by Chrissy Iley.
Last October Sting invited my mother and I to the first performance of the music from The Last Ship, his upcoming musical. It was exciting and overwhelming. I hadn’t travelled with my mother since I was about 12. No, that’s not true, I’d gone to Las Vegas with her and my dad and then gone on to meet an old friend in upstate New York and had such a dramatic row on the plane we weren’t speaking by the time we got to the old family friend who couldn’t work out what was going on.
Planes and small rooms are stressful. Sting is relaxing and kind. The musical set in the North East where we are from would be nostalgic and piquant.
My mother was so excited she fell over her suitcase and broke her wrist in two places the night before we were to travel. Randomly I moved the trip to April when I thought the weather would be better and hoping Sting might still be around. He wasn’t but we were going anyway.
They’d had snow the week before we arrived and it was still going to be cold. We launched the trip on Virgin Atlantic. My mother has such good memories of them. I know the service has ‘changed’ a lot but this trip got off to a flying start, called an upgrade. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for anything in my life. My mother is not particularly mobile and she couldn’t contain her excitement when her seat turned into a bed. She loved the food in the lounge. She had her first cosmopolitan. She got cramp and the chief flight attendant brought her tonic water because it contained quinine. Indeed she and my mum were having a good old chat. She was kind and talked about her wedding, which is going to be later this year. It is going to be held somewhere my mother knew all about, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.
I had a vegetable curry, which was an utter delight. The best thing I have ever tasted on Virgin. I abandoned Virgin for such a long time but they seem to have come right back on form, certainly food wise, and the kindness of staff wise.
We were to stay in the Waldorf Astoria. I had planned a deal at the Soho Grand because I love the area and you can get a really big room. My mother had wanted the Waldorf, it sounded better. Indeed the lobby is enormous and stately with people having their photos taken besides some historic clock. It is one of the few hotels in New York that does a room with two double beds, which is useful to know.
The room itself was disappointing, dark and with nowhere to put things. Imagine two women sharing a bathroom and there’s no shelf, just the top of the sink and a tiny occasional table. The closet was small and before long it was filled. We asked for extra hangers, they took an hour and a half to arrive. In the bar downstairs there were more cosmopolitans and tempura prawns which were good but expensive. The next day we packed in lots of theatre and lots of Bloomingdales. We went to The Plaza where my mother stayed in the Sixties and had afternoon tea. She asked me why we weren’t staying there. Because it’s $700 a night! About treble what we were paying.
After a day at Bloomingdales with a 20 per cent all over the shop sale and various ladies in the cosmetic department who became my mother’s best friend and gave her extra free gifts for all the Tory Burch, Clinique and Estelle Lauder she bought.
She’d left her winter coat in London by mistake but she now had three free Bloomingdales scarves that were mini pashminas. That evening she was tired and wanted to eat in the hotel, the Bull & Bear Steak House. She likes steaks and it purported to be somewhat fancy, a New York landmark.
I had a pomegranate cosmopolitan which tasted delicious but came in a martini glass with a giant crack. I couldn’t find anybody to replace it so I had to go up to the bar myself and ask for a new one. Maybe they thought I was an alcoholic and wanted more alcohol because the next one came pure vodka. I sent that back too. By which time my mother was looking horrified at her shrimp cocktail. I had tried to warn her that American shrimp cocktails come with tomato horseradish sauce not pink mayonnaise. She doesn’t like spice so she didn’t eat it.
Afterwards she had surf and turf because she remembered she liked it when she used to visit America with my dad. I had some crab cakes that were delicious but the bill was over $200. Next to us there was a table of men with shaved heads dressed in orange. No, not Guantanamo bay escapees but monks. They ordered the onion soup without checking if it was chicken stock. What were they doing eating at such an expensive restaurant? Perhaps it was a landmark after all.
My mother loved the other hotel restaurant called Oscars, which had an enormous breakfast buffet and a man making omelettes customised to order.
The staff there were incredibly helpful and tended her every need while I sat in another corner interviewing Stacie Passon, the writer director of the movie Concussion. ‘Why doesn’t your mum join us?’ she said. Because I don’t want to have to explain to her what a lesbian is – the movie is about a suburban contented woman in a happy lesbian couple who is hit on the head with her son’s baseball and starts feeling the need to change her life radically. She becomes a high-end belle de jour for women only.
If you don‘t have high expectations of the Waldorf Astoria being fancy you’ll find it friendly. The reception staff and the theatre ticket lady, who is British, were all excellent. And although the rooms were reasonably priced, everything else in the hotel isn’t. You pay luxury prices for average fare.
On our final day we went for breakfast at Tiffany’s. Well, went to Tiffany on Fifth Avenue and had a snack somewhere near. It had been a huge bonding experience where my mum was forced to meet my friends and drink cosmopolitans.
We were back on Virgin Atlantic who took great care of us. She had a great time.