Left stranded at the altar, or more accurately at the end of a very long queue outside Lambeth Palace, bereft not only of promised companions but of any printed literature offering alternative venues, I reluctantly decided this might well be the first year that I failed to take advantage of London's Open House Weekend.

Not such a tragedy, as it turned out, since I had my camera in my hand and it promised to be a gloriously sunny day. And besides, looking around at the overwhelmingly middle-class and middle-aged architectarati doggedly queueing in front of me, was this really the kind of company I wished to keep?

The glorious open-air heritage of Westminster beckoned, just across the river. Nice day for a walk.

Crossing Westminster Bridge towards the Houses of Parliament, I couldn't help wondering where all these tourists had come from. Did no-one tell them we were the victims of terrorist outrage?

"During this time of heightened security," as they call it on the Tube, it's a brave man who lingers around the Palace of Westminster, composing ironically juxtaposed images of ornate neo-gothic ornamentation and even more ornate neo-brutalist deterrent measures. But hey, I'm a brave man - and the fact that Big Ben struck twelve as I passed it seemed like a good omen.

Crossing Parliament Square, fighting off tourists with a metaphorical stick, I ducked into St Margaret's, the parish church of Parliament, which turned out to contain some stunning monuments - and stern adminitions forbidding photography.

Which, being a brave man, I ignored. To no avail, sadly - however small your equipment, it turns out to be incredibly difficult to take a good snap whilst holding the camera nonchalantly at waist level, whistling in a carefree manner and looking everywhere but straight ahead.

The main entrance to Westminster Abbey was clogged with visitors, none of whom seemed remotely perplexed at the prospect of coughing up £8 to enter a church ostensibly dedicated to the service of the nation.

Marvelling at how toothsome everything looked in the bright sunlight, I followed my alternative strategy and snuck round Hawksmoor's west front and into Dean's Yard (home of Westminster School, where Tony Blair's children were educated; one of the boys playing rounders on the green was definitely called Leo, but slightly too old, I think).

Whilst delightfully bucolic in its own right, an oasis of calm crammed full of interesting nooks and crannies, Dean's Yard also serves as a kind of back-door to the Abbey, via the Cloisters.

Having charmed my way past a secuity guard masquerading as a red-vested verger ("Was there anything in particular you wanted sir? Because we are being particularly careful today. What with the Battle of Britain service coming up tomorrow..."), I enjoyed a pleasant quarter of an hour wandering around the arcaded cloisters, popping my head into the stunningly light-filled Chapter House along the way.

From here, it takes only a cool head, a short (very short) moral debate and a few footsteps to gain entrance to the Abbey itself. (A notice requires to show your entry-badge on re-entering but there was no-one there to check it.)

Although I must, surely, have been in the Abbey before, I don't remember it being this glorious; I blame the sunlight, glittering off all that gold leaf, casting every little sculpted detail into sharp relief.

Prominent notices in international sign language sternly forbid the taking of photographs: one sees their point, but it's surely nothing short of a national scandal that citizens are denied their own record of our greatest national monument.

Or so I argued to myself, as - yet again - I surreptitiously snapped away, dealing politely from time to time with vergers solemnly bearing down on me with stern admonishment ("I'd keep that camera in your pocket if I were you sir...").

Although some of the pictures are unforgivably fuzzy as a result (especially one of touchingly small mini-monument to an aristocrat's dead baby), I think some of the others are superb; sufficiently so for me to have later entered into correspondence with the Abbey in re photographic access (only to be told, "No, nothing, never", which is an outrage).

Equally scandalous, though considerably more mundane, is the fact that if you politely enquire as to toilet facilities, you are directed entirely out of the Abbey, across the busy road and round the back of the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre.

I never did find them, settling for a pub instead, but the detour gave me an excuse to focus on the streets immediately surrounding Middlesex Guildhall, an ornate building whose cluttered facade often briefly focuses my attention as the night-bus swings past it taking me home after a night's carousing.

From there, I headed towards St James Park, passing by the gingerbread Birdkeeper's Cottage which lived up to at least part of it's name by proffering an entirely surreal vista of pelicans on the one hand and a homely moorhen on the other.

From there across the gravelled expanse of Horseguards Parade (where yet another lengthy queue of ageing grockles reinforced my belief that I'd had quite enough open houses for one day) for a brief flirt with some guardsmen, and then on for a final tip of the hat to Ms Lapper, whose plinth has come.

And...home.