I arrived in London yesterday and checked into a hotel that is so mod it looks like it was designed by Austin Powers. I really need a Mary Quant minidress and white go-go boots to complement it properly. Today my meeting wrapped up by 2:00 p.m. and had the rest of a warm, sunshiny day to explore the city. I have to be in Munich on Monday, so I’ve planned to stay here through the weekend.

I had intended to take advantage of the time to do a kind of photo safari in the city, but I forgot my Holga. As I’ve mentioned before, though, these cameras are cheap they’re practically disposable, so why not just buy another one? So I sauntered into the first photo shop I saw and asked if they carried Holgas.

“There’s only one place I know of in the whole city that carries them,” the clerk said, and made an X on my map. Half an hour on the tube and a short walk later, I had located the place, which turned out to be a gallery that was hosting a show of photos from North Korea. They had a small gift shop with four different kinds of Holgas. I sprang for the model with a built-in flash, because the camera I forgot doesn’t have one, and I might as well diversify. Of course, the shop didn’t sell medium-format film, so the clerk at the gallery suggested a shop that did sell it and put another X on my map. I walked about half a mile and easily found the next shop, where yet another clerk advised me on the best kind of film to buy. Three extremely helpful salespeople in a row; it was a red-letter day for customer service.

I found London pretty easy to navigate. You must understand that I’ve spent so much virtual time in London (via Trollope, Dickens, MI-5, any movie with Colin Firth, etc.) that it’s almost a shock to the system to be here in reality. I’ve been to London half-a-dozen times, but the last trip where I had enough time to play tourist was back in college. (I am not old enough to have worn a real Mary Quant minidress back then, but it was so long ago that Flashdance was a sartorial influence.) So I was quite excited to make this trip and have all this time to explore with my camera.

After I bought the Holga, film, and batteries, it was practically dark, but as I consulted the map I saw I was relatively close to Lincoln’s Inn, so I decided to indulge in a little literary tourism. I just finished Bleak House, in which much of he action takes place at Lincoln’s Inn and Chancery Court. And of course Lincoln’s Inn is a setting for every other novel in English literature that involves a court case (Phineas Finn and P.D. James spring to mind; I’m sure Rumpole of the Bailey was also there, although maybe I’m getting my courts confused). Anyway, all these years I’ve been completely unable to understand what Lincoln’s Inn is all about. There is no American analogy; it seems to be part bar association, part law offices. I was determined to see it, even if it turned out to be a dull office park (or “trading estate,” as they say here).

As I approached the Inns, I spotted a bunch of catering trucks set up for a TV or movie shoot. I tried out my new Holga-plus-flash by taking a shot of a bunch of people who appeared to be actors dressed as Hasidic Jews eating their dinner in a double-decker bus that had been turned into a canteen. Then I made my way through the gates.

It’s wasn’t a dull office park at all, but rather a beautiful campus that looked like an Ivy League college. Many of the windows were uncurtained, and I could see offices cluttered with lawyerly collections of books, some with black robes hanging on the backs of their doors. I took an artsy shot of such a window framed by a wrought iron gate. I’m confident it will turn out like 90% of my Holga shots: a nebulous black shadow.

I can’t wait to shoot some more film tomorrow, when it’s light. I’m glad I bought the camera. It will come in handy when I run into Colin.