by Stephanie Sadler

Created on: November 10, 2008   Last Updated: December 10, 2008

Regent Street pavement was clogged with the usual onslaught of weekend tourists and late night shoppers. I was walking quickly back from Borders toward the tube, head down, weaving between couples and groups and bags and beggars.

Then I overheard a woman say, "This city is unreal, it's beautiful" and she trailed off there. I stopped. The gaping grimy entrance to the tube was just ahead. I could be home in half an hour. Or, I thought, I could stop rushing about as if I had somewhere important to be and notice how beautiful it actually is. I chose the latter.

A few minutes later, I felt like a different person. I was awake and aware, a freshly-poured tall Tazo tea in one hand, a bag with a brand new camera from John Lewis and a one from Borders swinging in the other. I bought a book on travel writing, Wanderlust and Real Travel magazines and a mini French-English dictionary for my trip to Paris in two weeks. And I walked, head up, smiling, down Regent Street toward Piccadilly Circus. In a few months, this street will be draped in glittering displays of Christmas lights, shop windows wrapped in bows and holiday music the soundtrack to every shopping trip. But not yet. I love this time of year. It's fresh, a gentle transition from summer to winter, inspiring.

Despite The London Paper and The Evening Standard's front page news of Black Friday and the FTSE crashing to a 6-year low, the shops were throbbing, bags dangling from arms dressed in new winter coats. I walked past the windows of Burberry piled high with dry, crunchy tan Autumn leaves and the regal old buildings snaking around the end to the lights and crowds of Piccadilly Circus.

Following a familiar sound, I stopped in Zavvi to browse and bask in the Bob Dylan tunes floating from the doorway into the ears of people from around the globe. Around me, the melodies of different languages mixed and mingled with laughter, eager chatter and Sixties folk rock.

As I passed by Canada House toward Trafalgar Square, a continuous cloud of smoke that looked like the mist of Niagara Falls wafted through the spotlights of the National Gallery an unusual and eerie effect. As usual in this city, I had happened upon something amusing.

I had come here to write. It was quite an ordeal trying to find a notebook after all the shops shut. Desperate, but not desperate enough to steal a stack of McDonald's napkins to write on, I found myself, embarrassingly enough, standing in a tourist shop holding a few s and a notebook covered in clich

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