Behind the V& A and the Brompton Oratory there is a wonderful collection of Mews terraces — doubtless nothing for sale under a million, but well worth delving into the maze of little streets and alleys between the Brompton Road and Hyde Park Gate to find what I always think are the most interesting bits of London — the back ways.

To get to the work appointment I had time to walk through Hyde Park — just about at the peak of Autumn loveliness with leaves turning on the trees and carpeting the ground. On the Serpentine one could still hire a pedalo (if one wished — I hadn’t time) and there were a small number of the traditional features around the rest of the park — horse riders on Rotten Row, nannies and their charges, though in fold-up push chairs now rather than the prams of yesteryear, and the Household Cavalry trotting back to barracks after the Changing of the Guard.

There are lots of different combinations of streets to use between Kings Cross and the British Museum. I always like to include Marchmont Street — one of those small shop-lined streets in London which seems as though real people live there.  At the British Museum we went to the “Treasures of Heaven” exhibition — the cult of relics in the middle ages, and the elaborate and costly containers they were kept in. The relics themselves proved to be extremely small — tiny parcels mostly wrapped in silk with little parchment tags to say what they were and from which deceased saint.  Most visible were a couple of thorns from the crown of thorns which Jesus wore.  Despite all the perhaps predictable cynicism about the trade in relics, fuelled by Chaucer’s pardoner, it was the marvellous craftsmanship put into the receptacles that was really on display.  The whole business started quite early in the first couple of hundred years BC. The last example they showed was the cult of Charles I after his execution, though a little slide show at the end did mention Elvis and Diana.

TYo the London Review of Books book shop for a light lunch — they do a good line in sandwiches, quiches and salads — and cakes. The bookshop is excellent — huge poetry section, amongst other delights. The London shelves were stuffed to bursting with tempting tomes — cities spawn literary lovers.

Bus from Theobalds Road along Holborn to St Pauls.  When I was a kid, the whole area around St Paul’s was a huge bombsite, and the cathedral itself was a filthy grey. Bits of the rebuilt area are OK — I quite like Paternoster Square — and the idea of rescuing Temple Bar from exile in Hertfordshire and re-erecting it here was inspired. St Pauls currently gleams inside and out and has no scaffolding.  The interior is stunning, and the Dean stuns you with a massive entrance fee, for which you get in and also a free audio/visual tour handheld device which serves only to distract from the experience of this wonderful building.  It’s absolutely bizarre to see that the rows of people seated in the nave and under the dome all have headphones on and are dutifully listening to facts about what should be a visceral experience, let alone watching a tiny screen re-living the glory days of Charles and Di’s ill-fated wedding.  We gave our little machines back quickly, and enjoyed the place with our own senses.

Then an amble through the City, past such notable sites as the place where Ian Tomlinson died after being whacked by the Met, to Spitalfields Old Market, where the International craft show, Origins, crouches between the cast pillars and below the pigeon-bearing steel girders.  There’s very little dross here.  The ceramics were varied and imaginative, some of the jewellery exquisite, and there were some quirky objet d’art bits and pieces that were fun to look at, even if one might balk at spending any money on them.  We didn’t actually spend more than a very few quid this time, but had my premium bond come up I would have been tempted by Rachel Eardley’s beautiful pieces of jewellery based on the cut-out motifs from old coins (the wren from the farthing, the ship from the halfpenny etc etc and into coins from round the world). Ursula Hoffman’s multicoloured earrings and necklaces appealed TOO

Evening meal at Giraffe.  It was OK.

And then there is the even smaller and more eccentric “Smoke, a London peculiar” which appears at quite rare intervals but quite accurately describes itself as a love-letter to London, except that it’s not the London most of us who don’t live there think of but the London of night buses, pigeons, scrapyards and marshes, and most unlikely of all, London south of the river.

Or “A to B” the magazine of folding and electric bikes and general encouragement to sensible travel. Tends to go on a bit, entertainingly and justifiably, about how difficult sensible travel is made by the suits who run things.  Bits of it are so technical about engineering modifications you can make to obscure bikes that one suspects that only a couple of readers get to the end but the reviews of bikes are great, as are the polemics. They also like to reproduce, with mock-horror, any bike advertisments which feature semi-naked young women deriving pleasure from twining round a bike. Fortunately such lapses are rare.

Or “Blithe Spirit” the magazine of the British Haiku Society, which also publishes tanka and renga and other anglo-japanese specialities, plus erudite reviews. I like the haiku best — sometimes they capture a moment, a feeling, to utter perfection.

Finally, there’s “Railwatch” the magazine of Railfutures, which campaigns for improvements to Britain’s betrayed railways (Beeching, Tories, New Labour, privatisation).  Nothing like supporting an organisation banging its head on the brick wall of greed, blame culture and incompetence which characterises the very top echelons of rail ownership, leasing, and governance.

But also an amble round Islington — some very posh bits there,

and the surprising (to me) discovery that the Regents Canal goes right under Islington High Street in a tunnel.

Lambs Conduit Street is always a delight, calling in this time at the ever-inspiring Persephone Books, and The Lamb pub for a nice glass of Young’s bitter and an adequate lunch  (perhaps not quite as good as The Perseverance a few doors down on the other side).

Boris bikes much in evidence in their racks, less so on the streets, though we did see a pair hurtling round Russell Square, and a lorry refilling a rack near King’s Cross.

The “Slightly Foxed” bookshop on Gloucester Road surprised me by being mostly second-hand (I hadn’t been concentrating) but did have a most comprehensive selection in many categories (not all properly sorted, unfortunately). But it did put me in mind of the splendid “Richmond [on Thames] Bookshop” I used to frequent 45 years ago and whence I would return to Hounslow laden with fascinating finds.

I’d forgotten too, quite how crowded the Tube can get at rush-hours — Leeds commuters don’t know what they are missing.  Our decision to use buses in London wherever possible very wise, unless of course it’s a long distance or one is in a hurry and it involves Oxford Street.

There’s a mural just off Carnaby Street which has a delightful tribute to Soho Jazz in one of its panels.

Best stage musical I’ve ever seen was “Singing in the Rain” at the West Yorkshire Playhouse some years ago — this “Me and My Girl” runs it close, though I’m beginning to get flashbacks to “My Fair Lady” in London with Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway — less feelgood but quite marvellous.

Then along the river path to Richmond — at least a dozen herons on the bank or dozing in trees.

A reminiscent stop opposite old Isleworth and “The London Apprentice”, scene of many a lunchtime pint back in the late 60s early 70s.

The tide was in at Richmond, so we had to paddle a bit– just where I used to ride my bike through the water when I was a kid.

and then, raising one’s eyes, the dome over the British Museum Reading Room and swooping beside it, over and over, the ersatz bird of prey to discourage the pigeons.  And hard by, the London Revue of Books bookshop (and coffee parlour), small enough to feel intimate, large enough to have a wonderful selection — poetry particularly good.  And Lambs Conduit Street  - two splendid pubs

The Lamb

and the shop and office of Persephone books with their piles and stacks of dull grey and white covers mingled with the flash of their exuberant end-papers, bookmarks, postcards. (Persephone doesn’t believe in fluorescent light — daylight and pools of brilliance from table and standard lamps — must be wonderful, if hard on the eyes, on a winter’s afternoon).

Buses, of course, taking us through the early evening rain to south of the river, and back in the dark across the spangled river;  to Clapham through the magic names of Battersea and Latchmere; from Richmond through the dull suburbs of Sheen and Putney (though depositing us in the multicultural maelstrom of Clapham on a Saturday evening from which our initial escape bus was prevented by a collision with a suicidally opened car door — no casulaties); and lurching through the narrow streets of the City to Petticoat Lane.

And some trains — the new station at Hoxton first glimpsed with surprise from the neat historic gardens of the Geffrye Museum; from Hoxton’s platforms the high level line on its classic Victorian brick arches curving towards the Gherkin and its attendant temples;the surprise that the Oyster card would take us to Kew.

Petticoat Lane like any rubbish cheap-jack market anywhere in the country but a few hundred yards away the elegance and upmarket variety of Spitalfields Market — delicious food and crafts and hardly a burger or present for Auntie Nell on display, though some quality kitsch.

And the nice women at Oska who provided me with a chair and a free coffee while my partner tried on clothes.

A hymn to the city.

• Seeing old friends
• Sitting on the terrace of Somerset House in the sunshine
• Cocktails in some basement nr Covent Garden (I could find it again !)
• A Sunday morning stroll from Russell Square to the Wallace collection via the back streets
• Top deck of a no. 10 bus from Hammersmith to King’s Cross — especially Hammersmith to Kensington High Street, which I had never done before.
• Sunset over Hyde Park

We had actually gone for an exhibition of two treasure hoards from Germany, buried by Jews fleeing pogroms during the Black Death — masses of gold coins and trinkets, some of them absolutely exquisite — buttons and clothes ornaments, what would have to have been sewn on successive garments they were so valuable.  And Jewish wedding rings — with tiny gold buildings on. A coin from the Schwabisch Hall mint in one hoard.

The day before, to Constable’s Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery — pastoral portraits, in that many of them are country people, in their best togs, but nonetheless from their ruddy complexions and narrowed eyes, people used to the outdoors and weather.  There’s a picture of his father, one of the few where the sitter is looking directly at the artist, which is very powerful. There’s a new identification of an earlier picture as his father, but the sitter looks much older so I’m not convinced.  To my mind, these show a painter as accomplished as the one who produces the great popular landscapes — it rounds out his portrait, if you like.