It's eight years since I last went to New York. This trip was a fly-in, fly-out job, one night at the W on Lexington (fab, especially all the Bliss spa minatures in the bathroom) one night on the red eye (not so fab, but Virgin premium made it a bit more bearable) and a total of 40 hours on six planes and in transit. I could have done New Zealand and back in the time it took to connect to London and NY, mainly because there were no available direct flights to London at such short notice due to the mass exodus back to the UK for the start of school so I had to fly Swiss Air via Zurich both ways. The best bit of all, after eight hours in the lounge at Heathrow post red eye, was being delayed into Zurich which meant a jet lagged dash from one gate to another to make the last flight to Nice. Fun.

Even so, it was worth it. We arrived Wednesday afternoon, dumped our luggage and went straight to Brooklyn to watch Phill Jupitus do the comedy circuit with loads of other New York stand ups. He was unknown to everyone but us, and pulled it off at two brilliant clubs, The Lovin' Cup in Williamsburg and The UCB, in Chelsea, which is one of NY's most respected comedy clubs. Lasted til 1am fuelled by mojitos and was gutted to find out we missed karaoke until 4am with Phill and his mates belting out numbers from Hairspray at a tranny bar. Another time.

Highlight No 2, shopping in SoHo after the interview on Thursday. Abercrombie's ridiculous up-their-own-bottom rule of making shoppers queue outside to be allowed in by two bouncers (I'm not kidding), only to struggle through the store, which is dimly lit and reverberates to really loud music, slightly dented the experience. Maybe I'm just getting old but I fail to see the joy in not knowing what colour hoodies and t shirts you have bought until you have paid and stumbled back out into the glaring sunshine. Suffice it to say I'm popular chez moi with the girls and Iain who got his longed for Converse (at $45 not €70, which almost makes it worth the trip alone.)
Here's me and Zoe, above, having a rest in SoHo, shopping is hard work!

Have fitted in some work and am off tomorrow to see my nan in London in her care home, which I know will be sad. She has aged so much since I last saw her according to Mum, so I'm bracing myself for that, but still so pleased to be seeing her. Then off to Newquay to make a fool of myself in the surf one more time - if i don't stand up for longer than 10 seconds on my board I might have to admit defeat and take up crochet instead. AS IF.