Be your guest? I don’t think so…
For the most part, I love high(er)-end/speciality food shops like Whole Foods or Balducci’s. Having been spoiled with Waitrose or Marks & Spencer’s food hall all my life, there’s something thoroughly decent about being treated like a discerning food lover once again. With lovingly prepared foods, a shockingly good cheese counter and fruit that doesn’t [...]
200 things you simply have to know about New York (part four)
Finally, the list has been completed. So come on, what have I missed??
151. I love being preached at as much as the next man. But does it really have to be at 8 in the morning as I’m travelling into work on the subway?
152. Politics and bureaucracy is just as mindnumbingly ridiculous in New York [...]
Customer service hell (or America, as it’s also known)
Customer satisfaction isn’t exactly a particular focus for New Yorkers. In fact, on the list of 500 Things Every Business Must Do To Be Successful in NYC, “making sure that the customer is happy” appears just below “don’t leave dead rats in your reception area.” It sometimes feels that if you walk into a shop [...]
Death, where is thy sting?
After two long flights, and a lot of late nights with work and with friends, I’ve found myself encumbered with an early summer cold. Not the slight sniffles of a borderline hay fever attack, but the full on “I need thirty tissues to get through every hour” man cold, which could conceivably bring about my [...]
Don’t stop me now
It’s good to be back in New York, although the sweltering heat and humid atmosphere means that I have as much desire to be outside as an agoraphobic slug who has been told that the only way for him to get back inside his garden shed is to slither through an industrial-size outdoor salt store.
The [...]
The change
When I first moved down to London, She Who Was Born To Worry (or my mum, as I generally know her) took the wind out of my fresh faced and eager sails by calling me a shandy-drinking southerner. The implication being that the north of England was rough, the south was posh, and I’d have [...]
A cultural loss
In a classic ‘the dog ate my homework’ style, can I apologize for the lack of the last segment of the 200 Things You Simply Have To Know About New York list? I may or may not have written the vast majority of the final 50 points on a series of Post It notes, which [...]
200 things you simply have to know about New York (part three)
Here’s the third installment of the epic list to celebrate 200 posts. Think you know New York yet? Think again.
101. If officials made it any easier to access the subway without paying, babies who have consistently had their candy taken from them for the last 200 years would be relieved of their ridicule.
102. Aviator sunglasses [...]
Summer in the city
If you want to engage in small talk with a Brit, there’s only one thing you’ll definitely need to chat about – the weather. Whether it’s complaining about the rain, or talking about snow coming late this year, the British would be at a loss for words if it wasn’t for the weather. I’ve filled [...]
200 things you simply have to know about New York (part two)
51. Your stepsstoop is a much more civilised place from which to get rid of any old crap from your house than the back of a Ford Cortina.
52. Any city that can invent the beer milkshake is alright by me.
53. The view from the N train as you go across the Williamsburg Bridge is as [...]
