Sunday, 11th September 2005 in Tours & Gigs, New York Tour 2005.
Wake to find Neil has already tried to drop the piano off at SIR unsuccessfully. Tries again at 10am and this time after much shouting manages to get someone to hear and let him up the elevator. Then picks me up and we go to the first Starbucks for milky coffee. Then back across the Hudson to drop off the van. The weather is again perfect and the ferry across the river bracing.
Can never help looking across at where the twin towers were and imagining just how unbelievable and terrifying it must have been to those New Yorkers who actually witnessed it. Today is the anniversary so I guess a lot of people must be making their way to the site right now. We catch a taxi back to the hotel and Neil goes up to do the crossword and a few Sudokus while I wander through one of those Sunday street fairs – this time on 7th – that New Yorkers are so good at. Reggae pulses through the air.
Psychic readers are everywhere, Bags, clothes, shoes, food, food and more food. Stop at a stall and have papaya and mango drink. Look for presents for family which seems daily to get bigger (in numbers, not in size). Think I will have future told while I feel positive and am completely ripped off by this bored ‘fotune teller’ – for ‘fortune telle’r read ‘hustler of idiot’s- who tells me everything I know, in fact anyone knows – it is so general. But I do know that I will live to 91!!!!! and would be rich if I moved my business to New York. She is convinced I am a ‘garment designer’ having never heard the word ‘garden’ . I say I have never heard so much rubbish but pay up. What a fool. But the music is loud and am almost dancing along the street.
When I get back to the hotel, Neil has had enough brainwork fore one day and we go for lunch. Find a noisy but good restaurant. Return around 5pm to write diary and sleep.
Think today we have a chance to catch up on all the 3-4am ‘going to beds’ we have been doing. Phone Tom and JJ late. They actually went to ground zero today but felt completely numb. Very difficult to put into words the atmosphere down there. Later they drifted through the city listening to music and enjoying just being there.