Working It

New York City. I was told by an old hippy guitarist (relic of the expressive sixties, neither burnt out nor faded but weathered and hardened and diminished to his altruistic essentials) that it was the new Florence (renaissant), the only place to be in the twenty-first century. The city’s a bundle of sensation to me: it’s the smell of cigarette smoke on my fingers, in the folds of my clothes. It’s the pale strip of sky far up above the street. It’s the rattle-crash of subway trains in the filthy subterranean bowels. News-stands and their grubby owners; express and local on opposite sides of the platform; taking your chances crossing when the sign says ‘don’t walk’.

Just smile and let them hear your darling British accent and they’ll do anything for you, Robyina said. I let my personal mash-up of ragged-jeansed, roach-flicking bum and sweet English rose do its work. The city never denied me anything.