Friday

I woke up early, 3am in fact. Adjusting to time differences is always difficult for me. Deciding that I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep, and not feeling like reading the book I'd bought the day before, I turned on the TV and flicked through the channels. No cartoons at that time in the morning. Then I fell asleep again without meaning to and woke up at a much more reasonable half past six. Jetlag cured! I had a shower and went out for a walk around the big city before meeting Josh for breakfast at nine. I was delighted to find that paper copies of the Onion not only exist in New York, but they're given away free. And just walking down Broadway is kind of a thrilling experience if you've only heard about it before.

And it was hot! I've mentioned before that the weather is always lovely when I go to America, and this visit was no exception. In fact, Friday and Saturday were the two freakishly hot days of the year so far, and the weather reverted to normal NY March temperatures the day I left. Why can't I have this kind of atmospheric effect on England? I was wearing my leather jacket for this early-morning constitutional and I had to take it off because I was sweating.

Met Josh in the lobby bang on time. Leading up to the meeting I was trying to remember what he looked like (always a problem for me, even with people I know quite well, and I hadn't seen him for six months) and not getting very far. I'd like to think I would have recognised him even if he hadn't said hi as he came through the door, but I can't be quite certain. We went to a very nice little cafe round the corner and talked memory competitions. Josh, since writing an article on the US Championships this time last year, has been completely hooked on 'memory sports'. Following the competitors around in Germany and Oxford last year has given him a good idea of what goes on, and some useful training tips, and competing in this year's US championships is going to be the final chapter of his book on the subject. Ed Cooke has been providing most of his training and techniques, but I've been offering advice here and there too, and he was feeling pretty hopeful of doing well.

The rest of the conversation was pretty typical of whenever two memory people get together - what's happening with the world championships, is it a good thing that they'll be in Kuala Lumpur this year, is there going to be any money in it, who'll be going, who'll be winning (hopefully me, but with Clemens, Astrid and Gunther all hopefully there, who knows?), what's up with Tony Buzan and co, what's up with Andi Bell, who's coming to the Cambridge competition, the German championships, the Speed Cards Challenge, and so on. There's a lot to talk about considering it's such a minority 'sport'. Then there's the next day's competition - will it look good on TV? Is it an aberration or the future of memory competitions? But I'll leave the answers to that one for the Saturday post.

After breakfast we stopped the shop talk and moved on to serious sightseeing. Josh lives in Washington DC, but he's moving to NY soon to further his freelance writing career, and one of his writer brothers lives there already, so he made a good tour guide. I find it quite fascinating, incidentally, that the three Foer brothers are all writers, considering that my brother and I have scrupulously specialised in different things all our lives, and every time I write something I feel kind of guilty about muscling in on his turf. Did they not have sibling rivalry in that family?

Anyway, we wandered aimlessly around downtown Manhattan in the best sightseeing way. I always deliberately avoid the famous places when I go somewhere, because I prefer to see the real people and things (if I don't wander into a bookshop and spend the whole visit browsing there, of course...) We found a gallery selling cartoon-inspired art which I could have happily spent a fortune in if I wasn't still feeling guilty about that seat upgrade. There was a particularly good semi-3D Pepe le Pew picture that would look great on my wall, and some wonderful original Dr Seuss art. In the famous Strand bookstore Josh pointed out his brother's book "Everything Is Illuminated" and looked quite alarmed when I decided to buy it for a bit of holiday reading matter. In Forbidden Planet just down the road, he was positively appalled to learn that I'd never read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", and ordered me to buy that too, promising that I wouldn't regret it. I certainly haven't. I don't know why I haven't read it before, it's been recommended to me many times and it's exactly my kind of thing. He also ordered me to buy some new shoes, noticing how I had to avoid treading in puddles because of the huge hole in the sole, but I just ignored him on that as usual.

By then it was getting on for lunchtime, so we went to meet up with filmmaker Nick at his borrowed apartment (his artist wife had no fewer than three exhibitions opening that weekend, so he was in town anyway). The lengthy walk up from Union Square to 9th Avenue pretty much killed Josh off - I was still too caught up in the excitement of the big city to spare a thought for my feet. Nick, on finding out what Josh does for a living, immediately tried to enlist him in another film project of his. He does that every time I introduce him to someone - do I just have interesting friends or is he determined to make a documentary about everybody in the world? After popping into a Barnes & Noble to check out Josh's articles in this month's Discover and Esquire magazines, we went for pizza. Apparently you haven't lived until you've had New York pizza, so I was prepared to give the place we went to the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a particularly bad example. It's fair to say I've had much better pizza elsewhere.

Around this time, I noticed that one of the buttons had come off my stopwatch (which I also use as a pocket watch to tell the time). Deep sympathy and compassion failed to emanate from either Nick or Josh, but this is quite upsetting for me. That stopwatch has been with me since around 2003, when my previous one broke. It's been through three world championships and a whole lot of hard training, sitting propped up against my hat on the desk in front of me, and I'm really going to miss it. It won't be the same with another one.

After lunch Nick and I went back to his place, and he impressed me by saying without so much as a hint from me that he didn't see any need to film me that day, leaving me free to do a bit more tourism in the afternoon. So I spent the rest of the day tramping the streets of New York until I quite literally couldn't walk any more and was on the point of collapsing in the unseasonal baking sunshine. It's an amazing city.