Diary – 24 January 2004

New York

It’s as easy as pie to get through Checkpoint Charlie. The very agreeable Hispanic immigration officer at Kennedy asked me to place my index fingers, one at a time, on a scanning machine. My prints were instantly checked against the dabs of (I suppose) suicide bombers, anarchists, white slavers, drugs barons, porn kings, and those who, wittingly or unwittingly, have in the past 60 years engaged in genocide (on however small a scale). But… no match. I was clean; and I was through immigration faster than on any previous visit to the United States. The new security arrangements may be daft, but they are not yet burdensome. Now that the Feds have my prints, however, I shall have to keep my hands to myself on future visits.

I arrived in New York on the eve of the biggest freeze for 100 years. In the early hours of last Friday morning, after two days of Arctic conditions, the temperature in the city dropped to 21F below zero, if you take the wind chill into account. The morning news shows loved it. It was so fun. One channel reversed the old fried-egg trick. A reporter cracked four eggs on a pavement, and they froze solid within minutes. But there was a serious side to it. The transit authorities apologised because some trains were running 15 minutes late as a result of frozen points and the like. Fifteen minutes! If such ‘adverse weather conditions’ were to hit England, the country would close down for 15 days, minimum. There’d be food riots, looting, heated exchanges in the House. Counselling centres would be besieged. No one would apologise.

Family friends told me that I had to wrap up in layers. My brother-in-law suggested skin-tight silk underwear, which sounded nice.