WHEN A MAN GROWS TIRED

"When a man grows tired of London, he grows tired of life," wrote Doctor Johnson once. It must have been a wonder then, to the old wag, why anyone lived anywhere else at all. Well, Doctor, I might have a few reasons.

I'll get to those.

First a little context. I'm in the world's busiest Starbucks, I'm a little bit fed up, and my feet really hurt.

I set out with great intentions yesterday, ambling through the park as the morning sun painted the trees. It was lovely - long shadows across the grass, joggers and dog-walkers, bobble hats and breath condensing in the cold air. Breathe - that's what I needed to do: breathe in the gap, in the open space, where introverts thrive and thinkers walk at their own pace.

I was on my way to get on-board an open-top bus. I've done this in all the cities I've visited - it seems such a sensible way to see everything, and then go back later. And certainly, in London, there is everything to see.

From Marble Arch, the bus rumbles through Georgian streets of wide doors and fanlight windows, to Marylebone, Madame Tussaud's, Regent's Park, past the BBC and on into the city of Westminster. The commentary is interspersed with charming bursts of Holst, Elgar, Greensleeves and Jerusalem. I'll admit - they do grow less charming with repetition.

However, the open-top bus certainly reinforced my theory that London is not a single city. It divided it neatly into two. 

To the East, the real City of London, the Square Mile, is a clutter of skyscrapers, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of England and Fleet Street. This, the commentary said, was where Claudius's troops had forded the Thames and founded Londinium. This, was the medieval city which was first ravaged by the plague, and second burned to cinders by the Great Fire of 1666. The bus quickly trundled over Southwark Bridge.

Meanwhile, to the West of the City, the Houses of Parliament rise, silhouetted against the sky, and the London Eye glimmers in the November sunshine. This side, beyond the silver dragons, is called the City of Westminster - where rulers and kings have lived in wide avenued streets and tall Regency palaces.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that London is insanely overcrowded. I honestly don't think I've been more than fifty feet away from at least one person in the last two days. Right now, if I were to extend my elbows so that I looked like I was impersonating a chicken, I'd have one elbow in the hood of a little boy's jacket, and the other nudging over a girl's coffee cup. It's uncomfortable and claustrophobic... much as it is for actual chickens I suppose.

Here, everywhere seems to be this way, all of the time. The street is a swarm of people to slalom through; life goes by in snippets of languages and stories and all at a hundred miles an hour. Every coffee house is a queue between some tables, and the noise of it all is frighteningly loud. The morning walk through the park seems a long time ago.

After the bus looped around Southwark and Bermondsey, the commentary told us to both 'have our cameras ready' and 'sit back and enjoy the view' - something I found hard to do simultaneously. Nonetheless, we zoomed over Tower Bridge (a 'masterpiece of Victorian engineering') and caught a glimpse of what would be the highlight of the day for me, the Tower of London.

It seems strange to see it from the bridge. It looks small and unimposing, next to the enormous and shiny buildings around it. Stone walls, those familiar turrets of the White Tower, the Norman battlements and the crossbow windows - dwarfed by sunlit glass and concrete.

I got off at the Tower and went in.

It was freezing. I don't know whether it's the wind whipping up along the Thames, whether it's just the fact that it's November, or whether I was feeling the cold from sitting on the top of a bus for most of the morning... or something else, but I don't know if I've ever been so cold. I had to nip into a torture chamber just to get warm.

The Tower of London is an incredible attraction to visit. At every turn though, it was hard to forget that this walled castle on the bank of the Thames was a great and terrible prison, and perhaps the last place any sane person five hundred years ago would ever have wanted to visit. I have never been so fascinated. I found myself wishing I could have frozen time, just to take it all in. Death certainly swells there. I stood behind a latticed window in the Beauchamp Tower overlooking Tower Green, perhaps the same window as many of the prisoners condemned there. The execution site, the block and the axe would not have been far away.

Famously of course, the Tower is also home to the Crown Jewels. I wasn't going to go in at first - I didn't think it would appeal to me. Then, just as I was deciding what to do, a gust of freezing wind made me shudder and I dove into the Waterloo Barracks on a whim.

I was glad I went in to the Jewel House. I can highly recommend it. Behind thick titanium doors with bolts the size of an arm, a small room glitters with these emblems of state. The jewels are of course, stunning - colours glimmer from diamonds, rubies and sapphires, and dance around the room. The crowns of state are there - heavy, velvet, interlaced with gold, silver, and sparkling diamond. The orb glistens as it has on every coronation since Charles II, and the sceptre, topped with the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, is alive with light. It was a thrill to see it.

I left the Tower, just in time to catch the river cruise back to Westminster. The boat was predictably...  packed. Small children were whining, a sound which might just be the most irritating noise this world can produce, super-imposed upon an ocean of chatter, which just about swamped the on-board commentary...

"Michael Jackson has played the Royal Festival Hall," I just about heard him say while we sailed past the concrete building on the South Bank.... "... Michael's sadly no longer with us. Luciano Pavarotti too... who is sadly no longer with us. Not to mention John Lennon... also sadly no longer with us..."

'Don't ever feel like you're labouring the setup to a bad joke...' I whispered, rolling my eyes at the window. I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

"I just can't wait for Justin Bieber to play there next," he went on. He paused, expecting a snorting ripple of laughter. None came.

Doctor Johnson was right in some ways - all of life is certainly here, and if you can imagine it, you can probably get it. That must be so exciting if that's what floats your boat. But for me, an introvert, who loves the space of being far away from people sometimes, I'm confident that all this clutter and noise has a definite shelf-life. It all just feels exhausting.

And my feet are feeling it. I've done too much walking and my knee and feet have had enough. Certainly, as I walked back along the Bayswater Road last night, reflecting on the day, I wondered whether I should find a way to rest my joints a bit better today.

Well, I tried. But little did I know that that plan would work out with me feeling much worse, spending an afternoon doing something I had no intention of doing here, and becoming extremely annoyed, scared, and fed-up with this vast, uncomfortable and claustrophobic city.

But more of that later. I think perhaps Doctor Johnson's quote needs amending. How about - when a man grows tired of life, he's already grown tired of London. Well, my dodgy feet, after 52,000 steps would certainly agree.