Definitely not tired of life!

I may have quoted before the saying attributed to Samuel Johnson: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

Well I still love London. It is an exciting, vibrant, entertaining and enjoyable place to be, and somewhere I love to go if I am feeling bored or fed up - or when I am neither!

Today my wife and I travelled in once the rush hour was over, starting our day with a cup of coffee in the cafe to be found in the lovely environment of the crypt under St Martin in the Fields. We then went up to the church, where a choral quartet were rehearsing in the splendid acoustic of this bright, airy building, as seen in this blip. Strangely, although I have visited the crypt many times, this is my first visit to the church, but I'm sure it won't be my last (some of the concerts there appeal to me).

We then moved to the Strand Gallery where I wanted to see the free exhibition of photographs of the London Underground taken by Yangchen Lin to celebrate 150 years since the Underground first opened. I find the architecture and history of the underground very interesting, and I absolutely loved the style of photography on show at this exhibition. The photographs were interesting, entertaining and often humorous; the photographer found many unusual scenes or viewpoints (eg from down the gap between the train and platform as passengers embarked and disembarked) - and his introduction mentioned that he received some incredulous looks from passing commuters. If you like the underground, street photography, creative and original viewpoints, this exhibition is well worth seeing - but you'll have to be quick: it finishes on Saturday (having already been extended by a week).

After a very pleasant lunch in Cafe Rouge, we then moved on to Somerset House to view the exhibition called "Landmark: The Fields of Photography" - another free show. This is a large and well presented exhibition of a variety of landscape photography styles - not the pretty images of a Charlie Waite or Joe Cornish, but sometimes gritty, sometimes abstract documentary illustrations of varied landscapes throughout the world. Huge prints in a show filling several rooms of the East Wing, with images by many well known photographers, including Olivo Barbieri, Edward Burtynsky, Lee Friendlander, Nadav Kander and Simon Roberts to mention a few that I recognised.

An extremely enjoyable day. To finish it off, I went to the swimming pool this evening for an hour and completed a number of short sets, totalling 2100m. Now it must be time for bed!