I went to Harrods. It was full of stuff I don’t want selling at prices I can’t afford. It was also packed with people searching for bargains. It’s bloody scary when an item is discounted by £100 and it’s still expensive. The women’s shoes and accessories section was on the verge of turning into a riot. Only a few well placed security guards kept things vaguely under control.

That was pretty boring, so I walked around to Oxford Street, which is full of big shops. I heart Selfridges. I went to this organic beauty place and had a 30 minute facial treatment. It was so nice and I think I needed it because travelling has been making my skin go mental. I visited the Oxford Circus Top Shop. It claims to be the biggest fashion shop in the world, and that’s probably right. It’s huge and possibly as exciting as a circus.

I accidentally walked down Carnaby Street. It’s really ordinary, just a street filled with top end clothing chain stores. Not a pair of false eyelashes in sight.

First I made my way across the Thames and went on the London Eye/Millennium Wheel. When I was heading to the line to buy the £11 ticket, two old ladies stopped me and asked if I wanted one ticket because they had a spare. “You can have this for half price… or free.” In retrospect, I should have given her £7.50, but it was so sudden and unexpected that I just said thanks and took the ticket.

As a karma payback of sorts, the Wheel was rather boring. It’s almost like when you’ve seen one large city from a height, you’ve seen them all. But this at least had the attraction of being in a giant Ferris wheel. Though I was stuck up there as the wheel made its 30 minute rotation which such people as the man who video taped his family queuing and the lady with the big arse who always seemed to stand right in front of me where I was sitting.

Next I went to the Saatchi gallery. OMG HAWT. It was so excellent. I’m totally enamoured with the work of Damien Hirst. I used to think that the animal parts in formaldehyde were just silly “my five-year-old could do better” kind of pseudo art, but actually seeing it up close is bloody impressive. Seeing a cow sliced up and preserved in tanks of formaldehyde does made sense. The [thing] I liked the best was a room filled with used motor oil. There was a metal passage leading to the centre of the room. Walking in there meant being surrounded with a perfectly smooth, almost mirror-like reflection of the half of the room above the oil. It was beautiful.

Then I toodled along the Thames to the Tate Modern gallery. I made a £2 donation to make up for the Wheel freebie. The Tate’M was full of so much good art. I really liked one Jackson Pollack painting (“Summertime”, I think). There is a room dedicated to The Bricks, three groups of bricks by [an American artist] (They have a proper name, I just can’t remember it). When it was purchased for £6000 in 1976 it caused a furore because it’s just a pile of bricks. So along one wall was a selection of press clippings, a timeline, cartoons and other things relating to the public reaction to the bricks. I stood against a wall and while I was listening to the audio guide I watched people entering that room. Most people glanced at the bricks then spent a bit more time looking at the information display. Hardly anyone spent more than a few seconds looking at the bricks. After I looked at the bricks for a while they started to look like pebbles in a stream. Therefore, I am superior to the general public.

London still sucks, but I’m worming my way in.