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?