London in the Rain

I was up in London this week, at a meeting in the London School of Economics library.  The longer in the tooth I get, professionally, the less I enjoy this sort of thing. It is annoying, in the company of ambitious young people on whom the Terrible Truth has not yet dawned, to find yourself forced to play the grey-bearded, seen-it-all skeptic.  Someone has to do it, though, and I am perfectly cast in the role.  I have not only seen it all, I have seen it all twice.

But never mind, I love central London.  Even on a day of torrential rain, the romantic power of the Thames is inescapable.  To walk from the South Bank over Waterloo Bridge to the Strand and beyond, is like stepping onto a stage.  Other cities are grander, or more picturesque, but none is more multi-layered, more mysterious, more full of life, than London.

It is too overwhelming for the infrequent visitor to understand, though, much less photograph. I always have the feeling, in the streets of central London, that I am an innocent outsider, a beginner who understands nothing, a traveller with no destination. Once, that was true.  Now, rather less so.  But it's a good feeling to have, and it was fun to stand on a street-corner opposite Bush House, eating a takeaway lunch, just watching the people and the traffic pass by in the rain.

South Bank backstreet