There's always something in London to set your heart racing and keep your spirits up.

On the tube into work yesterday I was sat opposite a young school girl, no more than thirteen, who unlike most girls that age I see on public transport was n't chatting or listening to an i-Pod, or scribbling last minute homework; she was, instead, deep into a weather worn copy of Nancy Mitford's 'Love in a cold climate', rapt with the concentration and focus that only readers know. I was privately delighted; reading is the greatest joy. We travel further than anyone else. No continent, no century, no world is too remote. Anything is possible: we can be any gender, we can be anything in fact.

A few weeks before, I'd been sat in the Pret a Manger in Paternoster Square, working my way through the Guardian and nearing the thought of saddling up and making for the office, when a youngish man - early thirties at most, and as well dressed as most are who work in the City* - sat at the table next to me. So unremarkable and mundane an event that I scarcely took any notice. But I did when I glanced over and saw that he was reading Saul Bellow's 'Herzog' - my favourite book. The one I'll be buried with. I was silently ecstatic; I've never seen anyone, anywhere, with anything by Bellow in their hands. 

Again, someone on that lifetime's journey that reading is. Readers go places.

*I dress badly. It's not quite jester's motley I'm wearing but damn close. Only this afternoon I found myself wandering across the office floor with a hole in my shirt elbow the size of small bomb crater.