I am running round the Jackie Onassis Reservoir in New York's Central Park.
Strategically placed between the city's Upper East and West sides, a run round here is as much a part of the wealthy locals' daily routine as a call to their broker, a perusal of real estate in the Hamptons or a check on Wall Street. A notice informs me that the Park Conservancy will spend $3million this year, renovating the running track. No pitfalls or rain filled dubs for the well healed on this path.
My hotel is so distant, I had to travel here on the subway.
This holiday in New York was a failed attempt to escape from politics after the Independence Referendum - but it's been a busy old week in the Big Apple.
There's an Earth Climate Change summit at the UN complex on the East side. All week, international delegates have been moving around the city, mini-motorcades of dark windowed SUVs led by lights and sirens, like beetles following glow worms. They thread their way through the Midtown gridlock - to the UN Plaza, to the Theatre district, to the high end shops on 5th Avenue. Outside their hotels on Central Park South, limos are double parked, countries' names displayed on the windscreens, and Ivy League dressed secret service men walk sniffer dogs up and down the sidewalks.
Through the windows of the bars and hotels, talking heads on flat screened news channels discuss the attacks on ISIS, their chances of success, and how long it will all take. The British Prime Minister appears briefly, displaying the pointing finger and jutting jaw of a politician seeking world status ahead of a domestic election.
New Yorkers are phlegmatic, though, and if there is any sense of fear about this amazing city, it's not about the dangers of a 'lone wolf' terror attack on subway or tourist site, but a more ethereal apprehensiveness that they might lose what they have - wealth, power, world status, pride of place. Above all, there is the fear of change and things becoming 'different'.
This is the uncomfortable world from which we were warned Scotland's tangential connection would be removed if we voted Yes on September 18.
Back on the running track, I am overtaken by my antithesis. Young, fit, fast, and lithe, he disappears in seconds, leaving behind only a rumour of expensive aftershave. He is probably rich, he may be famous. How would I know?
The surroundings are idyllic - blue skies reflected in the silently calm water, autumnal trees on the change, the Manhattan skyline dazzling in high sunlight. I try to settle back into some kind of rhythm on the expensively manicured gravel.
As I lumber on, it eventually comes: "Dundee-Glasgow-Lanarkshire: Hope-will-overcome-fear: Dundee-Glasgow-Lanarkshire…"
I raise my head, seeking some kind of inspiration from the view, but my sight is blurred. I'm not sure if it's the sweat of honest toil, or tears of political frustration.
In the distance, a siren sounds…
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