Three a.m.

It’s been too hot to sleep and at three o’clock in the morning you may as well go googling as do anything else. Things come to mind then that may escape you in the daylit hours. And one thing can lead to another in a way that time doesn’t allow when you’re supposed to be awake.

I had been reading  the late Helene Hanff‘s Letters from New York, a wonderful collection of her talks on BBC radio in the early 1980s. I love Helene Hanff’s work and somehow hadn’t managed to get hold of this book before. She makes my affection for New York grow larger and brighter. Apple of My Eye was one of my bibles before I finally got there. Every time I went to Central Park I felt her presence, and her guidance. She had given me the park over and over, and I had lapped it up until I could walk in her footsteps.

And here she was talking about the community of  appartment buildings, the pleasures and pains of (very very small) appartment life, the street life and parades and shops and characters and dogs  of NYC. Bliss.

So I googled her and I discovered that her apartment block is now called Charing Cross, and that there’s a plaque on the wall commemorating her and her achievements. I didn’t go there. I’ll put it on the list for that mythical next time, along with the Russian Tearoom, Prospect Park and a concert at the Lincoln Centre. I love a plaque.

I also discovered that people used write to her and say I’m coming to New York and will you sign my book and she would say come to my apartment building and get the doorman to buzz me and they would and she’s come down and sign the book and pose for photos and have a chat.

What a woman.

And then I found myself reading an interview with Bob’s son, Jakob Dylan. He was talking about what it was like, living with the fame and the fans of his father. How it would start as soon as they went out the door. And then he said that sometimes they’d visit New York, and eat with friends in Greenwich Village. After dinner they’d walk home to their hotel on Central Park. And Jakob – maybe 12 maybe 13 – would worry that someone would hurt his Dad. And that he was too little to help him or to save him.

What a thing.

I looked up the appartment we had stayed in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, because I was on a New York roll. They have a web page now. Such a great place. It almost hurt my heart to see it again, from this distance. I trawled on, across the East Village where we also stayed at the place with the shonky bathroom, Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, Bryant Park, the High Line……

What a time.

And then? And then I tried to sleep again and dream the winning lottery numbers.

I didn’t.