In which Layla and Roz go to the movies, shop for handbags, play ping pong and almost participate in The Moth

by Layla

I am peeved that the role of getting out of bed, getting dressed, walking to the corner shop and returning with coffee and bagels has definitely officially been designated a Layla role, but when yesterday started with the same routine, I knew it must be so. Just half a bagel though, because it only had to power us a few blocks down the road to the Grey Dog, our favourite breakfast joint last year. It was still as good. Cool, exposed brick surroundings. Huge coffees. Freshly squeezed orange juice. And amazing banana pancakes (me) and granola bowls (Roz). We read the New York Times over breakfast before venturing out in the drizzle.

Our next destination was the Sunshine cinema, a famous old art deco cinema on the Lower East Side which was screening Never Let Me Go, a film that is due to premiere in London next week. I'd been bitter we'd lost out in the ballot for the London opening night, and so was smug to settle down with a bag of popcorn in NYC to see the same film a week early. It was very good, though frankly rather depressing. After it finished we wandered around, trying to hunt down lunch, before settling on Jane, a brunch venue we enjoyed last year. We had a late lunch - a goat's cheese flatbread with caramelised onion for me, and a roast vegetable sandwich for Roz. Very pleasant.

Afterwards Roz reminded me of my outstanding chore: buying a new handbag. So we went to Bloomingdales round the corner where I almost had a heart attack over the prices attached to my potential future bags. Fortunately Roz noted my hysteria and steered me out of Bloomingdales and into a rather less glamorous shop nearby where I managed to invest in a new bag and no longer need to look as though I procured my handbag from a dustbin. Pleasing. Even more pleasing was the red velvet cupcake that Roz produced for me as a reward for binning my old handbag.

We hopped on the subway and sped slightly north to Fat Cat, a great bar/games venue, to play ping pong. Since I introduced Roz to the game in Borneo, she has been obsessed. We grabbed our bats and balls and took our place at our own ping pong court, with others playing/chatting/kissing in adjacent courts. No such distractions for us. I served, and we were off. I won't boast by saying I won, but...

After an hour of ping pong, we took another subway, this time to Park Slope in Brooklyn. Last year New York had introduced us to the glory of The Moth, a storytelling performance night, that led us to The Spark, London's equivalent, where I have since started telling stories myself. When we turned up last year at a Moth Story Slam night, we had been very surprised to find a queue stretching all the way around the block; we very nearly didn't get in. This time we were more canny. We turned up over an hour before the doors opened and joined an already growing line by the door of Southpaw, fortunately sheltered by a canopy from the ongoing drizzle. I settled down to wait while Roz, like a hero, walked down to the glorious Chocolate Room and brought me back a large and superlative hot chocolate with cream, ice cream and marshmallows. As I sipped this in silent joy, she headed off again, this time to obtain falafel. We'd hoped to pop into delicious nearby restaurant Al Di La but this clearly wasn't going to be possible. So Roz returned with freshly made falafel and hummous sandwiches and we stood in line, munching falafel pitta with delight and chatting to a nearby storyteller while waiting for the doors to open.

Eventually they did open and we were smug to get good seats, giving us a vantage point to watch the latecomers having to sit on the floor. Now being a London storytelling veteran (well, almost), I really wanted to tell my story at The Moth, so put my name into the hat. Unfortunately so did another 27 people, and as there were only 10 slots, I knew I would probably be doomed. That meant that Roz and I listened to each of the ten stories in a state of high agitation, wondering if I was going to be called next. I wasn't. We drank beer, ate chocolate-covered Graham Crackers from the Chocolate Room, enjoyed the stories, and sniggered at the bizarre American positivity which led the organiser to tell the three sets of judges 'You can rate the stories on a scale of 1-10, but don't rate anyone lower than seven!' He went on to clarify 'Is there something so wrong with your own life that you have to shit on someone else's?' Er, why have a scale when you can only use the top end of it?! We settled down to an evening of 7.4s and 8.1s... and muttered bitterly that I'd have been a 9.9 (well maybe...). At the end of the night, the remaining 18 people who didn't get to tell their stories were invited onstage to say the first line of their story. I launched into mine, and my one line was a hit. Frustrating that I didn't get to tell the rest. Even for that one minute, with the huge crowd of highly enthusiastic people, I felt a little like a rock star (or perhaps I poorly estimate the feeling of a rockstar, but at any rate, I felt cool).

The stories over, we walked back to the subway and ambled slowly home on a local train.