It's almost a week since I returned from New York. It is the city sine qua non. To not love New York City is to not love life. It is a beautiful, forever tempting, and often bruised, exotic fruit that I can't stop myself from gorging on. I love the place, unashamedly and devoutly.

Amongst the myriad of joys, treasures and pearls that constitutes this diamond city is the profusion of astrologers, tarot readers, fortune tellers, guides. Most blocks near my apartment have at least one Gypsy Rose Lee.

Why? What's the cultural motivation? Is it the fragility of living in such a cut throat, thrusting urban dynamo? People want to feel there's something mysterious, something divine waiting or them? Hope in a crowded city?

Here I am at the Aubreve espresso bar at the ground zero of New York's hipsterdom - Cooper Square, and diagonally opposite it's cultural uber nexus - the Village Voice head office. A wastrel looking Bob Dylan waif did a "hey guy, what's happening" salutation and then created the most perfect espresso macchiato I've ever had either side of the Atlantic. Perfect.

And the highlight of it all is, well aside from the Man in Black, Johnny Cash playing over the in house entertainment, is I've got my I-Pad fired up and connected. Live from New York city....

There's a scent out there which is recognisably New York. It's the Big Apple's pheromone.

I'm not a bloodhound and I don't have the nasal super sensitivity of a master perfumer, and this all means I can't adequately say what this scent is. Nevertheless, I know it's like a modern 21st century family - it's a blend.

There's an aroma of very recently polished wooden parquet floors in there; fabric conditioner curling up and out of a thousand basement laundry rooms; a door to a pizza takeout opens and a skein of garlic drifts out, strong, pungent, alluring; it's the salty tang of the pretzel cart at 52nd and Madison; the headiness of hot coffee and cinnamon; that truly undefinable smell of an antique carpet in a quiet apartment where the only noise is muted traffic.

Put me in a sensory deprivation tank where the only sense I'm allowed is to smell, release the valve on the olfactory tank, and I'll tell you in a less time than the legendary New York moment exactly where I am.

Bottle this all and call it what exactly? Eau de Apple? Manhattan mystere? Sixth avenue shimmer?

I put my head on the pillow tonight as a forty nine year old man; I take it off the same pillow in the same town tomorrow morning but as a fifty year old man. What a great journey it's been. I have no complaints. None. No me puedo quejar

Just as yesterday, I'm awake before five listening to the surf of traffic pass along 58th street. I'm still waiting for my jet-lag to flush out of me and now I additionally have the weariness of a head cold to contend with.

Yesterday was a fiercely cold day in Manhattan; a slice and dice wind of the bitterest intensity streaming along the avenues and scissoring down the streets. Cold enough to freeze any exposed extremity to porcelain. But no snow, no rain, and the tiniest hint of a weak sun, still made it a great day.

New York has no ideal season - every season is the right season.

Getting on towards five in the morning and I'm blearily awake listening to the steady rhythm of the traffic churning along East 58th street.

I'm back in New York. Arrived yesterday and carrying a sleep debt that will have to be paid at some point; but that's for another day. Right now, I'm in the city, which other than London, has more magic, more hope, more drama, more passion for living, more elemental rawness, more sheer magnetism than any other. Like London, you commune with gods here.

As a Brit, I have more in common...much more...with this bold, throbbing heart of a place than I do with the rest of my own country: the sheer density of numbers living in the smallest possible space, almost in defiance of nature, but done so with peerless grace and harmony tells me we are special cities. Where else does that happen?

Here are two adapted civic ecosystems that have withstood every insult, felt the bruises of history, overwhelmed every exigency placed on them. That's our shared badge of honour.

Viva London, Viva New York. When Plato wrote about lovers searching for their missing half, what he really meant was these two amorata separated by the chance of geography, but forever united in shared spirit.

At some point, I'll stop hearing the siren call coming from my I-Pad, and get back to blogging in strength. That moment, though, is still like the vanishing point in a painting: visible...just, but only with massive effort. Squint and you'll see it, but that's it.

Two of my relatives have offered to hold a little get together to mark my birthday. It's a significant one. A milestone. And I'm really touched by this. Never had a birthday celebration in my life for one thing, but more than that, it's the gesture I appreciate.

It'll be a low key affair. A handful of friends, some finger food, a glass or two of wine, and interesting conversations. Low key suits me. I like to be in the back of the stalls, the spear-carrier waiting in the wings, not the lead figure. Too much attention ain't me. None of this P Diddy bling thing with thousands of alleged close friends turning up. Quality matters, babe...

Nevertheless, even the beigest of people like me for example, entertains that cheeky self-mythologising pipe dream where that's at least one fire engine, police car lights raking over houses in the dark, small hours, bemused neighbours in pyjamas peering through windows, or at open front doors, and there's someone, probably bare chested being led away in handcuffs. Now is that what we call party?

God, this is the most dismal weather to crack open a new year. Thick rain, low clouds, booming wind and insidious bone-sapping cold. We are creeping along, eyes to the floor, battened down and battered by grey.

I'm a January babe, with a Capricorn's love of the dark and sere, but even for me this is draining. A little sun, a few bright, sharp afternoons please.

London on the first day of 2012 is like being inserted into the pages of some grim Russian novel; wet, dank, preternaturally dark, and full of sombre faced individuals going nowhere. How desperate a start to the New Year.