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.