Dialogue No.1

- How long did you live in the States?

- We were there for two years, in New York.

- And did you enjoy it?

- Oh, tremendously. We had a wonderful time.

- And what we liked best was that we could work and still lead a normal life. I mean the shops are open till 10 o’clock.

- All shops?

- Yes, everything. Food shops, Chemists.

- Even a huge department store called Gamble’s on the 86^th Street was open till 9 o’clock.

- And some supermarkets are open 24 hours a day! Most shops don’t open as early as in England. Well, they don’t open until about 10 or 11 in the morning.

- Yes, that’s right.

- Because they all work much later. And everything is open on Sundays.

- And the holidays. The public holidays are much shorter than here. And in the States only the banks are shut. Everything else stays open. It makes life much easier. You can do what you like and when you like.

- I see.. em…Do you think New York is as cosmopolitan as London?

- Oh, yes. But it’s not as mixed. Nationalities stay in their own areas. Like there’s the Russian Section.

- The German Section. We were I German Town. York Town, which is called German Town. And there was a road with German shops all German speaking.

- I think the major difference was the height of the place. Everything was up. We lived on the 29^th floor.

- Yes, and I worked on the 63d floor.

- Yes. But I like heights. And of course, everything is faster. And the people are much ruder.

- Oh? In what ways?

- Well, pushing in the street, fights about getting on a bus. People don’t queue as we do in England. And of course, the taxi-drivers…ha-ha-ha. New York taxi-drivers must be the rudest in the world. Americans themselves are very friendly, but the taxi-drivers never speak and they don’t seem they know where everything is. I asked one of them to take me to the Guggenheim Museum once and he was really angry with me, because he had never heard of it.

- He… angry with you?

- Yeh…

- Are all American taxi-drivers like that?

- Oh, yes. Well, in New York, anyway, not so much in other places. When we were in California, it was very different.

- Yes, I think we were aware that New York is quite a dangerous place. We never had any problems ourselves at all, but when there was a crime, it was horrendous.

- Oh, yes. The subways are unusable. They’re dirty, uncomfortable.

- Did you make many friends?

- Wow! That’s what interesting, really. We made more friends in our two years there, than we may have after two years of living back here in London.

- Truth.

- I think Americans are more open. They, you know, they speak their minds, so if they don’t like something, they actually will tell you directly. Not like the British. We might think one thing and say another. So, maybe, the British are ruder, than the Americans.

(Tapescript “Jerry is talking about London”)