The lessons of New York’s carnage

I am seriously thinking of visiting a shrink (just kidding) as I now have definite proof that I am crazy. Instead of remaining in England and going to Badminton for the Duke of Beaufort’s 70th birthday bash, and catching a glimpse of the love of my life, Iona McLaren, I find myself in a rotten place where a small headline in the New York Post announces: ‘16 shot during bloody day in NYC.’ All I can say is that the Bagel’s salad days are over. The streets are awash with homeless druggies who are violent and perform their functions right out in the open, even on Park Avenue. Random violence is an everyday happening on the subway, and unhinged whackos shout at women and children when they’re not attacking them. So commonplace are shootings that a man who shot ten people last April on the subway is no longer even mentioned. Creeps attack mostly women or the aged in all five boroughs, and if they’re arrested they are often immediately let go following the recent no-bail laws.

And yet here I am, a Bagel bum, braving loons all day and night in a crappy city instead of being at Badminton – and for what? Why leave a peaceful London full of friends to come over here and have to look over my shoulder as I walk the streets. Once upon a time, walking up and down Fifth, Madison and Park Avenues was a pleasure. They were packed with beautiful women dressed to the nines doing their shopping and whatever else women used to do before #MeToo turned them into aggressive harridans. (They look different too these days, tights making them resemble female Soviet shot-putters of the 1950s.)