Some people call it the Great Wen. Some people don't know what that means, so they call it a kip. But I'm one of the "tired of London, tired of life" brigade. And in the summertime, if you know where to go, it is indeed very heaven.

The ancient guardian of the Thames has become mega-trendy again in the past 12 months, with glossy global magazines going mad for spreads of England's pastyfaced, poorly-dressed, bright young things, and its plethora of glass and chrome cafes. Drooping fortysomethings around the world are delighted to see that Swinging London, dimly remembered from a smoke-hazed late adolescence, is back in a shiny

1990s form.

For a bird's-eye view of this born-again Blairite mecca, the bar and the restaurant at the Oxo Tower, on the south bank of the Thames between Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges, is a good place to get the feeling. The building below the tower was an Oxo factory but has been stripped and turned into upmarket apartments and a series of craftsmen's studios-cum-shops. On the up and up you can have your choice of cocktails in the bar, or eat the salads and pastas while admiring the skyline on the opposite side of the river, with St

Paul's directly ahead and the Canary Wharf tower over to the far right of the panorama.

At ground-level again, you could turn right and head down to the new Globe Theatre, the contemporary version of the open-air theatres of Shakespeare's time which has just opened for performances. Beside it, construction is under way for the new Tate extension (the original being a couple of miles downriver, on the north bank).

Turning left, a few minutes' stroll brings you to Gabriel's Wharf, a delightful and Sydneyesque little enclave of restaurants and arty shops, painted bright colours, around a cobbled central courtyard.

The pizzas are good at the Gourmet Pizza place and almost all the waiters are Australian.

The whole area is part of the Coin Street Community Development

Project, a successful attempt to regenerate and glamorise the dowdy

Southwark area. It might soon also boast a "Vinopolis", a world of wine with history of viniculture, virtual-reality tours of vineyards and tastings. Thinking millennium, further east at Greenwich is the site for the planned polyester dome. It is currently a disused

British Gas works and not very lovely, but for devotees of "before"

photographs, it's worth a trip.

Hari's hairdressing salon in the Brompton Road is a more established place to go to create for yourself an impression of being part of cool London. The man himself (Hari - yes, an acronym of hair, but in fact his name is Hari Salem) looks pretty sharp, although the smart crop that was black back in the 1980s when he was in equally fashionable Beauchamp Place is now silvery grey. Hari's is always buzzing, and the clientele invariably includes a fair few people who look like they might be famous. The last time I was there some sort of New York princess in one corner was giving very detailed instructions to the cutter on what she should do. Tina, the hairdresser, was grumbling mildly about her previous client: "What they really want you to do is change their bone structure." Hari's is just across the road from one of the many pockets of Conranovia, to coin a much-needed phrase, that are dotted around London with increasing frequency: including the Conran Shop, the upmarket Habitat that you would expect from the originator of the latter, and the

Bibendum restaurant which has given such brilliant new life to a former Michelin tyre factory, complete with its famous muscle man.

Sir Terence Conran's latest restaurant, the Bluebird, has just opened in King's Road, Chelsea, complete with the latest in mode food and lashings of bluebird motifs. The intimidating thing about these fashionable restaurants is that the staff usually look so much better than the customers, if less certain what to do with the food. When our table managed to net one of these gorgeous garcons, people at two neighbouring tables shouted simultaneously in desperation "Where's our starters?" and "Can we have our pudding now?" No wonder the beautiful people are so thin.