pensive

High over the roofs of the city, over most anyway, though dwarfed by the humongous dome capping Saint Paul's just across the river, is the Tate Modern members room, a smart café exclusively for those who pay their dues to the gallery once a year instead of once for each exhibition. It was here that I found myself this afternoon recovering from the foulest of moods.

The weekend should have been splendid. Mom was in town and I had lined up a few things likely to entertain her, but really chosen because I wanted to do them. Yesterday, on a most beautiful and sunny late summer day we set out at Limehouse to explore the Olympic London of the future. The 1908 Olympic stadium used to be five minutes from my apartment in a area now taken over by the BBC. Thus I see the Olympic London of the past almost every day, but I was ignorant of how things were going in East London, how the preparations for the 2012 Olympics were coming along.

Directions for the walk had come from an article initially published in the London Times in early 2006. I should have been suspicious when printing this on account of its age, but wasn't. The walk followed towpaths along canals whose glory rose and fell in line with England's industry and manufacturing. I had blithely assumed that the waterways wouldn't change.

Our expedition started fine. We followed Limehouse Cut through some raw and rotting areas and then through others that had been developed out of their misery into fancy waterside apartments. We passed by a few locks and what used to be a tidal mill. This was my favorite part, strolling on a narrow path hemmed in by the canal on one side and the river that's nothing more than mud at low tide on the other. A rural openness surrounded us, somewhat surreal with the towers of Canary Wharf and the City so near.

When the skeleton of the new Olympic stadium came into view, further progress was doomed. Our tow path disappeared under heaps of trash, debris and barricades, and all signs only pointed away. Go thither, they said, their tails to the stadium. We found a few more canals and a few more towpaths, but all were similarly blocked and there was no way to even modulate the proposed walk to make it work for us. In Stratford, we hopped in a bus back to town, somewhat disappointed but happy with what we had seen so far.

Today was very different. The sun never came out, clouds piled up above the city as if they had nowhere else to go, and it was cold and very windy. The day was jinxed. The morning concert for which we had arrived half an hour early because I had misremembered the start time wasn't music to my ears. Afterwards, we lost our tickets in the stalls and thus couldn't benefit from the free sherry that was served at the end.

I had started the day with one or two things on my mind already, and every turn we took, everything we undertook compounded my gloom. I hated myself for it because I was a horrible companion to my mom, retorting to her questions and comments with a sharp tongue devoid of wit and charm. Mr Grumpy was in town, and I didn't have the means for containing him.

There are quite a few reasons for my dispiritedness, and during the hours spent walking around town, from the public art of Trafalgar Square to the miles of craziness of the Thames Festival, I kept rolling realities and possibilities, options and dead-ends, dreams and restrictions around in my head, and I got nowhere. Curiously, ascending the cathedral of modern art that is the Tate and having tea and a scone triggered an unexpected change of moods. I came to at least one little conclusion, to one decision of immediate impact. It's cliché, but the future happens tomorrow; today is the only day that matters. There was one more concert to go to and a spectacular fireworks display that would gloriously end my mom's forth stay in London. I stashed my worries away in a remote fold of my cortex, not to be retrieved until tomorrow. Finishing the tea, I tried a smile for the first time today, in preparation for the good things yet to come.