Earth has not anything to show more fair

The workers are on strike. The Victoria Line is down and the Piccadilly Line is full of refugees from this silent passage under the city. With another day done it was, therefore, a sojourn to Westminster to make the migration home from there. The sun shone, the air was fresh and my legs were moving almost of their own free will, unaware of the very concept of tiredness.

I walked past the Houses of Parliament and spied the lovely Joanna Lumley looking radiant, talking to passerbys who had gone up to her, while on the square the remaining Sri Lankian protesters continued to shout slogans and wave their placards. The towers of the house stood stark against the blue blur that occurs between afternoon and evening while Cromwell stood majestic and silent, a very different ideal to the fiasco that has been unravelling, warts and all, in those corridors of misused power.

To nice to enter the tube just yet.

So on past Downing Street and into Trafalgar Square, weaving through the spaces left by the evening drinkers, the speeding cyclists, the wandering tourists; cutting down side streets and moving towards Covent Garden with some vague notion of direction; ducking into an HMV (okay too corporate too sound romantic, but it is 2009), and peruse some DVDs. Then back to the Garden, watch a juggler entertain the crowds, before strolling on up to Holborn, past the Mason's building and all the mystery that holds.

And all this, all this mighty heart beating so loudly, is so easy to ignore each and everyday as we shuttle back and forth in tubes.

The workers are on strike. I'm outside soaking up the energy of one of the world's greatest cities.