Day 9, in which we are too shattered to do much about New Year's Eve

Given I never really adjusted to the time difference in New York, it seems a little bit unfair to discover I don't really fit in with GMT anymore either.

A lazy day was thus had of watching rubbish on tv, doing the laundry and snoozing, until 10pm when I felt wide awake again. We drank some fizz and ate some pizza, and then it was time to sleep again. Good times!

Day 8, in which we slip like shadows into the Guggenheim

After pancakes and french toast at the Red Flame Diner, we took a taxi to the Guggenheim.

The Guggenheim is a fantastic space, technically containing only one floor which rises up an up in a giant spiral to fill the tall space, today presenting a collection of Kandinsky's work progressing through time from his first sketches at ground level up to his latest works at the top. It was filled with a large number of slow and stupid strangers who only served to get in the way. I can't be alone in thinking the world would be nicer if the majority of people on the planet would just vanish and leave the rest of us to enjoy it, and so it was I wished I could roll a giant Indiana Jones-style boulder down the ramp and clear out the gallery. As it was, no boulder was available so we checked out about some of the later Kandinskys (and a very cool Anish Kapoor sculpture, a giant object crammed into a tiny room which was only visible in small sections, like the blind men's elephant) and then spent twice as much time in the gift shop.

After a cup of coffee back at the Algonquin, we dragged our suitcases down to Penn Station. Manhattan is busy at the best of times, but as New Year's Eve approached the streets were densely packed and the traffic static, and so taxis simply were not an option. We battled our way eleven blocks south and agreed that perhaps we'd had enough of the big city for now and were glad to be returning to provincial London for a brief rest.

Following Al Qaeda's terror attack on the Christmas flight to Detroit (if setting fire to a blanket and then being beaten up by a member of the public can be counted as an 'attack'), British Airways had warned us to be prepared for severe delays in security at the airport. In fact, it was swifter than usual and we soon found ourselves tucking into burgers and ice tea.

The flight home flew by, assisted by the soporific effects of Scott Neustadter's (500) Days of Summer. We arrived back in Tufnell Park at 9am, ready to unpack, launder and repack for Japan.

Day 7, in which I almost vomit in the cinema and Paul takes to his bed

It is apparently minus 12 degrees celsius today, once you take the wind chill factor into account. We prepared for frozen misery by putting on our black thermal tops and leggings, and for one brief moment it looked like two particularly unskilled ninjas had broken into the room. I wore four more layers on top, plus gloves and a hat, and still the ice cold wind blew right through to our bones.

As today is our last full day in New York, we decided to get a proper American breakfast and - after some google research - ended up at Norma's at Le Meridien on 57th Street. Everything was big at Norma's, including the prices and the queue to get in. However, once seated and served with hot coffee and unlimited freshly squeezed orange juice we soon cheered up. Norma's spin on eggs benedict was somewhat unexpected - sweet pancakes topped with poached egg, hollandaise and asparagus and served with deep fried new potatoes - but it gave us sufficient fuel to brave the cold again.

We strolled up through Central Park and scoped out the Tavern on the Green, the principal joy of which was the wacky topiary out back. To the right: a shrub pruned like an elephant with its trunk held triumphant, its tail elevated and a trail of little poo sized bushes down below; to the left: a leaping horse, its shrub-based mane streaming behind it; and in the middle: a bit shaggy gorilla with its arms raised in the air, its fur made with fir fronds in a realistic - if green - simulcrum of an ape's pelt.

We bore left to the cinema at Lincoln Square, and tried to enjoy Avatar. Unfortunately, James Cameron has not made this easy, not least as the entire plot is a series of tribal cliches ripped off from every Boy's Own jungle adventure show anyone has ever seen. It is also an uncomfortably racist film: giant blue aliens living a feral jungle existence on a completely alien planet for some reason speak in a range of black accents (not one accent in particular, you understand, but any of the range of black accents, from the Caribbean to Harlem to generic Africa). Cameron's theory seems to be - as Doctor Who might put it - "Lots of planets have a tribal underclass".

Cameron also demonstrated that he now struggles to follow Syd Field's screenwriting maxim "show, don't tell". Awkwardly presented exposition was dripping off the screen, and at the start of the film characters were to be seen regularly explaining the key features of the plot to other characters who were either (a) already fully aware of the facts or (b) themselves in no need of knowing it. "Are you forgetting why we're here?" the villain said to a hard-nosed Sigourney Weaver (who had spent the past five years on the alien planet leading a major division of the project the villain was referring to), "It's for the unobtanium, which is a rare mineral worth millions per ounce back on Earth. You've not probably heard me mention it previously, although we've been mining it exclusively for the past five years and you lead my core research team." If people talked like this in real life, you'd punch them in the throat. Given the concept was trite at best, an element of slow reveal might have served the story better.

I doubt we would have walked out of Avatar on the strength of these criticisms alone, but they were certainly contributing factors once I discovered that the new 3D technology causes me to experience incredibly unpleasant motion sickness. Nauseous and dry retching, Paul escorted me from the cinema 45 minutes in and so we never found out which of the two most obvious endings Cameron chose in the end - the hackneyed option or the derivative one. I don't much care.

Today was going to be the day we caught up with all of the different people we know in New York. Alas, Paul was by this stage feeling very ill, as his cold reached the headache and acheing bones stage, and so he called off meetings with two of his friends in the afternoon in favour of walking back to the hotel, eating some chicken salad and napping.

In the evening, then, I travelled down to SoHo on my own (leaving an ailing Paul in bed with nothing more than a Six Feet Under marathon and the promise of RuPaul's Drag Race for company) and met up with some friends at 'Salt' on Macdougal Street. An obscure friend of Paul had recommended the place on the basis that "it doesn't look like much, but does the best Italian food". In actual fact, it looked amazing and did traditional English bistro food. We had some dates wrapped in bacon to whet our appetites, and then shared plates of lamb shank, steak and pork belly. The food was all terrific, the atmosphere was warm and the waiting staff very friendly.

It was great to catch up with my friends who - we realised - I have only met up with a few times previously, although they're the sort of people you feel immediately comfortable with and conversation and laughter came quickly.

I sloped off back into the night, ready to pack for England.

Day 6, in which we go kosher and ascend to the Grand Master's throne

I am clumsy and confused before I have caffeine in the morning, and so while I was sitting down to sip my first cup of coffee at the shop across the road I kneed a woman in the breasts. She spoke only Spanish and did not (as far as I'm aware) complain.

We had risen early because Paul had persuaded me to try re-running the Abercrombie & Fitch gauntlet, and this time we were targeting the flagship store on 5th Avenue. We turned up half an hour before it was due to open and so the queue thankfully only stretched around the corner and halfway up the block. As we neared the front, I noticed a constant stream of chancers trying to skip the queue. "Are these people queuing just to enter?" they would invariably ask. "No, honey, this is the queue to see idiots asking the doormen stupid questions".

Anyway, it took us an hour to get through the doors, which was precisely the length of time I needed to focus my mind on summoning the energies required to battle the A&F demons. As we crossed the threshold I successfully fought off the stench, noise and poor organisation to identify the t-shirts I had liked the previous night. Figuring I never wanted to experience such horrors again, I grabbed some more t-shirts and a hoody and figured that would probably be enough to last me for the rest of my life.

After a brief restroom stop in Bergdorfs, we went through the whole horror again with the Apple Store, so Paul could buy a new iPod Nano. We concluded that was about sufficient shopping for this week and went for lunch.

The attentive reader will have noticed that much of our diet so far in New York has involved fried foods and fat. We tried to redress this by having a big falafel salad in a kosher health diner, and this was the first time in days my stomach has seen green.

After a short nap, we marched fifteen blocks south to the Grand Masonic Hall of Manhattan. In the spirit of transparency and blowing away the cobwebs of mystery, the Masons have decided to throw open their doors to the public and allow them to be guided around a selected range of rooms by a cranky and deaf octogenarian holocaust survivor. We were taken around around six masonic meeting rooms, each of which was identical to the other in size and layout but themed around a different time period (colonial, renaissance, egyptian, classical, etc.) It was like taking part in a sinister and secretive version of the Crystal Maze, only our guide had marginally more hair than Richard O'Brien.

Although fairly interesting to look at, it soon became apparent that the rooms were decorated with little more than stage props and scenery. Classical architecture was rendered in painted chip board and plaster, while the much lauded marble pillars were just red gloss paint. The choice of historically themed decorations struck us as an awkward means of creating the illusion that Freemasonry is an ancient institution (rather than a series of dinner clubs from the 16th century which took off in their current form under the Victorians), and it was hard to tell whether the guide genuinely believed - as he repeatedly stated - that the halls were built to mirror the layout of King Solomon's temple (a building which may or may not have existed and - if it ever did - has certainly never been seen during the time of the Freemasons). The only truly amazing room was a ballroom on the 4th floor, which was an exact replica (or rather, vice versa) of the ballroom on the Titanic. "The only difference between this ballroom and the one on the Titanic," the guide explained with a grim smile, "is that you don't drown while you're dancing in this one."

The guide only had a few core facts to share, but shared them as often as he could. For example, when I asked what the Egyptian hieroglyphs running around the top of one room meant, he explained that "You see, Masons were stone workers but we don't work stone any more. We don't build buildings, we build character. Do you understand?" Yes of course I understood - not least as he'd already mentioned this twice and would mention it twice again - but what about the bloody hieroglyphs? Similarly, when I asked how much it costs each to be a Mason, his reponse was a long, rambling and almost certainly bullshit anecdote in which we were supposed to believe that Adolf Hitler had shaken hands with each and every jew as they lined up to enter Auschwitz, and that his friend Artie Stenoficz had given the Fuhrer the Masonic handshake and got an instant 'get out of the death camp free' card (nonsense of course, given the Nazis tried to shut down the masons).

The tour might have been rather pleasant were it not for an irritating Canadian-Russian woman who asked a series of banal questions with the persistence of a mongoose. The most extraordinary question came as we were boarding the elevator to leave at the end of the tour. "One more thing," she said pensively. "Can you photocopy books in the Freemason's library?" The guide thankfully played on his deafness and affected not to hear.

Hungry again, we tried to recapture the magic of lunch by visiting a fast food kosher restaurant for matzo ball soup. I've only heard of matzo balls from Woody Allen movies and Michael Chabon novels, and I was very excited to finally find out what they might be. Sadly, they transpire to be relatively disgusting cold chicken dumplings sitting in a plastic bowl of stock.

After a pre-dinner drink in the Algonquin's Blue Bar, we went to Mint at 50th and Lexington, a very good South Indian restaurant with a stylish atmoshpere, delicious food and incredibly friendly (and handsome) Nepalese waiters. What more could you need?

Day 5, in which Carrie Fisher reprises her role as Princess Leia, coffee pot coffee pot

Today we enjoyed some fortifying coffee and muffins in bed before heading uptown to enjoy the marvellous queues at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, to those in the know). After queueing to enter the building, what could be more charming than queuing to buy tickets? Why, queueing for the coat check, silly!

Finally ticketed-up and bereft of baggage, we joined the queue for the escalator and travelled to the top floor to see the Bauhaus exhibition. We somehow got confused and walked around the exhibit in reverse, and so it was that I shall always hold the impression that Bauhaus got cruder and more primitive through time. I also spent a lot of time not knowin what Bauhaus was or where it came from - something I only figured out right at the end of the exhibition where it was fully explained in an introductory display.

We followed this with an exhibition of Gabriel Orozco's work. I'd not previously heard of Orozco but found him to be a very playful artist, and perhaps the biggest delight was in seeing the other visitors' faces as confusion gave way to laughter (a good example of how he plays with imagery is my favourite work, Cats & Melons. C'mon, follow this link).

After a sandwich in a local bagel shop - where the only bagel filling was 'fat', although you had the option to choose between dairy, animal or vegetable - we went to see Carrie Fisher's fabulous new one-woman show at Studio 54, Wishful Drinking, in which she reveals all about her inbred Hollywood origins, her drug and alcohol addictions, her failed relationships, her manic-depression and the recent death of a friend in her bed. The material may hardly sound like comedy gold, but as Ms Fisher noted "if I can laugh at my life, I know I'm going to be alright", and she went further and managed to get us all laughing along too. Crowd pleasing material concerning her appearance in Star Wars included recreations of the hologram scene and an audience participation section with a life-size Princess Leia sex doll, while more intriguing material was presented with a Q&A session on the said friend's death and an analysis of the lyrics from songs Paul Simon wrote about her (it was not, it seems, at any stage a very happy marriage).

After a stroll down through Greenwich into Soho - through City Hall and down onto the tip of Manhattan to see the Brooklyn Bridge (pointless after dusk, it turns out, as they don't illuminate the piers) - I thought it might be nice to visit the Abercrombie & Fitch store at Seaport. I was wrong. It was in fact fucking horrible to visit the Abercrombie & Fitch store at Seaport. Entering the store, they got us first with a chemical attack: the aftershave hung so thick in the air we were drowning. The second wave of attack came in the form of 90s rock anthems played at deafening volume, while the general public was recruited to complete the assault by screaming, pushing, grabbing and generally being disorderly. Despite seeing a few t-shirts I liked, I had to abort the entire process in the face of cruel and unusual punishment, and we went for recuperative white wine at Pier 17 instead.

We ended the evening at L'il Frankies at 1st & 1st in the East village, a typical local-neighbourhood-pizzeria-cum-world-famous-radio-station, where apparently Mark Ronson DJs (and not Jon Ronson, as I initially and very excitedly believed). Most of the American food we've eaten so far has comprised white carbs, protein and fat (and not in that order), so we ordered a big bowl of broccoli and an entire roast aubergine in an attempt to please the gods of our tummies. It was all very nice, and I'm certain the prosecco we poured down alongside only aided our digestion.

It was a beautiful night, so we strolled home.

Day 4, Boxing Day, in which Penelope Cruz sacrifices her dignity

We took breakfast at Viand on Madison Avenue, a classic Manhattan coffee shop founded way back in the depths of 1976. The seven staff make up for the impossibly tight and narrow floorplan through sheer sweat and frenzied planning, the whole show conducted by the sweating Spanish waiter who politely takes customers' orders and then barks them in furious code at the relevant cook. Every square inch was carefully invested in either cooking space, seating for customers or storage of ingredients. Our knees thus met romantically under the table, while our plates jostled for space on a small square of chipped formaica. Despite the apparent chaos, it all ran smoothly and Paul's corned beef hash was reported to be just like his mother used to cook.

We had popped into Viand as it was on route north to the Guggenheim, but in the end breakfast was the destination in itself as we reached the gallery to find the queues stretching around the block, the poor suckers getting drenched in the rain. We figured the Guggenheim's best feature is its exterior anyway, and made the most of being so far up the East Side by popping back into the Met.

The Met lets you pay whatever you wish to gain entry. On our first visit (two days earlier) we paid the full asking price of $20 a head, so we figured since we were only popping in (to see William the Blue Hippopotamus and an exhibition of photographs from Robert Frank's Les Americains) it would be reasonable this time round to only pay a dollar total. The cashier did not seem to see things this way, and her beaming smile vanished almost immediately, to be replaced with a look that could sour milk. I've found this to be a common trait among New Yorkers - they treat you like shit unless they think they can make some money out of you. Incidentally, William the Blue Hippopotamus was absolutely the best thing in the Met, while Les Americains was simulataneously illuminating, amusing and bleak.

It was still raining when we left, so we ran to the nearest tube station - via muffins at Dean & Deluca, a delicious deli where apparently Hannibal Lecter ate when he wasn't eating violinists - and took the train down to Union Square to shelter in the cinema there. The only film showing was 'Nine', an absolutely awful musical in which Daniel Day Lewis puts on a dodgy Italian accent and lusts after Oscar-winning actresses while said actresses perform lap dances for the audience. Penelope Cruz lost all of her dignity doing a splay-legged routine in a thong in which she sang lyrics along the lines of "Squeeze this, squeeze that / Darlin', squeeze my twat", while grasping the various body parts she was referring to for additional character depth and in support of her complex narrative arc.

The only reason we didn't walk out after fifteen minutes was the rain and the fact the Flatiron Lounge on West 19 Street doesn't open until 5pm. I suppose if the film ran past 5pm, we'd have been enjoying chenin blanc in the lush art deco bar by the time Kate Hudson was flashing her tits. As it was, we had to endure the tits and wait. The Lounge was an immaculate recreation of a decadent 20s cocktail bar, and a fine place to spend any evening (considerations of Kate Hudson's tits aside).

Racing through the rain afterwards, warmed through with wine, we found our way to the Spotted Pig on West 11th. The Spotted Pig has become something of a legend in London, following a series of articles reporting that the founder of St John's in Farringdon makes an annual pilgrimage to the Pig to share some of his more palatable offal creations. Although it does not seem the Pig has retained any of his recipes (crispy pig ear being as adventurous as it got), we had some great bitter in the upstairs pub while wiating for a table, followed by a nice enough burger in the restaurant. It still has some way to go to earn its legendary status, but was a really cozy place to spend a rainy evening.

We later saw the street where apparently Carrie Bradshaw lives in 'Sex And The City', and the shop where this fictional woman buys her cup-cakes, and then headed down in the seedier side of gay obsessions by visiting Marie's Crisis on Grove Street. On previous visits this show tunes piano bar has been packed enough that you can get away with singing along without actually knowing any of the words. On this occasion, however, it was just a few nerdy looking gays singing the more obscure songs from Little Shop of Horrors, so we discussed international politics, drank up and caught a cab home.

We arrived in our room soaked through and smelling of wet dog, and fell into bed to watch tv. Over the past four days we've become addicted to a ridiculous tv show called 'Clean House', in which three idiots led by Niecy Nash will meet with people with very real mental health issues, and try to fix these psychological disorders by selling the majority of their possessions to the general public and then repainting their living room in earth tones using the money raised. Fortunately, to celebrate the Christmas season Style TV was having a Clean House marathon, and so the remainder of our evening was sorted.

Day 3, Christmas Day, in which we order too much Korean food

Christmas Day! We woke early of course, and after coffee down in the lobby we Skyped my family in Edinburgh to wish them a happy day. I have spent the past nine years celebrating Christmas in Edinburgh with the same people, and I felt quite homesick to see them doing it all without me.

We had booked Christmas lunch in the Algonquin's 'Round Table Room', which of course is room where stars like Dorothy Parker, Jamie Cullum and Angela Lansbury all made their name. I had imagined a rich atmosphere and even richer food, but frankly the whole thing was something of a disappointment. The food was school dinner quality - all overcooked meat and salty sauces - and the waiting staff comprised a number of ageing gangsters with the grace and manners of an elephant having an epileptic fit. Cutlery was placed on the table with heavy determination, bread roles were tossed through the air as the waiter bizarrely tried to serve them with two spoons, and at one point a passing waiter tripped over, showering Paul in gravy.

After a post-prandial nap we went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre to see what Manhattan looks like from above. The 'Top of the Rock' viewing platform is superior to that of the Empire State Building largely due to the fact you can see the Empire State Building when you're up there. It also has a killer view of Central Park, which stretched out quietly before us and looked absurdly small, like a short back garden covered in puddles.

We had romantic plans to go ice skating on the Rockefeller rink in front of the giant Christmas tree - a scene familiar from every Christmas movie ever set in New York - but alas it seems that several hundred thousand people had the same idea and so it was impossible to even move. At one point Paul was posing for a photo when an obese child tried to push him out of the way. "Excuse me," the boy bellowed. "My mom is trying to take a photograph".

I had my own opinions of what his mom could try to do, but I resolved to keep them to myself and indicated to Paul it was time to abort the Rockefeller Centre. This was in itself a challenge, as the streets were utterly crowded surrounding the centre and riot gates were in place to keep people safely kettled. We took to walking on the roads, ignoring the police's constant and angry appeal to stay on the pavement.

The crowds had cleared a few blocks later, and by 32nd street we found ourselves hungry and on a street full of Korean restaurants. Having had such a disappointing meal for lunch, something with a bit of flavour seemed like just the ticket.

We chose a restaurant called Hangang at 34 W 32nd, largely because it was filled exclusively with Asian customers and they presumably know a thing or two about Korean food. This sadly also meant, however, that the serving staff spoke no English and so we had to order blind. I haven't ordered Korean food before, and my confusion at the menu was only doubled by use of American terminology - it seemed there was no way I could communicate to the waitress that I had no idea what brisket or scallions were.

In the end we guessed that ordering two starters and two mains would probably be appropriate. It was a little surprising, then, when twenty seperate dishes all turned up at the same time, along with various plates of meats and vegetables which were tipped onto the table-top barbecue and cooked beside us. This was, however, precisely the sort of feast we had wanted to celebrate Christmas, and the fact we ate barbecued beef and chicken with chili sauce instead of turkey with cranberry sauce, and a spiced green spinach jelly instead of sage and onion stuffing, only made this Christmas dinner far more special.

We had planned to go drinking downtown, but my confused body clock demanded bed and so it was I found myself falling asleep in bed at 9pm.

Day 2, Christmas Eve, in which we maintain an erratic schedule

I always forget what a five hour time difference does to a schedule, but sure enough today I woke up at 4am to find myself in a city which - while theoretically never sleeps - certainly isn't up and partying in mid-town. I went to the gym and read my book until the sun rose, and then we went for a walk.

It was freezing cold before the sun has had time to warm up the streets, and my thermal gloves and furry hat had little impact on the cold, so a few blocks later we ducked into the Astro Restaurant on 6th Avenue for coffee, pancakes and to slip on our thermals.

New York at dawn is a wonderfully quiet place, and it was a strange experience to be able to navigate the streets without the usual commuters, tourists and tramps trying to jostle for the same space. NYPD officers stood at street corners in anticipation of chaos, but observing little more than a trickle of traffic. As we entered Central Park, there were so few other people to see that strangers were delighted to stumble across us, and dog walkers would beam and wish us good morning as we passed by.

We dawdled in the park until the museums opened, and then went into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a bit of a mooch around. There is a lot of stuff in the Met and not all of it worth seeing. A new wing contains reproduction rooms from different time periods, and is about as exciting as walking around the room-by-room displays in Ikea. A completely restored Egyptian temple housed in a giant greenhouse was pretty spectacular however, as was the huge painted glass mural from what I believe was the only French ship sunk by the US during the second world war. We also bought bagels from one of the rudest men in New York (indeed, all of the museum staff were rude apart from the smiling grey duffer whose job it was to secure our voluntary entrance fee).

We wanted a hotdog when we left the museum, but were most particular about who could serve it to us. Hotdog vendors who looked unclean, mentally ill or had bad facial hair were out. We thus made it to the bottom of Central Park before finding anyone worthy of our $3. The hotdog was everything I had dreamed it would be: fatty, chewy and delicious.

After buying snacks and water from the room, we were exhausted. It was 2pm and I'd been up ten hours already. We went back to the hotel for a quick nap, and jet lag took its toll and we didn't resurface until 10:30pm, in desperate search of some dinner.

Again, while Manhattan may be a city that never sleeps, it also doesn't keep many restaurants open after 11pm on Christmas Eve and so by the time we'd found somewhere we wanted to eat the kitchen had already closed. We had a pleasant walk down Broadway and through Times Square instead, then looped round to see the Empire State Building, the Speedy Deli on 32nd Street and the Chrysler Building (only one of these sold us sandwiches).

As we stood before the Chrysler, I noticed it was midnight. We wished each other happy Christmas, then returned to the Algonquin to eat our sandwiches and watch an extraordinarily fat couple look at pretty dreadful houses in the local version of 'Relocation Relocation'.

Day 1, in which we fly to JFK and wear eclectic shoes

It was touch and go whether we'd get to go to Manhattan for Christmas. First the BA strike threatened to cancel all flights this week, and then when that was overturned the baggage handlers went on strike at Heathrow (just as it turned out our flights had been switched to Heathrow from Gatwick), and then finally snow storms swept across the UK closing airports and ruining Christmas for everyone.

As we formulated alternative plans, they too were destroyed. Plans to pop through the Channel Tunnel to celebrate Noël were ruined when it turned out Eurostar's only mortal weakness is the British weather, while thoughts of maybe checking into a cottage in Somerset were ruined when the south west iced over and pensioners' corpses started littering the roads, collecting in drifts beside overturned coaches.

But as it happens, we did make it to New York - despite a massive delay after someone unfotunately fell ill and had to leave the plane on the runway (meaning the cabin crew had to inspect each and every bag on the plane to establish whether it was a bomb. This was a thorough and complex process: "What is in your overhead locker?" the assistant would ask the bearded man two rows ahead. "Ah, is just the two light hat boxes," Osama bin Laden would respond). I watched Aliens In The Attic and the superb Shorts on the inflight entertainment centre, and then it seemed we were already landing.

When we emerged from the subway I hailed a cab to take us to the hotel. "Where you going?" the angry looking Indian man demanded. "Um, 57 West 44 Street" I responded, but already the man's face had creased up in disgust: "No!" he bellowed as he slammed his foot on the accelerator.

"Welcome to New York," Paul mused, and we decided to walk.

We're staying in the Algonquin Hotel, which is superbly friendly and incredibly festive at the moment. As we were checking in, I noticed the conscierge polishing two big red apples from the fruit bowl. He shortly presented them to us, exclaiming "Welcome to the Big Apple!" I ate mine for breakfast the following day, and it may be telling that it was mostly bruised or rotten.

A rather sexy looking cat called Matilda has the run of the hotel and seems to spend most of her time riding on the luggage trolley or lounging on her purple chaise longue in the lobby, watching jealously as the locals sip their perfect cocktails.

Grand Central station is just round the corner, so we went to play in the 'whispering gallery' (where the sum total of our secret lover's whispers were "Hello, can you hear me?" / "Yes, can you hear me?" "Yes, crikey it does work then"), and then headed into the Oyster Bar for shrimp, fish cakes, some rather drab yellowfin and a bottle of champagne. We tried to get a drink in the Campbell Apartment too, but alas Paul was wearing what the haughty maitre d' determined were "eclectic shoes", and so we were turned out into the street on our asses.

At around 9 o'clock, we collapsed exhausted into bed.