Manhattan!

It’s faintly liberating to finally post a personal picture having avoided it for so long.

I can’t say I’m ever going to do a Liz Hurley and have a stream of swimwear shots week after week; frankly I wouldn’t want to be responsible for anyone not fully digesting their breakfast; suffice to say, I’m too old. But maybe just the occasional one fully dressed top to toe, so you can put a face to a name. I hope that’s ok.

Now back to matters of importance! At 20:43 last night our mobile phones went into crisis mode as the New York alert system delivered a siren so loud we jumped up from watching the highly addictive ‘The Crown’. A tornado was apparently on its way.

Short, sharp and violently it hit us. At 49 floors up, the windows shuddered, the wind raged and howled, sheets of rain and hail were horizontally fired at us and below in the light of the street lamps, we could see the boughs of enormous trees, still heavily laden with their autumn leaves being violently thrown from side to side. Rubbish, detritus, road cones and plastic barriers were being tumbled and scattered down the streets with force. And not a person was in sight. Manhattan was understandably deserted.

We couldn’t hear the television through the noise, so instead of trying to resume the dramas within Buckingham Palace, the Colonel shouted to me about the marvellous engineering and structural strength of the building and the way in which glass is made for exactly these conditions; I wondered at what point we should hide in the bath and put a mattress on top of us, but perhaps that’s only if there’s a bomb … my mind was clearly befuddled.

Twenty minutes later and it was all over. I returned to The Crown with relief and a stiff drink; the grizzly, drizzly rain and weather at Balmoral Castle seemingly quite clement in comparison.

So I’m having a quiet day today, writing, cooking and drinking copious quantities of tea, alongside peaking a look at some of my swimwear beach photos from the summer. Nope, I ain’t never posting any of those! Some things are best kept to oneself!

Katie x