I was diagnosed with a severe temporal spatial deficit, a learning disability that means I have zero spatial relations skills. It was official: I was a genius trapped in an idiot's body.

You just don't notice the time of your own metamorphosis. Until you do. Every once in a while time dissolves and you remember what you liked as a kid. You jump on your hotel bed, order dessert first, decide to put every piece of jewelry you own on your body and leave the house. Why? Because you can. Because you're the boss. Because... Ooooh. Shiny.

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres, I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat, sleep, read, watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.

I think that most New Yorkers would object to calling me a New Yorker. I didn't grow up here.

and there's something about having an especially different name that makes it difficult to imagine what you would be like as a Jennifer.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

New Yorkers have a delightfully narcissistic habit of assuming that if they're not conscious of a scene, it doesn't exist.