Sometimes I wake, open one eye, take a look at London and wonder at how the old thing has let herself go. When we first met she was all glamour. In those first days together she was exciting; she was all energy and sparkle. Then I found her quiet places and learned a little of her history – the time before we met. There was, I thought, a sadness she was trying to outrun.

I suppose we got used to one another and I stopped seeing her except to register, subliminally, that the hot-pants and party frocks had become slouch-pants and work-wear.

Then tonight, coming out of a restaurant on the south bank at sunset, I saw the light on the river and the primary coloured kayaks working their way up stream. The last rays shone on the white stone of the great bridge and the shadows lengthened in the moat around the Tower. With a drink inside me I saw her again as she had been – a beautiful and complex creature that I had been under-estimating.