Fun in the city

On days like today, its a pleasure to walk London's streets and drive through places like Hyde Park, the sun pouring in through the open window, singing enthusiastically (and badly) along with the radio.

I bopped down the Kings Road early morning, watching all the Sloaney mothers with their Bugaboo strollers and Louis Vuitton handbags taking their morning strolls with baby and then drove up to Oxford Street to begin what became a tedious mission. My mood was slightly spoiled by the fact that I'd forgotten my mobile and was thus effectively cut off from my world and forced upon the mercy of London's few working phone boxes. However, on the plus, I got to eat lunch completely uninterrupted.

Standing in the crowds in the late lunch scrum at Oxford Circus, I had a heart stopping moment and this is the main reason for my post this evening (that, and I have to pay my congestion charge). As I swam through the crowds of tourists, pick pockets, shoppers and office workers to get to another set of traffic lights a loud bang rang out from behind me. It could have been any number of relatively harmless things - a car backfiring or a minor but loud collision - but for a split second, everyone on the pavement froze and turned in that direction. After a beat, when it was apparent that it wasn't a bomb or a nut with a gun, everyone turned and went on with their days as if nothing had happened.

You could never say life in the city is boring.