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I was fortunate enough to work backstage at this year’s Glastonbury which meant that I avoided the mud, the high prices and the discomfort of camping with thousands of punters. Some might argue that I wouldn’t have had the true Glastonbury experience, however when you’re in the press pit watching Crowded House, Leonard Cohen, the Verve and Amy Winehouse, these criticisms seem trivial.

Not that I especially liked any of the artists above. The fact was that as 120,000 people swarming towards the Pyramid stage to glimpse a coloured dot bounce around on a very large screen, I sipped chilled beers behind the cattle fences. Largely oblvious to the struggle of the masses, I adjusted my complimentary earplugs with relative nonchelance.

I don’t feel the need to ramble on about the excitement and diversity of Glastonbury - the people, the food, the art and the various ‘villages’ - where you can do anything from learn to make wooden cutlery to meditate with modern day druids. My only reaction to the time I spent there, even counting the hours I was working, was that it wouldn’t displease me in the slightest if everyday of my life was like a day at Glastonbury. It would exhausting yes, but holy crap it would be fun.

Check out the BBC’s photostream: many photos of which I took and, to nearly all of them, added comments to.

At my left, a 40-inch television with 600 cable channels. To my right, the cold remains of a deli sandwich. Outside in the heat, traffic snakes and shoots through walls of sunlight; horns in a constant state of beeping almost as if to shout out to the world: “I’m alive! I’m alive in New York!”

If Paris is a city for walking, then the Big Apple is one for skipping: mainly because you get around faster and at the same time, you can display an air of optimism (while hiding deep-seeded depression) that only the US can pull off.

Fortunately you don’t have to skip everywhere. Thanks to the subway and grid system of Manhattan streets, getting around New York is piece of a generous serving of your favourite cake (which, by the way, you probably get on every corner along with a bucket of watery coffee). The only hassle is trying to not get sidetracked by the mayhem. Smiling traffic conductors screaming at cars to move along; diners brandishing “All day burritos and jugs of beer”; flocks of garbage trucks; and of course, the thousands of people from everywhere and, judging by the mixture of fashion, everywhen.

New York could be described as London pushed into a tube and stood upright, sprayed with essence of extrovert. But it’s best not to make comparisons. This city is exciting in its own skin and I’m just about to walk out the door of my west mid-town apartment into the thick of it. More later.

The smell of roasting rubber from the metro is a mere tickle compared to the hammering of fresh bread, seafood and cheese. Looking up to the grey sky, you don’t feel so bad as you would on a similar day across the Channel.

You’re in Paris.

What can be whittled from this majestic stick of French gold that hasn’t been said before? The streets are wide, the food is delicious and the people are French. Walking the streets, you feel as if you were in one colossal museum - there are monuments, ancient buildings, lively artist corners and French people everywhere. Like England, the hangover of lost colonial power is apparent in France, but it’s done with so much style; you can forgive them their pride and lose yourself in a empirical reverie of wine and fragrant butter sauces.

Far from being snobbish and rude, the people are warm and only happy to help you if you give their language a go. Every day I witnessed a tourist bark orders in English to a stunned service worker. In a bakery one afternoon I saw a man demand a badine in English and, with his arms stretched out, indicate the width of the loaf he had in mind. The teenager behind the counter, probably with a good level of English, was either too offended or too amused to react. The man looked and, probably to her, sounded like a zombie with a brand new Nikon strapped to his drooling head. Just before things hit melting point, a woman standing in line translated, the zombie got his bread and retreated. Imagine if a French person did that in Australia: they would be immediately sent to a detention facility and deported the following decade.

So determined to play by the rules, I stammered out what remained of my French language skills and surprisingly, I got by relatively well. Some were flattered that I’d taken the time as an anglophone to even open a French grammar book, which is a bit of a polite exaggeration but it was a nice compliment nonetheless. The folk selling trinkets beneath the Eiffel Tower and those trying to scam money weren’t so appreciative when I told them to fuck off.

In the areas where tourists tend to congregate you are guaranteed to be approached by someone asking you for money, directly or indirectly, at least once every 15 minutes. I learnt to ignore pleas of “Do you speak English?”, but there was one trick I’d never seen before - someone would pretend to pick up something from the ground in front of you, a ring or a coin, and then present it to you as if you’d dropped it. Insisting that you take the trinket, they congratulate you and then proceed to ask you for money to compensate them for having brought such good fortune upon your package holiday.

Va te faire!