High life | 24 November 2016

 New York

  If only my wordsmith friend Jeremy Clarke had been with me. What fun he’d have had with the ungallant thing I did last week. Jeremy’s writing thrives on such occasions, but alas he’s in the land of cheese and impressionism. I had just finished lunch with my friend Alex Sepkus, a designer of unique jewellery, and a Catholic priest whose name I will not reveal in view of what followed. After all, the Catholic Church loves sinners, but hooliganism is discouraged. I was walking up Fifth Avenue, which was packed to the gills with shoppers, hawkers and tourists. When I got to 56th Street, it was blocked off by armed police and steel barriers. There was a bottleneck to end all bottlenecks as protesters screamed and shouted abuse at the black-glass rock that is Trump Tower. One woman, who was carrying a sign and looking like a 21st-century Madame Defarge, was by far the loudest. Never have I seen such hate, her eyes slits of loathing for the orange man high above, lording it over the mob. I don’t know what came over me but just as I brushed passed her, I politely asked her if she also gave blowjobs. Without missing a beat, she swung the sign trying to nail it on my head, but missed. A cop saw her and tried to arrest her. But when he saw me laughing, he thought better of it and simply told her to behave. I got lost in the crowd, but for about a minute she forgot all about the Donald up high and screamed bloody murder against the poor little Greek boy. Some of the tourists ogling the black tower stopped and demanded to know who the well-dressed man was who had caused the protester to go so bananas. ‘She mistook me for Trump,’ is all I said.