New York Pt 2

I have a very bad habit of not blogging as much as I want to as I think that some things simply do not merit blogging about, but maybe they do. New York was fantastic. Everything I expected it to be as usual. I shopped till I dropped. Made a note of all the latest designer bags, bought the ones I could afford and mentally tagged the ones I couldn’t afford and headed down to Canal street market, home of the designer knock off bags. I am sorry but I just can’t resist the place. It’s like a huge Aladdin’s cave filled with colourful sparkly jingly rubbish but if you dig hard and deeply enough -into the various back street caverns and cars you get dragged into - (your stomach in your mouth I must say), you come up with some amazingly real bags, everything as it should be, down to the lining and certificate.

I don’t know how my bag and shoe obsession quite came about but its a habit I like to feed and though I have some real high end bags I just can't justify having to pay thousands of pounds for all of them especially as some of them are only in fashion for five minutes. But really, it’s ridiculous some of them I have never even carried, but hey I like beautiful things across the board, from art to furniture to good china and glassware. I don’t think I am alone in this and maybe its just part of being female. Besides it doesn’t matter how much you weigh - bags and shoes always fit:->

The best part of the trip apart from having oga with me was the Colour Purple. I remember when I first looked on line the tickets were pretty pricey so we decided to go to a discount ticket booth on the day of the show for some cut price tickets. We timed it to get there about half an hour earlier so we could be first in line at the booth but we soon discovered everyone else had the same idea and the queue was 2 blocks long. With a heavy heart we decided to go to the theatre and pay full price and justified it as a worthy expense. I kissed oga and left him to work his magic as I ran back to Macys to continue my shopping (God I sound so shallow but I have to buy up everything I can as I just remind myself I am not going back to England after this trip. Instead I’ll be going back home to Lagos where walking into a shop fully stocked with everything you need at a reasonable is just not an option and I'm running out of unmentionables at the minute and I'll be damned if I’m going to Tejuosho market to try them on over my t-shirt as all my Igbo brothers leer at me (whilst at the same time trying to sell me material).

I get back from Macys some four hours later to find oga tucked up in bed watching a football match and enjoying his down time as he should be, but how far with the tickets now? You know I really want to see that show! eh? .. You should have thought of that before you ran off to Macys, he replied without looking up from the tube. Haba honey look at the pretty things I bought for you now I responded (actually they were for me but you get the drift). Anyway he kept me wondering and stressing for half an hour before he whipped the tickets out of his pocket with a flourish. That’s my man. I was over the moon. Now this would be a really memorable trip.

As we arrived at the theatre we saw the same people that were queuing up in the afternoon to buy tickets from the discount booth now queuing for the show. Oga said he did not know what the wahala was about as he had gotten the tickets from the theatre for $29.00! I wanted to see the show so badly I didn’t mind sitting in the rafters but to my amazement we had the best seats in the house in the front row. It was so close I could see the hairs on Chaka’s arms as she belted out songs from the play, which was incredibly soul warming and moving and made you think how easily you can waste your gift of life by thinking you couldn’t amount to much but even then God is faithful and can bring you out of very bad situations with great reward. This show is a definite one to see when in New York.(Just heard that it is actually going to close this month due to lack of ticket sales. Can you believe it?)

We left on a high but decided we couldn’t take in another humongous meal at a restaurant, so decided to go into a deli type shop opposite our hotel that we had noticed. I wished we had gone to a restuarant immediately we opened the door. I had never seen so much food under one roof in my whole life, there was a sandwich bar, a dessert bar, a cheese bar, a seafood bar, Chinese, Japanese and American food then there was the breakfast bar with every type of breakfast you can imagine including fruit and twenty different kinds of muffins. And surrounding all that were boxes and boxes of cereals, drinks, milk - lo fat, high fat, no fat, slow fat, chocolates, packets of biscuits... I could go on. Now by this time I was beginning to feel a tad sick and a bit disoriented (IT REMINDED ME OF THE MACYS SHOE FLOORS. IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH. SENSORY OVERLOAD.

I can't remember what oga got but I left with an apple and went upstairs to our room incredibly hungry, made a very bad cup of American tea, had my apple and decided to put on an impromptu Victoria’s Secret fashion show for oga (the only way to distract him from football) to show him what one can purchase in a four hour shop at Macys. Needless to say he was distracted. Oh the joy. I can’t wait to go again.