Luce took the day off today, enabling us to enjoy the morning together as i made my way towards work. My girlfriend would be heading to Clapham for some kind of girlesque preening session whereas i needed to pack up my belongings at work for the BIG MOVE. As luck would have it, the weather was looking up and the sunshine gave some welcome hints of the spring to come. In fact, the whole lazy wander towards the south bank would have been perfect had it not been for that damn pigeon.

I've always had a laissez-faire relationship with London's pigeons, finding them horribly unhygienic and flappy at the best of times and yet grudgingly admiring the fact they choose to live and forage amongst us. My sister-in-law dislikes pigeons because of their "pecky beaks" and my mum says they have "cruel reptilian eyes". In other words, pigeons are the LOLCATs of the real world - you either hate them or tolerate them.

With that in mind, Luce and I had been enjoying looking at the cafes and pastry joints off Charlotte Place. We passed a patisserie that proudly showed its array of expensive, artisan foodstuffs that were painstakingly arranged behind the front window.

"Look at this stuff Luce" i said. "They've got Gypsy Creams...and Derby Scones...."

"Actually, those are coconut macaroons and the other ones are flans patissier with nutmeg, but well done for trying". Luce is an expert on baking.

"Well what about those things in the middle?" i said, gesturing to a pile of paper-wrapped cylinders that were cut in half but wrapped at the ends like giant sweets. They were about the size of a man's wrist and half a foot long.

"That's obviously cheese of some kind" said Luce, scrutising the wax paper.

"...or butter" i countered. I speak from knowledge gained from years of being thrown out of the Borough market after taking their "free samples" of market food a little too seriously.

"Nah, it's definitely cheese" said Luce. She was bent forward now, but the unwrapped edge of each cylinder was facing away from the window.

"I reckon it's butter. Cheese is rarely cylindrical. It's a food physics thing. Freshness, and suchlike." i said, trailing off.

"First of all, cheese can be cylindrical. Look at Roule. Secondly, there's no air conditioning so the butter would go rancid."

My girlfriend made two very good points, but i was going to call her up on this.

"Let's go in and look" i said, and she agreed.

As soon as we went inside, the proprietors' face went from keen interest as the prospect of early customers to dawning recognition, to absolute horror.

"Oh, hell no!" he yelled. Luce and i were stunned.

"We're not tourists, if that's what you're worried about. I mean, she's from manchester but - "

"Pigeon!!!" the guy barked to a woman out back in the kitchen.

"Wait, what?" said my girlfriend before realising that a pigeon had indeed entered into the shop with us and chose that moment to practise its flying skills.

Well the next minute or so was like something out Benny Hill. The pigeon got caught up in the ecstasy of being surrounded by so much amazing food that it didn't know what to do. It tried flying towards the cakes before changing course as the shop assistant waved his arms frantically. Then it made a dash for the counter where there was tray of delicious-looking brownies. Finally i put my hands up in an attempt to coax the bird towards the exit whereby it immediately panicked and fell arse over beak into a large punch bowl full of freshly-made caesar salad.

"Oh shit!" i said in a small voice. The pigeon then flopped onto a nearby quiche before it decided to quit playing silly buggers and exited the shop in a flurry of sticky feathers. The assistant stared at us for an entire minute.

"I think it shat in your salad" said Luce, helpfully.

"It didn't touch the quiche though, did it?" whined the proprietor. His head had been turned to yell for help while the bird had been doing it's runaway act.

"Sure, why not" i said soothingly. I apologised to the staff for their bad luck and they gave me that shit happens smile that you acquire when living in a metropolis, and Luce and I beat a swift exit.

"Hey, that was fun!" i said, grinning. Although the coffee shop had lost a large quantity of gourmet salad, it had provided us with the nourishing food of entertainment followed by a desert of lessons-learnt in birdproofing your establishment.

"They were tortilla wraps, by the way" said Luce, slipping her hand into mine.

"Who were?" i said, confused.

"Those things in the windows. They were sandwich wraps. Chicken and pesto."

"Ah!" i said. We headed towards Waterloo.