I mentioned in a much earlier post that in certain areas of London, memories pour out of the walls of buildings and ooze up from the very paving stones I'm striding over.

That sense roared back this evening. I'd been to Foyles on Charing Cross Road and was walking towards Lower Regent Street, when - and this may well have been provoked by a wonderful memoir of a man looking back at a youthful trip through Mexico I'd just finished reading - all of those ghosts of happy memories of my life in this wonderful city surged along the streets.

Streets and buildings that I'd seen twenty five years ago on similar fresh, clear October evenings, I saw again as the young man I was then.

What would have I done if I'd bumped into that young man I was then this evening? So easy. Hugged him, and then told him I loved him. Loved him for being him, for being adventurous, for accepting that life would often be solitary, but when it was, that the quietest moments were so often the most exciting, and to never give up, to keep going, to push on.