey". "And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down."

My friends enlighten me. It isn't all play and no work and in any case, maybe these people you see in outdoor cafés are out-of-towners, tourists. The real Melbourne people are working in offices, earning a quid because everything is so expensive. Right!

Near the Alfred Hospital - Visiting Hours Over - Australians at Play

Late January, 2011. The tellie is full of commentary and scenes of the Queensland floods which were in full force. Television in Australia is becoming like CNN in America. The same scenes, the same interviews played over and over again. The Aussie journo's knack of sniffing out the village idiot in every town, means we have to put up with scenes of little Aussie battlers sitting outside their flooded homes drinking beer. Of hoons on surfboards in rivers that have burst their banks. "Dreadful" say my friends. "What will the rest of the world think of us!"

Corner of Elgin and Lygon, Melbourne

Our Prime Minister Julia Gillard keeps embarrassing everyone by appearing on television in the midst of the flood and its victims, smiling plastically at the camera. I ask my brother, "Is she putting on that accent, trying to sound working class?" "No," he informs me, "She thinks she's talking posh."

I'm reminded of this when back in New York, a colleague tells me that he saw Julia Gillard on television the previous evening. I try to change the subject, as if by hearing about her in a distant land I'm somehow tainted. But he persists. "Is she low class?" he asks. "Probably," I mutter. "She doesn't sound like you," he's saying as I move away.

Universita Restaurant, Lygon Street  Carlton

Yep I'm back. Back in America where there IS no "working class". For my Australian readers - when Obama et al talk of the "middle class" they mean working class and middle class. People who work. The people with blue collar jobs are "low class". Republican states are "red" states. Democrat states are "blue". They've got it backwards. The conservatives aren't "liberals". "Liberal" doesn't apply to economic policy but to social reform and being left wing. Barack is the President's first name and not something you do for your favorite footy team.

The other side of the world seems like the other side of the world. But there is one small mercy.

I don't have to listen to Julia Gillard.

The Half-Unpacked Case

A large part of travelling consists purely in waiting, with all the attendant ennui and depression. - Damon Galgut, "In a Strange Room"

The first thing that I do when returning from a significant trip away, is to try to keep the feeling. The feeling of being there; "there" being the place I have just returned from.

Even on day-one, I am conscious of the feeling, the touch of the place that will continue to fade into a personal and muted history. I always try, although I know it is in vain, to "keep the feeling", to hold it in my mind, to capture the essence of the experience that grows further away ever minute.

I even have tactics, mechanisms to keep my memories alive. I try to keep, for as long as possible, all physical evidence that I have been away.

First there's the luggage. I used to unpack as soon as I got in the door. But now I do so on an as-needed basis. It is now three weeks since I returned from Melbourne. What's in the case? I take a look. A summer dress I bought at David Jones. It'll need to be dry-cleaned and it is winter here in New York; it can stay there a while longer. A power adapter for my Australian mobile phone. No point in removing it. Summer sandals. An umbrella - Melbourne weather! Summer tops. I close the lid. It is getting painful.

Another tactic is not to pick up my paper mail. To do so is a sign of settling back into the routine of being HERE, not THERE. After a week my ingrained conscientiousness gets to me and I collect it from the box downstairs, sort out the junk, pay bills. The mundane-ness of being back. It's too much. I decide to collect it weekly now instead of daily as I have always done before - perhaps my Melbourne-feeling will stay a little longer.

I keep using my manual toothbrush that I took to OZ. My electric one stays on its base in the bathroom - all dried-up. Good!

I remember I'm meant to call my dentist and make a string of appointments that were interrupted when I left. That can wait.

But I know that soon I'll empty the case, start collecting the paper mail daily. I'll even make dental appointments.

For today I had my nails done at my local nail salon. A routine New York event. Back! The nail polish I'd worn to Australia was growing out anyway. It's gone now, replaced with blue.

I chose the color well.

Falling Out Of Love - With New York

"My one regret in life is that I am not someone else." - Woody Allen

Inside a Melbourne Tram

He said it as one sentence - "How-ya-goin-mate-I-nearly-sconned-you". Sconned - OZ for knocking a persons head off. As in "I was recently sconned in the head with a beer bottle."

He was the Melbourne 200-City-Bulleen bus driver and he had just been forced to brake for a man in double dreadlocks who had walked in front of the bus to get to its door. Unfazed and unsconned, Dreadlocks swiped his ticket and sat down in front of me.

I'd realized the bus driver was a wise guy, when I'd gotten onto the bus and asked whether it went down Johnston Street, which was not far away. "Yes next turn I make is into Elgin Street," he had replied. Adding, "Elgin Street turns into Johnston. Then I turn onto Studley Park Road and go left at Princess, right into Willsmere, left into Kirkby Street. Then I get to Bulleen road and make a right at Thompson's Road, another right at Manningham and then it's right at Williams Road and then I get off and go to the pub for a beer".

I thanked him and smiled. But it was his comment to the nearly-sconned man that got to me. And I think, that's what did it. That's what triggered the memories and the longing.

The laconic irreverence of the stereotypical Australian. Had I heard the same sentence spoken by an actor in an Australian film, or in an ad for Fosters I would have found it over the top; at worse embarrassing, at best ridiculous. But coming from the horse's mouth as it were, it was reassuring. The best and worst of Australia was apparently alive and well.

Australians at Play - Belgium Beer Garden, Melbourne

I few days later I spent several enjoyable hours with my nephew and friend in a beer garden in South Yarra. Around us were hundreds of other people, singles, couples, families ... enjoying a sunny Melbourne day ... doing nothing in particular.

The image of Australians sitting in sidewalk cafés - unhurried, cell phones hidden from view, conversing sans-FaceBook - is engraved in my mind. My vision - although I know it is not representative - of "life back home. Nevertheless it is stamped there. I tend to be like that - easily conditioned, impressionable.

A hundred years ago I was crossing the land border from Pakistan to India. I was leaving a country where I'd had to cover most of my body and a fair bit of my head whenever I ventured out. After looking through my passport the Pakistani border guy motioned me to move on. "Where to?" I asked. "To hell," he replied, pointing to India. I walked on.

My first vision of India then was of a bunch of brightly-colored-sari clad Indian woman sitting on a cart being driven by oxen. I remember distinctly. Their saris were yellow, blue and red, bordered with gold patterns. Their faces were uncovered. They were talking and laughing. I was in India! I was not in hell! Darkness turned to light.

Australian for Politics

Ever since then, when I think about India, I remember those women and the feeling of joy that they evoked. Yes I know there is sadness, poverty and corruption there, but there's also joy. And representative or not, that is the image my brain conjures up, that is my India.

In much the same way, Australia evokes images of warm days relaxing in beer gardens or dining el fresco, of bus drivers unafraid of saying what they think, of lazy hazy days.

Representative or not it doesn't matter. The images are planted firmly in my brain - a yardstick by which other societies will be unjustly no doubt, judged.

New York - you are pretty good - but you are not, my Australia.

Yesterday's Laundry

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists? - Woody Allen

Central Park West, Last Days of 2010

2011. Who would have thought it. Yet here we all are. And what's more, I am now a member of a generation that is, as some patronizingly put it, "entering into a new window on life, the Third Age".

"You know how there's all sorts of groups," my brother told me a few weeks ago. "Like Asian, Jewish, boys, girls, black, white and so on. Well I always thought you couldn't cross from one to another; you had your "'group'. And I saw 'old people' as one such a group. A group I'd never belong to. And now I'm one of them!"

I feel the same way. Sometimes I try to see the positives of getting older. We are supposed to become wiser, more mature, tolerant and kind. Pop psychologists would have us self actualized, knowing and accepting who we are, understanding ourselves ...

Well Mr Maslow et al, you obviously don't live in New York. It is pretty pretty hard to know oneself in THIS apple.

Dry Cleaner's Laundry Bag 

Take the other day for example, when I dropped by the local dry-cleaners to see why my laundry had not been delivered. Our dry-cleaning is dropped off at the building's lobby in a dry-cleaner-supplied yellow bag. It's then picked up that evening and returned by the dry-cleaner to the lobby once it's ready. Mine hadn't come back, so around day 3 I walked to the dry-cleaners and asked about it.

"Name?" he asked and I gave it. "Very sorry, is no such name," he said. "But I am telling you my name and you have been taking my stuff and charging my credit card for years," I complained. On and on it went. Until I remembered he'd misspelled my name on the tag, and so he'd probably done the same thing when he'd entered it into his computer.

Without my laundry bag I could not recall HOW he'd spelled my name. I tried all sorts of variations while he looked at me pityingly. "You do not know your name," he was saying.

Eventually I got it right. K-A-T-H-E-L-E-E-N. So that's who I was Ms Katheleen. I'd thought I was Kathleen Juliff. Silly me!

It wasn't as if it was the first time I'd had an identity problem. A few months ago I went to a new pharmacy. Before I could get my prescription filled I had to give the pharmacist identifying information, including my date of birth.

When I returned to pick up the prescription, I was asked for my date of birth. I mumbled it back but he couldn't hear. I was forced to shriek it out for the whole pharmacy to hear. "Oh well, who cares," I was thinking, only to hear that I had it wrong. "Sorry," said Mr. Pharmacist, "you got it wrong. It is 1/1/1980." "Clearly it is not," I insisted. "That's what the computer tells me," he answered with an air of triumph. "I suggested he'd mistyped it in, in the first place. But he was not to be convinced. See, I don't even know when I was born, let alone my name.

Several years ago I opened a new account at Chase Bank. The bank manager transcribed my credentials from the form I'd filled in, to the computer. The branch in question happens to be in the same building - same street number and street - as our apartment.

Doorman shoveling snow, December 2010

A week later I received a letter from the bank saying the account was declined as the address was the address of a milliners, and was not an apartment block. A milliner!!!! Obviously they had a very old street directory I hissed. And anyway the branch was at the same address and didn't sell hats.

I showed the letter to the bank manager but he just shrugged. Obviously I didn't know where I lived.

Eventually the bank conceded that my address was my address, but explained that the account was still declined because my Social Security number was incorrect. I took the elevator upstairs and found my blue Social Security Card. The original. I showed it to the manager who checked again. "Incorrect, you'll have to contact Social Security!" was all I could get from him. "The computer has a completely different number in it." I wasn't me after all.

In the end it was sorted out. I was allowed to give the bank my money.

What's WITH these people. What's with ME?

Who am I?

I am Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

On the other side of the aisle

Can someone else take over from me on front of store? I've had enough! FOREVER! - Manager of the local supermarket after arguing with a customer about a can of Pepsi for 40 minutes

A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied, and I think that's what we have here. - Larry David

Holiday Shopping, Keyfood, Manhattan

I was approaching the fast lane at the local supermarket's checkout. The manager was there arguing with two customers who stood there zombie-like. One of them was repeating over and over, "Where's my free soda?"

The manager saw me approaching and called out. "Take the next line, Miss. I'm going to be two hours here."

I did. And he was. Well, I think he was, because I hung around fascinated and he was still dealing with the two women when I decided to leave.

Saturday afternoon entertainment. New York style.

It all happened after having had all her items processed through the checkout, one of the women wanted a free can of Pepsi. There'd been a buy-a-can-get-one-free special on cans of Coke. She'd bought only Pepsi. It had apparently been explained to her several times that she needed to buy Coke to get a free can of Coke, but she wasn't having any of it, so the manager had been called over to explain.

Sad Christmas Decoration Second Avenue, New York

I stood there transfixed as the manager did his best to explain what "get one free" meant and that Pepsi and Coke were two different brands. He had to repeat every sentence several times. The woman looked at him with dead eyes. Eventually he reversed the Pepsi charge and took the can from her basket. Here you are, he explained. Here's your money back. Now if you want to get a free can of Coke you need to buy a can of Coke. "Can I buy two?" she asked. "Buy as many as you want," he said.

She went off and came back with two cans of Coke. He told her he'd only charge for one, as the other was free. But she wasn't satisfied. She claimed she was entitled to two cans, one of Pepsi and one of Coke and where were they?

All this time the checkout girl was leaning languidly against the counter, focussed on something in a different land, visions of sugar-plums perhaps, or of bowls of noodles at a restaurant at a South East Asian beach. "Nobody cares," the woman behind me was muttering. Homeless people with big bags of cans were shuffling around waiting for the cash for cans-recycler machine near the doorway. Several newly-arrived Nubian-looking men were talking in French, waiting for 'delivery orders', oblivious to the fracas. "I want a can of Coke and a can of Pepsi," the complaining-woman was repeating for the hundredth time to the manager.

Eventually he left, waving his arms in the air and calling for someone to take over from him. Enough was enough.

By now I had finished with my purchases but lingered, wondering how the next person would handle it all. But no sooner than I'd swiped my card, than the manager was back. A glutton for punishment. Though I understood his position. He was determined to have her understand.

I stood around for a while. The woman had become even more confused. She appeared to have forgotten about her refund and was wanting even more Pepsis. She wanted free ones for the free ones she hadn't received from the purchase of the Pepsi that had been refunded. It was going to go on forever.

I couldn't stand it.

I think I'll mosey along to Fifth Avenue and stand amongst the tourists.

New Yorkers are getting me down.

P.S. My best ten books of 2010 are HERE.

Anti-clockwise

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars - From "Fly me to the Moon" composed by Bart Howard, sung by Sinatra

A few hundred years ago when I'd just finished university ('yooni' in OZ-speak), the Kubrick movie, "A Clockwork Orange" was released.

It is set in a Britain of the future and is the story of a young delinquent Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell). Alex is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem. The therapy involves him being forced to watch violent scenes on film while listening to classical music, specifically Beethoven's 9th, 4th movement.

Among other consequences of the "therapy" he is forever more unable to listen to classical music - music which he once loved.

I hated the film. However I was apparently alone amongst my circle of friends at the time. It was after all "in" to hate big brother, government, and aversion therapy. To love classical music was apparently the character's (Alex Delarge's) saving grace. Government bad, classical music good. And somehow Alex's horrific rape crimes that were the cause of his imprisonment were lost to all, or at least forgotten. I hated the film as they way I interpreted it was that ruining Alex's enjoyment of classical music was somehow worse than the crime he committed against a middle-class couple. Alex was of course working class and somehow sacrosanct.

I'd forgotten all about "Clockwork Orange". And then suddenly, unannounced, it all came flooding back to me.

Living in New York it is not uncommon to hear Frank Sinatra songs being played. In gyms, dental offices, stores, pubs. I don't normally notice them, well, not consciously at least.

But last night, there I was in my favorite Japanese restaurant. I'd asked for the check (OZ-speak = "bill"). When the check is brought at Konomi, it is always accompanied by a segmented orange. Why did I suddenly feel so ill? My jaw ached.

I could hear "Fly Me to the Moon" sung by Frank Sinatra playing in the background. Then I realized Sinatra songs had been playing all the time I'd been at the restaurant.

And what music is piped into the room at my dentist's? Sinatra of course. And I've had several very long sessions at my dentist's lately. Must have heard every Sinatra recording several times over.

I'd been aversion-therapied!

Now when I listen to Sinatra I hear drills. My mouth goes numb and I imagine Malcolm McDowell ramming a golf-ball down the mouth of the husband whose wife he's going to rape in " A Clock-Work Orange".

What's more I remember my old friends telling me I was bourgeois and didn't understand Kubrick's message. Oh the fear of being thrown out of the in-crowd!

Furgeddabout Beethoven's 9th. It's hardly played here in Ol'-New-York-New-York-so-good-they-named-it-twice. But Sinatra, he's EVERYWHERE!

I tell you guys, this is just hasn't been my year!

Mad Dogs and English People

Fat common people in tight clothes licked ice-creams and ate oozing buns and shouted.... "It's a shame so many young people are bald now," she said.
"Is it AIDS or this awful chemotherapy? I am sure we never had either." "It's the fashion, Ma." - from "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam

Poster at the Fashion Museum, Bath, UK

My dentist, as well as being a self-proclaimed expert, is a philosopher, and not a bad one at that. "Every morning when you wake," he tells me, "there are two channels, and you must choose one. One is the sadness or misery channel, and the other is the happy channel. People LIKE happy people and if for no other reason, you must take that. But if you have trouble, start the day with music, music that will guide you towards taking the happy path."

I've tried to my dentist's advice over the past weeks, but it's been hard. New York can be a lonely place, especially during the festive season. And this festive season, what with a few not-so-nice experiences, I've found myself taking the sad channel by default.

At one stage I became so depressed that I thought I'd buy a dog! Seriously. ASIF I could have a dog in a New York apartment. I imagined a comforting little puppy welcoming me home every night. I watched other New York women (yes, they are mostly women) hugging their dogs during the morning elevator commute.

Then reason set in. The only type of dog I could accommodate would be a dog without a digestive system. I just can't see myself following a four-legged creature around waiting patiently to scoop up its excrement in a plastic bag. Or paying a dog-walker $20 a day to do it for me. No. I had to find another path to happiness.

So that's the "dog" part of the title of this posting. Now for the second channel.

English People

English people. I visited the UK recently. Not for the first time. The first time I went there was a hundred years ago. I remember my first UK job. It was teaching at a "remand" home - for adolescent "criminals", somewhere far away from Golders Green where I lived, but still in London. Industrial greater London. I had to get the Tube, change a hundred times and then get a bus.

My first day. I navigated the Tube system and found what I thought was the correct bus. After about 50 minutes I looked at my watch, saw I was late, and looking out of the window saw green hills and hedge fences. I was in the country-side. Not a building in sight.

After asking the bus conductor where I was, and realizing I was hopelessly lost, I burst into tears. I told him I was late for my first day at work and what was I to do. He suggested a cup of tea. Really.

I can't remember the upshot of this story, except that I did have a cup of tea, arrived somehow at the remand home, and survived England.

Bath, UK

A hundred years later. My plane back home to New York from England left at 9:00 am from Manchester airport and I was staying in London. I decided to do the sensible thing and spend the night in a hotel near Manchester airport. I booked into the Crown Plaza.

The day before my flight, friends dropped me at Euston Station and I took the train to Manchester Piccadilly station, and then the local to Manchester airport. It's a pretty big airport. Nothing as big as JFK or Heathrow, but if you've never been there before, still confusing. On leaving the train, I took an escalator or two, looking for signs for the exit, or for information about transport.

Eventually I found courtesy phones for the airport hotels. There was a line. A Japanese tourist was sobbing into one of the phones and then ran off in obvious distress. Next in line the person in front of me was German. He threw his hands up in horror after a few seconds and left under his rucksack. It was my turn.

I dialed the Crown Plaza,. "I am at the station at the airport. Where is the courtesy bus?" I asked.

"Oh, near the doors?" came the answer. "Which doors". "The front doors."

"I am not familiar with this airport and there are doors to the outside all around," I explained. "How can I tell which ones are the front?"

"Well just go up a set of escalators and down another and look to the right and there they are," a very patient voice explained.

"But I already came up one set of elevators? So should I go down again?" I asked.

"Depends which one you came up," was the answer. "What were they near?" Was she serious?

Same Things, Bath, UK

I was becoming distraught.

And on and on it went in the same vein.

As we spoke the line behind me was growing. Doors to the outside kept opening and closing, bringing in freezing air.

I started to cry. "I don't understand," I was sobbing, when suddenly a woman wearing a Crown Plaza uniform miraculously appeared.

"The bus is outside and I will take you to it," she said.

And continued, "When we get to the hotel, you know what I'll do? I'll get you a nice cup of tea!"

Ah!The English solution. But what was even lovelier was the familiarity of it. The cup-of-tea-solution. Some things don't change.

Maybe my dentist is correct and the second, the happy path, is not so difficult to choose.

And that concludes the second part of the title of this post - "English people". You have to love them!