London calling

The Man and I went into London today. The children decided to stay at home with their grandparents - they've done a lot of moving around lately and there's more to come, so fair enough.

At Watford Junction we ran into an old friend of mine, so we enjoyed the journey into Euston with her. Then we walked down to St.Pancras which has been impressively renovated. The Man was interviewed for a student documentary.

From there we took the tube to Leicester Square and found ourselves wandering into the National Portrait Gallery. The Tudor and Elizabethan portraits always impress me - somehow all those faces look so modern and familiar. I swear there's a lad who serves in Linton Co-op who is the spitting image of John Donne.

We also viewed the annual BP Portrait competition exhibition. After spending any amount of time looking at huge and minutely detailed portraits it's almost impossible not to examine every face you see as if it too were a work of art. Which is wonderful in a way, but you do find yourself staring hard at strangers and that's not entirely acceptable, is it?

Then we walked down to the South Bank and along the Thames as far as the Millenium Bridge. The day was warm and bright and we had a constantly changing soundtrack of buskers as we admired the various fun art installations along the way. And of course there was the beautiful bicycle wheel of the London Eye - what a lovely thing it is.