Back in ’65 I was what Pete Townshend referred to as an art school mod. This meant that I could not afford the threads worn by true mods – working class lads earning good money and still living at home with mum and dad – but had to improvise with what was left from a meagre student grant after forking out on life’s essentials; beer, food and rent.

In those days I tripped the light fantastic in desert boots, white Levis, boutique bought button down shirt, crew neck sweater from Marks’ and a nearly parka from the local army surplus store. My wardrobe was later reinforced by a jacket that had crept, unnoticed, into the decidedly unswinging and least likely destination for such a garment - the menswear department at the Co-op. It was tan with a thin blue pinstripe - widely spaced - a double vent, narrow lapels, high buttoned front, four button cuffs: fab gear rave pic as John Lennon would have said if he’d ever caught sight of it.

Then there was the seersucker jacket in a large tartan check that was louder than three Marshall amps with the volume turned up to number 11. When I slipped into that, Steve Marriot had nothing on me baby. Nothing, apart from being the best white soul singer of his generation, fronting the Small Faces, stepping out with Chrissie Shrimpton and being one cool customer with an account at Scotch of St James and the Adlib.

OK, admittedly I had a bit of ground to make up, but the jacket was a start. Well, the end really, because that’s about as far as my flirtation with mod took me. But like Townshend, I never surrendered unconditionally to the new peace and love brigade. Not for me the extremes of hippydom; ludicrous loons, baubles, bells and bright shiny beads, headbands – expanding or otherwise – cheesecloth soaked in petuli oil and tie dye corduroy boots. No, I never lost those early mod tendencies for sharp rather than gently rounded.

So imagine my delight this Saturday past, that when out shopping for a suit to wear to my son’s impending matrimonial celebrations I was presented with a vision of electric blue magnificence: truly a Peacock Suit. And better still, it was reduced by half, making it a mere 50% less affordable than before. Outstanding. And come Saturday, standing out is what I’ll be.

Back in dear old Blighty after my American odyssey, life has settled back into familiar patterns. Not the silken paisley kind, rather more of a knitted Fair Isle; the kind of sleeveless woolly that Paul McCartney sported in The Magical Mystery Tour, smelling vaguely of sheep’s breath and spilt Horlicks, with a dash of Scotch for kicks.

The daily routines are, of course, convenient cover, helping to create the illusion of respectability behind which I can continue my other life as Farquhar, the dandy highway and byewayman. He is a genie who is well and truly out of the bottle and he’s not about to be forced back in.

In the meantime, London, where I spend my days between Monday and Friday, has turned into Madrid. The unchecked sun blazes down, trapping heat in brick and stone, turning the side roads to flows of lava, black and soft underfoot .

People gather to fry eggs on the bonnets of parked cars just because they can, the smell of cooking mixing with boiling diesel and hot shit. Sweat seeps down the back of businessmen’s shirts as they battle through to corporate headquarters, jackets slung carelessly over heavy shoulders, already bent by the weight of their world. Girls trip lightly, legs long and shiny, the like not seen since the sixties swung into town, but without the innocence.

In recent days the power is cut as ten thousand vibrating air conditioners in Oxford Street bring down the electricity supply, demand outstripping capacity. Storm rain shifts tons of earth onto the Piccadilly Line in the western suburbs. Somebody is mugged for a bottle of water. Better get used to it, mother nature is on the run in the naughties.

I walk through the front door and drop my bags where I stand. I turn towards the mirror. My face stares back. I untie the knot and remove my father’s old green tie, folding it neatly around my fingers. I take off my hat, drop the tie inside and place it on the hall table next to my keys. I kick off my shoes. Walking to the foot of the stairs, I pause, rest my hand on the banister rail, and listen.

‘Hi honey, I’m home’.

So my American adventure is at an end. As always, airports have a way of neutralising events by creating a void, a nether world that bears little resemblance to the one that lies beyond the perimeter fence. The two and a half hours I’ve spent at JFK have already created a buffer zone, an empty no-man’s land, reducing the ability to clearly recall or give meaning to the events of the past few weeks. I don’t let it concern me but slip into neutral, allowing the set routines of air travel to take over. Time stands still, so I stop watching the clock, entering a state that resembles hibernation.

Once the flight is called I join the two hundred or so people with whom I will share the journey and proceed, in a ragged line, through the boarding gate. Seated and belted in my window seat, I watch the ground staff go about the final preparations for the aircraft’s departure, vehicles with flashing lights swarming around us on the wet tarmac. America could already be three thousand miles away. I imagine the workers below returning to their homes in Queens or White Plains, letting themselves into darkened apartments while their neighbours sleep. I picture them fixing a plate of food and filling a glass before sitting down to unwind with a late movie, a tray balanced on their knees, the TV light ghostly in the bones of their faces. People I will never know, getting on with lives I will never be part of, in a city, state and country in which I will never live.

What then have I learned from this trip? Has it added anything to my life? Will it change the way I think and live? The truth is, I don’t know. Anyhow, now is not the time to answer that question. Do I even need an answer? Maybe not. Life will carry on regardless - wasn’t that the title of a film? And what of Farquhar? Does he have a future or will he fade quietly away, back into the shadows of the fictional world from whence he came, patiently waiting for the call to accompany his creator on a new quest? Time, as ever, will tell.

Turning the pages of the intermittent journal I’ve kept of this journey, I return to the first entry, made on the plane during the outward-bound flight. The words I read possibly go some way to explaining the reasons that find me here, stranded somewhere between the past and the present, suspended in space.

‘ And so it is, that here I am on a plane, somewhere over Greenland on my way to the United States. The outside air temperature is minus 50 degrees centigrade; altitude 34,000 feet; remaining flight time four hours thirty-four minutes. This means that I’m about half way. Half way to what? To my destination? Yes. Half way through my life? That could be optimistic. Half way to paradise then. Now I’m getting a little light headed in my train of thought. All aboard for the Marrakesh Express. It could be the altitude or the Bloody Mary I’ve just finished. But halfway to paradise, who can tell? Billy Fury maybe? No, he’s already there. Up above, somewhere over my head in the heavens, dressed in his silk Italian suit, blond slick-backed hair falling carelessly into half-closed eyes, top lip curled in mock rebellion; a look perfected in front of the bathroom mirror in Bootle, a photo of Elvis propped on the shelf and the distant horn of his father’s tugboat drifting across the foggy Mersey night.

Maybe that’s how it began for me, this fascination that draws me again and again to make the Atlantic crossing. Restless clanging nights, the sound of the docks beating out their nocturnal rhythms into my childhood dreams; ships sirens, clattering railway wagons, machine gun riveters in the nightshift shipyard and the smell of the sea on the breeze: the scent of adventure.

Great liners with regal titles steamed majestically to sea before our childhood gaze on their way to another world, the new world, a world that lay five days away across the ocean. For like Billy Fury, I was raised in a great seaport. The Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, The United States and The France crossed regularly to New York. Watching from the Weston Shore I saw those towering, stately liners pass silently down Southampton Water and out into the Solent. Each time it was as if a small part of me stowed away and sailed with them, to a land that was the place of myth and legend, played out and coming alive in the comic book stories and films of my boyhood’.

And so it is now, and evermore will be so.

Before 9/11 getting into the United States was never relaxed. Now, it can be tense. Immigration officers are rarely caught with a smile on their face as they ask for details on the nature and duration of your visit while scanning the magnetic strip on your passport. Frequent visitors soon learn the rules. Stay behind the yellow line until called and once at the desk, speak when you’re spoken to, speak up, answer straight and show respect. By the time an officer reaches for the red stamp and hammers through the paperwork laid out before them you know you‘re in, unless, that is, you get pulled over by the customs officials, the final obstacle between you and the baggage carousel.

Some years ago, this is precisely what happened to a colleague of mine. Safely through immigration on a business trip we were making to New York City, Mike was taken aside by customs officers and subjected to fifteen minutes of vigorous questioning about his relationship with a certain Tony Lombardi, a gentlemen who did not feature under ‘L’ or ‘T’ in his address book. The fact was Mike had never, in his recollection, had as much as a nodding acquaintance with anyone of this name. But, according to his questioners, the two had met in Austin, Texas some sixteen years previously. Mike agreed to having been in Austin at this time, while on holiday with wife, but had not been back since and had not, to his knowledge, run across any Tony Lombardi at the time.

Seemingly satisfied with Mike’s denials, he was finally allowed to enter the country, shaken and a little stirred. During the cab ride into Manhattan, he was subject to some good-natured banter about his possible relationship with the mysterious Mr. Lombardi. Every black limo with smoked windows was seen as a potential ‘tail’ or, even worse, a mafia hit wagon. Being the easy-going chap that he is, Mike took it all in good spirits, although remained a little disturbed as to how the allegation arose and what other repercussions there may be. But the potential for jokes at Mike’s expense were quickly exhausted and during the course of the evening the topic was soon dropped.

Early the next morning just as I was about to step into the shower my phone rang. It was Mike. Could I go up to his room four floors above? He had just put the phone down on a female caller giving him a message from a Mr. Lombardi. Within minutes I was dressed and knocking on Mike’s door. He let me in, appearing pale and disturbed. The anonymous caller had said that she was calling to say how Tony had heard Mike was in the city for a few days and was anxious to meet up. Despite Mike’s protestations she insisted on leaving Tony’s contact number for him to call to arrange a meeting. This was now getting spooky.

Over breakfast, joined by remaining colleagues and the client, we decided that Mike was the victim of a clumsy attempt at entrapment by the US authorities. The consensus was that he should play it straight and ignore any future calls or approaches made by so–called friends or colleagues of the now infamous Tony Lombardi. And that was to be the last we heard of him. Mike received no further telephone entreatments to ‘hook up’ with any shady characters and to this day, has never discovered the reasons for the federal agencies interest in any alleged relationship or the nature of Mr Lombardi’s business activities. But the episode was to have one last twist.

Our final evening in the city had found us in Little Italy and in need of a place to eat, we spotted a pizza house across the street. Just as we were about to enter, I looked at the sign over our heads. It read ‘Lombardi’s, New York’s finest oven baked pizzas’. We went in anyway. Hey, what were we, pussycats or wise guys?

Now recalled as a tale to tell, it’s never far from my mind when I approach any kind of authority in the US, especially now, when the increase in security also includes the process of leaving the country. Once no more than an easy-going formality - Americans in uniform never seemed to fret about people leaving their country – the checks on passengers boarding aircraft, now that they’re all potential flying bombs, are a lot more thorough. It’s not until I’m the other side of the scanners and magnetic devices do I begin to slip into airport limbo, the state of nothingness that exists when you’re stateless, between countries, not quite gone and not yet arrived. I find a seat facing the window in a quiet spot and plug into my i-pod. Through the glass the rain is still falling, sweeping in sheets across the empty aircraft stand.

I close my eyes and drift away, lost in transit.

The morning starts dull and overcast with the smell of rain in the air. The city seems strangely withdrawn as it begins the working week; things seem slow and leaden, like Manhattan has woken up with a giant hangover. As my flight doesn’t leave until 7.30pm I have time to kill. I settle the hotel bill and check my luggage into the baggage store.

Breakfast is taken at the Cheyenne Diner on 34th and 9th. Built in the 1940’s in the Art Moderne style, this single story glass and stainless steel structure is one of the last of its kind in the city. In 2004, a similar establishment, the Munson Diner at 49th Street and 11th Avenue, was bought up, shut down, and nearly scrapped after more than 50 years. For decades, construction workers rolled in for eggs and toast as the sun rose over Hell's Kitchen; cops popped in for coffee and cabbies grabbed a bagel or burger between fares; commuters picked up dinner on their way to the Lincoln Tunnel and late-night club kids poured themselves into the black booths for cheeseburgers and onion rings before dawn.

After almost a year in limbo and several failed suitors, a group of local investors bought up the Munson Diner and moved it on low-loaders to a new home in downtown Liberty in upstate New York. But the Cheyenne survives as a living reminder of another time in a city that has ruthlessly torn down its past in the never-ending race to make a buck. As Dylan put it, ‘money doesn’t talk it swears.’

Leaving the Cheyenne I decide to walk off the corn beef hash, two eggs, links, coffee and toast with a stroll down 9th Avenue. This area of the west side is low rise and low rent. Chain link fences surround vacant lots used as parking spaces. Adult video outlets, shoe repairers, discount drug stores, gents hairdressers, nail emporiums, electrical suppliers, bars and pizza parlors all cram together in dingy blocks, the fire escapes rust red, criss-crossing up to flat roofs with their wood-clad water towers, stark against the sky. I pass a large photographic equipment store staffed entirely by Hasidic Jews dressed in white shirts and black waistcoats, most with spectacles, their beards worn in many shades.

Diverting right to 10th and 11th Avenues, I try to find the elevated section of a long abandoned railroad track that has allegedly been reborn as a pedestrian parkway. I find the El, but with no sign of the promised garden. The first rain is starting to fall and aching from three days spent pounding the New York streets, I take the snap decision to jump on the subway and head uptown to the Guggenheim Museum. I have no idea what’s on, but it will pass some time in the dry. As it turns out, the current exhibition is a retrospective of sculptor David Smith. I’m not familiar with his work and it’s a bonus when I discover that I like it a lot.

Within three hours, the rain now pouring down, I’m in the back of a yellow cab bound for JFK. We head east across town towards FDR Drive. The evening exodus is building and we crawl in line, brake lights reflecting blood red in the wet, all the way to the ramp that takes us up onto the Triborough Bridge. We cross high over the East River and I’m denied a last view of a city that’s wrapped in a dark shroud of low cloud and mist. I lie back, overwhelmed with a deep and irresistible need to shut out this parting moment with sleep.

Due to the heavy traffic, the driver turns off the freeway and we race through grim backstreets lined with warehouses, the tyres clattering over cobblestones in my half consciousness. A blast on the horn startles my eyes open and I catch the flash of a large 4WD, close to, on our inside, halted suddenly in its progress from the curb by our passing. Then the moment's gone and I continue to doze.

Coming around again, I see that we’re in line at a junction that will eventually take us back onto the freeway. We jerk forward in short spurts as the cabbie lifts his foot from the brake. Then, inches from my face, a vehicle pulls up alongside, nudging closer each time we move. This continues until, at last, our driver becomes aware of what’s going on. He mutters something under his breath and sits upright, suddenly alert. We creep forward; the other vehicle does the same, almost touching. This is deliberate. Someone is out to get us. Still slightly ahead, the road in front clears and we can pull away. Slamming down hard on the gas, we fly off the line and speed onto the freeway ramp. Behind, the roar of a four-litre engine crosses from left to right and our adversary appears. It’s the 4WD from three miles back. The driver’s window is down and he’s there, screaming in unheard fury, face twisted in rage. We cut him up and now he wants a slice of us.

We charge on, trying in vain to shake him off, but he’s out for blood. He veers wildly from side to side, getting closer with each pass. We’re locked in some deadly dual, and I’m an innocent passenger who, through a simple twist of fate, has been dragged along for the ride. It’s a role that I’m not enjoying. Becoming a victim of a road rage incident is not how this story is meant to end. I try not to look, fearing that this crazy man will interpret eye contact as a sign of support for my terrorized driver, who is now radioing for help from the Highway Patrol. From the corner of my averted eye I catch sight of something in the air, hurtling towards us. I make out the shape of a large Subway milkshake as it hits with a loud bang, showering its liquid contents over the side windows. I’m convinced that it won’t be long before the madman pulls a gun. If he shoots the driver I’m done. If he shoots me, I’m dead.

My mind races ahead. Failing in his attempts to force the cab to stop I’m convinced that this guy is going to follow us all the way to JFK where we’ll be trapped, with nowhere to run. That’s when he’ll produce his pistol and gun us down outside the departure lounge, making good his escape before the authorities and horrified onlookers realise what’s happened. Resigned to a showdown and with nothing to lose, I look across the carriageway for a good look at our adversary in case I survive and am required to give the NYPD a full and accurate description. I’m just in time to catch a glimpse of the 4WD sweeping up an exit ramp, an arm extended from the cab in a parting one-finger salute. That kind of abuse I can take.

The last few miles to the airport are spent in silence. All that’s been spilt is a half-full shake and both driver and fare live with a tale to tell. Despite my cab driver’s action provoking what could have been a dire retaliation for us both, I tip him handsomely, relieved not be travelling in the opposite direction in the back of an ambulance.

C’mon, whad’ja expec’? Dis is Noo Yawk Cidy.

This is my last evening here in New York City, my last in the United States and the last of my trip. I walk out onto Madison Avenue into my favourite time of day; the part when the sun is low, throwing out long shadows and hitting a million windows, bouncing the light around to create crazy reflections on the buildings like a giant kaleidoscope slowly turning. With the daylight almost done there follows an interlude of calm contemplation, but this is soon replaced with a rising sense of excitement - an expectation of what the night’s coming may yet bring. Tonight this is tempered with thoughts of leaving, for I’m almost at the end of my journey and this brings the inevitable feelings of ennui.

Crossing the street I continue westward, determined to shake off this creeping negativity. I walk as far as 7th Avenue and jump into a cab, heading downtown. Through the open window a warm breeze blows into my face as we race through seven green lights, straight off. The weather is close and humid with a storm building somewhere not too distant. The sidewalks are crowded, people’s voices rise and fall, carried on the still air into my hearing, the words clear for a second or two, then gone, like scanning through the wavebands on a radio. After twenty-five blocks the cab pulls over at Washington Square North.

The day having been warm, as well as Sunday, ensures that the square is crammed with people enjoying the sun’s last rays that saturate the scene with a blazing orange light. Street entertainers are out in force, each attracting a willing and appreciative audience. A group of old timers knock out New Orleans style jazz; two kids with acoustic guitars strum franticly through their set and are joined for a while by a strange wild boy, who, stripped to the waist, performs a dance of his own invention, moving on with a wave once he’s done, vanishing into the crowd; a black guy in top hat and tails runs through his repertoire of Sammy Davis Jnr. numbers; an old man on a bicycle rides imperiously through the throng, a battered cassette player duct taped to the carrier over the back wheel, belting out the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack with maximum distortion; twin brothers from the Bronx treat us to an acrobatic display, pulling in members of the audience to act as stooges to their well rehearsed patter, artfully putting us down while we willingly hand over our dollar bills.

Reluctant to go, I need to make my way to Hudson Street where I’ve reserved a table for dinner. I’m booked in to a Portuguese restaurant that has been getting good reviews. The place is jammed with large parties, all seeming to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, or just each other’s company and this drives me into the book I always bring along when I eat out alone. I turn the pages, I see the words, but I take in nothing and give up. Uneasy in my surroundings and overcome with an urgent desire to leave, I finish up quickly and get the check.

Darkness has fallen as I make my way across to 8th Avenue where I can pick up a cab to take me uptown. On the way I pass a small bar, the door is open and before I can think twice I’m inside ordering a drink; another follows, then another until I’m settling the check for six or seven. By the time the coolness of the street hits me the last lingering traces of depression have lifted to be replaced by an alcoholic high and for the present at least, all is right with the world.

On the corner of Bleecker and 8th I stumble across a paved area with public seating. I take my place among those already here, happy for the city to pass me by. Close by, a rose from Spanish Harlem uses her cell phone to arrange a rendezvous with her boyfriend; a swaying drunk serenades his bottle toting compadres; a bespectacled lady with a perm walks her dog, plastic bag at the ready to scoop any poops; an old man watches, his chin resting on gnarled hands, cupped over the handle of his cane; a couple whisper low, their heads almost touching, oblivious in their lovelorn solitude.

As the cab sweeps me up 8th Avenue for one last nightcap at The Paramount, I lie back as far as the cramped back seat will allow and let the sights and sounds of the New York night flood over me. Electricity is everywhere, shocking everything into life, its fluorescent energy illuminating the clouds above with a ghostly light. It's as though I can reach up and touch the stars that sparkle beyond.

Across 7th Avenue, I slip into a neighbourhood café on Bleecker Street. I’ve been walking since leaving the hotel at 8.30am and I need to boost my energy levels with a shot of caffeine and a slice of something sugary.

On my way downtown I took some time to wander through the farmer’s market in Union Square, here most Saturday mornings and drawing in a variety fresh produce from upstate New York, Jersey and places further afield; an early start for all. Stalls with pure honey, fresh baked bread, cookies, home made pies, fruit and vegetables, flowers and plants, jars of preserves, all serve to transform this large square in the heart of the city into a bustling country marketplace. New Yorkers in their hundreds get here first thing to stand in line for a taste of the natural world.

From there I turned east on the south side of the square along 14th Street to 2nd Avenue, diverting left or right whenever something caught my eye, until I reached the wide cross-town boulevard of Houston. Tramping the sidewalks, block by block, I felt the urgent pulse of the city all around, raw energy pumping through the streets from a heart that beats, without skipping, for 24 hours a day. It’s taken me the best part of three of those hours to arrive here at Hester’s Café.

Taking a table for two on the sidewall I check the chalked menu for the day’s specials. When the waiter comes over I order a large filter coffee with milk and a slice of maple and pecan pie. Looking around me, the place is playing host to a mixed bunch, most with the kind of relaxed ease that comes with being regulars. A couple on the next table are underway with the kind of conversation that old friends have – she, slight, angular and wan– he, large, rounded and rouged. She talks fast, only her mouth and her hands move; he talks slower with extravagant, melodramatic gestures, like he’s rehearsing speeches in a nineteenth century production of Falstaff. In their own way they’re bringing each other up to date on what they’ve been doing in their lives.

A guy who has been sitting on a bench outside – tall, cropped white hair, cap, windcheater, a ringer for James Coburn - comes in to settle his check. This done he makes to leave. Without removing his eyes from his companion, ‘Falstaff’ says something I don’t quite catch as ‘James’ passes. At the door he turns, pauses, and then speaks, his words delivered with cool malice.

‘Some of us have got work to get back to - an honest living to earn. We can’t all spend the day in here sitting on our fat ass telling faggot stories to any fag hag who’ll sit and listen to ‘em.’ The door slams shut behind him and he’s on the street.

Moving with speed for a man of bulk, ‘Falstaff’ is already on his feet, his chair clattering to the floor. Stepping over the tangle of legs and lunging for the door he booms,

‘I’ll kill that miserable bastard. Faggot, did he say faggot?’

Without waiting for an answer he’s already outside, hurling insults up the street in mock-fury, eyes bulging, spit flying, mascara running.

‘You don’t get to call ME a fag, d’ya here, you fuckin’ closet queen. Crawl back up yer own hole you son-of-a-bitch. You come back here and I’ll kill ya, ya fuckin’ Mary.’

Then as quickly as he left, ‘Falstaff’ returns, picks up his chair and restarts the conversation where he left it before interrupting himself. His companion too, who has sat calmly and expressionless during the outburst, shows no sign that anything out of the ordinary has taken place. I can’t help conclude that I have just witnessed a regular cabaret performance, enacted every day at this time for the entertainment of Hester’s patrons, who also seem remarkably unmoved, even bored, by this brief play of passion. I pay up and leave, with no mention of events. A block away I spy ‘James’ behind the desk in the rear of a gallery, spectacles on, quietly going about his business at a computer screen.

It’s 11.52am in the West Village, New York, and with the dynamo hum of the city filtering through, all is quiet here in the sunshine on Bleecker Street.

I walk out into the thundering morning.

Garbage trucks grind yesterday’s trash, banging and smashing as the crew toss plastic wrapped waste into the crusher, sweating to get through by 10 and on to second jobs, making ends meet in the big apple: Buses hiss to a stop as the automatic doors jerk apart to spill their human cargo onto the ironbound sidewalks, hitting the ground running to beat the clock and the boss’s evil eye: On street corners people rise out of holes in the ground like Lazarus - only in their thousands - from the riveted girder framed catacombs of the subway, splitting left and right as their feet hit ground level, blinking into the daylight, each one silent and alone in the madding crowd: Shiny mobile stalls, towed in from Jersey and Brooklyn at 4am to occupy a corner on every block, dispense coffee and bagels to go, bagged in crumpled brown paper, feeding the five thousand a hundred times over at a dollar fifty a time and off the streets again by noon: Packs of yellow cabs, forever hungry and on the prowl, dive fearlessly for the curb across speeding lanes to scoop up a fare, one hand on the wheel, both eyes in the mirror: Cops stand in pairs, short of leg with paunches that overhang belts weighed low with the stuff of law and order - cuffs, ammo, billie stick, gun, torch, rosary - the guys with uniform moustaches, the gals with a wink and a ready smile: More cops in patrol cars cruise around with the windows down, radios babbling, all beeps and crackles, distant voices strained through static: Peterbilt diesels, lights blazing and loaded with dank rubble, shake the ground with their double axles, ploughing through clouds of white steam billowing up from the manhole covers as if the whole city is about to blow: Hasidic Jews, fresh in from Amsterdam and London, black hats, black coats, black ties, black beards, black shoes, dark history, pace West 57th Street lost in private conversation: Manny’s guitar store, a destination for axmen the world over, giving nothing away to nobody, however big: Asian traders push bulging racks of wholesale clothing through the deep shadows in the bleak streets between Broadway and 7th Avenue, the only colour coming from the swirls, splashes and dots of the garments themselves: Dog lovers, one eye on their sparring mutts the other on the time, swap shaggy stories in Madison Square Park, the Flat Iron looking on imperious and aloof through narrow unlit windows: The Village relives its past daily, Café Wha still trading off the glories that once called it home, footsteps of Hendrix and Dylan retraced with uncertainty, but knowing for sure that it’s still positively 4th Street: Washington Square with its arch that had echoed with Ginsberg’s howl and where Ferlinghetti’s dog trotted freely and cocked a leg in mock salute to senators and congressmen long dead: The Chelsea Hotel hides behind plastic sheets, its rumpled beds playing host to a thousand rock and roll tales. Today, the tragically hip - their shades down - traverse the lobby with studied artlessness, checking the mirror and hoping that something magic rubs off by just being there: Monte's old time Italian waiters in the basement on McDougal Street stand along the back wall in their white shirts and black waistcoats, pants seats shiny with the years, looking like funeral directors with their jackets off, talking among themselves, waiting, waiting, the menu committed to memory: Elizabeth Street where Little Italy just gets smaller, now almost lost to fashionable bag emporiums and gentlemen’s clothing boutiques, the Albanese Meat and Poultry Market hanging on with its hand painted offers on prime cuts. Two doors away through the dusty glass of a store long closed, Ol’ Blue Eyes throws an arm around the owner, smiles faded by years of daylight, while a block away Chinatown creeps forever closer: Brooklyn Bridge, too much for some to walk across, though surely the most beautiful: The Statue of Liberty, exiled out there in the grey mist waits for a new wave of huddled masses to relight her torch: Ground Zero, the city’s only war wound, still open to the sky: The Bowery, empty of bums and CBGB’s, doing business again: The Chrysler Building shines out from the past above 42nd Street, its art deco arches blazing white hot against the ice blue sky: The Cheyenne Diner does the same at street level on 9th Avenue, serving hash browns, eggs and toast 24 hours 7 day a week: Breakfast at Tiffany’s: The Park: MOMA: Horns: Sirens: Grand Central: The Bronx: Lincoln Tunnel: The A train: The Knicks: John’s Pizzeria: The Garden: Walk: Don’t walk.

I return in the lightning’s flash of night and dream of home.

I join the end of the line wishing that I hadn't packed my warm clothes. The wind whips though the murky cavern between the terminal building and the multi-story parking lot, rippling the surface of the standing water left by recent rain showers. It's not yet April and east coast temperatures are a chill reminder.

As I near the front of the queue the airport taxi attendant hands me a flyer telling me about fixed-rate fairs into the city, simultaneously she beckons the next yellow cab forward.

'Whereya goin''? she says, in the nasal staccato sing-song of Brooklyn, voice raised to carry over the echo of engine noise in this dripping concrete tunnel.

'Manhattan', I say, 'Madison Avenue', the wind taking my breath away.

She bends to hand the cabbie his official paperwork. The trunk springs open and I swing my bags in before the driver can get out to assist. He was in no hurry. I slide across the rear seat and pull the door shut behind me.

'37th and Madison', I say, through the scratched Plexiglas partition that separates me from the back of the driver's head, unmoved on his thick brown neck. Without word or sign he powers the cab away from the curb and out into the grey daylight. We tip left and right through a series of sharp bends, inclines and slopes on the ramps and slip roads that take us out of JFK to join the Van Wyck Expressway. Without slowing, the driver launches his vehicle into the racing stream of traffic, his arm resting along the open window, shirt sleeve flapping violently, loud enough for me to hear above the hip-hop on the radio and the rip of the tyres speeding over tarmac.

Switching lanes wherever a gap appears, we motor on, somehow managing to miraculously avoid a collision. I sit back and silently vow to throw myself on the mercy of the driver. I have every faith in him. What else can I do? This is his game and he knows the rules. From the picture ID taped to the partition in front of me, above the freephone number to ring in case of complaints, I see his name is Mohammad Khan. Most cab drivers in the five boroughs are first generation immigrants, earning their living the hard way.

Through Queens we pass rows of compact wooden villas; black limousines pulled up on narrow sloping driveways; back yards stacked with plastic furniture and last summer's abandoned barbecues; an empty playground with basketball hoops and kid's swings, dead leaves piled up against the chain link fence. Overhead on a bridge, I see a sign for Electric Avenue and think of Eddy Grant grinning with his dreadlocks flying.

On the right, hard up against the freeway, is The Lincoln Motor Inn with its deadeye windows and sagging air con units, looking every inch a murder scene. Inside, in an airless room on the second floor, I imagine a body tangled in stale bloody sheets waiting to be discovered, a 'do not disturb' sign hanging on the unlocked door.

Taking a long sweeping exit ramp with signs for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, we move on to the Long Island Expressway. Picking up heavy traffic heading into the city we slow to a crawl. Across the central barrier the lanes leaving town are at a standstill in the evening rush.

Then, without warning, through the front screen, I catch the first sight of Manhattan, still eight miles away and spread out from Wall Street to the park. No matter how many times I see this skyline rise up before my eyes, the thrill never fails to ignite the torch I carry for this city.

Jostling for position, the cab passes through the toll booth and we're in the gloom of the tight, tiled tunnel under the East River, the hollow whoosh of tyres amplified to mix with the roar of motors, the smell of exhaust and gasoline thick in the damp air. All at once we're out into the dappled light of the street, brick and stone towering all around, people everywhere, walking like New Yorker's do, conversation coming in snatches through the driver's window, horns tooting, steam billowing, a siren wailing its mournful rise and fall.

I'm back in Gotham, in all its iron-built glory.

I wake from a night spent in the restless dreams of a wanderer far from home. Strangers using the names of those that I know had drifted in and out of my shallow consciousness as the sound of my wheels rumbled endlessly on, towards a horizon that drew no closer. The mechanical beep of my bedside alarm finally releases me from this mixed-up twilight world and at 5.30am I'm in the shower preparing for the long day ahead. By 6am I’m reversing out of my parking place, all bags packed and stowed in the trunk.

After two days in Tucson I’m taking my leave; not only from the city, but also from the southwest. I turn left out of the hotel exit and join the first rush of morning traffic, the sun not yet risen. A mile-and-a-half down the road I take a left onto Speedway and pull into the middle of three lanes following directions for Interstate 10; past the buildings of Arizona State University with its national photographic archive, past automobile showrooms, drive-in banks, fast food joints and the western wear store. I pull off into a Texaco and tank-up with enough unleaded to get me to Skyharbour International Airport in Phoenix, two hours drive to the north.

The elevated freeway is a flowing ribbon of red tail lights as I climb the ramp and slot smoothly into a gap. Indicating left I pull clear of the slower lanes, increasing my speed to match those around me. The highway sweeps by the cluster of shiny high buildings that identify the financial district of downtown Tucson and takes me swiftly on, soon crowded in on both sides by mile after mile of soulless walled-in housing estates, dubbed with the mock poetry of their Spanish names. The desert is on the run out here and the concrete keeps on pouring.

Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought 'em
And they called it paradise

Clear at last, the giant saguaro cactus appear, in silhouette, arms outstretched and bent upward against the pale sky as if in a gesture of surrender to the sly, creeping city. The first rays of the sun catch the top edge of the mountains to my right and swamp the land to my left in a soft orange glow.

Charging on, traffic thundering all around and growing thicker with each passing entrance, I’m led fatefully and inevitably to the metropolis of Phoenix. This is to be the end of the road for me and I begin to hang on to every mile as if it were the last I would ever drive. The thought of stillness and a fixed view has me in a state of mild panic, held at bay only by the crazed forward rush of those that surround me, soaking up all my concentration and numbing the regret that lingers inside.

But I need to let such yearning for the heartworn highway slip away now, for in five hours I will be in a different place, over two thousand miles distant in the direction of the rising sun: New York City.

In the Santa Cruz Valley, nine miles south of Tucson, stands the mission of San Xavier Del Bac, known by generations as the ‘white dove of the desert’. It’s dome, towers and spires stand holy and immovable on the baked brown earth amid dusty green mesquite and sage, the violet shadows of the distant mountains running the length of the horizon, to left and right.

Originally established by Jesuit missionaries in the land of the Tohono O’odham people at a place they called the Bac – ‘the place where the water appears’ – the present structure was built between 1783 and 1797 by Franciscan fathers Juan Bautista Velderrain and Juan Bautista Llorenz, the hard labour provided as an act of faith by the indigenous tribes. Isolated and exposed to bands of raiding Apache intent on its destruction, the mission survived all adversity and remains a practising place of worship to this day.

Walking toward the glowing majesty of its white structure across the flat, sun-beaten parking lot, I can only begin to imagine the immensity of the undertaking; for its creators had raised such a building in a place that must have then seemed as hostile and alien as the dead, silent surface of Mars. But such wonder at the exterior does not prepare me for what I am to find inside.

The interior of domes and arches create shadowy enclaves, that in the soft light of a thousand burning candles are drenched in the painted reds, golds and blues of heaven itself. Moorish tile patterns appear alongside Byzantine flourishes and folk icons from the late Mexican renaissance, creating an overpowering testament to faith and the greatest symbol of a people’s love for their God that I have ever seen.

Overwhelmed and no longer able to stand, I sink onto the rudely carved seat of a narrow pew. A great wave of half-crazed euphoria sweeps me up like an incoming spring tide and delivers me, bewildered and a little scared, into an unfamiliar and altogether different place. Stranded in my uncertainty, holding back tears, I sit and try to find some sense in it. It’s as though a great stone, in place across the opening to my innermost self, has been lifted, releasing what lies within into the sudden freedom of the air. But like the air, I cannot hold it and it is gone – vanished - lost in the infinity of space. What remains is a feeling of great and immeasurable weariness.

To say it has been a religious experience is too easy. I believe its origin is altogether more earthly, rising from the manifestation of humanity’s will to create something dedicated to a belief in the power of a God's love, out here, in what had been a desert wilderness. As I step into the blinding light of day I leave the mystery of what has taken place behind, deep within the shadows. This event will, I know, have no lasting influence on the way I live my life, but the memory of it will stay with me for a long time coming, for some things are meant to pass all understanding.

I return to the car and after two-and-a-half miles enter the I-10 in the direction of Tucson, Arizona.

Get back, get back,
Get back to where you once belong.
Get back, get back,
Get back to where you once belong…

Get back Joe