BEFORE the plane landed they said that the temperature in New York was going to be around 80. "Is that really 80?" someone asked. "Are we landing in New York?" someone else wanted to know.
A man with the lines on his face that advertise that he has seen, done and knows it all, delivered himself of a view. "New York" he said, "is a very extreme place. Hold onto that piece of information and you'll survive." I don't think people should get away with enigmatic one liners without a challenge.
"How is it extreme?" I asked.
"I left this city eight days ago and there was snow and ice today it's going to burn your butt off. I left this city eight days ago and my wife was filing for divorce, now I hear she's going to be at the airport with chocolates and a book called The Road To Reconciliation. Is this a sign of a sane and balanced society?" He picked up his suit carrier, loosened his tie in readiness for the hot weather and marched gloomily towards the chocs and kiss n' make up that lay ahead.
At the airport the sniffer dachshund put the heart across us all by appearing to pause at a perfectly innocent suitcase looking for drugs. But he found nothing and looked up at his handler ashamed.
A tender dog loving person took his picture. "No photographs," said the handler. "This dog is on government business."
The dog loving person was full of remorse. "You can take the film if you like," she said humbly. "No Mam, that will not be necessary, on this occasion," said the dog handler.
Could they have been serious? Any of them?
The sun shone down on the children in Spanish Harlem who were arranging an impromptu sidewalk sale. They had all their winter clothes out on display, fleece lined anoraks, waterproof coats. Very low prices nothing over two dollars. Business seemed to be brisk. Possibly the buyers were dealers in old clothes, and if so they were getting goods at a steal of a price.
"Won't you need these next year?" asked the boring old tourist who couldn't bear to think of them all being cold when snow and ice comes down on New York city, as it will.
"That's next year," said a gorgeous, happy 12 year old girl with a fist full of dollars. This year she needs skates. This year perhaps her mother won't notice that all the winter stuff seems to have been rather over tidied away. And the smile she gave me showed all the business sense and optimism that have been part of these streets since the city started.
At Fitzpatricks Hotel they have various clocks over the front desk. One of them says Irish time and tells you what time it is at home.
"Isn't that cute?" a woman said to her husband.
"It's over specific, certainly," he said.
"No Harry, when we're abroad we like to know what time it is in Dakota and no one ever tells us," she seemed wistful.
"True dear," he said.
But she worried at it, like a dog at a bone. "Of course, there could be another agenda," she said.
"Very possibly."
"I mean it might be a different time in Ireland to anywhere else?"
"Will we go into the bar and have an Irish coffee?" he suggested.
"That would be great, honey. Or maybe a Diet Coke," she said.
They had been married a long time, someone told me. In fact they were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary by this trip to New York. "Amazing the way some people stay together," a friend commented about them.
I didn't think so I thought that theirs was a life full of wonder and excitement and speculation on her part and that he had long since ceased listening to her and was happy in his own world.
The whole of New York has gone mad over the sale of the late Jackie Kennedy's belongings. It has been such a glittery event that people line up just to see those going in. Very rich, well dressed women from South America mix with more bohemian art dealers and book collectors. the auction fever is intense, with ludicrous prices being paid for a rocking chair, a cigar holder and a child's rocking horse.
I met a woman who had been there. She hadn't bought anything but she said she unashamedly loved it. It was being part of history. "We don't have a royal family. I'm not religious, this is the nearest I get to the whole thing," she said, clutching the catalogue as if it were a bible.
Not everyone there felt part of Camelot, she said. People can be so picky.
She heard a woman say that the Kennedy children must be very unloving to let everyone wander through their mother's possessions like that and pay inflated prices for them. She heard a man being interviewed for television just because he was a critical, crabby person and he said the whole thing was a circus. That's the kind of people who get on national TV these days, people filled with hostility in their veins. But she had loved it, loved it to bits. She had got Lee Iacocca's autograph, had her picture taken standing near Joan Rivers, and stood near a phone which took a winning bid. If that wasn't being part of history, could she ask what the hell was?
And they still sing out the chef's specials in the restaurants. Lots of marscapone, luscious creamy, bad for you, lots of aruguta, bitter, lettucy, good for you. Lots of polenta, totally confusing, hard to work out, tasteless.
But, sharp as a razor, I noticed that the dishes, when presented, seem to be a totally different shape. They are much narrower and taller, like a kind of mount instead of covering and painting the plate as they used to.
"Vertical cuisine," said a marvellous woman who knows everything. Apparently it's all the rage. You begin with a tiny base and pile everything upwards like the Empire State Building. It leaves you at a total loss about how to approach it. I mean, it looks so clumsy when it crashes down. And we're talking about things like breast of chicken on potato on arugula on polenta with a dollop of marscapone on top and a Christmas tree of rosemary to make it taller still.
"How long will vertical cuisine last?" I asked, hoping it wouldn't be too long.
"Until something better turns up," she said. "New York is a very extreme place."
And so it is, I'm glad to say, from book signings where they either buy to books or say they came to tell you they wouldn't buy any because they don't like your ethic, to meeting publishers and booksellers whose lives leap and lurch from one marvellous drama to another with dizzying speed - they are all promoted, sacked, divorced, remarried, newly in love, crazy about grandchildren, rejecting siblings and that's only in the last year.
But they say if you think New York is extreme you ain't seen nothing yet . . . Wait for Texas.