I have always thought that favourite places, like music, are not chosen by us; they choose us. When I happened to stumble across Michael Jackson doing Billie Jean circa 1982, I did not choose to be mesmerised; I just was. Even now, many years, newspapers headlines, allegations, trials and tribulations later, when I hear Billie Jean or just about anything else that MJ did after it, my heart skips, flutters and tumbles as the epiphany of familiar notes brings me back to beloved memories. I never consciously decided to love New York, it just happened. I visited it shortly after my time in San Francisco and so much good took place to me there and then, that New York now intrinsically means the best place to go to the extent that every time I consider a holiday, I mentally flick through places I have heard of and invariably find excuses to divert back to the Apple. But I'll tell a greater truth than that: I like the familiar. I like to return to places for reasons other than new explorations. I like to find the same cake in the same coffee shop in the same road with the same smells and the same sights I left there years before. I like to get into the Waldorf through the back door and instantaneously find myself in a place that I can call home, even if only for two weeks. In fact, I always think that home is wherever I want to be and that, were it not for my beloved animals, I would have no issues to hop from place to place, owning nothing more than a handful of clothes and fifty pairs of shoes. But then who needs to move when the magical is just a park away?
