[Continued from yesterday’s reminiscences about my first trip to New York City. To start at the beginning of the story, please click here, “New York City 14 May 1999”.]

18 years ago today I returned to London from my first trip to New York City. As I noted a week ago I can piece together every day of that trip. There is probably no other week in my life that I could recreate so fully from memory. I wanted to create diary entries for every day, as a test of my memory and as a definitive record, and have done so. For the last few days my memories have been influenced by watching parts of a travelogue that we made while we were away, a 2-hour video covering at least part of each day. It begins with the cab ride into Manhattan and ends in a terminal at JFK Airport.

Our final morning in New York was uneventful. We woke around 6am, packed, and took a cab to the airport. On my return I didn’t leave the confines of my London postcode for several days. Unlike the previous seven days I have few definitive memories of what I did. I know that Saturday 22 May was the day of the FA Cup Final that year, Man United completing the second part of their treble by beating Newcastle. I watched it in a pub called The Eclipse, which has been through a number of changes since then and is now called Piano. We watched part of that game with an actor we had met the previous year, the legendary Bryan Marshall, who played Councillor Harris in “The Long Good Friday”. The following Wednesday Man United completed their treble, winning the Champions League Final against Bayern Munich. New York City seemed a long way away.