Grabbed G to tour our old junior college together this evening. Guess it's the school vacations cos no one was around, and we wandered round more than I ever did on my previous rare visits. Those visits were spent dodging people who could catch us as tresspassers, and too short to see everything.

This time, I took random snapshots with my mobile phone camera: the funny tree root which followed the edge of a cement slab at right angles; the paper mache model of a pair of leaping legs suspended from the ceiling; a climbing ivy sort of structure with strings tied to it from different floors at the quadrangle.

This time, I walked round the back to see the garden shed cage where my whole class squeezed in to take a photo once. I saw new container classrooms which weren't in existence before; they looked just like army bunkers. I noted instructions scribbled on the rock-climbing wall on how to call and respond while rock-climbing, as if people would stop in mid-climb and check out the most appropriate line to utter.

When we walked around the school tracks, I mentioned that I used to look forward to the train that passed very close to the tracks. I didn't really expect to see a train today, though that would have been perfect. But then we stood on top of the empty spectator stands and G said "train" quietly. I looked stumped and G repeated the word, and then I heard it too, the wailing of an approaching train. So we stood and watched as the whole train passed us by. Fantastic!

You know how they'll empty out Harrods so some celebrity can shop there at night in peace? That magical feeling of walking and lingering among beautiful things, and feeling quite content? I felt like that, minus the bill and the entourage.