The sun's out! Shockingly, it's warm and sunny in London. We may have a summer after all. Had a quiet weekend of shopping, spring cleaning, and laying about. Watched a fantastic Danish comedy lastnight - En kort en lang. A gay comedy that might be the first "gay" film that didn't make me want to throw something at the screen! It's the story of a gay couple who are thrown into crisis when one of them has an affair with the other's sister-in-law. It all ends happily and without an ectasy overdose, AIDS death, techno soundtrack, or male hustlers. It did feature a cute-as-pie male lead, a fantastically designed flat, and a curious woman who smoked a pipe throughout.

Sad, but true. The long silence is because I'm freaked out about life right now. Organic has decided to close the London office and merge some people with Agency.com. I knew nothing about Agency.com and was unprepared for this big change. I know it's only a job, but when you're thousands of miles away from friends and family and you're about to see your team and colleagues scattered to the winds and when you have no idea who will give you a work visa in this job climate -- well, it's overwhelming. I stormed. I sobbed uncontrollably. I sulked. I stayed home for two days overwhelmed by sadness. Organic was more than a job -- it was a full blown, emotionally dependent relationship and then suddenly, it was no more.



With the passing of time, however, I've become hopeful and even anxious about what's coming next. Will it be Agency? They've seemed sincere in their interest. They're not terribly dissimilar to Organic. It would be safe and familiar and more of the same and maybe just a bit better. But am I not being courageous enough? Should I be taking a bigger step in a new direction for my career? Am I spending to much time making too much noise in my own head? Will these hives ever go away?



What's sweet are the former colleagues who've come out of the woodwork to wish us well. Say what you want about Organic (and some day I will say it all) it brought together some very tremendously smart and interesting people.

The English used to dance around maypoles celebrating Spring and fertility and hopeful love and all of that 18th century rot. They would frolic in fields and drink toasts to bounty and taste the first fruits. Now they board up windows and call out the police and protect themselves from the anarchists who take to the streets to protest McDonalds and banks and anyone in formal business attire. It's a strange day in the capital. Happy May First.



They expect 400 anarchists. And thousands of bored slackers. Really, couldn't we learn anything about riots and protests from the French? Shake it up at least? Paralyse the nation? Viva 1968, this is what happens after post-modernism -- press coverage and Starbuck breaks. They waited for the light to turn before crossing Cambridge Circus, for fuck's sake.



Le Pen. Cripes. Anti-semitism and anti-immigration are sweeping Europe. A nutcase gets into the French presidential race and a synagogue in North London is vandalised for the first time in 40 years. What a nightmare. I blame Bush, simply because I haven't heard him blamed for anything recently. I like spite. It feels good. I don't like the Right.



Radio Four reported that the American Jewish establishment has joined forces with the Chirstian Coalition to influence the nation's policy on Israel. Talk about dancing with the devil...



I dream about work now. Haven't slept right in four days. If I look away from my monitor my eyes blur like they were smeared with vaseline. I took a sleeping pill and slept for 10 hours and now realise the depths to which I'm wrecked -- I dreamt about work in slow motion.



I would go home and watch all of the hoopla on the telly but there's the final wine class to get through with an impossible taste test I have no hope of passing and ITV Digital has gone out of business, leaving me with nothing more than the terrestrial channels everyone else gets -- lots of BBC. ITV went belly up today after realising they had gotten themselves into an impossible multi-million pound contract with the Premier League (that's soccer for you yanks) and have left thousands of people without digital television. Sounds tragic, but as the BBC is currently inundated with gardening and pet hospital programmes, digital cable was a necessity. Documentary on the Queen's jubilee tour to Southampton anyone? Or maybe billiard highlights? I better take up reading.



I flirted with a boy in a bookstore last weekend. Then realised that I had the recent Jamie Oliver book in my hand. How embarrassing. (He's become passe, if you didn't know.) The boy was buying a holiday book. I was jealous.



I also developed a rash after eating Moroccan food. My palms went blood red. It was like a dream.



It's trying to be Spring. We had two warm days, but its reverted to its cold, rainy self and we get through chilly days with wet socks and pale, glum expressions. It sounds like I'm looking forward to Summer, but I'm not. We become inundated with tourists, the Tube becomes impossibly hot, it becomes prohibitively expensive to travel and it is reminding me that a few of my friends are leaving the UK to go back to the US for good. That makes me sad.



Make an effort to make friends, make an effort to find romance, make an effort to better yourself, make an effort at work. Make an effort, make an effort. Or sit at home and watch telly. Oh wait, make an effort to get cable. Just muddle through.



My MP3 player is on a Lilith Fair kick. I think I'm becoming lesbian, but I don't have the shoes for it.



The anti-capitalist march just walk past. 200 white youths with Nike shoes, Gap clothing and Jansport backpacks followed by tens of police in riot gear. This is why we boarded up our windows?



I'm going to get a coffee. Maybe I'll taunt them with pound notes.

Has it really been a month since I've updated this? I'll recap briefly. The Queen Mum died. Everyone agreed she was "indomitable" including those who probably had no idea what "indomitable" meant. She was a gracious brave woman, but let's not also forget that she lived in ridiculous luxury all her life. Still it does Britain credit that people are queuing for 8+ hours to pay last respects to their dead queen.



Robert came to visit again. He wears me out, even though I greatly enjoy his visit. We did the usual drinking about town and it was lovely as always to see Mark. But I'm afraid the stress of my job has made me a less than gracious host. I'm exhausted most of the time and preoccupied the rest of it.



So I joined a ridiculously expensive gym, The Third Space, in the hopes of getting in shape. It's going slowly, but so far so good and I do feel slightly more able to handle my life.



I also bought a new iMac. I couldn't resist the lure of the beautifully compact, super-powered machine. Let's face it. The new Apple products are addictive.

Inspired by the opportunity to see Patti LuPone at Carnegie Hall and the cheap airline tickets and the gloomy grey London weather I hopped on a plane for five days of play in New York City. It had been three years since I had been and wanted to feel the excitement and heady joy of being a tourist again.



I arrived early in the evening and after checking into the fantastically japonais Roger Williams Hotel set out to wonder the streets of midtown. It was bitterly cold and it was getting dark (or as dark as Manhattan ever gets) but the shops and restaurants were just starting to throb and I was happily preoccupied by the parade of cosmopolitan businessmen on their way home or out. Businessmen seemed to come in two variations -- the youthful agressor with his Abercrombie and Fitch profile and poorly fitted suit and the slightly wary, swarthy I've-made-it-and-am-trying-to-enjoy-it-in-my-mid-thirties man. I lapped them up euqally (well, visually anyway).



Thursday, I walked for most of the day until it was time to see Patti LuPone at Carnegie Hall. The hall is impressive, but I hadn't realised its height. I had to climb five flights of stairs to sit at dizzying heights above the auditorium. The acoustics are amazing, but from my seat Patti was merely a dot on the stage. Her concert included songs from roles she could have, should have, would have played. It was fantastic to hear her re-work famous Broadway songs -- from Don't Rain on My Parade to the fantastically difficult Trouble from the Music Man. Watching her sing both parts (simultaneously and comically) from West Side Story's A Boy Like That has to be one of the very best things I've ever seen. As a surprise, the soprano Audra McDonald joined her on stage and they recreated the infamous Judy Garland/Barbra Streisand "Happy Days are Here Again" as a valentine to New York to tumultuous applause. At the end of the show she dropped her mike and serenaded the crowd, her voice easily and beautifully reaching the very back row. It was definitely worth the trip.



Walking around on Friday (well, walking from shop to shop on Friday) I was struck by the wide, clean avenues of Manhattan that allow for stunning long-distance views in the midst of a densely populated city. Manhattan opens and arcs to the horizon. London cramps and closes down on you. It may have been the shock of such undiluted sunlight, but the city seem to be gleaming, even if the shadow of 9/11 still hangs in the air. I won't make generalisations about the emotional state of New York, but you feel it in and hear it in the voices of people who live there. The city's scarred, but graciously recovering.



I had the opportunity to meet up with Daniel Leonard, a dear friend from college who seems to have the annoying ability to not age. He took me to the Folk Art museum where we toured a most bizarre show of the work of Henry Darger. Darger was a reclusive scavenger who probably had emotional disabilities and who obsessively traced and painted hundreds of drawings of doll-like girls and boys to illustrate his 15,000 page fantasy about a war of good and bad based loosely on the Civil War. It was all found in his apartment when he died in 1973. The figures in his work were all traced from popular publications of the 50s and 60s but are all compositionally striking. One wonders, however, if this fantastical material was found in 2002 instead of 1973, would we consider him a strange and daring folk artist or a pervert?



After the museum I begged Daniel to take me to a Mexican restaurant -- the one thing which London lacks -- and we gorged ourselves in a Hells Kitchen Restaurant, eating so much that it took several hours of walking before I felt well again. We had drinks in the East Village and he went off on a date and I went to the theatre to laugh until I cried at "Noises Off" -- starring, who else, Patti LuPone and a beautiful Peter Gallagher. I tried desperately to appears as if I belonged in a Chelsea bar, but after a couple of drinks and glares from the steroid-riddled he-bots I gave up and left.



Sunday Daniel and i brunched in the Upper East Side and went to see the Brazilian Art show at the Guggenheim (who've inexplicably painted the interior to this fantastic museum black which gave the impression of seeing art in a seedy video arcade and not a world-famous Frank Lloyd Wright building. Hours later I was back on a plane (sitting several rows behind Lourdes, Madonna's daughter) to London, poorer, tired, and walked out.



I happen to like New York. It's a big grown-up playland with expensive trinkets and beautiful crowds and curious sights. It's not home, but I like it.

Princess Margaret, younger sister to the Queen, died on Saturday after a long illness. She was known in euqal parts for her glamorous beauty and her rather vicious wit. She could be cold, gracious, haughty, rebellious, and distant but could never quite find happiness balancing love and her sense of duty. Constitutionally she had no place or duties and seemed to have battled that in her life. She was 71.



Saturday was the Pop Idol climax. For weeks, we've heard very little but the Pop Idol television competition -- where people audition to be viciously cut down by rather nasty judges. The winner won a record contract and the last two in the running were the topic of most conversations. Will is 23, posh, a bit of a queen. Gareth is 17, an angelic-faced boy who worked to overcome a very serious stutter. They both sang quite well, but may be destined to suffer the same fate as the insufferably insipid Pop Stars winners, Hear'say. Well that's really more than this whole thing deserved, though it's worth noting that more people voted in this competition than in the last general election.

Jubilee Day. Today is the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's ascension to the throne. In 1000 years of British monarchs only five reigned for more than 50 years. So I think queens everywhere should celebrate. The mood of the country is mixed -- some refusing outright to celebrate, others mindful of the considerable amount of public service she's done over the 50 years, still others happy for any reason to get to the pub. I believe that the monarchy is a powerful part of the British culture and the future (Wills) certainly looks golden.