I wanted to give her an angle on London that you tend not to get by doing the museums and galleries and the Eye - the old landscape that you can still see in the topography of the streets, the hidden rivers, the bomb at Bank Junction during the Blitz. We stood for a while in the way of lunchtime crowds on Cannon Street looking at London Stone (supposedly brought here by Trojan exiles who came to England to found Troia Nova but certainly already very old by the time Shakespeare mentions it - it's set into the wall of a sporting goods shop)
And we walked. Oh, sweet baby Jesus did we walk. I am seriously out of shape - the most rigorous exercise I get during the week is changing the toner cartridge on the office printer. My legs are in absolute agony. Apparently my friend wore holes in her socks. Do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?
We made a date to see each other again in another twenty-five years. Which is fine by me; by then I'll be almost seventy and someone can push me around in a wheelchair.
Good day, though. Too few of those, these days.