Breaking down

In sympathy with the Blackberries in Britain that are all fomenting rebellion, my own handset has also turned evil, although in this particular case it's just that the screen has turned black and the light has turned on, like a miniature eye of Sauron glaring angrily out at the world. That wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't stored several days of my most intellectual gibbering, news that the World Must Hear or somesuch.

Or at least, this means that I may have lost the record of my unbroken blogging streak - almost up to two years now, managing to type out a few words in between getting married and other events.

Meanwhile, the day went pretty well - I got up early and wasted an hour reading superhero comics, then ran for 10 kilometres, mostly on the High Line, an elevated railtrack that has been converted into a pleasant walkway, rather than a space to insert more expensive apartments. It's also fully exposed to the sun, which meant that running up and down it at 9am wasn't actually the best of ideas, but at least I got the distance in and could then stagger slowly back to the hotel, via an angry protest that was one man holding up a sign saying something obscene about Cuomo, who I think might have been the mayor, or something, at some point. It's hardly burning down the whole city and boosting DVD players from the Sony warehouse, is it?

This afternoon we didn't buy any books (for a change) but went north to the Cloisters, a collection of buildings put together by the Rockefellers via the amusing although insensitive method of buying up lots of neat stuff in Europe, and then shipping it all to New York and sticking it together - so there are four different religious buildings combined to form the cloisters, with only the smallest perceptible joins around them. It's nice to pretend you're a few centuries ago from time to time.

I also found a Swedish sweet shop (try saying that and see if anyone believes you) down in Soho, which meant I could stock up on my beloved Dumle, and be mistaken for a Finn by the Swedish shop assistant. Which I think is either a compliment or she thought that I was alcoholic and like playing with knifes. And repelling Russians in a winter war amongst pine trees. Ah, life's rich and glamourous tapestry.

We've become more lazy though. At the start of this week we were walking everywhere. Now we're taking taxis almost everywhere, and then getting lost and seeing whole new vistas of the city as the taxis hurtle in strange and implausible loops through the Meatpacking district or another of those areas of New York with a fictional sounding name. All the taxis have televisions in the back, but unlike Hong Kong where they're impenetrably Cantonese, here I can understand the ruddy things, and with the wave of bilge they produce, I really wish I couldn't.

Tomorrow I might write about the New York Post, if I can subject myself to 75 cents of tabloid inanity again. Ah, bliss.