Monday
We take a train an hour east of New York to Long Beach, a beautiful stretch of sand bordered by industry. On the horizon, an endless line of cargo ships waiting to dock in the city; directly above, planes beginning their final descent into JFK.
It is a perfect collision of coastline and urban blight that, like the tiny, jewel-like gardens dotting the city between tower blocks, always gives me a thrill.
The most eye-popping thing about Long Beach is the fervour with which some of its residents still love Donald Trump. You don’t have to go far out of town to see Trump lawn signs, faded from two years of exposure.
This, however, is something else. Parked opposite the beach, a row of motorbikes adorned with a range of flags snapping briskly in the breeze. From left to right, “Fuck Biden (and fuck you for voting for him)”, “Trump 2024,” and “Trump save America.”
Incredibly, affixed to the two bikes at the end of the row are a series of huge Confederate flags.
Passersby stop hard in their tracks to stare. This is a prosperous town, where a family house costs comfortably over $1m (£870k), putting pay to the old lie that Trump was entirely the fault of Mineral County, West Virginia and its ilk.
Shuddering, the American friend I’m with says, “This country has gone mad.”
Then she mutters two words even more frightening than “Donald Trump”, evoking, as they do, the hard-right governor of Florida – a man less encumbered by stupidity and widely assumed to have eyes on the White House: “Ron DeSantis”.
Tuesday
The culture war came for Meghan, and I did not speak out because I was not Meghan. I did sympathise with her, however.
Who in their right mind would want to join that family of peevish dimwits, exposed, once again – this time in the recent HBO documentary The Princess – for their failure to meet basic human standards.
All power then to the Duchess of Sussex, even if, as Tina Brown points out in her latest book, The Palace Papers, she never rose higher than sixth place on the call sheet for Suits. This week was a cause for celebration as Meghan and Harry finally cough up some content to satisfy the multimillion-dollar contracts they signed after leaving the Firm. Spotify sold the hell out of episode two of the newly launched Archetypes, the podcast in which Meghan interviews famous guests.
“Interviews” perhaps overstates it. Loth to assume the subordinate position of journalist to talent, Meghan largely avoids asking direct question in favour of explaining to her guests – Serena Williams last week, and Mariah Carey most recently – who they are, what they’ve done and what it means. Her husband potters in and out of range like a baffled Harry Enfield character.
It’s all quite entertaining, as are the duchess’s comments in New York magazine this week. There’s a lot to choose from but I think the emotional journey she and Harry went on before buying their house is the most enjoyable part. “We didn’t have jobs,” says Meghan, “so we just were not going to come and see this house. It wasn’t possible. It’s like when I was younger and you’re window shopping – it’s like, I don’t want to go and look at all the things that I can’t afford. That doesn’t feel good.”
Most of us can identify with this; that aching yearn, the guilt at wanting something we can’t afford, the 11th-hour scramble to get the money together and the final headrush of parting with $14.5m to nail that cheeky impulse buy.
Wednesday
I have an unhealthy interest in disasters at theme parks, which, alongside plane crashes and being shut in a box with a snake, furnish my worst nightmares hall of fame. En route to Coney Island for the day, I am thinking less about the lovely time I’m about to have with my children and more about every news story I’ve ever read about a parkgoer who was catapulted, decapitated or otherwise mangled on a malfunctioning ride.
It comes, I’m sure, from the dodgy fair of my childhood, which once a year set up on the rec ground outside town. Most of the rides were lame. But there were two terrifying slingshot-type rides that, as a very fun teenager, I used to look at and think, I wonder if either of those meets EU safety standards.
My children and I board a rollercoaster. Cranking up the incline to the crest of the ride, the child to my left says, “That doesn’t sound right.” It’s true, it doesn’t sound right. But my job is to be less scared than the seven-year-olds, so I say, “It’s totally fine. It’s supposed to sound like that.” Ten minutes later, walking from the pretzel stand to the Tickler – a hideous ride you should never go on if you’ve ever needed a chiropractor – we look across towards the rollercoaster to see it stalled at the summit of the incline, as engineers scramble and riders are guided down a tiny, steep emergency exit ramp. My child, free of my phobias, howls in disappointment. “I can’t believe we missed the best bit!”
Thursday
A new gun law in the city prohibits the carrying of firearms in playgrounds, the subway, parks, libraries and some high-profile locations, one of which, depending on your view, is either the worst few blocks in the city or the beating heart of everything. In any case, the question of where Times Square really starts and finishes is suddenly up for debate.
I live 25 blocks north of Times Square and was once accused of living in midtown. (Is Lincoln Center, two blocks south of us, in midtown? Is it? No, it’s not.) There should be a zip code to help with these things, like property prices surging across the invisible boundary from London’s N16 to N1. But in New York no one attaches importance to zip codes, so the city has just taken a wild stab at it, designating Times Square as an area covering 13 blocks from 40th Street up to 53rd Street – equivalent, in London terms, to deciding Covent Garden is in fact part of Leicester Square.
If it reduces gun carrying, all to the good. But to residents at the northern boundary, living in what they might have flattered themselves was, at a pinch, Central Park South, it must all have come as an unpleasant surprise.
Friday
To Brooklyn, for the back-to-school shop at the discount emporium Nordstrom Rack. It’s like the scene of a trolley dash, or a supermarket after the zombie apocalypse. The shoe section looks as if a flood has just subsided. If you can find a matching pair, it doesn’t matter if they’re appropriate or your kid likes them: nail those suckers down.
As it turns out, after a frantic 10-minute search, chucking wedges and water shoes over our shoulders, we strike gold: some gunmetal Doc Martens in the right size for one of my seven-year-olds. Truly, it’s a holy grail moment; not only my child’s first pair of DMs, but $20 off retail. There she stands, legs poking out like golf clubs, ready to attack third grade. Let the autumn begin.
