NEW YORK NAMT Day 1: Laundry Day

Prior to last night I hadn’t slept for 48 hours so I’m not entirely sure what day I’m on. I arrived at JFK around 10.30am having met some nice people on the plane who have invited me to go to Coney Island with them during our time here. It’s very rare that you sit next to someone on an 8 hour flight that you get along with, so thank you Norwegian Air for choosing only a fine person to sit in Seat 42J.

I was able to enjoy the flight principally because I had downloaded the entire series of Killing Eve on to my laptop. Fooking entertaining stuff. The other reason I was able to enjoy it was because I wasn’t sharing a seat with Jasper Mountbatten III (my ego) , Derek Bluebottom (my depression) or Colin Shitsmearer (my envy).

I can only assume they missed the flight. I can imagine their reasons for doing so right now:

JASPER: “Mate, I was out on a complete bender for the last three days, I was up to my eyeballs in coke, MDMA and hookers. Also I was totally munted on fifteen bottles of Champagne. One of the hookers had swallowed my alarm clock so I didn’t wake up in time. You know how it is.”

DEREK: “Well, I mean. What’s the point in any of it anyway. You’ll go to New York and you’ll come back and your life will continue it’s dreary, slow-motion plunge towards pathetic oblivion without anything ever changing. So I thought I wouldn’t bother… also one of Jasper’s hookers had swallowed the alarm clock. You know how it is.”

COLIN: “Dude, you should be thanking me. I was out super late last night breaking the legs of all the UK writers with new shows on. So when Jasper turned up with the MDMA I kind of joined in until I got envious of him and made one of the hookers swallow his alarm clock. Forgot that it was also mine. You know how it is.”

So whilst they are not with me just at this moment, have no fear... I have no doubt that they are all currently on a later flight to the Big Apple and will inevitably find me in my apartment on 7th Street Brooklyn by Prospect Park. They have an innate ability to find me. Which, given that they are intrinsic parts of my psyche is not altogether surprising. I’ll let you know when they arrive…

So far, I have eaten two hotdogs and successfully navigated the subway including use of the 3,F,G,A and Air Trains. I have accidentally purchased a 10 trip on the air train and I have conversed with no less than three NY Transit officials about my metro card (I say conversed. But it was more me doing the conversing and them staring at me blankly from behind the glass until I went away). I have been to Grand Central Station and 42nd Street, where I sat in a cafe for 3 hours formatting The Wicker Husband score for appropriate actual human use. The final script and score are due to the NAMT offices by 2pm today and there are some final changes to make.

Which is obviously why I’m very busy doing that and not writing a blog about it at all.

It was absolutely shitting it down with rain for the entirety of yesterday, whilst at the same time being inordinately hot. The people of New York looked unbothered by such things. They appear to have other things on their minds. Apparently Donald Trump is President of the United States. Who knew? There are also small statues of him dotted around Brooklyn with the words "Pee on me" attached.

I have also overheard some conversations in which the participants have told each other very loudly to “F off Sharon!”, “Go and F yourself!” and “I’m already F’ing doing it!” So everything seems very dramatic.

So today, the plan is to finish this score and get everything wrapped up nicely on that front. Have brunch with Rhys (who has just arrived and is living quite close to me up the road near Prospect Park as well), then maybe head into the NAMT offices to introduce ourselves. Then I’m going to figure out how the laundry in the basement works.

You know how the song goes right? Frank sang it:

If you can do Laundry here
You can do laundry anywhere
It’s up to you New York, New York

---