(Am now trying to pare down my NY reports to notes and highlights only. Still not brief enough, I know. But stick with me, there’s photos at the end…)

FRIDAY JUNE 27th – conclusion.

9pm. Collected at JFK airport by Moira from the film crew, along with local driver Sydney, a charming, wiry – and wry – black gentleman of a certain vintage, in his people carrier. His radio is permanently tuned to a channel playing big band numbers: Sinatra et al, so this soundtracks the famous skyline looming into view. Which is, of course, exactly what I want.

First spotted detail of non-London-ness: road signs at junctions warning $350 penalties for sounding your horn. ‘I want to wake up in a city that always beeps…’ How is this enforced, though? Speed microphones?

Also: yellow taxis carring adverts on their roof fins, today for the movie ‘Wanted’, starring James McAvoy. So the first face I see in NYC is Narnia’s Mr Tumnus, with a six pack and a gun.

Check in at the Waldorf: plush beyond plush. There’s a series of huge lobbies and hallways you have to walk through before you even get to the main reception, which itself is like a 1930s Deco railway terminal. Good enough for Cole Porter, good enough for us. Rest of the evening (by now 10pm) spent in the lobby bar with Shane, Mr John from the Boogaloo (how strange it is to go halfway around the world and then be tapped on the shoulder by someone from your local pub) and Liam Clancy, plus the film crew. Shane back onto his White Russians. Liam Clancy says, ‘So your mother’s getting an MBE…?’

SAT JUNE 28th:

Morning: I wander outside. The heat hits me full in the face as soon as I leave the Waldorf doors, and I feel I can barely stand about 30 mins outside in the sunshine. Walk towards the Chrysler to get a close look – no signs of ghostbusters or winged serpents… Suddenly find myself next to Grand Central Station, so in I go.

By Grand Central Station I stood around and gawped. The recently restored concourse ceiling is incredible – zodiac signs, constellations. Why aren’t all railway stations like this? A temple to travelling, a celebration of escape, or the joy of arrival.

Afternoon: After the usual postponing and nagging, I eventually prise Shane out of his room and down to his first filmed appointment: singing and chatting with Liam C in the Waldorf’s Marco Polo Room. After that he seems happy to hang out in his suite with BP Fallon, DJ, photographer and something of an Irish rock ‘n’ roll Character, with a capital C. So I have a night off. What to do? Where to start? I need a guide.

I email Tony O’Neill, a friend since his days as keyboardist with Kenickie, Marc Almond et al, and who’s now an acclaimed author (latest novel Down And Out On Murder Mile, soon to be out on Harper Perennial). I know he lives in NY, and though we’ve remained in email contact, I haven’t seen him since a Crouch End party in about 2000 – a party which features in the aforementioned novel. ‘Hello Tony, er, I’m suddenly in town and tonight is probably my only free night here. Can you drop everything and come out and meet me?’

I’m in luck, and infinitely grateful. Tony and his wife Vanessa meet me at the hotel and offer me a tour of city bars. Do I want the posh side with the sights and the skyscrapers, or the seedier – admittedly artily seedy – Lower East Side, of Quentin Crisp and CBGBs fame?

I feel the Waldorf is splendour enough for one weekend, so off we go to (hope I’ve got this right): the Max Fisch bar on Ludlow (where the jukebox plays Journey, Foreigner and Air Supply – all of whom are apparently now cool), the wonderfully decrepit Mars Bar, The Pyramid (80s disco – where I’m told off for NOT dancing to Kim Wilde. Duran vids on rotation, ‘Lovecats’ fills the floor), The Cock (dark gay seediness – toilet door open to the dance floor to prevent naughtiness) and another called Sofie’s.

We also stop by CBGB’s, now a bookshop advertising a volume of rock photos with Sid Vicious on the front. And we pass the diner where Quentin Crisp used to eat every day. Or rather, the spot where it used to be: it’s moved across the road. This is typical Dickon The Tourist stuff – visiting places that aren’t what they used to be, or even where they used to be.

At one stage we walk down a side avenue straight out of Will Eisner, all fire escapes, low-rise blocks and rats jumping off beer crates to run across our path. Unlike their London counterparts, who tend to keep their distance from humans, these rodents aren’t yielding for anyone. ‘Typical New Yorkers,’ says Tony.

I rather like mice and rats. And I don’t even mind cockroaches. It’s just spiders and snakes I get upset about. Snakes can get knotted.

(Can’t decide whether that last sentence is terribly witty or just terrible.)

Second biggest detail of non-London-ness: having to show ID to gain entrance in all the bars. I’ve left my passport at the hotel, but for the most part the various bar staff and bouncers let me off, once they hear me say (in my best Hugh Grant voice) that I’m English and I just didn’t know. Terribly sorry, first time in the States don’t you know, splendid city you have here, have you seen Four Weddings, etc…  I still have to answer ‘What year were you born, and where?’. For the first time in nearly twenty years. The only bar that turns me away is Niagra, on 2nd Avenue.

Tony says the idea is less about proving one’s age, more about weeding out the sort of people who don’t carry ID. Or who forget to bring it. It’s a more psychological intent: to associate drinking with seriousness and responsibility. Given UK adverts for alcohol now carry the message ‘please drink responsibly’, without much effect on the binge drinking statistics, I wonder how long it’ll be before Britain follows suit.

But maybe there’s something in this measure towards a more conscious – if not more sober – kind of drinking. We end the bar crawl sensibly, ie as soon as we realise we’re getting to the stage of drunkenness where amnesia or severe hangovers is likely to kick in.

Third detail of otherness – you have to tip the bartender. Over the weekend I have this little ritual explained to me three times. But I still either over-tip, or under-tip, or haven’t the change to tip at all. I am useless when it comes to money matters as it is. In other countries, doubly so.

***

Some photos courtesy Mr O’Neill.

Tony, Vanessa and self at the Mars Bar:

Eighties dancing at the Pyramid, probably to Billy Idol at this point:

Ye Olde CBGB’s, now flogging a dead Sid:

And a Bowery-parked vehicle covered in images from rock album sleeves. Who lives in a van like this?