Many years ago I had a patient who was undergoing an acrimonious separation. In order to prevent his soon-to-be ex-wife from getting her hands on his money, he decided to blow most of it on taking his new partner to New York on Concorde and returning on the QE2 liner. I must have commented on several occasions that James would never whisk me away to New York on Concorde and certainly the only time I have been on it was a grounded display at an air show or museum after it was retired in 2003. When I mentioned to our son that we would be in New York for a week, his response was ‘but not on Concorde’. We left for the airport while it was still dark. Going through security I remembered that it used to be our son who would have a bag full of electronic items and cables, but now it was me with the camera and lenses, laptop, phone, iPod and various chargers and cables.

Bad weather delayed our departure from Manchester and we sat at the gate at Heathrow watching the rain pour down but we did get an unexpected upgrade which made it all bearable. Our plane (a 777, not Concorde) had to fly further south than usual to avoid an incoming storm so it was a surprise to emerge at JFK in sunshine and with a blue sky as rain had been forecast.

American airports are generally fairly utilitarian with lots of brutalist concrete although I did spot some curvy decorative railings near one of the terminals. We took the supposedly express coach to Manhattan which took two hours as the traffic was dense. We were the last stop at Penn Station and had told the driver this when he loaded our bags on the bus. I thought he was taking a slightly strange route after his previous stops and he certainly was not very adept at dodging the traffic. I started to track his progress on Google maps as I thought he was a bit off route and as he went past Penn Station, James asked him where he was going. The only other passenger still on at this point agreed we had passed the destination. He went round the block again, let us off and started to drive off without giving us the chance to retrieve our bags. Fortunately one of his colleagues flagged him down and we got them. The notice saying that tips were appreciated was completely ignored by us. It was a relief to walk the last three blocks or so to our hotel. I am enjoying the skyscrapers already.



We are in midtown, in the old garment district and there are still some tailors and the like around. We had dinner at a local Italian restaurant and are trying to stay up until a reasonable time now that we are on Eastern Time, five hours behind.