London was in a frisky mood tonight. A strong warm wind whipped up the drizzle and swirled it around the streets. I walked down from Fitzrovia, across to the other side of Soho and then on into Chinatown to shop at a supermarket filled with food that had labels I couldn’t read.

It’s not easy working out what is meat free when you can’t decode the instructions on the packaging, but I got the things I was after - I think - by means of guessing shapes and decoding pictures, then headed on through Covent Garden to cross the river on Waterloo Bridge. The view was amazing. A low, dense blanket of clouds had been caught in the glare of the leaking streetlamps, and the whole sky been painted a coppery orange, from well beyong Parliament as far as the furthest end the Docklands.

A light on top of the London Eye winked across the city at Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf winked back.

Walking to the middle of the bridge, I stood among the tourists as they took rain-sodden pictures of St Paul’s, and actually felt excited to be there. It’s a long time since I’ve felt that about London. Usually I can’t wait to get home, but every so often it does you good to walk out through the streets you’d never normally use, and see what you’re missing.

I passed across the rest of the bridge and went down the steps onto the bank of the river where it passed the National Theatre and Royal Festival Hall. Coloured lights had been hoisted up into the trees, and speakers screwed into the concrete walls that line the paving. While the speakers moaned the kind of whale song you’d hear in a new-age crystal shop, the lights shot eratic flashes of light along the wet walkway.

The lights, and the outlines of the few pedestrians out there, were softened in the fine spray of water being shot out from a network of bizarre tubes strung up along the branches of the trees, which shrouded the whole embankment in a colourful wet fog that, for once, everyone seemed to enjoy.

It was a good night to be in the city, out on the streets rather than sat in a pub - even if you were the man in the hat playing guitar in the rain on the Millennium Bridge.

I arrived home three hours late, wet and tired, but none of that mattered.

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