The Landlady: Dollar bill y’all

A couple of days after arriving back from Turkey, The Small Daughter, Big Son and I set off for five days in New York City. Exhausting though the transition between time zones was, it was the best fun ever, as our initial reason for going was to surprise The Big Daughter’s Boyfriend, who was already out there with The Big Daughter, celebrating his 30th birthday. It had been a very difficult secret to keep for virtually the whole of 2016, but the look on his face when we suddenly appeared in a bar was well worth the effort. Ahhhhh… bless.

On our arrival, The Big Son and I were already slightly squiffy due to the over-generous pouring of the cabin crew and we’d been told off for making too much noise on the plane, which has happened to me more times than I care to remember. I also had my usual language-barrier misunderstanding with the Homeland Security guard in the airport and when I was asked ‘any drugs or alcohol?’, I said ‘Yes please’. Ooops.

New York City was the perfect place for an old person (i.e. me) to live

Still, we arrived in one piece and even The Small Daughter managed to stay awake for long enough to surprise The Birthday Boy. New York hasn’t changed much since I was there a couple of years ago, but it is now hideously expensive, due to the post-Brexit pound. One swanky meal we went for cost the best part of £500, but The Big Son declared it the best meal he’d ever had in his life, so I guess it was worth it.

While I was there, I decided that New York City was the perfect place for an old person (i.e. me) to live, as everyone seems to be out and about all the time and no one sits at home isolated in front of the electric fire. I even went as far as looking at houses on the internet and discovered that to afford the equivalent of my Brighton house in Manhattan, I would need around $15,000,000, which at the moment is basically £15,000,000. The good news is that, if I sold two of my flats in Brighton, I would be able to afford a studio flat in Greenwich Village. Maybe I’ll wait until the pound goes back up, although The Small Daughter is already looking at the prospectus for New York University….