I’ve found a little Eden in London

I’m not one of life’s early risers but an exception had to be made on Wednesday last week. In an event organised by Lord Chadlington (Peter Selwyn Gummer), Michael Gove was talking about ‘levelling up’ to an invited audience at the Corinthia hotel in London. This was a breakfast meeting, doors open at 7.45, and I wanted to hear Mr Gove, a politician I know and admire.

So I was there. Gove was impressive. But in the end neither he nor the breakfast were what I’ll always remember about that morning. Around nine o’clock we tipped out on to the pavements by Embankment Tube station. It was a glorious morning, fresh and clear in the winter sunshine. I’m trying to prolong my life by doing more walking these days, so why not amble along to Temple station through the Victoria Embankment gardens – a long, narrow strip of London greenery parallel with the river that, oddly, I’ve never walked through before – and enjoy the morning air? The distance was hardly epic and time did not press.