I’d always wanted to do this. Being a Londoner, I don’t do the London sightseer thing - open-top bus tours, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace etc. But I’ve nurtured a sneaking longing to be a tourist for a day.

My chance came in mid December, when our publishers Atom arranged a Christmas office outing: the London Duck Tour. That’s “Duck” as in D.U.K.W, the wartime American amphibious-assault vehicles that have six wheels, a propellor, rudder and bilge pump. Although the last ones were made in 1945, there are a surprising number of them around, these days converted into amphibious day-tripper buses. 

As it turned out, they are surprisingly handy vehicles. You’re perched up very high on those giant military wheels so you get to see plenty while you’re doing the land-based bit of the tour (Westminster Bridge, The Mall, Piccadilly, round Buckingham Palace, and finally into the river next to Terry Farrell’s MI6 building). Then everything feels very different, because you are distinctly low in the water.  We raced downriver on the tide, slewed round in front of the Palace of Westminster and breasted the current to chug slowly back again. I thought it would roll about all over the place but no: after all, they could handle the English Channel on D-Day so are designed for rougher conditions than this.  London seen from the river always yields interesting new perspectives. I was intrigued by a strange tall thin brick tower on the Lambeth side, full of blackened niches. A later Twitter inquiry revealed that this is the now redundant training tower for London firemen, seven storeys high from the days when that was the limit their ladders and hoses could reach. A listed building, it’s like a detached section of the 1937 Fire Brigade HQ alongside - by the same London County Council Architects, E.P. Wheeler and D. Weald. 

The firemen have now moved out, and the building forms part of a housing development proposal by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands which preserves both it and the tower. Not that we knew any of this at the time. We were up out of the water and off to our pre-Christmas lunch. Which was very nice, thank you for asking.  And if you want to try the London Duck, here’s where you go: http://www.londonducktours.co.uk/