Sunday 30 October 2011

Take a left, I said

Thinking about London theatres reminded me of this, when Tony and I visited New York for the launch of Mistmantle over there. We'd travelled to London the day before, stayed the night in a Heathrow hotel, got on the flight to NY, and were collected at Kennedy Airport. The publishers were fantastic, and put us up in a fantastic hotel in Central Manhattan with the friendliest staff ever.

Having arrived at about three o'clock NY time (eight o'clock in England) we decided to have a little wander and explore, and discovered to our delight that we were ten minutes walk from the internationally famous Carnegie Hall. (I noticed that there was a subway station just beside it, and thought how sensible that was, putting a station right beside the venue.) There was a choir festival concert on that night, and we saw that they were doing Faure's requiem, which we love.

Well, it will be very expensive, we said. We looked at the prices. It wasn't.

There won't be any seats left, we said. There were, lots.

So a few hours later we found ourselves in the amazing Carnegie Hall, listening to some stunningly beautiful music sung by world class choirs and occasionally pinching ourselves to make sure that this was really happening. Us, here, now. Never in our wildest dreams.

We were walking on air back to the hotel when an American lady stopped us to ask if we knew where the nearest subway was. Tony hesitated, but I - and by the way, I usually have to think twice about giving directions to my own home - said, 'straight along here, take a left at that light, and it's right beside Carnegie Hall.'

I'd been in NY for all of seven hours. How cool is that?

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