As it turned out the French were more cunning than I expected, they took the extra £20 and then put me on a Delta flight, they don't fly it themselves, probably too busy being on strike, blockading some road somewhere outside of Paris - 'bloody French' as the old man likes to mutter.
Anyway I got there, late - thanks to the ever miserable immigration hall - having endured some filthy food, I know I'm travelling cattle class but do I really have to be fed like I'm livestock? The taxi driver dropped me off in the cool (fooking freezing) New York air on 17th and Irving, home of Tom G and also Pete's Tavern. Rather than do something sensible like go to bed, we went to Pete's Tavern which apparently is one of the oldest pubs in town.
We minded our own biz, catching up and then the fun started; I went for a ciggie and was forced to talk to Chris, a dickhead and a hedge funder (double bubble). Surprisingly he failed to tell me if he was Irish or not, a rare slip on his behalf but he did take time to inform me that menthol cigarettes (he was smoking one before gladly taking one of my normal cigs) were only for black people and strippers, something I wasn't aware of.
I returned to the bar for more revelations as some drunk (I hope they were) people in their late 40s insisted in talking to Tom and I.
Their opening gambit was to question whether we knew who President Regan is (technically was), we replied yes and that we also knew he was once an actor and, as an added bonus, if required we could also name other Presidents.
Our mistake of course was to engage with these people as it apparently meant we wanted to listen to them suggest how Tony Blair had it right in wanting to flatten Saudi Arabia with bombs and turn it into beachfront properties - now whilst Tony had a few interesting ideas during his term in office I'm fairly certain this wasn't one of them.
We were asked if we were Republicans, I suggested no, somehow this fired them up, we were asked if we had heard of Vets? We queried whether they meant war vets or animal vets, cue a speech about if it wasn't for them we'd be speaking German. Tom thanked them for helping the war effort so early in the piece rather than idly watching the Germans impose their language across Europe. Luckily one half of the foursome left and we were now stuck talking to the other couple but they seemed the gentler pair.
However, after a few sweet moments about Donald's niece living in London (Slough actually but hey it's a small country) we discovered that this lawyer had some good chat on him too. "She's got foxes on one side of the house and Arabs on the other, hopefully the foxes will bite the Arabs", followed by manical laughing, oh dear Donald. I made a mental note that if I required legal assistance I would rather go solo than enlist the help of this chap.
Tom and I cut our losses and headed back to his flat for a night cap beer and then I made a futile attempt at sleeping, no matter how little I have (I only fell asleep on the plane a few mins before landing) it still doesn't help me get any more. Also, I'd like to point out that the sleeping effort wasn't assisted by the heating system in Tom's flat which sounds like Mario himself has been made prisoner in the vent and is banging his wrench until help arrives - it doesn't.
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