BRITISH BACKPACKER BOMB-PLOT FOILED!

OK, so the next time one of your friends asks you to do them a favour - Just Say No! Someone (yes Tim, that would be you) asked - neigh, begged - me to please please pretty please find Sarah Jessica Parker's apartment and have a photo taken on her stoop (no, that isn't some weird kinky part of the body; a stoop, apparantly, is the name given to the steps outside New York Brownstone houses. So now you know). So being the considerate young (hey! Still under 30 so shut it) man that I clearly am today I dully obliged, finding the address from a frankly scary internet Sex and the City fan-site ('so, did anyone notice in season 3 episode 2 that Carrie started the first scene in a pair of white silk Manolo Blahniks and then later on they were RED?! ' - I always thought such pitful obsessing was reserved for Deep Space 9 fans. How wrong I am). I then hauled my cookies all over Manhattan in serach of said stoop. OK if I'm being honest I was in Central Park and the street was right around the corner, but that's not the point. Anyways, I find the place and yes it's a brownstone and yes it has a 'stoop' so I wanders around taking photos. I'm not really a SATC fan (Samantha notwithstanding, for she is a Goddess and should have her own show as a spin-off. Like 'Joey'. Only funny). So to be honest I wasn't overly thrilled and I didn't really recognise the place anyway. But, it being a hot day I decide it would be nice to sit on the stoop for spell and sip my Snapple (try saying that when you're pissed), which I did, and I got out my little notebook-journal type thingy and started scribbling away. That was when the Policeman showed up. He parked his car right in front of me, got out and walked up to me, demanding to know what I was doing. It would seem that the owner of the house was returning home when she found a red-faced, sweaty, shaven-headed bloke loitering outside her house, taking photographs and making notes in a little black book. Clearly peturbed by this she went back to the corner and stopped a Policeman. I looked up the road and sure enough about 50 yards away behind a tree a nervous-looking elderly lady with big earrings was peering at me suspiciously. I tried to explain to the Policeman (who was quite a large, scary chap) about the photo of the stoop and he clearly didn't believe me because the stoop is actaully located in Greenwich about 50 blocks away. So it would seem that the sad fanatics are wrong. Ha! I shall return to the site and put them in their place. Anyway, in order to convince him I was a retarded tourist rather than a deranged extremist plotting to blow up a leafy side-street in upper Manhattan I ended up having to empty my backpack all over the pavement and also show him the photos I had taken. All in all, not a particularly successful venture. I should have just taken the official bloody SATC tour. OK so it's $35 but you get a complimentary Cosmopolitan and presumably finish the tour without almost getting arrested for suspected terrorism...