I thought I'd start with a nice, short, easy and recent one.
I asked "When and where was London beautiful?" and I had an immediate answer.
I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket, at short notice, to Day 4 of the England-India test at The Oval last month.
I've by and large determined not to travel on the tube at the moment, so I got there by catching the slow train from Ashford to Waterloo East then walking down to Oval. No slower, really, than getting the fast train anyway. The one down side is there are no power sockets on the trains.
It was a lovely, sunny, attritional day's test cricket, evenly matched, just a joy to be there after all that's gone on. England would go on to collapse the next day, but I left the ground on Sunday with the sense that all 3 (or 4) results were still possible.
Because my phone's old and there'd been no charging opportunities, it had died at about 4.30.
I followed the crowd out, meaning I went a slightly different way to how I'd arrived, getting to Vauxhall, then crossing a park to find myself suddenly, almost unexpectedly, at Albert Embankment.
And here was London like I hadn't seen it in years. The Thames glowing on a late summer evening. The full cliche - Houses of Parliament, the works. I briefly felt very emotional.
I reached for my phone to take a picture, of course, but no dice, no battery. So the picture lives in my memory, where pictures used to live.
I walked along, back to Waterloo. On the way, I passed this Covid Memorial Wall thing, which I'd like to say was also a moving and profound experience, but, for me, with all due respect, just seemd a bit odd.
It's massive for starters, so mainly empty, which I suppose is a good thing, but somehow makes it look a bit glib, and there are scrawls all the way along, and some of it is anti-vax stuff, and it's just not really, I think, the effect they were going for, well-intentioned though it no doubt was.
So, yeah, here's to that picturebook London ... dirty old river, must you keep rolling etc
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