"I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it"

Everything in London is reflective. Everywhere you look, something glass, something metal, casts your face back to you, mirror sharp or distorted. It's an egotist's paradise, a vain man's heaven, a nightmare for the insecure teenage girl.

Perhaps I noticed it more than others, since at home I don't have a mirror. Of course, there are mirrors in the house, and I do own two, which live in my room. But one lives behind the door, the other down the side of my bookcase, since there is little space for them to stand freely, and I have to make a concerted effort to get them out, or use the bathroom mirror. So I am not used to having my reflection thrown back at me sixty times a day.

Mirrors surprise me sometimes. I don't have a very clear image of how I look in my head, so it can be quite startling if I forget I haven't got any make up on, or if I catch a sight of myself looking sweet and approachable in a window on the train. So London got me thinking; my internal picture became sharper and sharper, since I could barely walk twenty paces without finding another image of myself. Narcissus-like, I became fascinated with my reflection, tweaking my hair, watching expressions break over my face, inspecting my curves - all very typically teenage girl behaviour. But for me, it was a revelation. This is what I look like, I kept saying to myself.

Walking around London on your own has a tendency to make you yourself reflective (see what I did there?). As much as I love my friends and enjoy spending time with them, it's a wonderful thing to be totally alone in an unfamiliar city. Oh, I was safe. I was meeting people later on, I was in a text conversation with my dad - you're never totally alone from the world. But I had no-one to have to consider. The world, as Mr Shakespeare said, was mine oyster, and it was glorious.

On impulse, I did something I always think about doing whenever I'm on the Bakerloo line: I got off at Baker Street. As the biggest Sherlock Holmes nut you're likely to come into contact with, I can't help but love the decorations in the Tube station, and I was sure (with London's proliferation of museums) that there must be a Sherlock Holmes museum. Directions are not my strong point, and although I was rewarded on exiting the station with a sign telling me that my goal was 150 yards -> thataway, I managed to walk down the wrong street for at least double that, before cutting back from Marylebone station to realise that the sign meant me to turn the corner onto Baker Street proper.

I found 221B, guarded by a period policeman, paid my extortionate entrance fee, and was shown up some narrow stairs by a period maid into 'Sherlock's study'. There were only two Chinese girls apart from myself in the study, and they were taking pictures by the fireplace with pipe and hat. That was the only point in the day where I wished I had someone else with me, to take a photo of me in that study - for it was the most perfect representation, the epitome of all the screen incarnations and drawings I had seen.

The most wonderful thing about the museum was that you could touch everything. I spent about 45 minutes wandering around 'Sherlock's bedroom', 'Watson's bedroom', and the rooms upstairs, which were filled with waxworks of various villains and victims. I don't like waxworks at the best of times, so alone on the top floor of a very convincing 19th century house, surrounded by people frozen in the act of dying or waving guns around or just looking very wicked, I managed to scare myself slightly... But I kept my back to the wall, leafed through Mr Jabez Wilson's Encyclopaedia Britannica, examined the eponymous blue carbuncle, and stuck to the least creepy waxworks until I felt I could safely betake myself back downstairs. I never once turned my back on the contents of the room.

There was a lot to see, if you could see it. You could, for example, skim through several of Holmes' monographs - On the Keeping of Bees, On the Difference between Ashes - or read Watson's notes on the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, or prod through the good doctor's medical kit. I think, however, to get the most enjoyment out of the museum, you would have had to have been super geeked-up on all the tiny little details of the stories. Luckily, my love affair with Holmes and Watson has lasted since I was about 7, so that wasn't a problem for me!

From there on, I spent a very enjoyable two hours wandering in and out of shops on Oxford Street. I like shopping on my own. Although it is lovely to shop with friends, laughing at hideous clothes, sometimes trying them on, there's a tranquility in shopping by yourself which comes from having no-one else's opinion to satisfy. You can spend as long or as little in a shop as you like, without worrying about boring someone or dragging them away. I made a couple of good buys, a very nice lilac skirt and a dark, rich purple tank top. (Upon showing these to my mother when I got home, she exclaimed, "But I told you to buy winter clothes!")

I made a triumph for the directionless after that, to counteract my inability to find Baker Street - ducking into Starbucks to use my A to Z (don't want to look like a tourist!), I navigated my way successfully from the corner of Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd to Trafalgar Square, where I was headed to the National Gallery. I like the Gallery, but I always feel a bit undereducated, like I really should have something deep and relevant to say. What is an acceptable time to spend looking at a portrait of a Venetian noble? I felt slightly irreverent, like skim-reading Shakespeare.

It came time to meet the first of the people I was meeting, the purpose of my trip being a 'pre-union' of freshers from my college. Luckily, she had much the same view as me with regards to the art, and I really enjoyed her company. Much hilarity ensued when we had to decide whether to ask the lone boy in the National Café if he was our next target, and then ten minutes later when the final members of our group began to hover at the edges of the café, clearly wondering the same. We sat in the café for about an hour, and when the staff began to close up, we adjourned to sit on the side of Nelson's Column. It's not as hard to climb as it looks! It was a beautiful day, and as the sun began to set over London we talked and laughed. I have a good feeling about October.

As I headed back towards Paddington to catch the train home, I barely noticed the reflections, I was so tired. But, as worn out as I was, it was the kind of day you don't get very often. Maybe it takes an unfamiliar backdrop to show you the familiar but forgotten sides of life.