New york

New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The reality is an urban agglomeration of millions, most of whom have a disinclination to speak English. Then there’s the celluloid city of 42nd Street, Annie Hall, Dead End, Rear Window and King Kong. This is the dream city I keep writing about, the one that stabs you in the gut because it’s gone. And it gets worse when you accept that it never existed in the first place. Like the woman of your dreams who has lost her looks and your best friend tells you they were never there. And

New York   If I wrote this in one of those newspaper diaries about metropolitan life, no one would believe it. But I trust that The Spectator’s readership has faith in me, so here goes. Last week six inches of snow were suddenly dumped on the Bagel in the space of two hours, bringing the city to a total halt. Trains stopped running, planes stopped flying, cars stopped driving. The traffic cops — very short in stature and Spanish-speaking to a man and woman, and appointed to the job in order to keep them off the welfare rolls — gave up and allowed drivers to go through red lights, which

New York I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where I live on the Upper East Side, and approximately $30. I even walked to the Heights once. One hour down the FDR, turn left on to Brooklyn Bridge, dodge the aggressive bikers and avoid the vendors; it’s a 20-minute crossing, give or take ten minutes depending on the crowds. Once you’re over, turn right and you’re there. The Heights are sedate, leafy streets with fine old homes turned into apartments, lush gardens and lofty harbour views. It feels like a staid patrician neighbourhood where time has stood still since the

New York   In the dark she still looks good. The mystery and magnetism linger until dawn, then you slowly see the lines and the harshness. As with a lady of the night who has smoked 10,000 cigarettes, the coming of the light is the enemy. New York ain’t what she used to be, that’s for sure. She’s a tired old place: upper-class vertical living has gone to seed and the fun honky-tonk side of the city has been gentrified and made boring. As mayor, Michael Bloomberg did his best to ruin the glamour of New York, allowing glass behemoths to bury the Chrysler building, one of the world’s monuments

New York   There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought police and hard-eyed women roaming the television studios with lists of sexual predators. There is also dread over the latest exports from the city’s youth detention centres, thanks to Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy and ex-wife of Governor Cuomo, who is now busy bailing out criminals who cannot afford bail through the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation, of which she is president. This is one hell of a city. While the criminals are being released, the innocent (presumed) are losing their jobs, having been accused of sexual harassment.

Gstaad   The bells are ringing, the bells are ringing, ding dong, ding dong. The cows are down from up high, where they’ve been grazing since spring. I look at them from my window and they stare back. I love hearing cowbells day and night. Their sound accompanies me as I hit the makiwara. I like it best when the cows cosy up and examine me up close. They have a complete absence of expression: no emotion, no curiosity, serene. The one that grazes just outside my window I call Emily, and she has even more tsuki no kokoro — ‘mind like the moon’ in karate parlance — than the

It’s that time of year again. Yippee! And get your wallets out. Scrooges are no longer tolerated at Christmas, although once upon a time people were so fed up with the annual Christmas shakedown that in 1419 London biggies ruled that Christmas solicitations were banned. Servants, apprentices, tradesmen and churchmen had all become professional supplicants, and were not best pleased by the ukase. But as someone once said, it is better to give than to receive, so there. We now give to doormen, barbers, hairdressers, garage attendants, lift operators, building supers, postmen and rich tiny children with hands outstretched. You name it, they expect it. And let us not forget

What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included a toddler, several children and eight members of one family at prayer. It is almost too hard to fathom. I’ve been here for six weeks and three mass-murder sprees have taken place, two perpetrated by deranged male shooters, the other by a disciple of Allah from Uzbekistan, who unfortunately survived a cop’s bullet and demanded an Isis flag be raised in his hospital room. Nice. At least that ghastly man Jann Wenner has not plastered the Uzbek scumbag on the cover of Rolling Stone. After the Boston marathon massacre, he

I hate to say this, but the quality of life in the Bagel has crashed in a Harvey Weinstein-like way. The city has always had a sort of rollercoaster feel, its ups and downs driven by Wall Street and budget cuts, but its present state is the worst I’ve experienced by far. When I first came to New York, it was the true centre of the world. It was after the war and Europe was in ruins. What glamour there was in the world resided in the city. People dressed to the nines, women wore hats and gloves, and manners were far more important than money. It was a feast

Katz’s Delicatessen, established 1888, is a theme park of Jewish-American food, with tribute gift shop, on the lower east side of Manhattan. There is nowhere more Jewish than Katz’s except Haredi Brooklyn, but if you go there you don’t come back. Katz’s offers a gentler Jewish experience, if you can conceive of such a thing, or it at least attempts it; it offers a kind of Judaism you can enjoy over lunch, which I find amazing because I have never managed it. (No one, for instance, talks about the Holocaust in Katz’s, not because they don’t want to but because they can’t. Try saying Treblinka with a dumpling in your