Tuesday: back in Manhattan

It's only Tuesday and already I feel drained. Trying to get my Dell XPS laptop fixed has taken up most of my time over the past two days, what with the countless hours spent talking to well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual Dell Tech Support.

Without it I cannot work, and I have three stories I need to finish and file on there, and which I cannot access until the Dell technician comes to New Jersey to mend it tomorrow (fingers crossed.) At least everything on there is fully backed up to my external harddrive.

I'm also a little tired as we celebrated S's birthday a little too enthusiastically for a Monday night with a dinner for fourteen on the Roof Deck at Soho House. If I remember correctly, we were the last people left up there.

I'm writing this sitting in a corner of Soho House on their guest PC. A couple of years ago I nearly gave up my membership. I was still in London, Shoreditch House hadn't yet opened, & I was spending too much pro rata money for one drink there every couple of months.

Fast forward to New York and I can't imagine how I would get organised on these short trips into the city without having access to the changing rooms & showers in the Spa, the Drawing Room for working in between appointments, the Baggage Check for my cases during the day, and the Roof Deck for meeting friends in the evening. There's even a convenient lamppost outside for my bicycle.

Which I brought in from Jersey on the train yesterday. So simple and easy (apart from the bit where I nearly fell down the Up escalator with it at Penn Station), and makes Manhattan a much easier place to get around, especially with Mr Bloomberg's zippy new bike lines which seem to have multiplied each time I come into the city.

I've been zipping around all day on it doing showroom appointments in SoHo with designers (in particular, accessories designer Sang A who I will blog about later this week), heading to Chinatown for lunch at the Vegetarian Dim Sum House on Pell and then to Crumbs for a quick restorative cappuccino cupcake. Living in Jersey is turning me into a wide-eyed tourist all over again. It's wonderful to be reminded just how much I love this city.