London has been a furnace this weekend. Two days of face to face encounters with great roaring blasts of hot air and a tormentingly hot overheard sun.

I've done things that metaphorically I would n't do, meaning I've forsaken the sunny side of the street for relative mint cool of the shade. Had to. I was baking like a brie yesterday particularly.

Even if it has been two days of walking on hot coals, I've made it to places I don't normally go to, including Tooting, which I only knew of in relation to a beloved French teacher I had who came from there, and from what I saw yesterday, it must be one of the most multi-cultural places on Earth.

After Tooting, came New Malden, London's Koreatown; it really is too, not a handful of shops and lonely restaurants lumped generically by the local media on one of their periodic ethnic safaris, it is as Korean as any place I've seen in Korea itself.

Somehow I then made it to Chelsea Bridge and ran into the Chelsea cruise, a slow drive-past of lovingly restored British cars of the sixties and seventies, Ford Anglias, Escorts, Granadas, Minis, and a static parade of iconic American cars: Chevy pick-ups, Moby Dick sized Lincolns, Impalas, Mustangs. All beautifully painted, all handsomely refurbished, and throaty enough when the engines kick to bring tears to any petrol head or Americophiliac like me.

Before my legs split like matchsticks carrying an elephant, I made it to Battersea Park. To my eternal shame this park is one I'd only visited once before, possibly in the late eighties or early nineties. The park is a dream: a magical Peace pagoda by the river, with resplendent Buddha figures serenely watching London at play and rest. and where last night and again this evening, I saw people in complex, probably painful lotus like positions, meditating.

As I left this evening ( I had to go again to confirm it was as entrancing as I remembered on Saturday - it is) there was sound of a tenor sax floating into the trees and over the Thames. It could have been a movie; the protagonist walks away under the spreading shade of the trees, content and at one with everything