Dear New York,

One of the things you may have noticed about living in a big city, is that when things get busy, they can seem to get very very busy.

Even though the number of tasks you need to do isn’t any more, or the time you have any less, just the simple fact of the environment around you can have a profound effect on the mental space you find yourself in.

Tourism instantly presents itself as a tricky old task because it adds people into the equation (see similar rant I had with regards to the Commute challenge) and people are infuriating subjects. 

Also, when I think of tourism, I become a grumpy Scrooge. Not a fan. Not the act of touring and appreciating new places, which comes under the heading of travelling, but the socks and sandal wearing droves of people that transform a place from beautiful and historic to something more closely resembling a cattle market.

Dear New York,

What beautiful photos you are taking - they are really showing off a lot of the grandeur and sheer scale of New York. I went the other way with both of my photos this week and really scaled in. My first instinct, like yours for the Summer in the City challenge, was to take some sweeping park life photos, so I headed to Hyde Park after work looking for some "proper English" park scenes.

The last few weeks have been rather hectic when it comes to life in NYC as we have been jumping through every hoop imaginable to secure a roof over our head. Last Sunday we found ourselves stuck in a downpour of biblical proportions en route to an interview on the Upper West Side in order to convince the co-op board of directors (intense) that we're good people and that they should accept our application to rent in their awesome building.

Dear New York,

It must be flu season both sides of the ocean. I think it is slightly unlikely that we had the same illness (I’m not sure that human viruses have managed to transmit themselves over the internet yet), but the symptoms you describe are sounding quite familiar…