Strange Things Will Happen.

My mind seems to be a tangle of contradictory thoughts. Today I got on a train to Victoria only to get off, get back on and come straight back home. I try to sit and arrange my thoughts and I find myself totally unable to. I try to sit and watch a film without pausing it to do something else and I can't. I try to get 3 different scanners working and I CAN'T DO IT! Scanners and printers are in a technology zone of their own, and none of them seem to want to work when I'm around and I have work to do. I try to be creative every day. It seems to be the only way I am happy, when I am writing, drawing, taking photos, reading Rousseau, Stafford, Jay. So perhaps the best way to complete my day is to finish up this little tour diary.

New York. How to describe this place without living out a cliche. Actually for the first 2 days I hated the place. We had just spent nearly 3 weeks in California and we were not prepared for the change. Dirty, expensive and the first place on the whole trip where we met anyone who wasn't completely accommodating and helpful.

After flying through the night on the most uncomfortable flight imaginable, made even worse when I get home and my dad says to me:

"How nice is that flight from LA to NYC?"

Err, dad, it was awful. Possibly the most uncomfortable flight of my life.

"But you get to fly over the grand canyon and see lots of other beautiful landscapes!"

...

I flew at night. And I was nowhere near a window.

"Oh."

Cheers dad.

Anyway, we get in to New York super early, jump into a taxi to our hotel, find out we can't check in until 3pm. We have been up all night and I am so tired I could curl up and sleep on a fucking bench if I have to. Luckily, there is the best bagel place in the world around the corner, Murrays, and also a cinema! So we go in and buy tickets to see Kick Ass, the only film starting when we arrive. I promptly find us seats in the corner at the back, curl up and fall asleep.

We go back to the hotel Chelsea, world famous, a plaque with Leonard Cohen's name on it, features in a song by The Antlers, Sid & Nancy and all that, and get the shittiest service, the shittiest room and to top it all of it's full of mice who eat their way through the peanut butter m&ms I was planning on taking home. That means they have been in my luggage. Not a nice thought. The quality of the service also makes its way on to my bank statement, with a £22 refund for finding mice in our room. Ah, thanks, I could have probably use that to buy more m&ms, if it hadn't taken 2 weeks to clear.

Sans the shitty hotel, the rest of our time in NYC was... amazing. Great weather, easy public transport and an iphone with wifi most places so we could navigate our way to places recommended by friends. East Village, Soho, Brooklyn, Williamsburg... the best places to eat like Lovely Day, Caracas, Veselka, Murrays... Shopping in the likes of Opening Ceremony, A.P.C surplus... We spend the evenings with Holly Stanton and meet her friends, have drinks and scandals in Big Bar, Lit lounge, The Box... it seems like everyone in NYC knows about The Box and the transvestite who does stage shows with a dildo. Needless to say, we being British, were not expecting that on a night out. Not at all. We go to parties in East Village, the Trump Soho... I don't think we could have asked for better people or better places.

I feel that the American Museum of Natural History deserves a special mention. The place was incredible. It's like an art gallery, unlike any museum I have visited. The painted back drops, the perfectly laid out exhibits, the colours and the intricacy of the rooms is just staggering. I couldn't help thinking how much this place gives me the feeling of a Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach film. They are both obviously influenced by this place (Baumbach directed a film named after one of the displays) but I never realized it until I walked around it.

New York, you had to work for it, but you proved yourself to me. You really are an amazing city.