New York - Part 4

I am relaying all of these NYC anecdotes out of order. It makes me feel disorganised, discombobulated and a little bit naughty.

Our journey to NYC was... long. We'd got a special deal which was a total bargain, but did mean that we took a bus from Bethnal Green to Victoria, a train from Victoria to Gatwick, a plane from Gatwick to Detroit, waited four hours at Detroit, got another plane from Detroit to Newark and then had to get to our hotel in Queens (the other side of Manhattan from Newark). So it was about 17 hours in all, and TheBloke (TM) and I had taken it in turn to have migraines at different points during the journey.

An extra hour was added on by having to de-ice the plane at Detroit, and the runway was so long that at one point I thought the pilot was actually going to drive the plane there for the whole distance. And then what we expected to be a $45 taxi to Queens turned out to be nearer $100, so we finally arrived at our hotel at about midnight local time - but about 5 in the morning UK time. We were tired. Excited, but tired. And - I'll admit - perhaps I was slightly lacking in the subtlety and tact that I usually pride myself on.

(Pause for sarcastic comments. And on we go.)

So we arrive at this pretty cheap hotel somewhere in the suburbs and it's a Saturday night and the hotel has some sort of disco going on. But far more strikingly than that, right in the lobby, on the telephone was the most obvious prostitute I've ever seen in my life. You know when people go to fancy dress parties like a prostitute? Well, that's what she looked like. Almost too cliched to be real. The full works - about 45 years old, fishnet tights, a black dress that was far too short and low cut for her age, bleached blonde hair and nasty stilettos. I couldn't believe it. It was like an American film come true.

Please remember I was tired. Please remember I had been up for nearly 24 hours. And had been ill.

TheBloke (TM) insists I actually stopped, laughed and pointed, and would have taken her photo if he hadn't dragged me (laughing and pointing) to the check-in desk. I deny this accusation. I am fairly sure I (very subtly) just drew his attention to her. He said I did this by stopping dead in the lobby, with my suitcase, turning round and pointing, whilst saying, "Look at the hooker! Look!".

I deny this. Though perhaps tact doesn't run in my family. I used to live in Dalston, in Hackney. My flat was actually on a pretty nice estate, but there was a dodgy cut through that I didn't often use. It was full of drug-dealers, drug users and fairly desperate examples of humanity, so I tended to avoid it when I was on my own. However, my brother was staying with me one weekend, and as we were together and it was only early evening, I took us down the cut-through. Jack, displaying all of the Nunn family subtlety said in his loudest outdoor voice, "I'm glad I don't live in a ghetto like this..."

So perhaps I did laugh and point. It's hard to know. Subtlety doesn't come naturally to us Nunns.