Queens

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

The flight from Dublin is delayed. I’m up front in a pod when it arrives, but I don’t need to sleep and the film I choose I don’t want to watch. The food is good, though, three courses with wine and a whisky to close.

Seven hours later I get off at JFK. There’s no longer enough time to get into the Bronx and back before my next flight, only there is, because thunderstorms have delayed flights all over the USA.

Two hours late we board the flight to San Diego. We wait on stand for awhile before pushing back to join the queue of planes waiting for the runway. Before long, we get taken out of the queue because our flight plan has been rerouted via Carolina, which means we need more fuel.

We get to San Diego just before 2 am, well over 4 hours late. I get a taxi to my Airbnb, but the security code has expired. Mine host wakes on my call and gives me a replacement code that issues three keys that eventually get me into the house.