To tip or not to tip

As I grow older, I find myself increasingly reluctant to travel, which is why it’s been a few years now since I last visited New York. I like New York, but there are few nastier experiences than going there. The usual horrors associated with modern air travel are bad enough, but the passengers on transatlantic flights tend to be especially uncongenial — harassed mothers with screaming babies, tattooed, pot-bellied men bursting out of their jeans. By the time I reached the check-in desk at Gatwick Airport I had become so alarmed at the thought that I might be put next to one of the scarily obese women who’d been in front of me in the queue that I paid for an exorbitantly expensive upgrade to a ‘premium’ seat.

Anyway, I survived the journey, and here I am nicely settled, staying with friends near Union Square, where there’s a lively farmers’ market in which you can buy minced bison for your cottage pie.