New York. State of Mind.

When I was 17 and Freddie Laker was in his pomp, I had a plan to use my Saturday-job money to take a £99 trip to New York City. I would fly out, walk the city for a day, then come straight home. No hotel. A few bucks for the subway and hot dogs. People told me that I was mad. New York in a day? Impossible. You'll die. Now New York in a day is a business-macho tick-box. Over the years I went off other people and my dream morphed into the same desire to visit remoter, lonely places. But now I'm fond of peoplewatching from some high castle or another. I'm at peace in a crowd. Two-score years later when it no longer matters to me, I finally made it. Did I feel that cartwheeling joy that I had anticipated as a boy? Not even a flicker. I felt precisely neutral about that initial step into the Big Bad City. What I wasn't prepared for was the rising flood of cultural references. Every corner turned brought a new song to mind, or a story of one kind or another and pretty much every one a warning of some kind. The city brought an unexpected, different kind of romance. Where Vegas is the sparkling domain of dark and hypnotic enchanters, New York is Mordor-on-Sea.

We passed Hackensack on the freeway to the New Jersey Turnpike. Newark Penn station for the Ironbound,  Suzanne Vega to Tony Soprano in a single tannoy call. We were a group of unlikely gangsters, followed by a state trooper for a spell. Don't look in the trunk, I thought, you'll find a Tesco bag-for-life full of unwashed boxers. After that preamble, I had a dead day between two work weeks and that's always dangerous. I took the shuttle from my jaded airport hotel to the air-train and then to the proper train to Penn Station. In that underground warren I got lost and intimidated in a world that might have inspired The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, with references all around her, from Times Square to Broadway. I finally emerging from what turned out to be the bowels of Madison Square Garden. That brought the memory of among other things, Jimmy Page performing wicked acts with a violin bow.  Ali and Frazier slugged it out somewhere overhead. Marilyn Munroe sang happy birthday to JFK, a real Fairytale of New York. John Lennon's last major performance was here. Biblical trumpets sound and great towers and icons fall.

People in coffee shops were polite through gritted teeth. I think they wanted to be rude, but maybe they thought it would make me a happy tourist, so they weren't. There were derelicts with a curious state of mind dodging the traffic.  There were mean-eyed cops in doughnut shops. I didn't get as far as Tom's Diner, or a walk on Madison Avenue, and I couldn't find a skateboard punk rocker  but not for want of trying. I was surprised to find that the sad and lovely Kettering is a reference to an institution in New York and not the town on the A14. There was no buzz. Instead there was a turbine of movement accompanied by a fierce bassline which it will take me a while to process. I take pleasure in being alone in a crowd and in that one regard, New York City was an unfettered joy. Unlike Vegas, I may have to come back. There is some siren thing here, a hint of the Angel.

All of this made me realise that if I had landed in New York in my teens, intending to spend a day and fly straight home, I am quite sure I woild have lost myself and never gone home at all. In the end, at eighteen, I spent my Saturday job money on a fellwalking trip where I discovered heaven in the mountains and valleys of the Western Lakes. I would say that I never looked back, which is not true, but over the years that teenage dream has turned into a very different, lifelong yearning for a true spiritual home where, one day, I intend to fall asleep under a high crag and never wake up. Which would, it has to be said, be a more satisfying end than a desolate backstreet in New York City.