I’d never been to New York until last month, and like most people visiting for the first time, I was blown away by the experience. Hamilton on Broadway, the Staten Island ferry, jazz at Birdland, walking the High Line, the whole schtick. And of course, the overwhelming sadness and eerie tranquillity of Ground Zero.

“Hey, you just missed those Tartan celebrations,” said one taxi driver. “Aye,” I said. “Thank goodness.” Not that I wouldn’t extol the virtues of what we have to offer, and walking through Central Park it struck me that what’s impressive about it is not so much what the park ─ two and a half miles long and half a mile wide at the heart of the most expensive place on earth to live ─ has to offer, but the towering scale, and the cost, of the surrounding buildings and the fact the park has survived when property developers would just love to nibble away at it.

“It’s an astonishing place,” I told our tour guide amidst his stream of superlatives and details of the movie scenes shot there. “… but has it got an extinct volcano?”

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