Impressions.

Seven hours in London left me with a wealth of mental snapshots. Not used to this overload of stimuli I tried to roll with it for once and not be resistant. Paddington is nice, bears and Paul's patisserie tht does an excellent Tourte Legumes and tarte au citron. Spent a happy hour there in comparative peace waiting for daughter to take me sight-seeing in Covent Garden (I've been before of course but long before she was born) The screeching, body-snatching tube journey pretty much did away with good intentions to stay cool and we got off much too early ta walk from Picadilly. grimness. London seems suddenly so small and scruffy. Whatvere do the tourists make of it. The Japanese girls taking Paddington's photo were happy but in this pidgeon-splashed nightmare of streets..? My lungs didn't like it. Everyone we asked the way (Sophie is like me, knows areas well but can't connect one with another even after several years in the city) was friendly. All were young (or are the oldies just invisible?) I sat on a step outside a shop that looked like a warehouse whilst she shopped for clothes then she took me to a nice, tiny, cobbled, square off Neil's Yard where we had a highly intoxicating drink with lots of lime and vodka and sugar which definitly helped my equilibrium though it shot Sophie's to pieces (these young just can't hold their drink!) Then she took me to a vegetarian restaurant where the food looks and tastes home-baked. Unfortunately it too was diminutive inside and I had my case and just after we arrived so did the rest of veggie London. I wasn't hungry anyway as I'd eaten well in Paul's but I was happy to have seen a place she frequents and to have found a tea shop (selling loose teas like jasmine flower which I haven't seen since the Belgian days, and everything you need for the tea ceremony so I was able to arrange my birthday gift for this year - as much loose tea as she can afford at the time.)

We took a taxi to Euston. Daughter was very resistant - real Londoners don't take cabs? - but saw I wasn't going to survive another tube journey and it wasn't very expensive IMO. We sat gratefully in an odd sort of cafe/diner with an open frontage outside Euston where Sophie gave £1 to a beggar who told us she was seven months pregnant. She looked at least my age and I wouldn't have known how to deal with her but supposed paying a bit was the easiest way out. How would I deal with being on the streets? I wouldn't last long is the answer.

After an evening with my friends who spend winters in India I came away with my mind darkened by horror stories of beggars. They say 'Slumdog Millionare' only showed the tip of the iceberg and it's all much worse than that. I'm glad I didn't see it.

Really I have to say I'm a coward about travel. At the same welcome-home-to-the-chilly -northern-climes dinner party were two ladies of my age who recently travelled to Tibet. One went in on the 'tourist' route with a guided tour starting in Lhasa (that's horribly high I believe) and the other going in with monks through China. Strangely the one who went in through China had the most hopeful reports on the lives of the Tibetans who she saw working their own fields, keeping shops and looking quite relaxed in their homeland. Only when they got close to the more touristy routes did she see Chinese guards with guns patrolling the streets and more repression.