New york

As the maître d’ ushered me into the packed restaurant, I leaned in close and intoned softly, so as not to be heard by the elegant lady sitting nearby who was obviously my date, ‘I’m here to meet...’. And I nodded towards her as I said the name of my New York publisher. Yes, that’s right. New York. I’ve had fancy conference calls and everything. A lot of very bright Americans say a lot of lovely things to me down a phone line with a two second delay and I say ‘um’, and ‘oh, right’. And they sound confused that I don’t sound more excited by the prospect of a book of mine being published in the States. I am excited. But in a British way. Added to which reserve you have to factor in my unique brand of chaos.

Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: — Repainting the Forth Railway Bridge used to be a metaphor for never-ending work, but a new coating completed in 2012 is estimated to have a life of 25 years. — Sydney Harbour Bridge was, for the first 80 years of its life, cleaned by hand, but last year it was done for the first time by robot. — The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is cleaned by a team of abseilers, with all 24,000 windows taking three months to get through. — Most New York skyscrapers are cleaned by hand. The World Trade Center had an automated cleaner, but it could not cover the corners or upper windows. Two window cleaners were among the victims on 9/11.

4.06 am, that’s what it was when I was woken up. Last time this week I think it was a bit after three. And by the same bloody car alarm. The thing went off just long enough to wake me up and unsettle my seven year old. Why? I mean, why is it my business whether your car is being stolen? At this time of the morning I just don’t care. It’s unfortunate; I do deplore car theft; but I do not see why I should be woken up way before rosy fingered Aurora gets going just because someone is trying to make off with whatever it is you’ve left on the back seat.

America and western Europe sure have their priorities right, blanketing our newspapers, magazines and the airwaves with newsworthy items that reflect our culture. For example, the April cover of Vogue magazine featuring a rap thug and a reality TV queen on its cover has been covered as extensively as the sinking of the Titanic was back in 1912, except that those were pre-TV and pre-internet times and only ink-stained wretches invaded our homes daily. The editor of Vogue apparently wrote that she wanted to feature those who define our culture and who stir things up. That’s not even original, because another monthly some time ago featured on its cover the mass murderer of the Boston marathon, calling him sexy.

 New York Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually stunning place built for action and adventure, a city of broad avenues and narrow side streets, of soaring towers and grubby tenements, all giving an air of, as Humphrey Bogart drawled in The Maltese Falcon, what dreams are made of. But what’s happened to the gritty stoops of Harlem, the waterfront filled with gleaming ships, its majestic train stations and grand hotels? I’ll tell you, progress is what happened, and it stinks. New York for me has always been a fictive place, mostly made up from movies I’ve seen, the rest from childhood impressions when New York really was the centre of the universe.

Shortly after I started working at Vanity Fair in the mid-1990s, I suggested to my boss Graydon Carter that I write an article about the number of New York society types who were bankrupt. Not morally bankrupt, but up to their eyeballs in debt. ‘Let’s get a team of researchers to go through the financials of everyone on the guest list of the annual costume ball at the Met,’ I suggested. ‘We could publish a list, like the Forbes 400, but the exact opposite: America’s most indebted billionaires.’ Graydon didn’t go for it, and not just because he was worried about its impact on his social life. ‘Like who?’ he said. I rattled off a list of names, but he pooh-poohed every one. ‘This is just wishful thinking, Toby,’ he said.

The new mayor of New York, who despite his name (Bill de Blasio) claims Irish ancestry, is boycotting this month’s St Patrick’s Day Parade because its organisers refuse to allow a contingent of gays and lesbians to march up Fifth Avenue as an identifiable group bearing the insignia of gay pride. This is not exactly surprising, because the New York St Patrick’s Day event, claimed to be the oldest such parade in the world, is more or less controlled by the Roman Catholic Church, which doesn’t encourage displays of gay self-congratulation.

 New York I’m in an extremely happy state as I write this because a young Englishman flew over the ocean just to have lunch with me and ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage. This is how things used to be done, but alas no longer. I will not reveal his name until it happens — I am very superstitious — but suffice it to say he went to Eton and Oxford, comes from a fine and very old English family and has a beautiful sister, who unfortunately is happily married. (But not to me.) So, in this pleasant state of mind, I’m only going to write about nice things. Up to a point, of course.

New York   Nature is at her best right now, the leaves still holding, Central Park awash in golden browns and reds. I go there every morning, half a block away from home, and under a giant elm I put the creaky body through its paces. Twenty push-ups, 30 deep knee-bends, 25 kicks over a knee-high bar with each leg, and finish with 25 punches against a leaf for speed and accuracy. Then a quiet walk and back to the flat for breakfast and the papers. At six in the evening I walk to the dojo and mix it up rather hard with karate sensei Richard Amos and other black belts. Tuesdays I skip the park and go straight to judo training, the judo sessions being much too brutal for wasting energy before hitting the mats.

The court of Ed has a new hero. Francois Hollande, who was credited with ‘turning the tide’ of austerity by taking a ‘different way forward’, has been usurped by Bill de Blasio, the Democrat Mayor-elect of New York, who Team Ed credit with a ‘different kind’ of politics. Ed’s greybeard Lord Wood has penned a gushing paean to de Blasio in today’s Telegraph. Wood applauds de Blasio’s ‘Disraelian theme: “One New York, Rising Together”’. Mr S can’t see all that much of Disraeli in de Blasio’s mundane slogan — the word ‘one’ seems to have assumed mythic proportions in the minds of Ed’s counsellors.