I used to dress windows in my 20s. The guy I worked for let me run free – I’d come up with an idea, draw it for him on a piece of butcher’s paper, collect the materials I needed and confine myself behind glass for as long as I had to make work. Sell more alcohol, to be precise. The day progressed and in came offerings of snacks, eventually followed by wine. Drunk windows? No. But I did love the company of those around me and for the weeks those little vignettes lived within those windows I loved walking past, quietly knowing that I’d created the worlds within them (we did sometimes sell more wine, apparently).

The windows in NY are like little universes. There’s an art to seduction, I shamelessly succumb to the potency of a good merchandising and — good lord — do the New Yorkers know how to create a stir up front. Falling in lust with the retail zoo — tick. Abstaining…a relatively new experience but, mostly, imagination behind the glass was (mostly) pleasure enough. Lust for yourselves…

Pink licking building

Pumping pointes

Tumble of scarves

L-O-V-E though me & yellow = scrambled eggs on boobs

J'taime

Red letter

Dancing in the wind

Anthropolgie, hand dyed and crafted by staff

Strike a stripe

Keys play vintage

View from a wedge (Camper)

Shimmer @ Bergdorf Goodman

Strident @ Bergdorf Goodman

Beautiful composition

Who's he looking at?

One for the Frenchies

Colour blocking

Green tea @ Bergdorf

A window for humility

Real Estate Agent (truly)

Newspaper dress @ Bloomingdales

Levis dress @ Bloomingdales

The Red Dress

Not a window, just beautiful in Greenwich

You can spend days going in the wrong direction but someone will always want to help you out. We’ve met so many people on the subway, which might sound kind of strange, but when you know you’re on a limited time frame a bit of chat can be just the thing to bring you up if you’re frazzled.

Days have been lightened by nannies who want to talk about the stresses of caring for other people’s children, people with dogs in bags, old people seeking a connection with the world and today a little girl sat down and held my hand. She leaned into me and said, ‘my magic trick is finding money on the sidewalk, today I found this’. Proudly unfurling her hand to reveal a shiny one cent piece she told me that was going to buy a bike with it.

I’ve had a man give me his umbrella in the rain, we seem to attract restaurant recommendations like we’re wearing a sandwich board that says ‘hungry’ and the other day I looked up when we got out of subway and said to nobody in particular, ‘where are we?’ A homeless guy looked up, smiled and and sung, ‘why, you’re in New York City’.

New York is the city of endless arrival, it welcomes you but also allows you to be a part of it. You can be here a week and have a story and when everything around you seems to be in chaos you can feel calm. Great cities are often different from the countries they are in: London doesn’t reflect England, nor Paris France and New York stands alone in America. There are 800 languages spoken here everyday making it a culturally diverse and thrilling place to be and every day it seems we encounter someone who is cleverer than us, better off in life and successful yet on the flip side so many who are less fortunate. But everyone, it seems, has a story.

There’s a humility that pervades this city and – as the cliche goes – it is the place where dreams arrive, swell, sink and swim. New York’s arms are wide open to those willing to embrace it, whatever complexion your dream. Though some days seem like any other when it’s impossible to leave yourself behind, others can feel like you’re at the centre of the universe making me feel blessed to have been embraced by this great big city.

Candy chairs

Eygptians know colour

Gitane in Soho

Baseball game

Cakes, cakes, cakes

I wanted it all but resisted (me and yellow?)

Escape in Canal St

Tip in the Village

New York Public Library Reading Room

Community Garden by The Hudson

The lamp matches my glasses

Purple suede shoes

It's raining pots and pans

Riviera in Soho

Red socks at The Met

French laundry at home

Doggy bag (sorry, can't resist)

The Red Shoes

Pink couple talk at The Cloisters

Buttercup at Pegu

Ready and waiting for a chanteuse

Dog seeks vintage clothes

Fabulous font (terrible coffee)

Street art

Feathered nest

Old friends

I joined us up to MoMA which was a perversely thrilling transaction but it made sense to do so as there are a few exhibitions on there that can’t be done justice in a day – William Kentridge (amazing – lost a couple of hours, gained new perspectives), Tim Burton (the crowds loved it, I was claustrophobic, can’t imagine what he and Helena’s houses look like), Cartier Bresson and oh so much more. At MoMA the people – and outfit – watching is sometimes as good as the art itself. I also loved feeling like I had somewhere to go when I had a spare hour during the day and it began to feel like a rather large, densely populated second home.

We went over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn last Saturday for breakfast with some friends who are artists. They put us onto Brooklyn Museum, which has an enormous collection of work, my favourite being an exhibition by Kiki Smith that shimmered. At the New Museum on Bowery I felt like I was walking inside a cake tin and two special things happened at an exhibition curated by Jeff Koons: I walked into one room and joined a wax corpse of JFK – just me, John and the security guard (who, it turned out, was a trumpeter). In another was shocked by nine white fibre glass corpses laid out. Rather than have a written explanation accompanying the work, a soprano in her sixties sang the artist and the work’s name. Her voice filled the room and it was incredibly moving.

One day we met a guy who told us he used to run the cafe at the Guggenheim and that we should try and get our roller-skates past security and whoosh down the Lloyd Wright helter-skelter. One, we don’t have skates and two, it struck me as disrespectful, but apparently at least one person gets away with it a week. So we settled for a tour for two, sans wheels.

My favourite moment in all the gallery adventures? T hoping for a rest – ‘oh, there’s nothing much around there Lise, just some Monets and Manets’. Oh-we’re- so- spoiled.

Exquisite sillouette

Heady view

Crowd bathed in red light at MoMA

Vase of Roses

Old man studies Picasso

Hoopla

MoMA seduction

T at Museum of Art & Design

MoMA on a Sunday - mother and daugther

Girl outside the Guggenheim

Bubblegum light in The New Museum Cafe

Loved this lady, she was sitting laughing at The Met

People soup at The Met

Exquisite hair at the Guggenheim

Egyptian treasures

Cheeky

Art deco treasures

Green enough?

Opulent room

Picasso

Egyptian treasures

Picasso (I think)

Luminous spawn

Klimt

Museum of Art & Design

Map of NY

On the roof of The Met

Needs no caption

My faraway tree at The Museum of Art & Design

Map of NY

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

I’ve been taking pictures of vegetables in Wholefoods and the other day met a woman who shared my zeal for how beautiful everything looks, like a loved urban harvest.

‘The pumpkins, now honey, they’re the best to shoot when they’re in season’.

A kooky pair, we walked around the fruit & vegetable department at Columbus Circle musing about which displays we loved most. I was misty eyed over the artichokes but she went for the carrots, ‘see how they’re stacked, look at the patterning, gorgeous, hold this’. I held her basket, she took pics and returned the favour when I cried, ‘mushrooms!’

The first weekend I was here I got so overexcited at the local Wholefoods on 96th that I bought enough cheese and supplies to see us through a war. I naively lugged it home on the subway and had frozen shoulder for almost 10 days. But you see it does that to you, Wholefoods, it seduces you into thinking that if you buy those two bunches of asparagus for $3.49 you’ll get closer to enlightenment.

I’ve now experienced Union Square (full on but great people watching, models with crispbreads and boys with two day growth, great outfits and I am convinced it is a pick up joint), Bowery (fromagerie and restaurant on top, with art!, giant eco-boutique), Chelsea (less impressive but great soup for flower markets), 96th (local, love it, on first name terms with the security guard) & Columbus Circle (ridiculously large cake dept) and tomorrow, Tribeca. Ah Wholefoods, a far cry from Franklins.

Would you look at that stacking?

Mushrooms! Are you excited? They're blue

I heart artichokes

Golden beets

Soup for an army

More mushrooms!

Crunch time

Sunshine cup cakes

Cabbage helmets

Potato stack

Edaname lunch

I'm not alone, my Wholefood's friend

Antipasto

Who buys packaged roast veg??

You could build a house with this

Cupcake enlightenment

That's lunch from the self-serve bar...yes Dad, that's is a serving of macaroni cheese...

Cafe @ Bowery (in a supermarket - art and everything!)

The experience made me a bit giddy, like being plunged into a box of petals and swimming my way through a kaleidoscope of colours. Yet once I was in the shops the romance faded as custom is brisk and the vendors, though charming, hustle small fries like me who are not buying in bulk.

I dilly-dallied between shops and eventually decided on some classic white tulips for Caro as yesterday was the first day of her festival. The experience was great theatre – event planners talking animatedly about ‘signature centre pieces’, wealthy Upper East Side ladies dripping in jewels planning dinner parties and hulking men striding down the street with huge bunches of flowers slung over their shoulders like slain animals. And me, with a cup of bean soup and bunch of tulips.

Toolips

NY in bloom

powder puffs

Striped folliage

Not flowers but I loved this window

Marmalade

Paris in NY

Lush

Pink pom poms

Dizzy lizzies

Flower sandwich

Tulips from Amsterdam

Lush passage

Flower soldiers

Urban bamboo

Lush lavender shake-up

I saw the band in Sydney a few years ago and like their layered, seductive melancholy music. They’re an erudite bunch and the epitome of Brooklyn cool now in their mid-30s with grown up lives and a huge following. As we entered a studio dominated by college kids (it was 2pm after all) with thick rimmed spectacles and flannel shirts, feelings of being a student visited me from remote corners of my memory.

It was a live recording from their new album High Violet which is out in a fortnight. They told themselves they were going to make a ‘pop’ record but there wasn’t much pop about it, same stormy guitars, muscular drums and drawly lyrics about love and living a bohemian life (in flannel shirts) – as good as ever but I’ll leave the critical analysis to you, BZ.

The gig was intimate and there was a lot of chat about their creative process – achieved for the main part through introspection, literature and drinking wine…then getting grumpy. I wanted to say to them, that’s called a hangover, but resisted.

In drowsy long sentences they explained how their music had accrued meaning as they recorded, how lyrics don’t necessarily need to have meaning but need to sound like they have meaning – try deconstructing “terrible love and I’m walking with spiders.” It’s a theory which has resonated, particularly since hearing Patti Smith sing about burnt moons and orange leaves last night, but that’s another story.

Back to the real world and I bought a fab black and white vintage belt for nix in Noho, we both got very wet and grumpy, a woman told us dirty jokes on a pelican crossing and persuaded us to go to have a pizza slice at Frankie’s. We did, and loved the $3 slices and Italians shouting at each other over dough. Clearly we are a beacon for restaurant recommendations, no matter how zany.

I have wanted to go to Anthony Bourdain’s Brasserie Les Halles ever since reading Kitchen Confidential and Tuesday was the night. It was rammed with carnivores and staff doing pirouettes around tables in denim shirts. Dim lighting, wood booths, white linen, amped up New Yorkers and one Manhattan down I was ready for whatever they plated up.

We scored a corner table and sat next to some animated antique dealers talking about sideboards and dating in NY. A bottle of Bordeaux arrived, then a plate of snails shipwrecked in butter. T had steak au poivre, I went for their standard hunk, medium rare with shoestring fries. They arrived, one slice, first bite and I realised I was crying – over a steak? jeez – but when I’ve tried to imagine how something might feel for years and then the experience arrives I’m afraid it’s inevitable I’ll get a bit emotionally incontinent (two Manhattans down).

Ps. Mum & Dad – so sorry for that over-excited 3am text xx

Les Halles through a Manhattan

NY Times pic of The National

The National set at NYU

We rattled towards Bliss Street, Sunnyside (poetic, isn’t it?) and A&P’s lovely home. Though you can see the winking lights of Manhattan across the water it feels a million miles away from the big smoke, they even have a garden for godsake.

Annie is Australian, Paul is from Wisconsin, both are architects and clever people equal great company and a stylish home. Syd the cat is adopted family member #3 and Annie’s tummy rises like a Victoria sponge with Stoller #4. She looks gorgeous and they make a very happy domestic scene. It might come as a shock to some who know Annie but our dear friend is 1. apparently now a country music fan 2. seems to be giving Jane Austen a run for her money when it comes to the art of good manners – she has stationery (!) and buys gifts in advance not day of special occasions…

We went biking (yes, new favourite thing), had lunch in Astoria which is where NY’s Greek population lives, met a couple there – Robert & Robert – who were faaaaabulous New Yorkers from the Village who pretty much mapped out the rest of our holiday for us in a gastro tour of restaurants (even down to what to order, what to split, where T needs to wear a jacket…get the $18 bottle of wine for lunch then sit under a tree in the park opposite to sober up, whatever you do DON’T order the butter milk pancakes etc, etc).

‘We’re foodies, you’re foodies, you love the bikes, we love the bikes, so here are our recommendations. And start with the grilled octopus, you must, it’s daaahlishous‘. Adorable.

Annie & Paul hosted an Anzac Day lunch, I made a cake (it’s ok, I bore myself) and T and I managed to get smashed on brandies whilst doing the dishes. I even fell for Syd the cat who has the qualities of a dog and is rather partial to sitting in the bath. All in all it made for a fab weekend (and I know it’s almost mid-week).

Styling home

Cocktails ahoy

Orchids

Tea party

Annie & Lisa

Look at that stack?

liquorish legs takes pictures

Roger Moore endlessly cast in the same role

orange almond cake (yes, on a Dino platter)

Syd in bath #1

Syd on china douvet

In a bath with a cat, pouting

drunken dishes

Biking in Queens

Our Annie, multiplied

Love's young dream

Last night was the premiere of Vidal Sasoon, The Movie at Tribeca Film Festival. I was determined we were going to be there as I knew it would be a hoot.

‘A film about hairdressing?’, said Trevie but he, graciously, let me drag him on a whistle-stop of subway stations to get there and stood in line with the fashionistas to wait for tickets. Who needs Broadway when this kind of theatre happens on the streets? They clackedy-clacked their way to the box office in Louboutins, we strode behind them (elephantiasis in right leg has dissolved, Italian boots are back in favour) and T found us what seemed like the last two seats in a packed auditorium. Sure, without hair there would be no story but it was one of the best documentaries about a successful life either of us have seen.

Sassoon’s is a rag-to-riches tale and at 81 he is a charismatic man full of humility and wisdom who throughout the documentary cooed, ‘but how did it all happen’?  Still lithe (50 years of yoga) and effervescent he is the rock star of this the exquisitely styled documentary full of stories from his wide-ranging influences: a love of architecture, reading, geometry, fashion and a devotion to his mother and family. A born impresario, he was the first hairdresser to make an empire of hair care products and became a celebrity whose catch-cry was ‘if you don’t look good, we don’t look good.’

Footage throughout the documentary reminded me of my gorgeous Mum in the 60′s. Fashion-forward for the Highlands of Scotland, she used to send-off to London for Vogue patterns, Dickens & Jones for fabrics, whip herself up the most extraordinarily stylish dresses and cut a dash down High Street.

We headed into the night and up to Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village for dinner at a restaurant, Tartine, I was determined to go to. En route T spotted a cute looking French place but, ever willful (I was exhausting yesterday), we headed up Bleecker. There was a scrum of people outside the restaurant rendering the likelihood of a table before 11pm remote. French restaurant, AOC, it was and propped up at the bar with our beers I knew we were sitting next to an actor but just couldn’t place him. I said to T, ‘have you worked it out yet?’

‘It’s Carrie’s boyfriend’

For those of you who don’t watch Sex in the City, it was Carrie’s ex, Burger. Ah, downtown Manhattan on a Friday night and the sweet irony of the moment tickled me pink.

Vidal Sassoon in the 60s

Vidal Sassoon at 81

mosiac of a life

The pink panther was a fashionista and not someone from Road Traffic Authority

subway chrysalis

Me being a plonker, daaaahling, in line

Two tart jars meet on Bleeker

Play me I'm yours

Reach for the stars...street art

Trevie & blossoms in Union Square

Cakes from Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker (overated cupcakes, but everyone says that)

Butterfly, butterfly

No trains have run on the High Line since 1980 and when it was under threat of demolition an impassioned group formed and worked with the City of New York to save it.

You feel like you’re on the set of a film when you’re there, the views of the Hudson River and city are like bobbing on a raft and sunset would be superb. It’s progressive project I’d love to experience in a few years when it hems the lower west side of Manhattan.

T arrived back from Peru this week, forget those waves, he couldn’t resist NY any longer and who can blame him. So we noodled around yesterday, I took him straight to The High Line, he took some pictures of me with my head cropped, persuaded me to buy some fabulous olive green sunnies I can ill afford (but according to our sales assistant who chewed her vowels like toffee look ‘faaaaaaabulous’ and took some pictures of my shoes from a range of perspectives. It’s great to have a partner in crime.

In other news, who do I have to sleep with in this town to get a decent coffee? Everyone told me that Manhattan gets just about everything right but coffee. The optimist in me thought surely that’s an exaggeration. Bum Bom, the sound of getting an answer wrong in a quiz resonates and my lonely quest continues.

Annie clued me up to Joe’s, a boutique chain who have grasped the importance of not scalding customers with burnt milk. I only know where two of their shops are and at a 45 round trip from the apartment, making for a rather ludicrous pursuit for the sake of a hit. One day someone will actually ask me if I’d like coffee with my milk, but I’m waiting.

We were walking in Chelsea and a group of four groovers who looked they had come from an audition for an ad for, I dunno, flavoured mineral water, swaggered past with coffees.  Scrawled on the side of their cups were the initials FW. My heart sung – flat whites are something of a rarity in these parts, it’s all lattes and floaters of god knows what in Starbucks beakers so I sniffed out where they had procured such a thing.

I forget what the place was called now but it had the requisite aesthetic – stained oak walls, mirrors with the specials scrawled on them, flowers dying elegantly in jam jars and orange crockery, sullen barrista – inducing high expectations. The staff were cool and I was not in my over-excitement. T sat in a corner, wisely keeping his distance.

We walked out of there to The High Line and I-was-excited. The cup singed my fingers, I sat down and settled into the moment. In a don’t-tell-me-this-is-true moment I would rather have drunk a cup of reheated gravy. Maybe I did? At least they had the foresight to know how their coffee affects customers – a prophetic stamp of a grumpy man on the cup offered some perversely ironic marketing. New York I love you but…quest continues.

Princess dreams in shop window

Fishergirl on The Highline

Nourished train tracks

Yellow cab dreams of travel

View from The High Line

Elated

Deflated....

Requisite aesthetics don't = good coffee

Hangovers never felt better

Trevie , every bit the metrosexual

Cabs with equity - ampitheatre to the street

Big foot strikes again

View from a rope

faaaaaabulous (apparently)