Brain Juice

Tonight I am going to see a performance of The Tempest - in Russian, at the Barbican Theatre in London. This is a building near St Paul's, and is one of the most irritating arts complexes there is - despite the very good work it does. Once you're, you flail about trying to find the bit (gallery, concert hall, theatre, cinema) you want to attend, then panic all over again at the end trying to get out. (There are, it is true, helpful lines painted in yellow along the bricked walkways that lead to the two underground stations that take one there. Years ago, when they staged a brilliant version of The Wizard of Oz, I took my then young, younger daughter to see her first properly done children's theatre, and we danced out afterwards, singing, 'Follow the Yellow Brick Line').

But this is a diversion. I shall walk there from my house in Kentish Town, in London's north west. It should take a little over an hour, but I find that walking is without doubt the best way to think, and when I am writing it provides solutions and movement in my mind in a way nothing else does. Cycling is no good because it helps to concentrate when one is on a bike in London; sitting on buses and tubes is ueseless. Walking is brain juice.