London on a sunny day

Shot of the day

Colder than it looks

The real thing

George W Bush

Shot of the day too

The Tate, mate.

Stuff at the Tate, mate.

Enlarge this to full-screen and try to focus

Today was London. We walked in to 'town' and took in the mystery of London's attraction. It's not the Canyonero (no, it's not a word) that NY is. It's not the post-modern survivalist hell that LA is. It's just a big ragbag of eras, all mixed in to suit all tastes. Something it seems to manage to do very well indeed. The place is both more ancient and more up to date than anything in America.

The biggest difference is the great odours coming from eateries. Mouth-watering reminders that one is no longer limited to the fat/sugar continuum. At no time in the US did I actually smell something and think "yum". Funny how I didn't notice this until today.

I loved the whole London deal. It's clean, it's pretty, it's very old and, occasionally, it's a bit tatty or grubby.

We went in with thousands of Londoners teeming their way towards imperatives. An endless conga-line of worker-drones across London Bridge showed you that the particular time of day was a very serious thought in many, many heads.

We tackled the endless headlong assaults by people confused by all those Yanks during the war. A people who no longer know which side of the footpath one should walk on. Left? Right? Doesn't matter! (As long as there is a continuous source of novelty?) One is constantly forced to swim upstream in any direction. We stayed on the left, everyone walked on the right. Vica versa? Vica versa.

Is Britain becoming part of Europe after all?

I decided to walk on the left only allowing grace if the oncoming biped seemed infirm or very firm indeed. Worked a treat, mostly.

The day took in the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge and the Tate Modern Gallery (see pics). The armoury was fascinating. Not just because of Henry's ballooning codpiece, but for the sheer scale of the place. It's a huge fortress not just a tower and it has elements unchanged from the 1200s. The Tate was immense too, and full of surprises. It's quite something to suddenly realise the immense significance of an artwork.

To see things in the real is very different to just knowing of them. Makes travel seem much less frivolous to be struck in such a way.

We loved the detail of London and it's internees because there was always something to cause you to ponder. Whether it's something that was originally approved by council in the 1300s or some quirk of a bus-driver who noticed something you didn't expect, there was always something.

We plan to go a little further from the nest tomorrow, having figured out a few handy bus routes. We are set up in a unit, a few miles east of the centre, and a thousand miles from a handy restaurant. Something we realised last night just before we cooked up some unseasoned scrambled eggs on toast.

I will continue to fearlessly report London as I see it, allowing for some variation in receptivity, perceptual resistance, vapidness and hyper-sensitivity.

What could be better than that?