Another homecoming abroad

One of the things I like about my job is that it gets me to places I like. In particular, it has taken to two cities that I hadn’t seen for decades but which are deeply rooted in my life.

The first was Rome, where I was born. And now it’s New York, where my parents lived from 1969 to 1977. If you add up all my visits to them over that time, it comes to pretty much two years. So, just as when I went to Rome for the first for a couple of decades and felt as though I’d come home, so returning to New York – or rather, Manhattan – was like a homecoming, though I’d not been back for 24 years.

My hotel, the Free Hand, is on Lexington Avenue. I was a little sad to see that the avenue, which used to be full of shops selling exotic spices or clothes of the kaftan variety, was now much more staid and duller. But the hotel itself was almost as surprising for its fidelity to that tradition, with its dimly-lit idiosyncratic decor and its colourful rooms offering Argan-based shower gels and shampoos.

The Free Hand hotel - very Lexington Avenue. In the old sense

Just being in the city was an odd sensation. I knew my way around. I went straight to the Caffe Reggio, haunt of my adolescence, for breakfast with a friend. She wanted to go to the 9/11 museum, so I led the way there too. I spent the day wandering the streets, without ever having the sense of not knowing where I was or how to get where I was going.

It was like slipping a comfortable old glove on and enjoying the sensation.

It was also a pleasure to chat with some of the locals. I’d forgotten how easy it is to get into conversation with strangers in New York. Three young men were having a discussion about whether or not it was legitimate to hit a brother (well, one brother was telling the other, ‘stop hitting your brother’). Having a brother myself, I couldn’t resist the temptation to join in, pointing out there seems little point in having a brother at all if you can’t hit him. However, we established that there had to be limits, and breaking a brother’s nose and leaving him bleeding on the ground was perhaps going just a little too far.

No one confirmed it, but I think the young man who raised this particular issue was the younger brother and had suffered just that fate. Certainly, the other brother was looking defensive, suggesting that his conscience wasn’t entirely clear.

We also came across a woman with a woolly hat to which she’d stuck a label with the single word ‘Impeach’. We had a brief exchange about just who she had in mind for impeachment, in the course of which neither of us felt any need to mention his illustrious name. Illustrious, that is, in the sense of notorious.

In the evening, I visited friends for dinner and went by boat. That was a new and breathtaking experience. The lighted skyline along the riverside provided a spectacular view so, like a child with a packet of sweets (or maybe I should say candy), I stayed up on deck watching it the whole time, so I turned up enchanted but frozen.

Manhattan skyline (with the Empire State Building in the background)
from the East River at night

At dinner, one of my friends pointed out that she felt that the Brexit process – which, apparently, many are following with fascination, and horror, over here – had only one benefit: at least Brits like me could hardly turn up in the US and poke fun at the country for its Trumpisation. It was a question of pots and kettles.

‘You have the advantage over us,’ I said, ‘you could get rid of Trump in 2020. We shall be stuck with Brexit for at least a generation.’

To my surprise, she replied, ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen.’

An interesting point of view. It would make some sense: since there’s clearly no majority for any Brexit formula, the logical conclusion would be to drop Brexit altogether. Someone on Twitter told me recently to cut the ‘whataboutery’ (whatever that means) because the ultimate principle is simple: ‘Out is Out’.

One of the most comical aspects of Brexitism is its capacity to reduce complex issues to such simplicity. I did point out to him that if there are several doorways to choose from, and no agreement on which to use, it’s hard to leave even something as simple as a room, however much out may simply mean out.

Still, it makes little difference that cancelling Brexit would be a logical outcome. Experience so far suggests that no presumption of logic can be made about the process. And I’m not quite sure how the cancellation would happen. Neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn wants to be the leader who tells the electorate ‘we’re dropping the policy you voted for back in 2016’.

Still, there are moves towards first blocking a no-deal exit, and then perhaps to a second referendum that might, just might, put an end to the whole sorry business. It’s encouraging to have crossed the wide Atlantic to hear people who believe that it may yet happen.

In the meantime, it’s been a joy to be back in a city that feels as familiar to me as it’s full of surprises.