oh poor little me

I've had the most glorious day, riding in Central Park, popping into The Met for a quick, uplifting peek at the Vermeers and then stuffing my face with delicious Mexican food. But Christ I feel staggeringly, overwhelmingly, homesick.

Autumn, not bloody Fall, is absolutely my favourite time of year. In London I would be spending my weekends cooking up a storm in my designed-by-me-for-me, perfect-to-cook-food-for-twelve-hungry-people kitchen, then hosting a silly, Bloody Mary & red wine filled Sunday lunch which would go on for hours, possibly rounded off by pulling on our wellies and wobbling off to the Heath with the hound to work it all off, before devouring plates of buttery crumpets & pots of Earl Grey and heading to the pub for a digestive.

I miss the easy camaraderie of being surrounded by people who have known me for years, in many cases people I went to both school & university with - we are a tight knit crowd. I have made some good, good friends here, people I hope I will take with me when I leave New York but, being separated from my sister & my parents, my dog, two recently bereaved friends, a couple of pregnant ones, some new babies and, especially, Miss P's divine Edward who I haven't even met yet makes me very, very miserable indeed.

In London I live in a beautiful flat, which I own. I had a car & a fancy bicycle and lots of lovely stuff. Here I live with a (charming) stranger in what is essentially a box, furnished with Seventies furniture and a bath in which I daren't bathe. I can't bake more than cupcakes as I have only a toaster oven (there are mice in the oven proper), and there is no work surface. All my possessions are stuffed into the room I sleep. I have regressed to the life I led in my early twenties, even down to the relentless socialising.

But, here's the thing. I love it here. I don't want to go back to London. I like the scale of Manhattan, the toytown feel, the ease of living, my ridiculous social life, my growing address book, the inexpensive restaurants and the shiny novelty of it all. I was stale, bored of London, my social life tramelled by other people's children & marriages, lacking in inspiration, stuck in an industry often seemingly populated by rude, bad-mannered, vile idiots. Not that those people don't exist here, it's just that they specialise less in tortuous back-stabbing and more in doing it to your face which is so much simpler to deal with - & counter.

So, I'm here, & everyone else is over there. And that's just the way it's going to have to be. Unless I magically get a 'plane ticket in my pocket tomorrow to go home for the weekend. Maybe then I could hang out with my adored male friends, because making any of those is another thing that's never going to happen here either...