Thai politics and bear hugging bookers

Last week we loved being here for Caro’s PEN World Voices Festival. We’ve attended events about the future of journalism, dystopias, utopias and New York life and heard Patti Smith, Salman Rushdie and Adam Gopnik (one of my favourite writers, his books sit on my bedside table and there he was, animated) speak. NY mind food. Getting lost was a prerequisite and we missed about six events but… that’s festival life.

Caro does an extraordinary job – it’s a hoot to be in her slipstream and experience her success from the wings and she took us along for the ride.

The literary social circuit started with a swanky do at the French Embassy and finished with a garden party in a lush oasis in West Village where I had a surreal moment standing in line for a drink with Christopher Hitchens – the week was a bit like that. Bit fabulous. Bit bizarre. Bit, ‘mine’s a gin, make it a large one’. Bit, why not?

On the first night we hurtled down Fifth Avenue in the rain and a tray of freshly popped Veuve Cliquot (listen to me?) was welcome a reception for drowned rats. The French know how to put on a party – chandeliers chinked as dapper waiters swept around the room like royalty balancing trays loaded with canapes. The ruder they are the more you want them. Note to self: affect arrogance, get hot.

As a fabulous nobody feeling small (I am, actually ,small but would rather not be) I was a awestruck (on platform shoes) by a room full of the great and the good for the writing world, their faces like a visual vocabulary of bookshelves. We stood in a corner chatting to some journalists and a woman approached me with such urgency I thought she was going to escort me off the premises.

“HI. I work for George Soros and I’ve heard that this is where I come for some robust dialogue about Thai and Burmese politics?”

Yes, she was talking to me. Yes, it was such an absurd question. Yes, I almost spat my canape at her in surprise.

I came clean about my (appalling) lack of knowledge about the political climate in those countries, deduced that T was the reason she had been so strident – who knows what he knows but he sure is full of surprises – we moved onto talking about wigs.  I found myself much more at ease.

The night rolled on. Drinks went down. We gained confidence of racehorses galloping towards a finishing line. Drunk horses.

Irish writer Colum McCann had been awarded The Order of Arts & Letters by the French Govt and was hosting dinner. We walked around the corner to Seraphina - think pizza Sopranos style – and upstairs to what we thought would be a huge room full of people who we didn’t know and certainly wouldn’t know us. Easy.

No, just a small table for 12. Small-table-for -12. First person to greet us? Salman Rushdie. What does a girl do when introduced to the Booker of Bookers?

‘Midnight’s Children is one of my favourite books’. Bleugh.

A lame but good start but no, instead I lunged forward and bear hugged him. Yes, what a tit. Caro found it hysterical and said he liked it (she’s kind, he was too). But yes the super-famous-successful-eloquent-brainiac-how is it that you have such good looking girlfriends all the time-are cleverer than I’ll ever be-in a fawn suit with a questionable beard struck me as…a lovely man, avuncular with the charisma of someone with a great body of work behind them.

We sat with Colum’s family who were excellent company. After what felt like 20 drinks under my belt (probably was 20 drinks under my belt) I looked down the table and said that guy looks like Gabriel Byrne – drunk talk to New Yorkers it apparently translated to ‘gays brioche burn!’, which sounds like it could be possible here – but this is apparently New York and he, Gabriel Byrne was, apparently, at our table. No bear hugs. No more gaffes. Spare the man and learn to pronounce his name, at least.

Oh, this city is such a giving one – a big stew of surprises, people are people with somebodies and fabulous nobodies and turnips like me existing side by side. Gays brioche burn!

Subway mosaic

Styling couple at a party

Subway love

Red books

Couldn't agree more

Fanelli's

Unorthodox combo but GREAT

Five borough ride Dumbo

Spire at 96th

Door in Brooklyn Heights

Through a glass darkly

Best Manhattan ever

The Delhi scarf gets a run

Knees up with the French

Corn & lemonade lunch

Brooklyn Bridge

T and leaves

Rockefeller light climbing boxes