High life | 4 June 2011

Taki lives the High life

New York

Summertime and, as the song tells us, ‘the livin’ is easy’. The temperature is in the nineties, girls’ dresses are at their flimsiest, love is in the air, and sex is everywhere, so what else can one wish for? This is my last week in the Bagel, and as always I am reluctant to leave. I’ve trained diligently, played less hard than usual, read a lot and even managed to identify cedars, poplars, willows and cherry trees during my daily walks in the park.

When it gets very hot, the city takes on a celluloid air, with old movies about the place playing again and again, like a rondo, in my memory. James Stewart in Rear Window, Fred and Ginger in white tie and tiara dancing away on a glamorous roof top, Woody Allen romancing someone far too young for him down by the East River.