Norse Atlantic! Weirdly large mugs! Yet another great TV series! Sperm!

A vaguely NY special, this week...

I was a bit nervous about going back to New York last week. I went in April with my ex (I know, spoiled) and it was a very swoony, romantic trip, so I wondered if this time it would make me sad. I’m often prone to wistfully thinking ‘this time X weeks/months ago I was doing such-and-such’, and I didn’t want to spend my trip there this time weeping in Central Park like a character from a period drama. If we want to be all therapy about this, it’s called an ‘anchor’, apparently - something that stirs up or causes a reaction to a past experience.

Turns out, it was an exorcism. In a good way! Actually, going back - even for two days on a work trip - was a ball. But let’s start with Norse Atlantic, shall we?

I moaned and carped on about BA here a couple of weeks ago, and then last week mentioned I was flying to NY on this ‘budget’, no-frills airline which has taken off (ha ha) I think really since the pandemic. As the name implies, it’s a Norwegian business but flies direct from London to various places inc NY, Miami, Vegas and Cape Town.

It’s not unlike flying EasyJet across the Atlantic. Planes are perfectly fine, but you have to buy anything you want onboard - earphones simply to be able to watch anything on the screen in the seat in front of you are $2, blankets and pillows are extra if you’re on a night flight, as is food. ‘Do we not get fed?’ shrieked an aghast American woman beside me, not long after we took off from London. She consoled herself by buying a cheese sandwich and some chips which came to something quite wild like $22. More sighing beside me.

But actually, it was great: on time (on the way out), clean, comfortable enough, efficient. V much recommend. Also, Norse isn’t setting itself up as the world’s favourite airline so you come to it without any expectations. And not being automatically served drinks and food is somehow easier. I stashed a Pret sandwich in my bag, did my Brooke Shields homework (I was going out there to interview her, and she was magnificent), and watched six episodes of the show I bang on about below without being disturbed by a trolley trundling up and down. And that’s quite enough about airlines for now because otherwise I’ll start to sound like one of those slight nerds who writes incredibly detailed online reviews of seat 44B.

After that, 48 hours in NYC. I stuck a post up on Instagram last week saying I had a free morning while there so what was the ONE thing I should do in that time, and promised I’d report back for those going soon. The various replies included things like walk the High Line, go to the Met, go to the park and so on. Various people said go to The Frick which I LOVE and have been to a few times before, but sadly it’s currently closed for a renovation and not open until the spring. Of all the suggestions, there were three particularly brilliant ones I’d never heard of, so I’m going to stick ‘em in here:

1. Do an art tour of the UN. Everyone bangs on about the galleries in NY but did you know you could do this? I did not. HERE’S a link for tickets. They launched it last year I think, and according to the follower who messaged me it’s GREAT. I can imagine - you get to go into the inner sanctum and check out what they have on the walls. They only do it every other Thursday so check the dates and plan accordingly.

2. Go to the New York Historical Society, a museum on the Upper West Side, where they currently have an exhibition called Pets and the City (see what they did there?).

3. Go to the American Museum of Natural History and see the minerals room. This used to be a very fusty room of boring old rocks, according to my source, but reopened in 2021 after a massive refurb and is now spell-binding. Even if you’re not into rocks.

Being more into history than rocks, I went to the Pets and the City exhibition on Friday morning (next to the American Museum of Natural History) and it was ADORABLE. A visual history of New Yorkers’ relationships with various pets - inc cats, dogs, parrots, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits, even a tiger - over the past 200 years. It included various paintings of wan-faced 19th century children with their pet lambs and squirrels; old photos of children driving pony carts through Central Park; dogs who helped during 9/11 and details of a Boston terrier called Sergeant Stubby, who ‘served’ with an American infantry regiment for 18 months during World War One, saving his men from mustard gas attacks. Afterwards, he was awarded the Purple Heart for bravery, and his taxidermied remains are in the Smithsonian, if you happen to be that way. Also, did you know that the word pet came from the French, petit? I didn’t. On until April, if you’re keen. The kind of exhibition that most tourists won’t bother with, but it was a very sweet and charming way to spend an hour or so.

Also, I walked there and back through the park and I didn’t weep! Instead, I saw two raccoons, took in the colours, and came over all philosophical. Some things in life are meant to be for a bit; some are meant for longer. I’ve come across so many break-up cliches in the past two months, but the thing about cliches is that they tend to be true. It felt like a release, actually, to be back in that park by myself.

FOOD wise, I also had the most insanely delicious dinner at Claud, in the East Village, and the best burger in the city (so claims a NY friend) at the Hotel Chelsea, in their brasserie, where Benedict Cumberbatch was also having lunch on Friday. He is TALL, is my main observation. Google tells me that he’s 6ft but I suspect they’re lying and he’s taller.

Unfortunately, Norse Atlantic slightly let me down on the way home because we were delayed FIVE HOURS. This made me quite sad, see below. Although tbf this was more Gatwick’s fault (the bomb scare) than theirs, and a very kind friend basically Deliveroo’ed the pillow and blanket to the actual bar we were in* before I left for the airport on the basis that Norse make you buy them anyway. This meant I was the person who struggled through security at JFK on Friday evening juggling a bag, a full-sized pillow and a giant fleecy blanket. But they did make the night flight bearable. (*Delivery culture in America is now hilariously mad but I’m writing about it for my Tel col this weekend.)

Overall, though, don’t dismiss Norse if you’re looking for a flight any time soon. I think they’re great.

(I tell you what’s less great: American airport immigration. I don’t want to come off all Trump, but I spent 90 minutes in the JFK passport queue on the way in because they only had a couple of desks open. It was painful. As was Miami’s passport control the other day. Say what you like about British airports, but getting back home has - recently, anyway - been a dream. When I landed at Gatwick on Saturday morning, I was genuinely through in under a minute thanks to the egates. Same not long ago at Heathrow. So we can do some things right.

And that REALLY is enough about air travel. Next week, something else.)

Picture of the week

Granted, this isn’t going to win any photography competitions, and it’s going to make me seem a hundred years old, but what is going on with mugs? Why do we need to be so hydrated? Has any generation in HISTORY been as hydrated as we must be now, everyone lugging around these giant Stanley mugs?

If this is all new you to, read THIS NEW YORKER PIECE which explains the dizzying rise of the Stanley mug. In essence, they’re incredibly fashionable, became incredibly fashionable thanks to TikTok (I think?) and are what all the cool kids carry around with them. I’ve vaguely noticed growing numbers of people clutching them, but I hadn’t paid much attention until last week. Poor things must have some sort of UTI, I assumed.

And then, last Friday, I went into a Target in New York to buy my 34825th lip balm, and noticed this entire shelf of them. The biggest ones were 62oz mugs, or nearly two litres. TWO LITRES. That is your entire day’s recommended liquid intake. Where are you going all day without a tap or other supply of beverage? The moon? A padded cell?

Aren’t they incredibly heavy, too? And if you’re lugging around that much liquid, sipping coyly on the Stanley FlowState™️ straw from time to time, don’t you need to stay very close to a bathroom? Down with single-use water bottles and all that, but is a GIANT beaker the solution? And what kind of handbag is that going to fit into? Look, here’s a recent review of the Stanley Quencher H2.0 FlowState Tumbler on Amazon:

I bought this for my best friends birthday and she loves it! The only issue is it does leak sometimes, but that is the case with all stanley's. Also it is a little inconvenient to carry around, but I would still recommend!

Eh? A portable mug that leaks sometimes and isn’t convenient to carry around? I can’t help thinking the Stanley mug begs more questions than it answers.

Recommendation of the week

Ignore this poster. This poster is AWFUL. This poster makes Say Nothing look like some sort of superhero show in which this green-eyed girl girl is soon to transform into a sticky-fingered creature that can scale buildings.

It’s actually a new nine-part series about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a true story based on the book by the madly talented Patrick Rudden Keefe (who also wrote Empire of Pain, the Baillie Gifford winning book about the Sackler family and the oxycontin scandal).

It charts the journey of two young sisters who join the IRA, and I don’t want to say anything else if you don’t know the story, but it’s gripping. Although one of the reviewers recently said that it’s glamourised the conflict and I don’t wholly disagree. There was, for instance, a slightly embarrassing moment on the flight while watching it when I thought ‘Cor, the actor playing Gerry Adams isn’t bad, is he?’

Still, I think it’s excellent, and the two young actors playing the sisters are outstanding. It’s on Disney, which now means that platform has two big shows - Say Nothing, a show about the Troubles, and Rivals, a show about sex - that seem unlikely bedfellows for the company that made itself famous with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Dumbo.

Here’s the trailer if you’re interested:

Nonsense Ethical/moral and emotional conundrum of the week

While over there, I read the above story in The New York Times and have become oddly obsessed with it. You can read it HERE. In short, growing numbers of Israelis are choosing to freeze their sons’ sperm after they’ve been killed in action. It’s something that’s happened before, apparently, but in much greater numbers since last year’s October 7 attack, partly because the Israeli government declared around the same time that families who wanted to preserve their dead sons’ sperm no longer needed to obtain a court order before subjecting their sons’ corpses to the process. In fact, when the Israeli military notify a family about the death of their son, they now offer the process immediately as a matter of course.

Since last October, according to the Israeli health ministry, sperm has subsequently been retrieved from over 200 dead soldiers. If you want the technical details of how this happens, here you go: a small incision is made in the testicle and a slither of tissue is sliced off, from which live sperm cells can be extracted and frozen. It it best if this is done within 24 hours of death, but it can potentially be done up to 72 hours afterwards.

Oooof, isn’t this quite the minefield?

Consent is apparently available in some cases, but not all. As in, some soldiers have indicated that they would like to have children and their sperm should be frozen in the event that they’re killed, but not everyone leaves such clear instructions.

A BBC report HERE offers details about the first Israeli child born from a soldier's frozen sperm. After her son Keivan was killed in 2002, Rachel Cohen claimed that Keivan ‘spoke’ to her from a photograph and asked her to ‘make sure’ he had children.

I don’t wish to belittle anyone’s grief, but something about this makes me feel uncomfortable at best - for Keivan, and for his daughter Osher, who’s now 10, having been born to a woman who came forward after Rachel advertised for a potential mother and interviewed over 200 women.

Did Keivan really want children? Was it up to his mother? Or the woman who came forward and was eventually selected to have his child? Should the state be allowed to offer this? Is it burdening any future children born from this sperm with roughly 30 years of therapy?

‘I don’t care what Jonathan [would have] wanted,’ one of the mothers in the NYT piece is quoted as saying. ‘I just knew that I wanted him to stay with me.’ In the thick of grief, of course a parent would want that. But does that necessarily mean you get to keep a bit of his body with the view to making a fatherless-child from it? Eeesh, without clear consent from the man in question, I think it’s pretty dodgy territory.

There are similar goings-on in Ukraine, tbf, but from what I can gather various Ukrainian clinics and sperm banks are offering to freeze soldiers’ sperm before they head off to the front. Which is quite a crucial difference. The Ukrainians have chosen to go through this process while alive, as opposed to having material taken from them when dead.

In the unlikely event that I went off to war tomorrow and didn’t come back, would I want my family to use my genetic material to create a mini me? A human being brought into the world chiefly to console the family about the loss of someone else? Again, people bear grief in very different ways, but I don’t think it’s a terrific idea without clear consent first. And even then, well, it feels like a lot for any potential child down the line. Although there is always Dennis, in my case.

So there’s a Tuesday morning conundrum for you.

PS. Something cheerful to leave you with: the shortest day of the year is in just over three weeks. THREE AND A BIT WEEKS. That’s nothing! And then it starts to get light again! I reckon you can usually tell by the end of January that it’s ever so slightly lighter at the end of the day. I’ve inherited this obsession with light from my mum, who inherited it from her family. One of my great-aunt’s sons used to send her a bunch of flowers on the 21 December every year, not because it was her birthday or anything. Just to celebrate and point out that the days were now getting brighter again. Isn’t that lovely? So, hang on if you feel similar. Lighter days are (nearly) coming.