If you ever want to experience magic….walk home through London at midnight!!! Sheer magic.  I walked home after a brilliant day; (ok not all the way home, just from the station), the air was quiet and still, hardly a soul about, a dank cold misty fog creeping through the trees.  My steps echoing dully against the silence, I could hear my breathing as I walked it was so quiet; my every breath hung like a vapourous cloud in the icy air. The streets dark and moody, the mist closes you in and it feels as if you are walking in the matrix.   I marvelled at the unadulerated freedom of being able to walk through the streets of this marvellous city at midnight and feel absolutely safe.  I love this city with a passion.

My very clever daughter gave me a brilliant book as a belated Xmas present…’I Never Knew That About London’.  What a fantastic book.  They have all manner of interesting snippets about buildings and streets and places, I never knew.  What a brilliant book to give me…she is such a clever present giver.  To give you a taster, the preface goes on to say:

“London is whatever you want it to be.  It is one of the greatest cities on earth.  It stands on the Prime Meridian and draws the best from East and West. It sits at the centre of Time and the world sets it watch by London’s Big Ben.

London is built on commerce and trades with the world. It gave the world modern banking, the stock exchange and insurance and it remains the world’s financial hub. London is home to the Mother of Parliaments and had given sancturay to ideas, to freedom of speech and thought, to religions and refugees from across the globe.

London has the best theatre, the greatest concentration of museums, opera and art; a musical and literary heritage second to none. London has the first underwater tunnels, the first and biggest underground transport system, the first international exchange, the higest Ferris Wheel, the biggest dome, the loftiest church. London has over 2,000 years of history. It has survived pestilence, fire and war. It has Roman walls, Norman towers, Tudor palaces, Renaissance splendour, Georgian loveliness, Victorian grandeur, breath-taking modern wonders.

There is pomp and ceremony and spectacle, and yet London is also intimate with quiet corners, crooked cobbled streets, winding alleyways and sunny squares. It is the most liveable-in of all cities with more green spaces than any comparable metropolis, and gardens everywhere.

London is its people and its characters who meet here from every corner of the planet. London cannot be tamed. All you can do is revel in its richness and enjoy the adventure”.

SEE I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THAT WAY!!!!!!

  and so to bed. I really had a great day. Met with a friend for coffee, then off to Boots to download my Sidmouth photos to CD, then to CJ for a quick cuppa with soup and pitta bread and a lovely chat, then back into central London to meet with a new friend, also for a cuppa (I drank 3 hot chocolates and cream today!), then onto a Success University meeting (I am blown away each time I go – SU rocks!!!), then for more conversation and hot choc after, hence the late return home.  When I walked in, I was offered a bowl of bread and butter pudding….oh yummy. Sublime pudding. J is the best cook in the world.

So here I am, wide awake, vibrant and energetic, just finished the pudding and thought I would do a blog. And now it is nite nite….I already turned into a pumpkin…..now I have to find my glass slipper