What's it like in New York?

A lot of people have been asking me recently how I've been 'settling in' since I moved to New York. Not really knowing how to answer that, I've decided instead to write down some of my early impressions of this city.

I say early impressions despite the fact that I have been here before, a few years ago. But I think this time, perhaps because there is no rush to see and do everything, I have been paying more attention to small details.

For example, one of the things I hadn't noticed before about New York, or had noticed but forgotten, is how many small birds there are everywhere. Not big fat pigeons like you get in London, but everywhere pretty little birds that tweet. Sometimes on the walk to work, it sounds more like the dawn chorus of a rainforest. Also, compared to London, there are far more people who walk down the street singing to themselves.

I've been told by my colleagues that I arrived here at the same time as summer arrived, and it's been incredibly hot by my standards. I'm not complaining. You might think there wouldn't be much sun at street level because the buildings are so tall, but the avenues are so wide and the sun so high at this time of year that it's sometimes hard to find shade. If I was spending more time outside I would be getting really sunburnt. Yesterday there was a thunderstorm.

I think I heard someone once describe Manhattan as 'compact', but that certainly isn't true. What they probably meant is 'dense'. At 23 square miles, it is the smallest of NYC's five boroughs, but it is still pretty big - about the same size as the built-up area of Plymouth. I tried running from the apartment where I'm staying to Central Park on Thursday before work, but I only got as far as Grand Central Station, which is less than half way, and I'd been running for ages.

On the way back from the station, running down 1st avenue, I felt exhilarated and intensely pleased to be here. It is an odd feeling finally really being in a place you have been so heavily exposed to through fiction, mainly films and TV, since childhood. It's familiar but foreign. Steam really does rise up from the manholes.

I took a trip on the subway late on Saturday night, returning from Brooklyn to the East Village. Despite the fact that there were no commuters, it was still clear to me that here was the most unpleasant underground rail network I had ever used. The labeling of the lines, with letters and numbers apparently assigned at random, the scarcity of maps, the sprawling underground maze of passages, the primitive distribution of vital information through A4 print-outs sellotaped wherever, the raw stench and air of menace pervading the place, make the London underground seem like playschool.

One final, weird and wonderful thing: Yesterday as I was walking along the street, in the other direction came an old guy with a long grey beard who was wearing the most fantastically garish robes, with a genuine parrot on his head. I couldn't help smiling - in fact, my face is plastered with an inane grin quite a lot of the time I'm walking around town - but judging from the reactions (or lack thereof) of the people around me, this apparition was not considered remarkable.