57 varieties
Having practically run up the Statue of Liberty I paused briefly to sign autographs and then we headed back on the boat to Manhattan. In a masterpiece of planning I’d secured us tickets for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It’s kind of sad I know, but it’s also entertainment in my price bracket. My price bracket ideally is somewhere between zero and fuck all. This had cost me nothing but some careful planning to get my ticket request in. Last year I’d seen Matt Damon. This year, the rather less famous but very funny British comedian John Oliver was the guest. John is a Cambridge Footlights alumni, like everyone from Bill Oddie to Richard Osman. However, he never really made it big in the UK save some panel show appearances. But now, officially an American citizen, he takes great delight in taking the piss out of his new found countryman. Particularly the ones with orange faces and pornstars in their closet. Anyway, this year Mrs Steve also volunteered to attend. As we have priority tickets, all we have to do is stand outside the theatre until they are ready for us.
We arrive somewhat after the main Colbert fan girls and stand in a queue of probably a hundred people. The queue quickly starts to move as approximately 90 people are let into the theatre. The temperature “feels like -12C”. For those of you who only deal in Fahrenheit, that’s too effing cold! We continue to wait patiently as our body heat slowly begins to dessert us. Luckily we only had to wait, probably another entire hour before we were finally let in. Standing outside on a freezing New York street for over an hour is probably not the way I’d have chosen to commit suicide. I’d probably have opted for death by bacon or maybe burgers. Indeed, most foods beginning with ‘B’… baked beans for example! Basically, gluttony generally is the way to go! Standing on Broadway wondering if testicular frost bite always results in amputation is not how I want to die.
By the time we were finally let inside the theatre no one wanted to see the effing show anymore. They just wanted there genitals to have blood flow to them again.
Anyway, once we had taken our seats and started to defrost a little the woman next to us turned to me and asked if she was allowed to go to the toilet. It’s an odd question. Not many grown women have ever asked me that. What if I just said “No” and she “had an accident”. I mean, how is this now my decision? Before I could conjure an answer, a lady in a Stephen Colbert hoodie announced that we all had permission to go to the toilet, if it was “an emergency”. I love being treated like I’m at kindergarten. Unsurprisingly, 95% of the audience declared a toilet emergency. I refused the opportunity. I’m practicing my pelvic floor control for my old age. I keep waking up in the night wanting a pee and then forcing myself to go back to sleep. What could possibly go wrong, and why am I sharing this with you?
Following the urine fuelled stampede. We went through the usual pre show brain washing, learning how to be American and scream and shout like you love Stephen Colbert and don’t have a single brain cell. I already love him, though not as a brother. For me it’s more the love only a stalker can provide!! I jest! And before you ask, I’ve no idea where he lives! Ok ok… it’s 77 Upper Mountain Ave, Montclair, New Jersey. But that’s just a guess.
Anyway… feel free to go and watch the show back on CBS. If you know exactly where we are sat, you can just about make us out as the camera pans wildly around the audience, we are sat there with our coats on, trying to defrost. Before we knew it the show was over. The little lady had had a jolly nice time fan girling over John Oliver. I simply got my kicks from a room of middle aged women chanting ”Stephen Stephen Stephen!” Now you come to mention it, that’s a little bit weird isn’t it?
The next day, we again consumed our body weight in bacon and lard for breakfast then headed up to Central Park for a stroll. The subplot here was that we’d be dumping part of my mother in law in Jackie Onassis lake. It’s a bit like a macabre game of Where’s Wally?, only this takes place in a dark time after Wally has been cremated. Anyway, on a windy day in New York the last place I wanted to be was in the blow back zone. As Mrs Steve reached for the IKEA sandwich bag her mother was travelling in, I made my excuses and left. I wasn’t merely escaping the “ceremony”. I was getting withdrawal symptoms from a distinct lack of walking. Sauntering around town does nothing for the athletic power houses that are my beautiful calves. As I set out around the lake like a greyhound from a trap, dust filled the air behind me. Was that from the soles of my Salomon walking boots or had my mother in law just covered some passing Japanese tourists. I didn’t wait to find out.
Two laps later and I’d worked up an appetite for what the hobbits call 2nd Breakfast. We weren’t far from the Bluestone cafe, located in an old church on the Upper East side. In the time it had taken for me to do another lap, to show off my athletic prowess to errr no one, the little lady had got to the cafe, found a table and ordered HER food. Thanks love! She had also selected the worst table in the place, right next to the door. It’s not that I’m old and frail, but when it feels like -50C an open door does not bring with it a ‘refreshing breeze’.
As my missus selfishly tucked into her hot Heinz cream of tomato soup (served in an old jam jar… because this is Artisan shit obviously!) I placed my order with the waiter. He was TOO American. Yap yap yap non stop. Dwayne just bring me some soup and a coffee. Oh and some crocodile toast and make it snappy! Poor Dwayne, personality disproportionally large compared to his tiny brain… “I don’t get it”. At this point someone came in through the door. In the gap he left a penguin tried to sneak in to get warm. Dwayne pulled it to.
Over the course of the next 20 minutes I must have got up 100 times to shut the door. One guy left it so far open I exclaimed “Don’t worry I’ll get the door shall I?” A woman stood by the door smiled as Victor Meldrew incarnate slowly but surely completely lost his shit. Her attention was actually good as for a time she became my personal door bitch. When customers left the door even slightly ajar, I’d just glare at her and she’d abandon her baby to close the door for me.
Had this been the relaxing, artisan soup stop I had hoped for? Well, I got soup! Can’t say i felt relaxed and refreshed by the experience. When the bill came that did little to help my blood pressure either. Just fifty something American dollars, including a tip of at least 20%. So I have to spend the whole time closing your effing door and I need to tip you!? Eff my effing life! Dwayne was very grateful. More grateful than his intellect allowed him to be. The phrase “knight in shining armour” was probably what he wanted to say to me because I’d saved him having to close the door. Instead he wittered on about me being a twinkling light that’s illuminated his dish cloth. I tired of his ramblings and punched him in the face.
We exited back onto the Arctic tundra. Having previously been lapping Jackie O like Mo Farah, I now found the post soup “speed” of my wife irritatingly slow. Her questions about how much I enjoyed my soup and where was the nearest subway station also annoyed me. Oh and wasn’t Dwayne a lovely chap? … At this point it occurred to me that she didn’t close the door once. Instead leaving it to me and a nursing mother. My own wife was complicit in this plot to annoy the fucking life out of me. I punched her too.
Post script: it was shortly after this, I had to break the ice which had formed on my eye balls to read a text from my mother. She was commenting how sunny it was in New York today. The implication being it must be lovely and warm. Yes mother, it’s just like fucking Ibiza!
And before you ask… yes I’m loving the chill vibes of New York City! God give me strength!