My husband is a corporate guy. He’s very corporate. He wears a Midtown Uniform. Deliberately. When we decided we’d get engaged towards the end of 2016, he kept referring to it as “Q4” and once we were engaged, one of his colleagues said to us knowingly: “Solid Q4 prediction”.
A few months after that, I watched him one day, take a work call on the weekend. He was asking the person on the other end to take a look at his email and have a think about how “best to progress it”. He added that “hopefully we can then bottom it out”. I asked him who on earth was calling him at the weekend about work and he told me it wasn’t work - he had been talking to his mother about our wedding cake.
The corporate speak continues and in ordinary conversation around dividing up the chores of a house, he’ll say things like “You might take the bins out if you have a chance” and I always respond in one way and one way only: “I might. I might not”.
We had a friend who worked for an Irish company that was taken over by another (British) brand. The staff remained the same but they were given training on the “values” of the new brand and were encouraged to incorporate the values into their day-to-day work. One of the core values was “being straight up” and our friend told us how at a meeting soon after the takeover, a junior colleague decided to show some initiative and display their use of the new values. He decided to make a suggestion (to a room full of people who had zero intention of changing a single thing about their approach to work) and he prefaced the feedback that nobody asked him to provide, with: “In the spirit of straightupness….”. Can you picture it? Excruciating.
“In the spirit of straightupness” has been adopted into lexicon of this household. So, we’ll say things like: “In the spirit of straightupness, you might take the bins out yourself”...that sort of thing.
It’s easy for me to remember how long it is since I’ve been in the corporate world myself because I’ve a 66lb growing reminder of it in front of my eyes every day. I haven’t worked in corporate since my last baby was born and that baby turns 5 next month. Do I ever miss it? I can’t tell you how much I don’t.
I am, nonetheless, on this - the 13th and last Thursday of Q1 - about to do a quarterly review:
The winter - it was so long. I’d fully checked out of New York. I’m done with this place, I thought. When we boarded our flight back from Ireland last August, my 6 year old cried “I don’t want to go back! I want to stay in Ireland!”. An older girl, of maybe 11, with an American accent and her very own Irish mother, stood in the line in front of us. She was properly bawling that she didn’t want to go back and her mother comforted her: “I know you don’t honey, neither do I but we have to go”. At the time, I wondered what the hell we were all doing! And in the depths of January and February, I was thinking very much the same thing. And then it came. The 9th of March. An ordinary Monday where the sun made a spectacular and brilliant appearance and I thought: how could you ever leave this place? There is nowhere better than New York.
We watched Industry, where Kenny looked more and more like a leprechaun with every passing second. It is uncanny. I cannot stand him. Why are Kenny and the IRA woman from Love/Hate the only representation of Irish people in the finance world in London? Your one is madder in Industry than she was in Love/Hate and that is really saying something, given that she inexplicably shaved her head and generally was a coldblooded assassin in Love/Hate.
Haven’t seen a love story as good as Heated Rivalry in years.
I watched all of Severance season 1 over the two legs of a return flight to Dublin and very much enjoyed. The twists!
I might start Love Story when I hit post on this piece right now.
Three excellent books:
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez: So brilliant. It’s about writing, teaching, dogs, friendship, marriage, adultery, New York. It touches on the MeToo movement, patriarchy, misogyny, separating art from the artist, using real people in books, nostalgia, aging, the passage of time, writer’s block, grief. It sounds heavy but it is not. It is an excellent read.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach: This is so different in style from The Friend that I didn’t realise for ages how similar their themes are: both are narrated by a female academic, suffering from writer’s block and the genesis of the plot in each is an attempted suicide (no spoilers there, I promise!). It is a surprisingly uplifting and feelgood read, despite the aforementioned themes. It’s set in Newport, Rhode Island which I am now dying to visit.
No One Saw a Thing by Andrea Mara: I noticed in the credits of All Her Fault that it was “based on the book by Andrea Mara”. I googled this person and was shocked and impressed to see that she is not only from Dublin but that that the book the Chicago-set TV show was based on, was originally set in Dublin. It turned out, of course, that I was the last person to ever hear of Andrea Mara. My mother certainly knew of her and when I was home, I picked this book off her bookshelf. I took it, despite my mother’s warning that she strongly advised against it because it is about a 6 year old girl going missing on the Tube. Indeed, being separated from the kids as the subway doors close (too quickly imho) is one of my biggest fears and one I came very close to recently. The 4 year old and I got on the train and turned round to see the doors closing while the terrified looking 6 year old - and her scooter - were outside looking in. Thankfully, a fast-reacting man beside us prised the doors open, just enough for her to squeeze in. Anyway, that’s the premise of the book! A page-turner! I stayed up till midnight reading it. Though I did wake up the next morning wondering: why do I feel so uneasy? Oh yes, I’m reading a book about a missing child.
Free New York
1. Museum of Math
I spotted on the NYC for free Instagram page that the National Museum of Mathematics had a free play session (usual cost for one adult and 2 kids $65) one Sunday, so we registered and showed up. Except! Except! Except! If anything is free in New York, there will be a line. Even if it is on a frosty morning in January. Even if it is into a Math Museum. The line was soooo long. Around the block. I had no faith in my kids’ ability to remain unbored but it was me who had trouble entertaining myself. “Do you want to leave? It’s ok if we leave the line now. We can go to the Lego store across the road!”. But they were weirdly committed. Even when I could tell they fully grasped how long we would be in line. They looked at eachother in delight as another family bit the dust (exited the line). God I was so bored. We were in line a full hour before we got in! But once we were in, we stayed three hours! It was so fun! I rode a bike with square wheels!! Afterwards, we got hot dogs and chips from the van outside and ate our tea on a bench outside Madison Square Park until we heard rustling behind us and looked round and saw a rat!
Only a 40 minute wait outside this time. Once inside, the kids enjoyed the concert and I sat down and ate crisps from the café.
Culturepass!!!
Culturepass is something, I feel I could be insulting your intelligence by telling you about but so many people don’t know what it is when you say it. Basically, with a New York Public Library card, you can go online on Culture Pass and book free entry to a range of exhibits in museums and galleries. On a quick look just now I see it includes access to Wollman skating rink. I checked it out for the first time and booked us (free) tickets for the Brooklyn Kids museum on Martin Luther King Junior Day (Usual cost for one adult and two kids: $45). We arrived and the kids squealed “There’s no line!”
The kids are off school for two weeks from tomorrow and I also will be taking a much-needed two week break from newsletter writing. I hope you have a lovely Easter and find lots of eggs and drink lots of tea with buttered hot cross buns. See you in April!
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