The Accidental Londoner

Let's get quizzical!

2012-02-12T20:22:00.000Z

I am not one of those lucky people with endless god-given talents. I am completely rubbish at art. I'm no dancer or hilariously amusing entertainer. While I was at school it was politely suggested to my parents that they save their money and curtail the piano lessons which were clearly even more painful for my teacher than myself. Alas, what I am best at is singularly random and useless as talents go. Ask me who sang the 1992 hit 'Informer' or what the lyrics are to the second verse of pretty much anything from the ouevre of Lady Gaga and I can tell you in a heartbeat. I can identify any 90s Old Skool dance hit or 80s rock smash within seconds of an introduction; sometimes merely a couple of guitar chords or a drum beat is enough for me to tell you who sang the song and when it was released. My iPod hosts an eclectic selection of tracks that extensively covers the last 90 years or so of musical history. And I recognise each track the moment it filters through my headphones. But what good is such a (slightly alarmingly geeky) talent? None what so ever, I had always thought, until one night a couple of years ago.

I was working late in the office when I bumped into a colleague in the kitchen. 'What're you still doing here?' she asked. I said something about a last-minute deadline and an evening ahead of staring miserably at my computer screen. My colleague made me a better offer; she was off to a nearby bar for a music quiz and their team was one man down - did I fancy joining them? One look back at my desk and the piles of paperwork on it and I was grabbing my coat. I bailed on the office and joined my colleague and her friends at Jerusalem Bar near Oxford Street, a dark basement bar filled with tables surrounded by keen quiz teams, clad in post-work attire, clutching pints of beer. Initially I was unsure what was going on, and only shyly offered an answer when the rest of the team look stumped, but as the alcohol flowed and I began to realise that I was somewhat in my element I joined the rest of the bar in frantically screaming each new answer, thumping the tables and dancing along in my seat. That night we claimed a spot in the top three teams, winning a free round of drinks, and, having demonstrated a surprising knowledge of hip-hop anthems which impressed my team-mates, I had a place on the team. Two years on, the colleague who introduced me to it has since moved to Sydney but the 'Sounds Familiar' music quiz continues its tour of central London bars monthly. And I am all too pleased to have found a forum in which to demonstrate my peculiar talent.

So, here's how the quiz normally goes down. In an ill-lit basement bar, teams of six people (and often an illicit seventh!) gather around a table, armed with a biro and several blank answer sheets. Each question is posed in the form of the first 30 seconds or so of a track being played throughout the bar, with the teams required to scribble down its title and artist. The rounds change each month (classic rounds including 'I'm no fool, I know my Old Skool' and 'Does liking this record make me uncool?') and are usually punctuated by a 15 minute interval which allows the quiz-master, DJ Al, to tot up the half-time scores and also releases those who are gasping for a cigarette. The evening usually begins with a mash-up round, in which teams have to identify multiple artists whose works have been mixed together. This can be harder than it sounds, and much frustrated teeth-grinding and face-pulling often occurs during this round as people strain to place the familiar lyrics or guitar solos. I have a theory that this round usually kicks off the entire quiz as it requires the most concentration; a couple more rounds in, and several more drinks down, everyone is far too pissed to recognise all but the most popular of cheesy mainstream hits. Part of the appeal of the Sounds Familiar music quiz is that as the night progresses the atmosphere transforms from 'pub quiz night' into 'night out'. By the final round the entire bar is singing along to the song snippets, clapping their hands and some people, ahem, have even been known to finish the evening dancing on the tables.

Whilst the rounds change each week there are a number of regular characters who form the teams. Each team usually has a pro; someone who knows 95% of the answers the second they hear the song. They are usually in charge of filling in the answer sheets and generally looking smug. Then there are the specialists. These quizzers spend the vast majority of the night nodding along quietly and sinking pints of beer, but suddenly come into their own on the Motown round or display an unexpected expertise on Brit Pop or boybands. Next up is the misguided guesser. As everyone screws up their faces trying to remember who sang 'Tears of a Clown', they will 'helpfully' yell a list of incorrect answers at random - 'Elton John? Rod Stewart? The Beatles?!' - thoroughly confusing those who may be close to remembering the right answer. And there is also the fact-checker. Not a strong quizzer, the fact-checker doesn't actually know any of the answers, but they feel compelled to grab the answer sheets from the hands of those who do to read what they've written and nod in agreement, despite not having a clue what the correct answer is or actually being able to read what's been written due to the lugubriously dingy lighting in the bar. And finally there are the no-hopers. Each team seems to include someone who knows absolutely nothing about pop music but who seems to like hanging out with slightly drunk, shrieking people who do. (The no-hoper is actually a great asset to a team, as they can be safely despatched to get the next round in, without any fear that the team will fail to answer a tricky question with one of its key players busy at the bar.) And these wonderful people are really what makes the music quiz night out so much bloody fun! You bond with colleagues, crack up with mates, scream along to Queen with complete strangers, and often feel like hell the next morning. But you always want to go to the next one.

Now, if there was only some way I could monetise my random talent into paying dividends even better than free shots, CDs and plastic medals...

Snow, revisited

2012-02-05T22:55:00.001Z

And so I've come full circle. When I began this blog three years ago I was inspired to put finger to keyboard by a day in which London was transformed; all usual activities were disrupted and the city's inhabitants began to behave rather oddly. It was the day it snowed. (You can read the post where it all began here.) And now exactly three years later I am still writing. I have moved in and out of three homes, I have begun and completed a degree (losing a small amount of mental stability in the process), I have obtained a new job and a mortgage. After two and a half years in South-West London, I have become a proud North Londoner. So much has changed in my life, but each time it snows here in London it is three years ago, and I am back in Putney experiencing my first proper city snowfall.

Snow has a peculiar effect on a city in which it is unfamiliar. Transport disruption and laughable footwear aside, it has a pleasingly calming influence on the pace of life here in London. As the snow sneakily fell while London was cosily indoors last night I peaked out into my street. I felt the same thrill I have experienced since I was very young seeing the transformed scene outside. The light was surprisingly bright for a wintery night, as the lamposts shone yellow through the falling flakes.

Snow has its most profound effect on the city's population. For example, yesterday, instead of mooching around the neighbourhood in hoodies looking disreputable the local youth spend their Saturday night tossing snowballs at one another in the street; abandonning their attempts to look cool and dangerous to laugh and dance awkwardly out of the way of icy missiles. Even animals are not immune to the influence of snow. The kitten who lives downstairs was entirely bemused by what had happened to his garden, and spent a while poking at this odd stuff that carpeted the space where his lawn used to be. (Indeed, he seemed to apply far more caution to strolling across his garden in the snow than he does any of his other actions; he spends most of his days falling sideways off a high trellis into the garden next door. He is single-handedly- or single-pawedly, I suppose - working to dispel the myth that cats always land on their feet!)

I am unable to resist the allure of a crisp pavement full of snow and love a good stomp around in it. However, simply leaving my flat to put out the rubbish this morning, I slipped on my top step and crashed unceremoniously down the short flight, landing without much grace on the pavement below, sodden and bruised. I limped back up to my flat, changed out of my snowy garments, and grabbed my wellies. I would not be put off by snow's more treacherous side! Having made it safely down the steps finally, I headed to Hampstead Heath to see how the rest of North London was enjoying the weather. And how they were enjoying themselves!

Parliament Hill was crawling with booted, bobble-hatted Londoners engaged in some serious sledging. Flattened, and in some places bare, grooves were worn into the side of the hill, where all manner of sledging vehicles had traversed the snow. Sledgers were leaving the Heath as I walked towards it, red-faced, rather damp children riding along the pavements on sledges dragged by cold-looking parents. Some sledges were rather elegant wooden numbers, whilst others were thin gaudy-coloured plastic. Plenty of people had eschewed traditional sledges in favour of a number of random objects they'd clearly found lying around the house. Trays of varying shapes and sizes hurtled down the snow, the round ones spinning their riders in circles. I even saw a semi-inflated air matress being borne back down towards Kentish Town. A large group of ill-clad students milled about at the foot of the Parliament Hill slope, each with a bottle of beer in one hand and a black recycling box lid in the other. Clad in luminous snow-gear a pair of snow-boarders made their way slowly down the hill, looking disparagingly at the whooping sledgers who were taking things far less seriously, and ruining their ride.

Dodging the sporting Londoners I made my own way down the hill, spotting secondary activities such as snowman-building and igloo-carving in action. Dogs bounced and snuffled in the drifts and the keenest of runners slipped and slid along the well-trodded pathways in their bright lycra. Chilly swans and somewhat bemused-looking ducks waddled across Highgate Ponds which were frozen solid. As the evening advanced the Heath seemed to blur around the edges, as a cold, vaguely pink haze settled over the city. I sloshed my way home through the already melting snow and ice, smiling at the fun of kicking up snow with my feet cosy and dry inside my wellies. Who knows how long the snow will last this time, but next year it will return and London will sledge and build snowmen and teeter on silly shoes in the slush and forget to be sensible and cool. Snow brings out the city's collective inner child. I wonder how many Londoners will make their excuses and 'bunk off school' tomorrow to play in the snow some more.

'Saved by the wedding bells?': Guest-blog for London Ladybird

2012-02-04T20:14:00.000Z

The lovely Olivia (aka 'London Ladybird') writes a wonderfully amusing blog about love, life, and lots of other things befalling the 20-something lady. She is a fellow Londoner, currently living out West, and was recently in search of some guest-bloggers. I volunteered and am happy to announce I have now become one of her charmingly named 'Ladybird Lovies'. Should you fancy reading what I wrote, on the subject of weddings, you can find it here.

Just a caveat for anyone expecting another piece on London, one of the lovely things about Olivia's kind offer of guest-blogging was that I get a chance to write about something slightly different in this post. So, no commuting whinges or restaurant reviews...just a dash of youthful commitment phobia and wedding trauma. (And if you do read it, before you all worry about me becoming a lonely old spinster, please view it in the light-hearted manner in which it was written!)

http://thelondonladybird.wordpress.com/ladybird-lovies/flora-tonking-saved-by-the-wedding-bells/

Have you got The Knowledge?

2012-01-28T22:51:00.001Z

'Where's that, love? Sorry, my Knowledge is a bit rusty.' The cab driver I hailed in Chelsea wasn't entirely sure where my home road in North London was. I rattled off a list of nearby places and the name of the main road that runs towards it. 'Alright, hop in!' he said, and off we went. At Hyde Park Corner he apologised for disturbing me in the back and asked if I had a preferred route. We traded streets and road names for a while and he formulated the quickest way in his head; a human GPS re-plotting a route in real-time. 'I probably ran this route when I did The Knowledge' he explained, 'but I've not been there in years.'

(Photo credit: TfL)

'The Knowledge' is the education that all London cab drivers must undertake and complete in order to be allowed to drive a black cab. Learning The Knowledge probably gives someone the best understanding it is possible to have of how this vast city fits together. In London if you need to know where something is, and often what is currently going on there, the best person to ask is a cabbie. But the process of gaining The Knowledge is extremely tough, as I learnt when I got chatting to my cab driver on this trip home.

The average time taken to complete the full Knowledge training is four and a half years; my driver tells me he took five years as he was working whilst he learnt (as a postman, which he says was so awful it kicked him to finish his training!). Although he does admit that he only began his lengthy scholarship as a £1,000 bet, laid down by a cab-driving friend. A friend of his completed The Knowledge in only two years, but he did little else with his life during those two years, and had no other job. The first step in gaining The Knowledge is the Blue Book. (I love the mystery of all these innocuously simple words used to describe a city's most detailed, intimate secrets!) The Blue Book - when my driver began his training - contained 480 'runs', or routes through the city from one place to another, passing through 100,000 streets; despite the fact that my cabbie admits his usual bread and butter routes are frequent trips running the short distance between the West End and the City.

Runs are worked or learned on two wheels rather than four. You can spot learner cabbies on small scooters (complete with L plates) with photocopied routes taped to their windshields in streets all over London. On wintery, rainy days however my driver states, unsurprisingly, that this training becomes rather grim. But the tough road to one's own four wheels and cab licence does not end there. New cabbies must also go through 'appearances', extremely formal tests in which examiners, addressed by examinees as 'Sir' or 'Ma'am', will demand precise descriptions of routes chosen completely at random. These routes have to be provided from memory, without even a map to illustrate the driver's chosen roads. Examiners are notoriously provocative and will attempt to wind up new cabbies to prove they are not yet ready to face the British public. Those that finally pass are clearly not only very knowledgeable but have the patience of saints; which is no surprise when you think of some of the drunker customers they get driving evening shifts.

My driver tells me of a study conducted back in the 2000s which examined the progress of wannabe cab drivers, following 100 new drivers as the learnt The Knowledge. Five years later only three of the original 100 learners had become cabbies. The remaining 97 had not yet finished learning The Knowledge or had given up on the task ahead of them. So next time you get in a London taxi and become frustrated with the route your driver is taking, don't start telling them they're going the wrong way or rant and rave about their chosen way. These people have proven themselves more than capable of manoeuvring their cabs through this complex city. Think before you pipe up...do you have The Knowledge?

Nothing lasts forever...not even shopping malls

2012-01-22T22:10:00.000Z

The 'pop-up' is everywhere in London these days. In response to these tough economic times, empty shops, restaurants and gallery spaces are hosting temporary businesses or exhibitions for just a few months or weeks, even one night only. The emphasis is on the transient nature of these businesses, reflected by the materials with which they are created - there is typically a lot of unfinished wood, plastic serveware and a host of new staff who are not entirely sure how the till works. Often pop-ups appear in empty units next to fully-functioning stores or food outlets, but in Shoreditch (where else?) someone has taken the concept to a whole new level and established Boxpark - the world's first pop-up shopping mall.

Set against the stark concrete of Shoreditch overground station, Boxpark comprises two levels of black metal shipping containers, with bare board walkways running between them. At the top of metal fire escape-esque stairs, tiny cafes and restaurants occupy single or double containers on the upper level, selling everything from Mexican cuisine to macchiatos. A personal favourite coffee haunt of mine, Foxcroft & Ginger, who base their permanent bean-grinding establishment in Soho, have a couple of containers up here, with a full kitchen squeezed into one corner and stripey banquettes full of coffee-drinkers running the length of one wall. Long wooden picnic benches wait for customers brave enough to eat their tasty pies and salads outside, several storeys above road level, looking out across the roofs of East London.

Down below are clothes shops (Calvin Klein, Evisu, Levi's, Original Penguin, Vans and plenty more), a book shop, and purveyors of homewares and sunglasses. Each shop entices in shoppers with bright lights and imaginative store-dressing. Wood is a common theme, a simple and adaptable material echoing the temporary nature of the shopping mall. When a shop moves on all of its displays and storage can be ripped out and recycled, even turned into a shop somewhere else. Some units stand dark and empty, still waiting for a store or cafe to rent them, move in and make them beautiful for a short while.

As the Accidental Boyfriend shrewdly, and with his tongue slightly in his cheek, observed "it's as if the identical shipping containers are making a point about the high streets all looking the same these days, with the same brands in every place." No one could accuse Boxpark of being quite like anywhere else however. So go and visit while you can, and do some shopping in a shipping crate. But go quick, before, like a fairy-ring, it's gone.

London's flying rats - how pigeons rule the roost

2012-01-14T20:34:00.001Z

The last straw was the cyclamen plant. When I drew up my blinds the other morning and looked out over my tiny window-sill garden there was a conspicuous gap where a pretty pink cyclamen in a terracotta pot had stood. There were large shards of said terracotta pot on the terrace of my downstairs neighbours. A tragic cyclamen stalk was tossed to one side. And what was to blame? Not a frantic gust of wind or a wobbly sill. A bloody pigeon. I have watched a couple of them huddle on my window-box and plant pots in the past, craning their horrid little heads up to the bird-feeder attached to my window which is intended to feed pretty little blue tits and the like; their dim brains wondering if they could somehow get themselves up onto it to feed their fat little bodies. They really can't - the feeder is designed for birds a fifth of their size. But they are dim and greedy and so they try. And now they have lost me a pot-ful of cyclamen and I am annoyed. (And I owe the downstairs neighbours a grovelly apology for the mess it's made of their terrace!)

Evil pigeon

Pigeons are everywhere in London, an urban life form which is ubiquitous yet undesirable. They are to London's rooftops and skies what rats and mice are to the sewers and Underground system. Their greyness blends in with much of the concrete and slate of the city, camouflaging them within their urban habitat. Pigeons conquer the highest points of the city, up to which human inhabitants can merely gaze. They deface statues and great architecture with their grey, sticky guano. They paddle in fountains and lakes, even in the oily water that fills the larger potholes in London's roads. They stalk the streets and window-ledges on scaly, spiky feet, or stumps; pigeons seem to have a rather unsavoury habit of losing their feet or just a random toe, yet hobbling on without appearing to be too inconvenienced by it. Shudder.

Most Londoners feel nothing but distaste towards this winged germ-disseminator. There are of course the odd few who feel a fondness for pigeons. One can often spot them in a park or square, plastic supermarket carrier-bag tucked over the crook of their elbow, distributing the best part of a loaf of bread in shredded pieces on the floor before them; that floor a carpet of grey feathers and scaly beaks. I have an Accidental friend (now a Londoner herself) for whom pigeons are like kryptonite. She flinches and heaves at the very sight of one. One in flight nearby will provoke the sort of response I imagine one might see if a bomb siren went off or one was told to adopt the brace position on an airplane in free-fall. She once went to Florence and reported the trip was, if not ruined, overshadowed by the presence of a multitude of pigeons. (I should add that she comes from a remarkable family of ornithophobics - she has a sister who claims to feel physically sick at the sight of emus!)

To keep the numbers of these birds down several pigeon hotspots in the city are now patrolled by hawks; a natural form of vermin control. Yet a loyal band of pigeon-fanciers still petitions to preserve this feathery fiend, even arranging feeding sessions so pigeons are not starved out of the city. It has also been claimed that the myth of pigeons spreading disease is over-hyped, and that pigeons are delightfully resourceful creatures and are able to navigate their way around the city by recognising landmarks. They must be pretty clever, as one of London's pigeons even blogs! Alas, the ones sitting (and crapping) on my window-sill are doing nothing to endear themselves to me. Destructive, greedy, clumsy...I'm off to get myself a hawk!

Heavenly homewares at Heal's

2012-01-12T22:16:00.001Z

There are some defining moments in life when the crashing realisation that you are growing up finally strikes. One such moment struck me on New Year's Day, as I stood in front of a large grey sofa in a furniture shop and watched as the Accidental Boyfriend calculated sale discounts. Every other New Year's Day before 2012 I have typically spent in a hungover haze, prostrate on a sofa, eating crisps and watching trashy films. And now here I was, upright, relatively hangover-free and shopping for sofas in the post-Christmas sale. Whatsmore I was shopping in Heal's. Yup, I was a grown up.

The flagship Heal's store stands on Tottenham Court Road, a street best known for shops selling every sort of electronic good from sound systems to PCs. Yet at the opposite end of the road to all these purveyors of technology stands a majestic early twentieth century edifice, proudly bearing the name of Heal & Son Ltd.

Established back in 1810 by John Harris Heal, this fine department store contains all you would ever need for furnishing a home, providing that you've got plenty of cash with which to do it. Heal's is synonymous with well-designed, and correspondingly expensive, homewares. It is the civilised furniture-shopping antithesis of Ikea. Shopping in Heal's is a very calm, peaceful affair; although the Tottenham Court Road store does have a peculiar fondness for piping Take That's Greatest Hits through its audio system, which jars oddly with finely designed Scandinavian dining tables. The store is sensibly designed so that it never descends into the maelstrom-like scrums of many similar shops. There are wide aisles throughout, and plenty of comfy sofas at handy intervals in case it all becomes too much and you need a sit down.

Heals stretches across three wide floors filled with expensive and covetable gifts, lampshades, linens, kitchenwares, armchairs and dining tables, bed linen, even four-poster beds. Impeccably designed yet classically simple furniture invites you to take it home, where it promises to transform your own scruffy living room into a chic yet inviting haven. Couples mull over new kitchen surfaces while their children flop over a nearby sample sofa, poking at their bleeping, hand-held computer games; totally relaxed and entirely oblivious to the bank-breaking commerce happening all around them.

On a sweeping spiral staircase at the back of the shop, all activities are watched by the Heal's Cat. Bought in 1925 by Sir Ambrose Heal, the bronze head of this fine feline has been rubbed smooth by generations of shoppers unable to resist a quick stroke on their way past this beautiful creature.

Tucked away on the first floor is even a cafe run by Peyton & Byrne, the high-end bakery chain, supplying much-needed sugar and caffeine to weary (and broke!) customers. Safely ensconced within you could easily forget that you were inside a large department store, full of other people; you would certainly never guess that you were mere feet from the noisy, rushing Tottenham Court Road. I still mourn the short-lived proper restaurant, of which I was very fond, that the current cafe, full of cup-cakes and pastries replaced. It served excellent food albeit woefully slowly.

Alas slow service is something of a theme at Heal's. Harking back to its ancient roots today's company seems to prefer slightly more, er, traditional methods of retailing. Enquire about purchasing anything much larger than a bowl or a candle and there is an extensive interview process which begins. You answer a series of questions and sign and read rather a lot of forms. Actual forms. Paper forms. Which then are whisked away from you - after you have kept a triplicate carbon copy (oh, it's so delightfully retro!) - and placed in large lever-arch files behind the sales desks. Paper in a shop?! It's practically unheard of in these days where the chip-and-pin is king.

And God forbid you ever try and return anything to Heal's. I mean, why would you when everything is so divine and perfect? But supposing you do you should allow a good half an hour to effect the transaction. And I am not even exaggerating, but speaking from painful, scarring experience. In retrospect I should have just kept the surprisingly ugly bowl I attempted to return to the kitchen department; for the sake of five pounds, the thirty minutes of agony and address-writing, and searching for the only person in the shop 'who knew how the till worked to do a refund' were not worth it. But a wander round Heal's feels somehow good for the soul. There are so many lovely things to see in such a glorious space. Maybe it's more pleasing as a sort of gallery of delights rather than a shop; look, touch if you must, but don't buy...unless you have plenty of patience.

London on foot

2012-01-08T19:27:00.001Z

A new year in London brings with it many predictable things. A month or two of boredom as everyone vows to be good and forsake booze and spending money in favour of staying in on the sofa. The delayed cold snap that we get instead of the 'white christmas' we were promised by the weather forecasters. A depressing sense of just how long it is until we see sunshine again. And the annual rise in public transport prices and the corresponding London-wide whinge about how much it now costs each of us to get to work each day.

UK commuters now pay ten times more for public transport than any other nationals in Europe, and amidst the general financial misery swirling through the continent this is not something of which to be proud; particularly as the functioning of our transport system itself is not exactly a shining beacon of achievement either. But rather than continue to pay the extortionate fees for half an hour of misery, crammed unpleasantly close to our fellow citizens, we do have another choice. We can forsake the bus, the tube and the overground train and...walk!

If one believes Transport for London any journey across town requires one of their vehicles - rarely will you ever find them encouraging people to walk anywhere. And why would they? Walking won't make TfL any money, but thus it can save the average Londoner a fortune. In theory (if I could be bothered to rise a little earlier than I would prefer) I could walk to work from home in the mornings; in fact, I have a much more dedicated colleague who tramps a far greater distance on foot each day to the office. Some summery evenings I do walk home again. But obviously travelling on foot usually calls for more time than one would allow for a bus ride or tube journey. Usually, but not always. Many journeys in central London can be quicker on foot than by road or rail. There are many transport stops in the city which are so close to one another that, with the effect of heavy traffic and a bus or train's obligations to stop and start at the whim of its passengers, it will often take less time to move between them on foot. A pedestrian can take shortcuts that a motorised form of transport may not even be able to fit down, and London is fully of such snickets; winding cobbled streets, hidden passageways, cheeky cut-throughs via shopping centres or office forecourts. And who knows what you might discover when you venture slightly off the beaten track.

When I first came down to work in London as a recent graduate I walked a lot. Partly this was due to the fact I had no salary and transport costs were expensive, but also it was a useful way to explore the city. Rather than sit glumly at my desk over lunchtimes I would head out for a stroll, pottering around nearby streets to orientate myself (by which I mean knowing not only which way is North or South, but also where is the nearest cafe/bookshop/gin palace etc!). Even now if I'm having a busy day I try and escape the office for a quick leg-stretch, and more often than not I discover something new. You see nothing of a city from deep beneath it in a tube train; you could be in any city, anywhere in the world, from all you can see outside the dark windows. Even on a bus, steamed up windows or an overwhelming stink from the tramp asleep on the backseat can distract one from the world whipping (congestion-permitting obviously) past the windows. If you travel London solely by its Underground system, that iconic map - a spaghetti of multi-coloured lines - is fooling you about what the city really looks like, and where places actually are. Not only can you learn a more accurate lie of the land from walking through the city, but you can also uncover hidden secrets or even encounter things that make you change a perception you might have about a particular area or the city as a whole.

On foot one discovers independent shops or businesses and quiet cafes tucked away off the main street of standard stores. One stumbles across tiny concealed gardens, bright spots of vegetation shrouded in multi-storey secrecy. One finds marks of the city's history in ancient signs or architectural features which most visitors to the city may never know about. One sees iconic landmarks or familiar views from unexpected angles - catching a glimpse of a section of the skyline through a gap in office buildings or across a park gives me a nudge, reminding me where it is I live.

From the pavement, one can even catch a glimpse inside the city's top visitor attractions. I strolled back home through Regents Park today and, skirting London Zoo's boundaries, I caught sight of a large group of penguins going about their Sunday afternoon chores by their pool. Their funny little waddles made me smile, and also made me very glad I decided not to get the tube home. And if a gaggle of penguins in the middle of the city isn't enough of an incentive to ditch motorised transport I don't know what is.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

2012-01-03T22:45:00.000Z

Surrounded by sky-scrapers and grey lanes of whirling traffic it's easy to forget that London is not that far from the sea. Brighton is the home location of choice for many celebrities or those who have to do business in London but do not care much for city-life. A mere hour's train-ride away from central London is a pebbly beach and a pier-ful of arcade games and fairground rides. Fish and chips are plentiful and you can shop along picturesque cobbly lanes, or spend a night boogie-ing to 90s dance tunes in one of the town's many gay bars. Whilst the sea may remain grey and freezing for a large portion of the year just its existence is enough to make a visitor giddy with excitement of being at the seaside, almost as if one is on holiday, even for an afternoon. Hop on a train from Victoria (only make sure it's a quick one or you'll be treated to a not-so whistlestop tour of every small town in Sussex) and you can be there in less time than it takes many Londoners to commute home.

Before Christmas I ventured further out of London and visited two different seaside locations - one rather rural and tasteful and the other, erm, less so. Yet interestingly both had their own charms. My first seaside jaunt was with the Accidental Cousin, to her family's house in Dorset. We wandered along a National Trust beach and watched plovers being bowled over by the low waves. The sun shone down on us and a legion of dog-walkers and strollers, one even brave enough to paddle in his bare feet as he chattered on his mobile phone, ankle-deep in salty foam.

We spent our weekend in Dorset drinking coffee in little delis, and tramping in wellies across soggy sand and muddy fields. We rode across a bay on a blowy ferry with keen cross-country cyclists, a small rural bus and a distressed labrador with a phobia of boats. Of an afternoon, one of us wrote whilst the other studied, and we collapsed early into bed, our city bodies and brains exhausted by all the fresh air. The small towns we visited were full of cosy cafes and gastro-pubs and neat semi-timbered cottages. It was the seaside at its most postcard-perfect.

My second visit, at the beginning of December, was to the town of Hastings, a much more urban spot by the sea. Hastings is actually a very ancient settlement, and has a slightly tired atmosphere about it, as if it wishes it could give up being a seaside resort and quietly retire to be a small crofting village in North Wales. The train we took from Charing Cross arrived into an exotic sounding station called 'St Leonard's Warrior Square'. Warrior Square actually looks considerably less exotic than it sounds...

(Although a most obliging seagull did pose in the top corner to prove this place is on the coast.) If Hastings was a human it would have multiple-personality disorder. Much of the town has a rather run-down resort feel, filled as it is with grotty chip shops, tiresome blinking arcades, and an empty and drippy promenade. Large film-crew pantechnicons were clustered in a wind-swept carpark, and a local taxi-driver informed us they were there to shoot a 'low-budget zombie-vampire thing'. Looking around at the depressing concrete street furniture and half-illuminated flashing signs this sounded like a perfectly plausible set choice.

However hidden within the oldest part of this town lies a tangle of streets which would be more suitable for filming period dramas. Charming, winding lanes are lined with restaurants and boutiques, peddling everything from antique metal signs and vintage furs to ludicrously expensive hand-made soaps. Regency-style houses, not entirely dissimilar to Bath's curving architecture, are carved into a cliff beneath an ancient ruin.

We ate chips with balsa-wood forks, were blown off the beach by a fierce gale, visited the city's surprisingly entertaining museum (much of which was dedicated to a great taxidermy scam which appeared to have scandalised Hastings several years ago), and frequented what I suspect may be the only Tintin-themed bar outside of Belgium. Everywhere we went locals were cheerfully friendly, which made the seedier areas of Hastings seem infinitely more charming. Less than two hours on a return train from Warrior Square and we were back in London, surrounded by the heaving tourist masses in Trafalgar Square. The coast suddenly seemed far away once more. But should I ever feel the need to run away to the seaside I now know it's only a train-ride away.

Neglecting London: why I am so glad to be through with university (again!)

2011-12-27T20:11:00.001Z

I was running late as I locked up my flat and walked to the heavy front door of my building. Amid the piles of festive flyers and brochures destined for the recycling bin I saw a large white envelope, relatively thin and flimsy, with my college's logo stamped on the top. In my hurry I snatched it up and stuffed it into my handbag. Only when I was sat on the tube ten minutes later did I open up what I assumed would be a page or two of administrative waffle. Inside - now slightly scrumpled - was my degree transcript, detailing my module marks and my overall awarded grade, stamped with my college's seal. I was now 'Accidental Londoner BA (Hons) MSc'.

With as little ceremony as the entire miserable slog made to obtain it, my industry for my Masters degree was over. When I came down to live in London after I graduated going back to uni could not have been further from my mind. I was finally free of essays and late-night panics about writing 2000 words by the morning. I had no more exams to revise for. My life no longer revolved around lectures and an embarrassing addiction to Australian soap operas. I still had to work of course, but my labours stayed firmly within my office, and more importantly occurred during office hours only.

But then, as I began to form the beginnings of what might ultimately transform into a career, a nasty realisation hit me; to work in my industry of choice, further academic study would at some stage in the future be necessary. Without any thought of what it might do to my evenings or weekends, to say nothing of my mental stability, I decided to see if I could find a relevant Masters degree that I could do part-time, whilst I continued to work full-time to pay the bills. I applied to a course and was accepted. I despatched the first cheque covering tuition fees and bought notebooks and a pencil-case. With retrospect if I had had any idea how tough I would find completing such a course whilst working a full-time job there is no way I would have entered into it so merrily. But if I had truly given it the due consideration such a matter merited that Masters would still be a far off dream, a longer-term goal, whereas now (thank God!) it is over. My final submission made. Done.

Second time around my university experience was hugely different from the three years I spent in Durham working towards my BA. It was a lot less fun, that's for sure. I no longer lived with fellow students, indeed the sense of camaraderie between those who I was now studying with was nothing like that at my first university. We saw each other once a week for a couple of hours, but all had very different lives outside of those hours. University was no longer about parties and drinking. Indeed, university now seemed to curtail rather than centre around such activities. Weekends and evenings were no longer times to switch off and enjoy not being in the office; now they were consumed with reading for upcoming lectures and preparing for terrifying seminars in which I would have to present an argument in front of people who seemed to know far more about each subject than I.

Over this summer, as my friends made the most of the meagre sunshine the season bestowed upon London, I shut myself in a library dungeon and read books on civil war and writing a 10,000 word dissertation, wishing more than anything for a seat beside the river and a cold glass of Pimms. I consumed cake at an alarming rate to get me through the miserable days and crawled home exhausted from work to have to open my notes and begin again as my colleagues flopped in front of a proper dinner and night in front of the TV. Worst of all I had no time left for London. No more could I indulge in exploring the city.

Once my dissertation had been handed in however, I found I could finally get back to enjoying London. I had time once more to potter round markets, to run on Hampstead Heath, to meet friends for leisurely lunches, and to have the odd much-needed lie-in to recover after a novel night out. And I loved it. With the weight of study lifted from my shoulders I could now skip merrily around the city, pottering in and out of my favourite places and finding plenty of new ones. London, forgive me for forsaking you. I can only promise you that you will have all my attention now that academia no longer has any claim over me. I look forward to getting reacquainted in 2012...

Slovenly festive blogging

2011-12-24T13:25:00.000Z

My poor blog has been a little neglected of late. I blame Christmas, which has crept up on me somewhat this year. The myth of 'winding down for Christmas' has been a torturous illusion. No one does that anymore, if they ever did! The pre-Christmas period has been a whirl of work deadlines, desperate attempts to catch up with friends, too much mulled wine, too many Christmas cards reminding me that I haven't even bought let alone sent any, total failure to buy useful things like wrapping paper, and a whole lot of online shopping as there's no way I'm braving Oxford Street at this time of year.

But now I've made my annual pilgrimage back to the Accidental homestead in the Midlands and am holed up ready to eat and drink until I pass out in a festive coma in front of the Doctor Who Christmas special. But before I left I did have a wee potter through London's streets in search of some seasonally appropriate trees and lights and decorations. Some were huge and gaudy, others were tasteful to the point of being barely discernible.

Spot the tree bedecked in simple white fairylights amid the communal gardens and surrounding glares of Bedford Square...

Something a little more obvious and borderline tacky? Festive lights twinkle above the frantic last-minute shoppers in Covent Garden - disco droplets above 7 Dials:

And enormous baubles suspended above the central market plaza:

But the most lovely holiday decoration of the year, for me, has to be the vast Christmas tree currently standing in St Pancras station, constructed entirely from small Lego bricks. Reaching up from the busy concourse to the usually more calm second level, the green of the tree and the coloured decorations make it a rather classier decoration than the Olympic Rings in the background.

Alas, back at the ranch it has just been brought to my attention that there is a cake to be removed from the oven, biscuits to bake, a wreath to assemble (HOW?!) and a tree to trim. So I shall go and do such necessary Christmas-y things but wish every one of my lovely readers a super break whatever holiday they may be celebrating! And bad luck to those of you who are slogging on through just another week while a good proportion of the world slacks off for a few days. Now, what am I supposed to do with this wreath?

Finding one's place in the big city and finding the people who make you want to stay there

2011-12-16T19:43:00.001Z

Life in the big city is anonymous and unfriendly. So say many people who don't live in cities, so do a few who do. I have had friends who came to university here in London who would certainly endorse that statement. Yet I would contend it depends entirely on which area of a city in which you are. Many of London's more commercial areas would be odd places to live. When househunting I looked at a flat (well, dark dungeon beneath a pub actually) in Clerkenwell which I rejected mostly on the revelation that this busy daytime area was almost deserted during weekends, when the office-workers were not at their desks. As my hunt went on I realised that my new flat needed to be in an area where I could feel part of real, 24-hour London life. Somewhere I could be part of a proper community.

And so I came to live in Holloway. Well, actually in a sort of grey, no-man's land between Holloway and Tufnell Park, but as I am safely within easy reach of Her Majesty's Prison Holloway let's call it Holloway. My street is the sort of street on which people wash cars at weekends. (No word of a lie, someone was even sponging away to a radio blasting 'Car Wash' by Rose Royce last week, which made me smile.) Neighbours clutching newspapers and shopping lean on railings to chat about local goings on, while their dogs do their own catching up, sniffing and tail-wagging. The church at the end of the road hosts a decorous tea dance one day and an extravagant Ethiopian wedding the next.

Round the corner lies the Holloway Road, which never sleeps, and not just in terms of the traffic that uses this key artery as a route in and out of London. Even in the darkest, sleepiest hour of the night people stagger along the pavements or slumber on metal benches. Late-night kebab shops sell styrofoam boxes of unidentifiable meat to bar-goers who are too drunk to care what they are eating.

By day the road buzzes from the minute that McDonalds opens for McMuffin-purveying business. It is peopled by stall-holders, shoppers, children trailing along behind their parents, cyclists, runners, coffee-drinkers and tramps drunkenly dozing on benches before 10 o'clock in the morning. A mixture of high street stores share the commercial floorspace with independently run, uniquely local establishments, including the splendid Selby's; a one-off department store with an excellent kitchenware department and a hidden branch of Cafe Nero in which I have passed many Saturday mornings working on university assignments.

People greet those they recognise, often they greet those they don't. On the whole they're a friendly bunch in N7. In shops, assistants offer genuine assistance rather than the customary sneer and disinterest in attaining customer satisfaction. After I had bought a vast, heavy box of cookware from Selby's the charming lady who rang it through the till offered to call me a cab to make sure I got my purchase safely home. I recently ordered my new bathroom floor (having spent the last month stripping both the hideous old tiles from the floorboards and the first layer of skin from my hands in the process) from a business which has been run from Holloway for 51 years. Not once was I patronised when I ambitiously talked about laying it myself, nor was I chivied or sighed at whilst I spent an eternity comparing samples and changing my mind about which option I wanted. 'Seeing as how I was just round the corner' the fitters even kindly agreed to get it all in by Christmas. The perks of being a local!

Holloway, if one was to be brutally honest, is not the most charming of London's areas when it comes to its architecture or greenery. It is an ecclectic mix of large terraced houses and even larger, bleak-looking council blocks, shameful post-war offices and modern geometric education buildings. The small parks which exist are not going to win any horticultural medals any time soon. It is clearly the people with whom I now share this place who make it such an interesting and enjoyable place to live.
During the riots over the summer, Holloway was surrounded by neighbouring areas that witnessed looting and rampaging youths. Yet within our little area there was an unexpected aura of calm, a feeling that any approaching violence would not be able to cross our invisible postcode boundary line. There was a powerful feeling of community repelling any form of threat to our shared security; a sort of shield around the houses and blocks of flats, around the businesses and the people who ran them. Twitter was alive with messages between strangers who were advising each other of the best way to return home to the area, and people happily and proudly reporting the lack of any trouble. A local 'HollowayGossip' tweeter even began coordinating the plans for a post-riot street party for the whole community.

Whilst I am all too aware that a vast city full of strangers can be an oddly lonesome place to live and work, from my time in London I have certainly learnt that it is the people rather than the buildings and infrastructure who make a city. Whether they make it fun or dull, fast-paced or desperately slow, friendly or scary, their individual energies and attitudes alter each area, and thus every new inhabitant's experiences within them. Two years ago, when I first contemplated searching for a new flat I would have not known where Holloway even was in London. If someone had described it to me I think I would not have thought it sounded very appealing. But someone asked me a few months back if I could choose to live anywhere in the city, exorbitant housing costs aside, where I would live, and I thought long and hard before replying, 'Here. Where I am now - Holloway.' And I really meant it.

Crazies and school kids: The Accidental Londoner's Taxonomy of Bus-Riders

2011-12-05T21:08:00.000Z

I take the bus to and from work every day. Whether I am late to arrive at the office or early home in the evening is entirely influenced by Transport for London's scheduling of the No. 29 bus. Thus whether I spend the entire day in a good or foul mood is similarly determined by my bus experiences. And even if the buses themselves run on time, my fellow travellers can also have an impact on my journey. With this in mind, and in the wake of numerous articles which have appeared in the last few weeks about different types of tube-rider, I present 'The Accidental Londoner's Taxonomy of Bus-Riders'!

The Worker: This is probably the largest species of bus-rider in London. The worker carries a large handbag or briefcase, out of which some produce a sizeable novel, usually a paperback bestseller, which they read whilst one hand clutches a greasy handrail. Occasionally their hands contain instead a papery take-away cup of coffee or a newspaper (never a broadsheet though - no room to stretch out and read it). The Worker's coat is usually smart and dark, their hair neatly styled. The Worker likes to scowl a lot, often at their fellow passengers. Of an early morning they look in no particular hurry to reach their workplaces, but by the evening they look far keener to end their journey.

The School Kid: This species will only be encountered by most commuters in the earlier part of the day. Each School Kid looks almost identical to its fellows, cladding itself in a standard outfit; a dark blazer and trousers or skirt with a single colour accent. Such standard outfits vary between the different London habitats; in some western or central regions a straw hat or ridiculous-looking knickerbockers may be worn. Younger members of this species may be accompanied by Parents or Workers, whilst older members move in packs. The shriek of a School Kid is a piercing sound, and may be heard the length of a bus as an individual communicates with their fellows of the species.

The Parent: The Parent can often be identified by the buggy they wheel, the School Kids they chaperone and the perpetually stressed look they wear. They use the bus as a location for their child-rearing, education and feeding activities. Their small charges provide a running commentary on the species activity in the bus; 'Mummy, that man smells. Why is that lady on her phone shouting so loudly? That man's hair looks funny. Why is it taking so long to get home?'

The Student: The Student is an evolved School Kid. They travel with a companion or two and loudly discuss the frivolities they got up to the night before. The Student is a somewhat scruffy bus-riding species. The Student carries large bags of books, yet they never open a single one on the bus. Instead they tap away on a Blackberry device, or communicate with other Students via their iPhones. Typically, as they yap at one another or plug their ears with headphones from which thump repetitive dance beats, they appear to have little regard for their fellow travellers.

The Tramp: This oft malodorous passenger is probably the only bus-rider with no desire to reach a destination. They are happy to ride the bus round and round its route, due to its presenting them with a warm, dry place to spend a few hours. The Tramp usually travels heavy, filling the floor by their feet and at least one seat next to them with shopping bags and bin liners stuffed with their possessions. This induces many glares from their fellow travellers. The Tramp never feels their wrath however as they are usually asleep.

The Driver's Friend: The Driver's Friend hops on to the bus and immediately causes havoc for other embarking passengers. Pausing at the driver's window, and thus in front of where a bus-rider is supposed to pay, the Driver's Friend proceeds on a long social chat, catching up on gossip and personal news as other riders attempt to squeeze past them and swipe their Oystercards. As the driver sets off along their route once more, the Driver's Friend hangs onto the handrail by the front door, conversing loudly with their friend. Despite loitering by the Oystercard reader, this bus-rider rarely pays for their trip.

The Tourist: This breed of bus-rider is most commonly spotted during the daytime, rather than prime commuting hours. They are the least confident of bus passengers, embarking with hesitation and usually a three minute chat with the driver about whether or not they are going to Lie-sesster Square. The Tourist sports a vibrant coat and plumage, favouring clashing luminous garments of flammable material. Once seated they survey their fellow passengers with interest - they are probably wishing they had a copy of The Accidental Londoner's Taxonomy of Bus Riders with which to identify the species they encounter - and remark loudly to one another on the landscape through which the bus passes. (All London bus-rider species are united in a common disdain for the Tourist.)

The Crazy: The Crazy is a combative species; they love nothing more than a fight with another bus-rider, physical or verbal. Merely catching their eye is enough to induce a rambling diatribe which may be offensively sexist, racist or ageist. Simply brushing past them can encourage them to leap from their seats and start shoving other passengers around. Fortunately however, this bus-rider is fairly rare, and is not commonly found on more central or wealthy bus routes, but they should be avoided at all costs if you seek a peaceful journey.

To be continued...(all suggestions for species to appear in the Accidental Londoner's Taxonomy of Bus-Riders, Volume 2 gratefully received!)

The man on the platform

2011-11-27T21:37:00.002Z

As I stepped off the Tube and headed for the exit I saw him. A fifty or sixty-something man in a suit, carefully placing his belongings in a pile and then lying down beside them on the ground. By the time I reached him there were only a handful of other people on the platform. Plenty more had already walked past him, oblivious to this man sprawled on the floor, with his arms over his head, clearly in some pain and distress.

Two young women were hovering near the man, asking tentatively if he was ok. This was a question that did not need an answer. 'Should I call an ambulance?' one asked him. He nodded weakly, his face white and sweaty. I returned to the platform where a station attendant was changing the posters along the platform; 'Excuse me, there's a gentleman here who needs some medical help.' He finished struggling with his papery task and headed over to join our little huddle on the now empty platform. The two women dashed off to dial up the emergency services, whilst the attendant adopted a facial expression which indicated he had clearly seen this all before. Getting down on the ground next to the man he established the man's name and the fact he had a heart condition, rearranged him into the recovery position, and radio-ed upstairs to alert the rest of the station's staff.

As the attendant spoke into his crackly radio and shortly departed for the ground level control room, I was left with the poor man, crouched on the cold, dusty station floor, trying to keep him in the recovery position as he rolled backwards and forwards clutching his chest. I talked to him, trying to calm him down, explaining why he needed to try and stay still and why we could not do any more to alleviate his pain until the trained medical professionals arrived. He told me where he had been and where he lived, gasping out his words as he fought for breath. For several minutes we two people were alone on the platform, and then another train pulled in. Blocking the exit as we were, numerous commuters hustled towards us, most of whom gave neither of us a second glance - this older gentleman in what now looked like severe pain, and this young girl who knelt by him probably looking rather terrified. Someone asked if we'd called an ambulance or if we needed any help, but the majority of people swept past keen to get home to their warm houses, where no stranger in distress threatened their comfort.

Time crept by as I and the man awaited the paramedics. Another train-load of people passed us by, some trampling a little too close for my own personal safety, rubber-necking but unwilling to take any responsibility for what they saw before them. Then silence again. A minute or two later I heard a radio crackle, and two paramedics dressed in green arrived, all jolly and jokey. 'Hello! Who have we got here? Is he your dad?' one asked me. I admitted that until about twenty minutes ago I had never seen this chap before in my life. Once the paramedics were there however I breathed a sigh of relief. Here were people used to dealing with strangers in need, something I most certainly was not. The tension in the tunnel dispersed, as the paramedics conducted tests, joked about the man's luck at being found by 'such a pretty good samaritan', extracted further information from the man and stabilised him. Despite his protests that he would rather spend a couple more hours lying on the floor of the station, the paramedics, now aided by two more colleagues, hoisted the man into an e-vac chair and pushed him towards the elevator. They picked up their large crash bags and I gathered up the neat pile of belongings which he had deposited when he was first taken ill. 'Ooh thanks! You'd be amazed how many times things like that get left behind.' laughed the paramedics as I placed them in the back of the ambulance once we were above ground once more.

'Thank you' the man said as the doors of the ambulance closed on him. Once he had got his breath back down in the station he had repeated it over and over. 'Don't worry about it. It's no problem!' I'd said, and smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way, that didn't convey how unsettled I had been by the whole incident. What I didn't say to the man was 'When we were alone in the tunnel I hoped you wouldn't die because I wouldn't know what to do.' I didn't say the thing that haunted me afterwards as I walked home, which was 'One day that might be me on that floor'. As a sufferer of migraines that leave me half blind and unable to speak properly, I have often worried about what would happen if one struck on the Underground. And maybe that was partly why I stopped to help the man, in the hope that my actions might accrue some karma points that I might need to cash in sometime. If I were to collapse in a subway station I would want someone to stop and find out what was wrong, to get me help and to stay with me. I would want someone to find out who I was. I would want them to make sure my coat and handbag were not just abandoned on the platform, but came with me when I left. I would want more than anything not to be alone. And that was the main reason I could not just walk on by, because being alone somewhere in a city where there are hundreds and thousands of people all around you is somehow so much scarier than being alone in a place where you are truly on your own.

Accidental Eats: Pizza at Franco Manca in Brixton Market

2011-11-23T10:59:00.002Z

A shortish post today (but who knows, maybe it could be the first in an Accidental series on city eateries...) on a rather lovely place to eat. I am, a year on from my move into my first flat, a well-established North London gal. I feel rather about Hampstead Heath as I once did the Thames when I lived in Putney, and cannot bear the thought of not having it within easy strolling distance whenever I chose. So I am at a complete loss when I venture into certain South London areas. Brixton, for example. Brixton for me for a long time was simply the place one went to for gigs, at the slightly scummy but atmospheric Academy. One took the tube to Brixton station, nipped through the streets to the Academy, watched a band or two, and hurtled home. (Occasionally there might be an additional detour in which one repairs to Speedy Noodle for some post-gig take-away, however let me prevent anyone else making the mistake we did and assuming that their service as well as their Noodle was speedy...slowest chips in London.)

When the Accidental Boyfriend announced he was buying a flat in South London I had a hope that my ignorance of places 'sarf of tha river' was about to be rectified, and so it seems it is. After a visit to what will become his new local cinema (the Brixton Ritzy, not too shabby but it's no Curzon), the Accidental Boyfriend escorted my starving self to Franco Manca, in Brixton Market. Whilst the rest of the market was all closed up, metal shutters padlocked down, and shop or stall lights all extinguished, a couple of small restaurants were still doing business as we wandered through the darkened, chilly space. A tiny pizza place straddled the walkway through the market, with half its serving space and half its seating on either side, and a flurry of waitstaff hurtling between clusters of munching patrons.

We both ordered the special meat pizza of the day, which came loaded with pancetta and aubergines and perfectly salty mozarella. Franco Manca's legendary sourdough base, which is much raved about among the London pizzeratti, was, I am happy to report, spectacularly tasty. Service was speedy and efficient, and we were brought a wonderfully fresh and interesting salad to accompany our pizzas - no pre-packaged leaves here. I ordered a homemade lemonade and was brought a large stoppered glass bottle full of cloudy, citrussy goodness, all to myself. I was instantly restored by food (I am like a small child when it comes to feeding times - liable to sulk or strop if they do not happen regularly), and very content to sit outside in the eerie, empty market under the gratifyingly cosy heaters. Franco Manca was the perfect post-cinema pizza place; although its not open every evening so check in advance or swing by for lunch rather than dinner. If you ever find yourself peckish in Brixton, go! (I'm afraid I was too hungry to spend time taking a photo of my delicious supper, so you'll just have to go and see what it looks like for yourself...)

Franco Manca
Unit 4, Market Row, Brixton, London, SW9 8LD

Frogs, snails and puppy dog tails - The Grant Museum of Zoology

2011-11-19T18:44:00.001Z

I had a rare afternoon off work a week or two ago. The weather was grey and grizzly otherwise I might have been tempted to stroll across town and do some damage to my bank account with a shopping spree. Instead my desires leaned toward sitting on my sofa, with the central heating on, watching an undemanding film. But no, I told myself, I should make more of this city in which I reside, and spend my spare time exploring its delights. And so I seized upon the opportunity to do something I could never do at any other time. As I had trudged to and fro from my college in Bloomsbury over the past two years in pursuit of my Masters I had noticed an enticing sign: Grant Museum of Zoology, open weekdays between 1 and 5pm. I had longed for those two years to visit, but the opening hours were totally useless for anyone with a job. But why my desperation to look at pickled things in jars?

Between finishing at school and starting my undergraduate degree I took a gap year, like many of my friends. But I eschewed the typical option of working in an orphanage or teaching English as a foreign language somewhere. Full moon parties on the beaches of Thailand or backpacking across Europe held no appeal for me either. Instead I headed for a large island in the Indian Ocean, to work as a research assistant on a species survey expedition, in a large forest along a river in southwest Madagascar. Out there we were taught how to set traps, how to check them and how to identify and classify the creatures we found within them. We were informed of the importance of taking specimens (one male and female from each species that we discovered), and thus taking two lives to be able to save hundreds or thousands more. Even with the knowledge that we were acting for the greater good, taking specimens was not a comfortable experience. Yet with practice it became easier and by the time we returned to the UK we had filled and meticulously labelled numerous jars of formalin with lizards, chameleons, mice, snakes and frogs. We also had a bloody good laugh and my months spent in the forest hold many happy memories for me, yet it made me something of a specimen geek, hence my fascination for zoology museums.

So off I went, that grey afternoon. The museum itself - with wonderful free admission - is housed in a single large room, and I initially thought I would probably be in and out within 20 minutes or so. Yet once inside, and engaged in peering into the glass cabinets and surveying the exhibits within, I realised that one could easily lose oneself for quite some time in this place. Behind the desk at the entrance a woman sketched a stuffed owl whilst, without looking up, she clicked in each visitor who arrived, counting those who had come to wander round this extraordinary place.

The museum - originally founded in 1827 by Robert Grant, a teacher of Charles Darwin - was recently relocated to its current spot, at 21 University Street, where it is now housed in a former medical library. Many fixtures of the old library still remain, the shelves and cabinets provide wonderful storage facilities for the thousands of specimens in their glass jars and pots. The library stretches over two floors as well - although the museum is only held on the ground floor - and the second floor is still lined with bookshelves, filled with bound books, and from whence a jaunty collection of large skeletons (one human) peer down on the visitors below. In one corner, hidden behind the display cases, a small staff sits tapping away at computers, identifying, cataloguing and curating the collection.

The museum holds around 67,000 specimens from the many phyla of the animal kingdom. There are fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, and even corals. An enormous rhinoceros skeleton may be the largest exhibit on display but in contrast on tiny glass slides you can also spy minute jellyfish the size of a newborn baby's little fingernail. Some jars contain multiple specimens, like a large pot of starfish or a bottle of pickled pig embryos. The shelves look like a peculiar sweet-shop, with the most grisly and intriguing of confectionery for sale. I was particularly fascinated by a cross-section of a shark egg, with a tiny baby shark curled up inside, and a Suriname toad preserved in the process of giving birth to its babies, which peculiarly burst forth from its back and swim straight off into the water in which it chooses to spawn. There were some slightly disturbing pickled cross-sections of the much loved family pets, Felis catus and Canis familiaris, and a sweet little otter whose silky fur floated around him as he snoozed in his glass jar. There were plenty of taxidermy specimens alongside the pickled ones, my favourite being a rather over-stuffed platypus who was balding in patches like a much-loved soft toy.

Above are a small sample from some of the marine and river-dweller cupboards. On the left you have sea-mice (actually a kind of segmented worm, known as an annelid) with wonderful holographic bristles, which really do glow and shine as the photo suggests. And you can, as the label on top of their jar indicates, adopt your favourite pickled friends. It would make quite a Christmas present: "Oh, a preserved jar of sea cucumbers, just what I always wanted!" Over on the right is a fishy fellow, who is either very jaunty and friendly-looking or deeply creepy; I'm not quite sure, but I think maybe creepy with that single scary, preserved beedy eye watching you.

Many of the specimens seem somewhat muted in colour as they float in pickled suspension. Others have been treated with an alizarin preparation which renders soft tissue clear and stains hard organs red; examining these specimens of frogs or fish is like looking at them in an x-ray machine. The museum also boasts a rare collection of glass models of snails and fish and other animals, which date back to the nineteenth century. Anatomically accurate as well as rather pretty they are a nice reminder of the close relationship between science and art.

I passed a happy hour marvelling at the wonders of our natural world, and I wondered where the specimens that I helped gather had ended up. Our work in Madagascar was undertaken for several zoological partners, including the WWF, and many specimens may have ended up in sealed systems hidden miles away from the general public, but maybe a rare tuft-tailed mouse or a particularly fine skink might grace these wonderful shelves one day and inspire a new generation to spend their gap year living in a forest in the middle of nowhere gathering specimens to identify a new creature or two and to save many thousands more.

Wear and tear: London's appetite for my wardrobe

2011-11-15T22:20:00.000Z

When I moved to London I anticipated I might have to make some sacrifices. There would be no more driving around in my beloved car, no more living rent-free in my parents' large, comfortable house with its lovely, green garden. Work hours would probably be longer and places I wanted to visit would be busier. I would have to give up fresh air and clear skin, and make my peace with a string of colds (ooh and Swine Flu) caught on unhygienic public transport. What I had not been prepared to sacrifice were my clothes.

London is quite literally destroying my wardrobe. Since I have lived in this city my poor clothes are being damaged, eaten up and worn out at a surprising speed. No items are safe - tights, coats, jackets, jumpers, skirts. This city, aided by some of its inhabitants, is slowly devouring them all. London's streets, buses and tubes, even bars and clubs, are site of sartorial sabotage. I know that one should expect a little wear and tear over time but it is not unknown for a brand new item of clothing to not even pass a single day unscathed in this city.

Hosiery has been my most vulnerable clothing category, and buses have been their Waterloo. Random screws sticking out of seats, the zips of other commuters' jackets, and worse of all exposed velcro have all claimed fresh deniers mere minutes after they had been worn out the front door. Wet, dripping, unfurled umbrellas are my poor leg-cladding's nemesis; so many spikey spokes.

Jackets and coats too have been similarly harassed by other people's errant accessories. I recently seethed for an entire afternoon, cursing the woman who could not be bothered to do up the flapping metal buckle on her handbag that caught my beloved boucle jacket, and pulled out a large woolly knot. I have stared down mothers of flailing children, cringeing away from their sticky fingers and carelessly flamboyant colouring-in (felt-tip pens have no place on a bus!) to protect my beloved black wool coat, purchased at mind-bending expense from Ted Baker with the express purpose of making me look well-groomed and sophisticated, not well-thumbed by jammy-fingered sprogs.

I cannot count the pairs of shoes which have succumbed to the city, soles worn through by the harsh, abrasive pavements. I have become intimately acquainted with an excellent cobbler who patiently repairs worn heels and scuffed toes. He is a resurrecting shoe-doctor, coaxing a few extra weeks or months of life out of my dying footwear.

Even at home, where due to my ongoing flat decoration scheme (current end-date expected: 2020), most of my clothes reside on a large, ugly metal frame rack, they are not safe. Lepidoptera are out to get my wardrobe too. A gorgeous Diane von Furstenburg jumper I picked up for a song in New York was the one thing in my chest of drawers that moths munched their way through. Expensive tastes, these moths. Actually that's not quite true; they also seem to like the taste of my tea towels, but as I don't tend to wear those out and about very often this bothers me less.

Somedays - on the rare days I leave the house feeling rather well-dressed as opposed to not caring what I look like as I am late, late, late - I wish I could travel through the streets of the city in a protective bubble, bouncing away those people and items of street furniture which threaten my look. A simple, private chaufer-driven car would be bliss...

Should I give in and succumb to a wardrobe of stains, tears and holes in beautiful clothing, or should I begin to shop with an eye for the functional and damage-proof? Heart-breaking though it is to witness one's much loved items become eaten up by the city, I still cannot bring myself to give in and buy clothes that are so sensible and ugly that I don't even care whether they are destroyed or not. But I must not to get too sentimental. Clothes are of course just material things. These days, with fast fashion, eBay and chain stores everywhere, even if a much-loved item is damaged you can usually find a replacement somewhere. And that means an excuse to go shopping - every cloud has a silver lining!

Occupy London

2011-11-12T10:17:00.000Z

There's a lot of occupying going on at the moment. First Wall Street in Manhattan was invaded by those protesting at the staggeringly unequal societal distribution of wealth. They identified themselves as 'the 99%', in contrast to the richest 1% of the American population who have continued to profit whilst the economic downturn has affected the majority of the nation. The location of the first 'Occupy' site was chosen for its proximity to one of the global powerhouses of wealth generation, albeit for a handful of individuals. Wall Street has been an icon of money and Western capitalism for years, and now has taken on a new symbolism as a site of resistance.

Watching the USA's protest, London (and many other locations across the world) desired to get in on the act, and on 15th October 2011, Occupy London was born. The London movement claims it is protesting against the bank bail-out, ongoing cuts to government spending in the name of austerity, social inequality and unemployment. Unable to camp directly on the doorsteps of the City offices in which work those whose economic activity so angers the protesters, tents were flung up on the square in front of St Paul's Cathedral, surprising tourists on holiday and bankers on their way to work alike.

And so they remain currently. However, due to the lack of soft ground to peg the tents in to - concrete paving slabs must be mighty uncomfortable to sleep or sit on too - some of the tents have a slight list to them; rather as if they've passed a week anchored to a blowy mountainside, and a passing sheep has made off with the odd peg and guy-rope.

The Occupy protesters seemed to be mostly within their tents when an Accidental chum and I visited their encampment one evening after work. We both instantly felt rather self-conscious in our work clothes, afraid our smart attire might suggest our sympathies lay with the loathed 1%. Typical attire of the protesters was, appropriately, camping gear. Those we could see were clad in fleeces, cagoules, walking boots and woolly hats. On a plaintive sign asking for donations of camp supplies 'thick socks' featured near the top of the wanted items list.

Within seconds of our arrival at the site, both the Accidental chum and I were struck by how organised the whole exercise was. This was not a campsite run by amateurs, but by those who were well-schooled and practiced in the art of demonstration. (In fact I had a distinct feeling of being back on a school camping trip in the rainy Forest of Dean aged 13 as I looked around. Now, where does one sign up for rock-climbing?) There were posters tacked to huge stone pillars explaining why the occupiers were there; other hand-written treatises were strung on ropes fluttering above the camp, like angry, wordy washing on a line. There were schedules for what was going on that day; meetings, talks, discussions and even music sessions. A particularly roomy tent housed an upright piano around which protestors were jiggling up and down to a jolly sing-a-long. There were signs on particular tents designating them as having a particular purpose within the camp. There was a medical tent, a counseling and therapy tent, a general information tent, even a library tent jokingly named 'Starbooks', as a nod towards one of the evil multinational organisations against which protests in the face of capitalism and globalisation are constantly being held. Starbucks however, a branch of which sits opposite the site, has taken the higher moral ground in allowing the earliest protestors to use its cafe's lavatories until a couple of blue and white portaloos were established among the tents.

One of the greatest controversies surrounding the Occupy protest has been the manner in which St Paul's Cathedral has become so much more than simply a backdrop to the camp. As the number of tents and protestors grew they began to present an obstacle for tourists keen to visit the cathedral. After a few days the decision was taken to close the doors of the cathedral, sealing it up against the encampment, and the tourists' entry fees, outside. The response of the Church of England's clerics has been heavily scrutinised and criticised, despite many of them extending a thoroughly Christian hand towards those protesting, even sympathising with their struggle. Senior Church of England clerics, including the Dean of St Paul's, have felt under pressure to resign their posts, which has created much debate amongst religious leaders, politicians, protestors and the public. Whether this protest is really a matter in which religion should have become involved, by its choice of location St Paul's has been unwittingly dragged into a complex social debate. And, even closed, this building - an icon of the city - looms strong and proud above the camp. In the years since it was built, this cathedral has seen it all. It can be closed and darkened, the people can be removed from within, yet, like the protestors beneath, it will not be moved.

A station reborn: St Pancras International

2011-11-08T22:26:00.001Z

When the Accidental Father was a small boy, many moons ago, he and a similarly be-shorted school-friend used to pass many happy days hopping between Kings Cross and St Pancras rail stations, trainspotting. The two train stations are united by a common underground stop, with subways facilitating the transfer from one to another; providing a highspeed trainspotting transfer route, if you will. However after the recent heavy redevelopment of both stations, trainspotters have become lesser spotted. St Pancras station, redeveloped first, has becoming a surprising icon of the city, or if that's taking it too far, a rather popular location in the city, given that it is 'just' a train station. A train station which has risen from the ashes more than once, avoiding demolition in the 1960s, and decrepitude in the years that followed.

On the completion of its £800 million refurbishment in 2007, St Pancras became home to the Eurostar train service, making it an international station, and allowing passage from London to the rest of Europe on a single train. The new station is undeniably majestic. A stunning, high barrel roof with hundreds of glass panes, allows in swathes of sunshine (when the city's weather sportingly obliges). Two layers of trains contribute to the bustle and activity within the terminus. Were it not for the quiet and unsatisfyingly steam-free trains one could easily imagine billowing smoke, and glamorous strangers in trench coats and homburg hats with a folded newspaper tucked under their arms meeting for assignations and affairs.

The lower concourse of the station contains the sorts of shopping and eating venues that make you long for a delayed train, so that you have time to browse and graze. There are civilised and charming (rather than simply the bland and ubiquitous Costa and Starbucks) places to drink coffee and eat cake. Lunch need not be a limp sandwich and a bag of Walkers crisps here. There are freshly-made salads and tartines to munch, or, if you're feeling flush, even oysters at the station's own champagne bar. You can pick up the perfect gift for whoever you may be travelling to see, or re-buy whatever crucial piece of luggage you have left behind.

The station is home to several pieces of artwork, some of which were loathed instantly on installation. Paul Day's 9 foot high, bronze sculpture of an embracing couple was criticised endlessly, famously by Antony Gormley. It is not the most subtle of art pieces, and sadly it just does not do justice to this beautiful old space, which has otherwise effected its rebirth with great style. Less offensive is the bronze of Sir John Betjeman, who stands marvelling at the station's staggering roof. Suspended high above the station's trains, in anticipation of next year's sporting festival, currently dangles an enormous set of Olympic rings. (At least they're better than the awful logo.)

And there is now of course also a suitably glamorous hotel for the secret assignations of the homburg hat-wearers, or just an excellent cocktail for the weary Londoner. I took the Accidental Father here for supper one evening when he was in town, and lost him to his younger self. I finally found him, snapping away with his camera-phone, at a series of brass plaques on the roof supports. Forty or so years on he could tell me the date they bore without looking.

Drinks and drama

2011-11-01T20:14:00.000Z

A serious joy of living in London is that there are so many utterly fabulous places a mere over-stuffed tube ride away from you. One vows to spend evenings in glamourous bars and days pottering around educative art galleries, or take spontaeous trips to festivals or feted restaurants. But then one gets a mortgage, faints on checking one's bank statement and never leaves the house. I wander past gorgeous twinkly-lit windows inside which beautiful people sup champagne and think, I must go there some day. Rarely do I ever get round to it. Rarely, but not never.

The other night the Accidental Ally (remember her? She keeps me sane at work and is wonderfully up for accompanying me on many mad adventures...) and I went to the theatre, as we are occasionally wont to do. We started out theatre-going with a trip to see 'The Little Dog Laughed' one night when there was nothing on at the cinema we fancied seeing. (Bloody hilarious, Tamsin Greig was outstanding - a real show-stealer.) And driven by a deep respect and awe for the utterly stylish and fabulous Kristen Scott-Thomas, we recently saw Betrayal which was also excellent. Although on that occasion our last-minute sprint through Leicester Square, scattering gormless tourists, to make the first act did not ensure a particularly decorous start to that evening.

The other night however we had learnt our lesson, and thus pitched up with three-quarters of an hour to spare at the Harold Pinter Theatre. The HPT was until recently called the Comedy Theatre, which we thought was a little prescriptive; probably wise to change the name to allow them to stage some totally unamusing plays as well. As we skirted the eye-searingly bright M&M World (just what on earth can they cover 5 floors with? And don't say M&Ms - I simply don't believe you can get that much mileage out of a tiny chocolate pebble), we caught sight of a large letter 'W' picked out in fat light bulbs which were slowly shifting colour.

'Ah, so that's where the W Hotel is.' said the Accidental Ally, 'Doesn't it look pretty?'. I murmured an assent before suggesting we add it to our ever-extending list of Things We Must Do. 'Well, do we have time to go now? Quick glass of vino pre-theatre?'. I needed no further encouragement. We swept past the security guards - who actually smiled as they welcomed us, rather than curling their lip in the standard doorman reception - and entered a black, shiny lobby. Save a sign towards a function room and a bank of lifts there was absolutely nothing in the hall. No reception desk, no receptionist behind it, no 'How can I help you?'. Apart from those which slide open to reveal a lift that looked like the inside of a padded cell decorated by Liberace, there were not even any discernible doors in the lobby. We headed for a lift and rode up to the first floor, startled when the our elevator car shook, juddered, stalled then heaved itself upwards. We were glad to emerge out into a silvery space, so mirrored it was hard to tell where the room actually ended. A waterfall of disco-balls cascaded down from the ceiling directly in front of us. We looked around ourselves and spotted an end to the mirrors. Passing along a corridor with yet more mirrors on one side and low tables and chairs in front of shelves stuffed with pristine hardback books and plates with odd-looking faces on the other, we found ourselves in a glittering bar.

The clientele was decidedly moneyed, many of them of the Euro-smoothie persuasion. Both business and pleasure seemed to be in full swing. A thirty-something guy playing with his iPhone swivelled on a high stool up at the bar, a bottle of champagne and a single glass in front of him. Suits clinked glasses of red wine, and tourists in jeans and jackets nudged their backpacks under their tables as their eyes scanned around the room. The Ally and I took our own glasses of wine to one of the low tables and watched the black-clad wait-staff slide up and down the sleek corridors. We gossiped about a certain A-list actor whom the Accidental Ally knew back in drama school, and she regaled me with tales from her own days of treading the boards. When curtain up at the Harold Pinter Theatre was only ten minutes away we drained our glasses and I had a brief terrifying moment in the toilets, as the omnipresent mirrors struck yet again, transforming the washroom into a fun fair's House of Mirrors ride, trapping me within. Fortunately the lift behaved itself on the way down, and we were soon back out in the whirl of Leicester Square, wishing our whistle-stop wine stop could have been longer.

And then we went to the theatre to see 'Death And The Maiden'. The play itself is a thought-provoking effort - a tale of human rights abuse in an anonymous Latin American country - and I left endlessly turning over what had really happened in my head. The two male actors were splendid, even if I spent a large portion of the play trying to work out where I recognised them from (Doctor Who and Midsomer Murders apparently). But Thandie Newton, making her West End debut...oh dear. There were moments during the performance when I had to poke the Accidental Ally as Ms Newton's am-dram melodrama induced in her endless fits of inappropriate giggles. Reviews have expressed a hope that Newton will grow into the role she plays as the performance continues its run, and maybe she will. The disappointed (but much amused) Ally summed up as we headed home: "Tis a shame. I was ready to be blown away by old Thandie but my own brother managed a better performance as a Scottish housewife in a school play aged 9." We vowed that on our next theatre trip we would avoid the Hollywood A-listers...unless they happened to be hanging out in the W Hotel bar.

Up on the roof

2011-10-27T23:10:00.001+01:00

Whilst London may not have the skyscrapers of New York or many newer Asian cities, its skyline is still rather a striking thing to behold. And despite not having vast towers to climb for the perfect vista out over the city, one can still find a satisfying viewpoint in many places. Roof terraces and gardens perched atop clubs, bars and restaurants, even occasionally above office buildings, will do the job perfectly. Sometimes even a glass-walled meeting room can supply a panorama. From a height several floors above the ground one can see iconic buildings like the Shard, which although not yet finished is already dominating many of the city's views. The one feature of this city you can see wherever you are however is roofs; terracotta tiles, sheet metal, slate, chrome and glass. Some are simple flat rooflines, while others are heavily detailed with ornate adornments - a grimacing gargoyle here, a swinging weather-vane there.

Some of the rooftops are famed landmarks; churches, museums, government buildings. The roofs of Big Ben and the House of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey can all be spied from the panoramic restaurant of the National Portrait Gallery. Against a backdrop of swirling, yellow-grey snow they are at their most dramatic. Thanks to the dome of the National Gallery, this London looks oddly Parisian, excepting Nelson and his column, of course. Roofs are icons.

Other roofs rest atop houses, rather than large offices or heritage buildings. These roofs form less dramatic shapes, instead tessellating with those either side of them in a jigsaw of slate tiles and pitched angles. Skylights and dormer windows break up the swathes of grey and orange, adding to the irregular pattern of the roofline. And of course the omni-present aerial adds further ugly accessories, clustering around chimney pots, snaking up into the sky in search of channel reception; and providing the occasional perch for the equally ubiquitous London pigeon. Roofs serve man and beast.

Newer areas of London are still shaping their rooftops. Cranes shift girders and trusses before metal sheets are slid into place or asphalt is poured. Industrial roofs which have slowly disintegrated over time are carefully replaced or repaired in trendy Shoreditch, as derelict warehouses become glitzy bars and clubs. High, high up on a flat roof marked with the letter 'H', a helicopter lands, sits and then later flies away. Roofs are jumping off points.

Rooftops of old warehouses and factories out in Hackney are a stark contrast to the shiny new stadium of the Olympic Park that emerges behind them; a spiky white skeleton being fitted with its new skin by lanky cranes. Instead of a single pitching angle this new roof is multiple sharp points like an enlarged lizard's plated collar. Roofs are organic.

Out here roofs do not merely exist to keep the rain off a building. They are also artists' canvases, tagged with signatures and skulls wearing party-hats. Spray-painting onto a roof not only guarantees that the artist's design is seen for miles around, but it serves as a lasting reminder of how fearless the graffiti artists was. Roofs are art collections.

Yet the most beautiful roofs have to be the uniform rows that cover London's terraces. I have lived among three such lines of perfect, matching houses since I have lived down here. Neat batches of chimney pots, an aerial or two per roof and the odd Sky dish perch on these rooftops. Roofs are home.

Serendipity or the law of averages?

2011-10-22T14:43:00.002+01:00

On a recent trip to New York I was casually wandering down a street (on the hunt of the city's best donuts for breakfast) when a vaguely familiar chap cycled towards me. I dismissed the likelihood I really knew him, given the fact that I was in New York City; bar my family I don't know many people in this densely populated city. Yet a few metres behind me the bike stopped and the rider called my name. Peculiarly I had indeed bumped into a former work colleague who had worked for the same company as I but who had been based in its San Francisco office. He was on his daily cycle route to university (he evidently no longer lived in San Francisco) and I was on holiday, visiting family and seeking donuts. Small world eh? I relayed this story to a native New Yorker who responded with a smile; 'That could only have happened in New York', she said. But I'm not sure that's true.

I've had plenty of similar experiences in London. In the last week alone I have bumped into two people I went to school with, one of whom I probably haven't seen in the nine or so years since we left school. I have bumped into colleagues in restaurants, old university mates in bars and had the odd awkward run in with an ex or two in the street. Just last night the former Accidental flatmate was making me squirm with a tale of an afternoon spent dodging her old boyfriend's flatmate. One is just as likely to bump into someone random in London as you are New York, and I'll wager Paris, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro...ok, maybe less in Rio, but you get my point.

One isn't even safe from the surprise encounter in one's own bathroom!

So why are we surprised when it happens? Surely it is less remarkable to bump into someone you do not expect to see in a big city than in a smaller place. Why is it that therefore, despite knowing vaguely that someone lives in the same place as us, we will still produce that high, shrieky 'Oh hi! How weird seeing you here!' when we bump into them in the street? In a vast population there must be a higher statistical likelihood that we may know our fellow pavement-pounders, gig-goers and frantic post-work beer imbibers. Maybe we are so wrapped up in our personal networks of people and socialising, which takes complex scheduling and juggling to maintain, busy as we are, that anyone we have not prepared ourselves to see appears as an irregular and surprising interruption. But in the past a couple of surprise meetings in an unexpected place in this city have led to exciting opportunities, like a spontaneous dinner or a night out. Those are the sorts of happy encounters which one doesn't mind. But I wonder how many other chance meetings we narrowly miss, simply by taking a different route to work or going to the supermarket at a particular time. If we had spent a little more time at home putting on make-up and removing our ugly but oh-so-comfy jumper with the hole in it would we have avoided the excrutiating moment when we bumped into our ex-boyfriend? Should we, as dwellers who share our city with hundreds and thousands of others, start to expect the unexpected?

Blog Action Day 2011: Food - Allotment gardening in London

2011-10-16T21:36:00.003+01:00

Every year, in an attempt to use our blogging power for good rather than filling the internet with drivel on what we bought at the supermarket/the amusing thing our cat just did, Blog Action Day suggests that bloggers the world over all write a post on the same day inspired by a common issue of global significance. This year, as Blog Action Day coincides with World Food Day, that theme is food. So here comes my take on food, with a suitable London slant...

When one thinks of cities and the industries and economic activities that take place within them, agriculture and food production does not leap instantly to mind. The cultivation of crops is the concern of rural areas, the land of fields and tractors and tiny villages where everyone knows everyone else's business. Yet plenty of cities, and London is no exception, have urban farms. From Hounslow to Romford, London's farms vary in size and charm, and given their lack of space tending towards small livestock holdings rather than many acres of cereal crops or large orchards and polytunnels of soft fruit. These farms therefore do not provide much food for London's inhabitants, although they do offer hours of entertainment for small children and the odd Accidental Londoner with a fondness for fat, furry donkeys missing a bit of rural home.

Yet within the city there are several acres of land which are dedicated to food production, cultivated by Londoners themselves - London's allotments. Nearly all London's boroughs - bar the most central, densely inhabited areas like Westminster - contain small patches of green land, divided into plots or 'allotments', which can be leased by borough residents via allotment or leisure garden associations. (Although the councils are the official landlords, they commonly palm off the administrative and operational responsibility onto these associations, run by a voluntary committee.) Some new housing developments now include allotment space within their designs and plans; this added feature hugely increases their popularity. With obscene property prices, and the cost of a garden adding many thousands of pounds to a flat or house's price tag, Londoners are keener than ever to obtain coveted leases on allotments to have their own bit of garden somewhere in the city. Scurrilous rumours abound that obtaining a plot is a cut-throat process of endless waiting lists and suspicious queue-jumping tactics; in my own borough interest is so huge that the waiting list for a local allotment has now been closed due to the ridiculous amount of names already on it. Yet I have it on good authority, from one involved in overseeing one of these waiting lists, that the system is actually rigorously and fairly adjudicated and no one is allowed access to a plot without undergoing a strict vetting.

But once you have your allotment you can get to work. These allotments are not the sorts of gardens that one uses simply to sit in and read the paper or to host barbecues in the summer; these are working plots for growing flowers, fruit and vegetables.

A bumper crop of onions grown by a legendary allotment-holder in West London

I remember visiting the Accidental grandparents in London as a child, and finding large canvas bags of dirty potatoes and bright red tomatoes on the end of the kitchen table. The Accidental Grandfather was a keen allotment-gardener for six decades, renting patches in Ealing and Wimbledon. He grew violet radishes and salad peppers and peculiar cucumbers that looked like yellow tomatoes, walking-stick cabbages and various frilly or sprouty herbs. Each season he recorded his planting in a notebook which bulges fat, full of old seed packets and newspaper cuttings on how best to trap disruptive moles. In the allotment produce show he was the undefeated grower of the allotment's ugliest root vegetable, a proud horticultural title he held for three years, winning each time with the same sinister looking 'thing' which was reburied and dug up each year specially to make its hideous appearance at the show. What species of vegetable (and I use that term in its loosest sense) the thing actually was remains a mystery of allotment folklore.

The Accidental Grandfather hugely approves of the allotment system, seeing it as 'a true manifestation of British spirit and optimism in a climate not always the kindest of growing conditions.' The allotment community he describes sounds wonderfully varied and fascinating. His fellow allotment holders included a BBC poet with an unruly plot that frequently earned him Council reprimands, a vine-growing, wine-making British army cook from Cyprus, and the heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub, who built a huge and expensive greenhouse on his patch to house his collection of exotic orchids. The relinquishing of the Accidental Grandfather's final allotment was done sadly a few years ago, when 30 years of rugby and a wartime leaping out of airplanes caught up with him, preventing him from kneeling in the earth to dig his plot.

A work chum (let's call him the Accidental Allotmenteer) currently tends a particularly fine allotment out in West London, from which he and his family produce a fair crop of food, that, weather permitting (this summer has not been kind to many allotment cultivators), can happily satisfy their greengrocery needs. Many of us Londoners can only dream of this level of self-sufficiency, and the ability to eat our supper safe in the knowledge of exactly where its ingredients came from, and that no horrid chemicals had been used to make them look rounder, fatter, or shinier. I know from my own minimal attempts to grow carrots and tomatoes on the windowsill of my garden-free flat how satisfying it is to eat something that you have cultivated and tended yourself. Nothing tastes better than your own invested time and energy.

Alongside (and within) the raised beds, the grow-bags and the trellises, allotments provide habitats for animal as well as vegetable organisms. Where concrete cities can be inhospitable environments for animal life, expanses of green space can be welcoming havens for insects, amphibians, birds and even small mammals. Some allotments allow the hosting of bee-hives on plots, recognising the reciprocal relationship that animals and plants have had for thousands of years.

The Accidental Allotmenteer, similarly to the Accidental Grandfather, reports a wonderful diversity in his fellow gardeners. The ages of allotment-renters on his gardens range from twenty-something to eighty. And he reports an increase in the number of younger people interested in allotment-ing over the past few years, amid the general rise in demand for allotments. I had assumed the rise in demand for a space to grow food had been linked to the economic crisis and people seeking cheaper food sourcing, however the Accidental Allotmenteer assures me it is actually due to media coverage of allotments, to television programmes proposing them as the hot, must-have urban accessory. Has growing one's own food become sexy once more? Is The Good Life becoming popular again? Or are we returning to a way of life that places value on individual and household sustainability and self-sufficiency in an age of increasing globalisation? Maybe cities like London, and its allotments, can lead the way in showing other places how to do it.

Oxford Street: Where not to shop in London

2011-10-12T21:21:00.000+01:00

I just spent the pricely sum of £3.95 on something I could have had for free, and I am not pleased about it. Yesterday I pottered down to a branch of a well-known high street brand on Oxford Street to visit a gorgeous pair of shoes I had been lusting after for some time. My will-power gave way and I attempted to obtain a pair in the correct size. It went frustratingly badly. I struggled with a shop assistant with a grasp of English which would be classified as basic-to-intermediate at best and a can't-do attitude, and finally left the shop without making my purchase (in the irritating knowledge that somewhere in the shop's understaffed stockroom were my beloved shoes). I then flounced back to the office and purchased said shoes online. The postage and packaging to have them sent to me would cost £3.95. I resolved to abandon my purchase, man up and head back to Oxford Street the next day to buy them directly from the shop. And then I thought, no! Life is just too short for that sort of frustration.

The sad things is that Oxford Street ('the famous shopping haven' according to the Street's website) has become my least favourite place to shop in the city. The word 'haven' invokes a relaxing retreat, of calm, pleasure and cocktails being sipped beneath palm-trees. Not an image that springs to mind as one enters Zara, Topshop or M&S on Oxford Street. No one who has recently visited the scrum of consumptive lust that is this place could honestly imagine it to be a haven. From my experience it is only vaguely bearable first thing on a Saturday morning when everyone else is still sleeping off Friday night. Here 'retail therapy' is a terrifying group session of humiliation and vulnerability held in a dank community centre basement, rather than a peaceful one-on-one consultation on a leather couch in Harley Street.

The home of the flagship stores of numerous British, American and European brands is now geared towards the tourist or professional shopper, not the average Londoner. Indeed, at any given time the average shopper is likely to be a holiday-maker or, for some reason, endless school-age children ('Why are they not in school?' my inner schoolmarm wonders). Maybe a desire to cater for the needs of the tourist shoppers is the reason so many Oxford Street shop assistants appear to hail from continental Europe rather than the UK. For who else, except those on holiday, without work hours prescribing their shopping activities, has the time to commit to the hunt for that dress in that elusive size? For thousands of shoppers before you will have already emptied the shop of its most common sizes, before there is time for a restock. You're a dress-size 10/12 with size 6 feet? Forget it! You'll have to go on a tour of nearby French Connections/Warehouses to track down a garment that fits. And if you decide to summon a shop assistant to have them check a stockroom, good luck in trying to identify one, clad as they usually are either all in black or in the very clothes you seek; blending perfectly in with the displays and mannequins.

Should you bail on a particular shop and attempt to tackle another, you may find the street itself equally angering. It is simply too full of people, traffic and roadworks; traversing Oxford Street is like wading through treacle. (Even the street's website is a slow, unnavigable headache.) Pavements are clogged with people, with those who've been persistent and lucky enough to actually make a purchase brandishing their shopping bags at ankle injury-inducing level. The road itself is usually stationary or slow-moving at best. Taking a bus down Oxford Street is a thoroughly unrewarding experience; snails move faster. And everyone is all too aware of this fact, hence I was not entirely surprised when I unearthered the following depressing fact: 280 buses go down Oxford Street per hour but only 10% are full to capacity. What a waste of energy. Transport for London seems keen to make things worse and is usually digging up some crucial portion of tarmac necessitating temporary traffic lights and single-file flows of vehicles.

Clearly, there's a reason that the retail development trend is swinging towards the pedestrianised, covered mall or shopping centre, like London's own vast Westfields. Who knows what will become of Oxford Street as London's shoppers head to these retail meccas instead. Daunting though these malls can be, with their endless square feet of hangers and racks and rails, at least one isn't likely to be crushed beneath the wheels of an errant bike courier or a number 88 bus, or get stuck behind lost tourists unable to even reach the front door of a shop 20 metres away. And I shall happily pay the extra transport costs to get out to Westfield if it means a successful shopping trip.

Doth the Londoner protest too much?

2011-10-09T20:34:00.002+01:00

The British are not well known for their political protests. Globally we are better recognised for being polite (although alas this is something of a matter for individual opinion) and self-effacing, for knowing how to stand quietly and tidily in queues. An inquiry about how someone is (particularly up North) will often be met with 'Mustn't grumble' or 'I can't complain', rather than 'Bloody awful actually', when that might be a more accurate response. Our default setting is apology. It's why things take so long to happen here. It's why simple conversations last hours rather than minutes; it's the 'no, no, after you, please, I insist' effect.

Here in London this pattern breaks down somewhat. Maybe it is the metropolitan nature of our urban community, the mixture of cultural norms and individual characters, which dilutes our national unwillingness to rock the boat. Maybe it is simply due to the capital being where politicians and industry leaders, i.e. the source of many political grievances, reside. In London political protest occurs everyday, both in the form of noisy event-based demonstrations and quieter, although not necessarily any less forceful, permanent resistance efforts.

This year the student protest against the government's proposed hike in university fees left millions of pound of damage in the city, and alarmed businesses along the protest march route. My own company now sends emails to all staff alerting them to any expected marches or protests, and alters security arrangements accordingly. (I don't qualify the recent riots as political protest however; they were more of an illegal citywide supermarket sweep.) Protests in earlier years, like the G20 march which turned sadly rather nasty, demonstrated the 'fairy ring-like' nature of political action in the city. Springing up overnight the city is suddenly engulfed in protest for a day or so. Chaos ensues as roads are blocked, public transport disrupted and police forces appear in force. And then within 24-48 hours, life goes back to normal. And the clean-up operation begins. Then there is no trace of the protest, save newspaper cuttings and film footage.

A news van monitors the start of a student protest in Bloomsbury

Usually marches or protests take place around Westminster in Central London, however they often start at a particular organisations HQ; on university campuses, for example, or the administrative offices of trade unions. I was recently surprised to encounter a hundred or so protesting students (and one raucous but unmusical trumpeter) in the British Museum. Who, they thought, would be supportive of their protest in there is beyond me. The milling tourists who were there to look at ancient tablets and artifacts simply looked rather confused.

Less disruptive to everyday life however are the quieter forms of protest which do not revolve around a particular event. Numerous groups take a public stand to protest against ongoing wrongs they perceive in our country, from military intervention to trade standards. Some even protest about political actions by foreign governments, such as the constant, yet silent, demonstration against the persecution of those who practice Falun Gong (a spiritual movement), by the Chinese government, outside the Chinese Embassy. (Although their site is actually slap-bang on the doorstep of the Royal Institute of British Architects, so I'm not sure if the true source of the grievance is feeling the force of the protest. It may be being wasted on a bunch of building professionals.) A fearsome bunch of ladies surrounds a memorial opposite the National Portrait Gallery, declaring themselves as members of Women in Black, a global movement that renounces violence and recognises the deeply gendered experience of conflict. They keep a weekly vigil near St Martin in the Fields Church, each week with a different theme, and circulate information to anyone who will take their fliers or stop and talk to them.

Every tourist who visits Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament will have noticed an encampment of raggedy tents and signs around Parliament Square. This is all that remains of 'Democracy Village' (most inhabitants of which were finally evicted last year), established primarily in response to the UK armed forces' involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. People lived here for years, using megaphones to broadcast their cause and leafletting passersby (often again, somewhat bemused tourists). One particularly fervent anti-war campaigner spent over 10 years living in Parliament Square, and became an icon of protest in London. Sadly, this man, Brian Haw, died earlier this year and the erection of a blue plaque on the square has been called for in his honour. Boris Johnson, London's mayor, paid a rather lovely tribute to him which also sums up why people do protest, as reported in The Guardian: "Brian Haw, the father of seven, anti-war loony who used to bellow at me on my bicycle...I thought his posters and general gubbins were a disgrace and spoiled the look of the place; and yet he...represented something dementedly British...Across the world, Britain still stands for a certain idea of liberty, a particular concept of the relationship between the citizen and the state." This relationship and this liberty must surely be what is worth protesting about.

Indecent exposure - Why can't Londoners dress for the heat?

2011-09-30T21:03:00.001+01:00

I arrived back from the States earlier this week filled with gloom. I had spent the previous few days swimming in the sea, sunbathing by a gloriously cool swiming-pool and dining outside in the dusk. Grey old London was going to be a shock to the system. Boarding my return flight, I prepared to layer-up, swathe myself in knitwear and don umpteen pairs of socks. And then I landed at Heathrow to bright, warm sunshine and found myself a tad overdressed.

London is in the grip of an 'Indian summer'. (Although frankly this year it's just 'summer', as we're all feeling a little hard done by after a June-August period filled with rain-clouds and wind and a distinct lack of sunshine.) Becoming increasingly frequent in the UK, Indian summers are periods of unseasonably warm weather during months which traditionally belong to autumn. Instead of brassy leaves, the first early morning frosts and a slight chill in the air, this meterological hiccup brings warm temperatures, sunshine and often a close humidity. Oddly however there are none of the balmy, long evenings of summertime, as, despite the heat, the nights are drawing in autumnally early.

The Indian summer also induces sartorial crisis. Londoners have gone into fashion meltdown in response to the relatively high temperatures as we enter October. Alas, many of them have equated sun and heat with the beach, and are now attired for an afternoon of sipping daiquiris poolside rather than a day in the office. Summer wardrobes have been dusted off, or finally retrieved after last year (I was still wearing sheepskin boots in June, for crying out loud), and our streets are now full of the most unsuitable flip-flops, filmsy dresses, strapless tops and tiny shorts. The most heinous of crimes is committed by those who believe that a little heat is a licence to substitute a bikini top for a bra; deeply inappropriate in the workplace. And to be honest, it looks ridiculous. The nearest seaside is a good hour's train-ride away, and I don't imagine many of the people who are pratting around town in little more than what a liberal Victorian might have considered swimwear have any intention of visiting Brockwell Lido, or heading for a dip in Hampstead Ponds. So what's with the beachwear, people? No one's asking you to clad yourself in a woollen boiler suit, but could we all find something a tad more seemly in which to sweat out the next few days? Particularly in an office meeting. And chaps, removing your shirt to wander around town on your lunch break is just not on. All that exposed, white flesh fair puts one off one's Pret sandwich.

The really ridiculous fact of the matter is that it's not even that hot. The thermometer has yet to hit the 30oC mark. (86oF for those who prefer to operate in Fahrenheit.) Temperatures were similar, if not higher, over in New York City yet New Yorkers continued with life as normal in their suits, trousers and skirts that kept their inner thighs well-hidden. Could it be that it is merely the novelty of a little sunshine in our city that induces this crazy behaviour rather than the heat itself?

An Accidental vacation

2011-09-23T23:59:00.000+01:00

Apologies, but the Accidental Londoner, after completing the dissertation that has ruined her summer, has retired on holiday to recover and panic about whether she's passed or not! Hence there will be a short break in posting while I'm away.

I'm currently chilling in New York, doing a bit of reading, writing, shopping and rain-dodging. If I were a New York blogger, I could have been writing about:

Real live puppies for sale in shop windows
The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site
The glorious Housing Works Bookshop and Cafe
How wet one gets here when it rains
Just how much there is to see and do in Central Park
The exquisite Frick Collection
How I could happily live off a diet consisting solely of steamed dumplings from Chinatown
The amusing things one overhears on the sidewalk
Just how desperately I would love to live here one day

But I'm not, so enjoy London for me. I'll be back soon!

"Everything a fiver": Flower shopping at Columbia Road Flower Market

2011-09-18T14:28:00.001+01:00

Gardens are highly sought after in London. Many of us live in upper level flats, where the nearest green space is an inaccessible scrap of grass down below. Whilst my little flat is not endowed with a garden, my kitchen windows have wonderfully roomy sills. And this is where I've focussed all my horticultural energy. A neat little row of terracotta pots now lives on my kitchen window-sills, and so far this summer they've even contributed to my food supply, with some tiny carrots and some less tiny, but reluctant-to-ripen, tomatoes. But what my sills really need is some colour, particularly as winter feels not so far away. Flowers were called for, and in London there's just one place to find them - the Columbia Road Flower Market in the East End.

Running from 8am in the morning until around 3pm in the afternoons the market is a weekly affair, held on Sundays. By the time the Accidental Boyfriend and I visited, a month back, at 11am the road itself was heaving, and progress along the length of the market was slow. But there was so much to see, one didn't mind only being able to shuffle slowly between the stalls. On the approach to Columbia Road one could spot numerous, early-rising flower-shoppers, already heading home, with their arms full of brown paper-wrapped sunflowers and lillies. Shrubs and small trees were being stuffed into the boots of parked cars. On turning into the road itself, we were met by the sight of a middle-aged man bashing merrily away on a piano on the pavement, his tea-cup resting on the top quivering with every crash on the keys.

Maybe 20 or so different stall-holders display their horticultural wares in the market, each trying to outsell the others. Prices are almost identical between the sellers, and a popular cry of 'Everything a fiver!' echoes around the road. There are bedding plants in trays, pots of aromatic lavender, tiny lemon trees, enormous orchids, bulbs, and huge bunches of cut flowers. Some sellers stick to a particular type of plant - trailers and creepers, edible plants - whilst others seem to have a little of everything. Some stock ceramic pots and planters, in which your new plants could be happily ensconced. Next to the delicate flowers and pastel shades the flower-sellers themselves are a somewhat incongruous feature of the market. Large, burly men, yelling their barrow-boy patter, are surprising experts on how to care for your geraniums and basil plants. Resisting the urge to buy a pretty sizeable olive tree for a fiver (they weren't kidding when they said 'Everything'!), I scouted some cheery little cyclamen for my window-ledge for a couple of pounds each.

And then we explored a bit. Tucked behind the market itself, hidden by leaves and stalks, is a picturesque row of shops, selling housewares, art, clothing and cake. There is a serious lack of coffee venues however, and the one canny purveyor who had noticed this gap in the market had an endless queue out of their front door. There's even a shop above which sits a real-live cross-stitching fox - look!

We discovered an off-shoot market of vintage home-wares (from enamel jugs to ancient cake-stands), and a stall selling extremely popular bacon sandwiches, down a street on the corner of which a small swing band strummed and drummed. We spent a very happy day pottering around the area - excellent coffee, tasty take-away lunch from the market at Brick Lane, window-shopping and market-browsing - with my new flowery purchases, before taking them back to their new window-ledge home. And very jolly they look there too. I just hope I manage to keep them alive...!

London's children that nobody wanted

2011-09-07T22:02:00.002+01:00

On a rainy Sunday, with 12,000 words of dissertation to edit, I was all too delighted when a friend asked if I fancied a wander around a museum. We ummed and ahhed over which one to go for, keen to visit one of the city's less known museums; after several years in London we felt that we'd pretty much seen all that South Kensington had to offer. And so we went to Bloomsbury, and visited the Foundling Museum on Coram Fields.

Housed in a building on Brunswick Square, the Museum tells the story of the UK's first Foundling Hospital (originally built in the mid-to-late eighteenth century), established and funded by an extraordinary triumvirate; sea captain Thomas Coram, artist William Hogarth, and the composer George Frederic Handel. The museum building contains permanent collections detailing the history of the Founding Hospital as well as some rather wonderful art and a collection of music, and even the last will and testament, of Handel. This building never actually housed the Hospital - which instead resided within an impressive winged edifice which was sadly sold off and demolished in the late 1920s - however it does contain features from this long-gone building, such as the heavy wooden staircase winding up through the three floors of exhibitions and galleries. (Although the metal spikes which used to run down its length to prevent 'foundlings' sliding down it have since been removed.)

The original Foundling Hospital

Foundlings were the unwanted children (usually very young, many were just babies) who were abandoned by their mothers, unable to care for them due to their impoverished or undesirable living situations. Thomas Coram had been horrified to see these children simply dumped on the streets of London by their poor, infirm or wayward guardians, and thus established the Foundling Hospital, to provide these abandoned souls with somewhere to live. Originally when the hospital first opened places for these poor, unwanted children were so sought after that mothers had to petition the hospital, pleading their impoverished circumstances, to be invited to bring their children in. Once they had been admitted however their child was still not guaranteed a place. In a large hall, among similarly desperate individuals, the mothers or petitioners would select a ball from a bag, the colour of which would determine whether their offspring was accepted, shortlisted, or denied a place at the Hospital.

Those who had been successfully secured a place were then handed over to nurses, as their mothers waved a last farewell. The entry of these foundlings was recorded in a large book, together with a note of what their parent left them. To identify their child, should their circumstances improve and they find themselves once more able to care for them, mothers left tokens for their children with the Hospital staff; coins, jewellery, pitiful scraps of cloth cut from their own clothes - these were all a woman could leave as identification that once upon a time she had been somebody's mother. Their children were then given a new name and a new start.

Housed in dormitories and marched through halls (boys and girls kept firmly separate), the foundling children were fed simple, unexciting meals and received healthcare far better than they might if they had stayed with their parents. The Foundling Hospital inoculated its pupils as standard long before such medical treatments became commonplace. From the age of 5 or 6 the Hospital became school as well as home. Pupils at the Hospital were given strict yet not academically taxing lessons, and taught basic skills to secure them equally basic work once they left the establishment at the age of 14 or so. For girls this meant domestic work, and for boys, more manual skills as well as music, as many went on to join army bands. Interestingly many pupils went on to join the armed forces, moving from one institutionalised way of life to another.

The Foundling Hospital functioned until 1954, so many of its pupils, who were still called 'foundlings' (and had to wear numbered labels around their necks proclaiming them to be so at all times), are alive today. The stories of these final pupils have been curated into an excellent temporary exhibition in the basement of the museum, entitled "Foundling Voices". It is one of the most profoundly moving social history projects I have ever seen. I say 'seen', but much of the testimony is relayed in aural form, spoken by the foundlings themselves. Reading the words and seeing the photographs of these individuals, brought up in these strange circumstances one can begin to imagine who they were and what they experienced. Yet when you hold a small speaker to your ear and hear these people speak of their search for their biological families, and the cruel rejection that some of them faced, you understand how these wide-eyed children became all too quickly acquainted with a feeling of abandonment and an awareness of being unwanted that has stayed with them forever. Saddest of all they discuss a common inability to bond with other people, discouraged as they were from forming close relationships with their fellow foundlings. Brought up in this restrictive system, creativity and difference was repressed. One foundling summed up, just what it was that made me so uncomfortable about the Hospital.

The quote above refers to an institution created to save and care for children, yet which does not seem to have valued the energy and exploration of being a child at all. Or even of being an individual. I confess that I found listening to the foundlings discuss how they had struggled to grow up, to develop careers and be part of their own new flesh and blood families desperately sad. Yet Thomas Coram had created his institution to give children a life, when none looked likely. Surely this option was better than no home at all. It is extremely brave to take a stand and to dedicate your energy, not to mention money, to helping others. The Foundling Hospital, and its current reincarnation as children's charity, Coram, are the proud and worthy legacy of a man who was brave enough to do so. As with many other philanthropic efforts, there is no perfect solution to many of mankind's worst problems. But I would rather live in a world where people still search for that solution; taking in stray animals, taking in stray children, digging wells and building schools. The time when no one can be bothered anymore will be a sad day for us all.

What's hanging on the walls at Whitehall?

2011-09-02T23:25:00.001+01:00

As yesterday was the first Thursday of the month, all across East London art galleries stayed open late and the streets were full of art buyers, art viewers and more than a few students who were just there for the free beer. First Thursdays are a monthly event but with over 100 participating galleries you get to see something new every time.

Yesterday I and the Accidental Boyfriend wandered along to see a particular exhibition that was on at the Whitechapel Gallery. Seven figures from the British government have selected their favourite pieces from the government art collection, and currently they hang together in wonderful eclecticism in E1. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Whitechapel Gallery building itself is rather glorious, although you wouldn't necessarily think it from the outside. A lovely old stone and iron staircase ran up one wall, and doors and wooden partition walls still featured wobbly yet original leaded glass panels.

Behind a display of charity shop porcelain trinkets lies "Government Art Collection: At Work". The first of five exhibitions in a series on government art, it occupies a single room featuring everything from 16th century paintings of Queen Elizabeth I to peculiar headless metal sculptures. Who from the government has picked the pieces is almost as peculiar as the artworks they have chosen. Samantha Cameron, the prime minister's wife (who is not technically 'government' herself, although as the Accidental Boyfriend pointed out has to see a lot of the collection on the walls of her home) features heavily, selecting some rather unattractive sculptures. The favourites of a dame and ambassador to Moscow, with a penchant for vast, slightly lugubrious Bohemian royals, and Sir John Sawers, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, also feature heavily. Nick Clegg chose a rather large painting of a lonesome and dull thermos flask. Make of that what you will. SamCam did select a rather nice Lowry to give her her due. Even some Tracy Emin made it into the exhibition (courtesy of the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey), although frankly her biro-y scribbles look like they may have been created by a bored policy wonk in a tedious meeting.

Having had our fill of governmental art, and completed an interminable visitor experience questionnaire, we headed out to visit some other galleries, to see rather less prestigious art, fresh from the artist's studio. We saw an entire show of large technicolour vultures, peculiar paintings of people with felt-tip pens stuck to their faces and the standard array of daubings that could, quite frankly, be anything. We supped a couple of strong mojitos amid a Cuban launch party for, well we weren't quite sure what, but it was very jolly.

No photos allowed of the Government Art Collection so here's some paintings and a peculiar sculpture from another gallery on Redchurch Street

After all the art we felt in need of a little sustenance, so headed to the Albion Cafe for supper. They supplied us with glasses of kir and beer, and tasty, hearty pies of fish and rabbit; although it felt oddly multi-seasonal to eat such wintery food with an open door nearby allowing in the semi-warm night air. Service was efficient if slightly humourless. When a bright blue balloon drifted in from the art parties outside our waiter look briefly baffled then placed it solemnly on a shelf along with the ironed napkins. And there it remained as the punters kept coming, and we slipped out and headed home, fortified by pies and Lord Mandelson's fondness for Flemish sculpture.

Working 9 to 5: the daily grind in London

2011-08-23T23:24:00.000+01:00

Almost four years ago I moved to London in search of a job. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do, given the somewhat limited employment options of the village in which I grew up, and my desire for an exciting career with a decent salary, development prospects and international travel. Most of my friends made the same decision. And so within a year of graduating from university we found ourselves in the London rat-race, working 9 to 5. Or actually rarely working 9 to 5, as the average workday seems considerably longer here.

The UK is recognised as one of the hardest working nations in Europe. Despite a European directive capping the number of hours we can legally work at a horrifying 48 hours, us Brits work far longer hours than many other countries, and in London those hours can be even longer. A standard working week is 37.5 hours, typically worked between 9am and 5.30pm. However since I have lived and worked here, I have discovered that the hour off for lunch which should occur between those times to tally up total working hours of 37.5 per week only sometimes materialises. Apparently the average British working day is more likely to last 43.6 hours a week.

At half-past twelve offices empty and descend upon the hundreds, probably thousands, of branches of Pret a Manger, Eat, Starbucks, Marks & Spencer Food and numerous supermarket 'local' or 'metro' shops. Whilst the luckier workers may be able to munch their lunch out in the sunshine (this summer?! pah!) in nearby squares, for the vast majority their dining table is their desk in the office. Sandwiches and crisps are eaten one-handed as office workers lunch whilst typing emails, filling spreadsheets and taking phonecalls. It's not a healthy way to work. Endless studies have shown the benefits one derives from taking 'screen-breaks', and nothing livens up a tedious day more than a quick office gossip session in the kitchen whilst making a cup of tea. Yet in many offices I have worked in down here it almost seems as if not being welded to your swivel-chair for at least 7.5 hours a day defines you as a slacker.

Where the real slog of the working day in London comes however is during the phase which bookmarks our office hours - commuting. London's transport systems are transformed between the hours of about 7am and 9am and then again after 5pm until around half 7 or 8. The typical commute involves a journey from one of London's less central areas (where most of us can all afford to live) into its heaving business centre. I have already moaned previously about the peculiarities of travelling on the Tube and the misery of the 'bendy-bus', so shall simply add that no one who hops in a cosy, private car to drive for twenty minutes to an office carpark, a mere 30 second stroll from their desk has any idea of the challenge involved in commuting in London. It is a battle. It is you versus TFL, you versus the rest of the bus-stop who've all been waiting 20 minutes for the bus to Trafalgar Square, you versus that man with the a lack of respect for personal space and a thoroughly inefficient hygiene regime. It's really not a pleasant start or end to any day.

A London-weighted salary should ensure the higher cost of living in the city is catering for, but what about the losses in quality of life? Are the sacrifices we make in a miserable commute and a endless working day worth it to gain those few extra pounds? With our long days, and our fraught travel, how many of the bountiful opportunities and entertainments that we can access in our city do we really get to make the most of? Don't we enjoy ourselves most when we're on holiday outside of the city? Is the daily grind all really worth it?

"Create your Take" - An exciting competition to celebrate the opening of Westfield Stratford City

2011-08-19T22:28:00.000+01:00

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so you probably know that London is hosting the Olympics next year. The area of Stratford, out in East London, is undergoing extensive redevelopment in preparation for the descent of the world's athletics fans. Currently in construction are numerous stadia for swimming, cycling, leaping, hurling things and sprinting. A recent amble I took down the canal towards the site was curtailed by massive amounts of hoarding and wire fencing, but the tops of the shiny new buildings could just about be spotted high above the security fences.

But fortunately for the less sporty amongst us the site developers are also preparing lots of restaurants and bars, lovely green spaces and what will be the UK's largest shopping centre. The new Westfield Stratford City is due to open in just under a month and to celebrate its birth, a rather London-y competition has been launched. "Create your Take", launched this week on Facebook, encourages people to respond photographically to 8 East London classic concept challenges; from Market Day to the Hoxton Fin.

Once you've uploaded your photo, other Facebook users will be able to vote for their favourite 'takes', and they could pick yours. The photo which receives the most votes over the competition will win the grand cash prize, which could total up to £10,000. Not bad eh? For every person on Facebook who "likes" the site's page the prize money will increase. Local London bloggers will also be acting as guest judges each week, to choose their personal favourite (in their concept category) to receive some amazing spot prizes.

The Accidental Londoner is thrilled to have been asked to act as a guest judge for the 'Landmark' concept challenge, and will be awarding a super spot prize to the best entry in that category. As Anish Kapoor's "Orbit" takes its place in the iconic skyline of our city, the 'Landmark' category wants you to share your landmarks - from your cities, your streets, even your own backyard. Take a photo, upload it to the site and you're in with a chance of winning. Fancy a private tour of the new Stratford development? In a helicopter?! Well, this is the prize that I'll be awarding in my week as guest judge, and there are plenty more brilliant prizes to be won under the other categories too.

Visit Facebook and Create your Take for a chance to win up to £10,000 or a number of amazing spot prizes, including free hairdressing for a year at Toni & Guy, £200 to spend and the advice of a stylist at Reiss and a day at the Waitrose Cookery School for you and a friend.

Get snapping and lots of Accidental luck!

https://www.facebook.com/westfieldstratfordcity?sk=app_140845055990855

Brunching at The Breakfast Club, Soho

2011-08-14T22:11:00.001+01:00

Sunday mornings in the city are all about breakfast. No rushed slice of toast as you dash out of the door to work, no hastily munched bowl of cereal eaten standing up as you do your make-up. At the weekends we have time to sit and drink decent coffee and eat full plates of breakfasty goodness. But after a hard week at work we sometimes can't be bothered to do the percolating and frying ourselves, so we go out to breakfast (or if we're sleepy, maybe a later brunch.)

Whilst mediocre cafes are two-a-penny and can be found in pretty much any area of London, with their greasy table tops and burnt coffee, a good venue for breakfast is far harder to find. You need somewhere with enough space to seat more than two very closely acquainted people, decent coffee, decent juice, tasty breakfast (anywhere with plentiful pancakes wins my undying patronage) and speedy service. Nothing makes you want to eat your copy of The Sunday Times sports section like an hour-long wait for a bowl of muesli and yogurt.

On the hunt for the perfect venue, I had heard wonderful things about a place called "The Breakfast Club". Now with four branches across the capital, the original cafe sits cheerily on D'Arblay Street in Soho, painted bright sunflower yellow. However every time I had attempted to breakfast there I and my breakfasting companions had been met by a lengthy, slow-moving queue of people with a similar idea, and we had given up and headed elsewhere. But this morning I finally stuck out the queue long enough to earn at table at D'Arblay Street, and it was definitely worth it.

Inside the vibe of the 1985 film of the same name (which I may be one of the only people in the world to have hated with a passion) filters through the cafe. Americana is affixed to a bare brick wall that runs along one side of the cafe. Chic mismatched chairs and wooden tables crowd a fairly small space, which made maneuvering into our table something of a limbo challenge. But once seated we were swiftly provided with menus groaning with breakfast options. You want eggs? They do them any way you could possibly imagine eating them. You want pancakes? Just say what you'd like inside them, alongside plenty of maple syrup obviously. The cafe serves lunch and dinner too, but rather nicely given its name, breakfasts are the speciality of this eatery.

The Accidental pal I ate with and I both chose pancakes; hers were topped with berries and a wonderful dollop of vanilla cream, whilst mine sandwiched perfectly crispy streaky bacon. As they should be, all their pancakes are doused in maple syrup, but not too much to saturate the fluffy pancakes. The coffee was excellent (Antipodeans can delight in the fact that The Breakfast Club even knows what a Flat White is), and the service was with a genuine smile (and an unexpected kilt!). Aware of the hungry queue outside the door we did not linger overly long once we were finished, but were not exactly chased away by the wait-staff who seemed capable and unfazed by the popularity of their little place. As we left, an hour or so after we arrived, those in search of eggs, sausage, hash browns et al were still arriving in D'Arblay Street. Long may the queue continue to grow. Except when I am in urgent need of breakfast.

London's burning...and rioting and looting

2011-08-09T16:56:00.000+01:00

The sound of an emergency services siren is the audible calling-card of any major modern city. In North London it is merely the usual soundtrack to real life; a traffic accident, a burst appendix, a rambunctious disagreement between football fans. But at the moment in London this familiar noise is signalling far more sinister events. Like most of the city I awoke on Sunday morning to reports and startling images of public rioting in the north London area of Tottenham. Buildings had been burnt, cars had been smashed up, police officers had been hurt and looters arrested. A peaceful protest begun earlier on Saturday night, in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan, a suspected local criminal, by police had been hijacked by, well...what to call them? Thugs, criminals, looters, opportunists? Mostly young people, many with covered faces, under cover of protest had perpetrated horrendous crimes which have caused millions of pounds of damage already.

A masked looter strolls in front of blazing cars - (taken from the cover of today's Guardian newspaper)

Seeing these scenes in Tottenham brought back unpleasant memories for London. The clashes with police were scarily reminiscent of the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots that left a policeman dead, hacked brutally to death by an angry mob. Was history repeating itself? As the same footage was replayed again and again, and a second and third night of looting, arson attacks and fear followed, London became a city on edge. Travelling home has become an expedition, checking routes, ensuring stations are still open and hoping that you won't encounter marauders as trouble flares up in random areas across the city. From Croydon to Hackney, and Clapham to Ealing, it seems as if no neighbourhood (however supposedly middle-class and safe) is immune to the invasion of these louts.

The former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone was yesterday criticised for blaming the riots on social deprivation, and current mayor Boris Johnson (who swiftly reappeared from his holiday to reassure us all - thanks, Boris, we feel so much better now you and your silly hair are here!) has just declared we've heard quite enough about the socio-economic factors in play. But there are obviously some far greater social issues which need serious attention. There must be something driving these wanton acts of destruction and pillaging more than a lust for iPads. The use of the word 'senseless' in reference to recent events speaks more of our own shock and incredulity than of the motivations of the looters and rioters. Numerous issues have already been blamed for the events, from the economic crisis to a disgruntled and frustrated youth, from long-standing antagonistic relations between civil society and the police to poor and irresponsible parenting. I am sure each proposed cause hold grains of truth and that these riots are the product of a complex set of influencing factors we cannot begin to untangle yet.

The texts and phonecalls began last night, from concerned friends outside the city and within. Was I ok? Was my flat safe? What was happening where I work and live? Twitter has been abuzz with a mixture of helpful and terrifying rumours; inspiring fear and panic from misinformation and those seeing the opportunity to make a lot of deeply unfunny jokes about tigers loose from London Zoo. Strangers helped one another plan routes home, and urged each other to stay safe. And then today they united again, to deal with clearing up the mess. However many destructive thugs there were tearing apart areas of the city, there were more people this morning brandishing brooms and demanding to clean their streets. And say what you like about social exclusion and societal breakdown but I think that the staggering number of people who quickly organised themselves, and without expecting a thing in return, set about putting our city back together again says far more about British society today.

Down Street Tube Station - the ghost station under Mayfair

2011-08-07T18:35:00.002+01:00

A couple of years ago I was tasked with an event management challenge at work. I was asked to create a day-long tour of London's most exciting hidden locations. The event itself was created for attendees of the TEDGlobal conference, so I needed to find sufficiently varied sites which would appeal to a vast range of people; from designers to poets, and e-commerce entrepreneurs to artists. Using numerous contacts kindly provided by colleagues we secured access to go backstage at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and even right up to the top of the BT Tower. But our very first site of the tour was the one which the attendees were still talking about by the end of the day.

We kicked off our day of exploration by going underground, and visiting one of the city's fabled 'ghost stations'. After James Bond met his boss, 'M', in one of these disused Tube stations underneath the city in the film 'Die Another Day' the profile of these secret stations had risen. As you travel through London on the Underground system you may well pass through a ghost station or two, only visible to the keenest of eyes which can spot a sign flashing by or an unexpected light in a dark tunnel. Once built to serve particularly busy areas of the city some hundred or so years ago, as commuter patterns and centres of employment changed certain stations became underused and were finally taken out of service. But the station which we went to visit, the now disused Down Street station, had found a new purpose once it had finished transporting Londoners to and from Mayfair. It became a secure meeting venue for first the members of the Emergency Railway Committee (for when you've just got to have a new train track right away!), and later for Winston Churchill's War Cabinet during the Second World War.

From the outside the station is almost invisible now. Who knows if the man in the photo above has any idea what he is sitting on top of. After descending ancient clanging metal stairs (the Emergency Railway Committee apparently insisted on a lift as they were not of a physique to clomp up and down endless stairs) we walked along eerily empty passenger tunnels, lined in the ceramic tiles which still cover many of the city's Underground stations today. As the tunnels widened we learnt that this was not merely a thoroughfare during the station's wartime use but a typing pool. Whilst the desks and chairs are now gone I could easily imagine rows of girls of a similar age to me down here in this odd, underground, echoey tunnel tapping away on their typewriters. But where did they make a cup of tea or take a break from their secretive toils? Further along the tunnel the space opens out onto the old platforms. Heading right we followed a wall which blocks off the tracks from tiny bunk-rooms, bathrooms and kitchens. People lived down here during World War Two, a secret community of decision-makers and their administrative staff. As we peered through the gloom at now filthy sinks, under decades of dust, a roar ripped through the station. The lights of an approaching train briefly illuminated the bricks, tiles and metal furniture, as the train vibrated the platform and metal grille which now cuts off the station from the carriages whirling by. We cut our flashlights to avoid alarming the train driver. Sat behind the beams of their headlights, Tube drivers are some of the privileged few who ever get to see inside these empty stations that have served multiple purposes across our city's history.

If you stand on Down Street itself today and look to the left of a small news-agent you can see where the entrance once stood. The wide arch now sealed up, with only a small metal door providing access to the station beneath. And look very closely as you speed along the Piccadilly Line between Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus, and you might just spy a flash of the ghost station. Look for the pale bricks that now block off the platform that served commuters in the early 1900s and that kept Winston Churchill safe as he worked to keep an entire country secure.

Another Accidental outlet

2011-07-28T13:19:00.000+01:00

This blog was started for me to record the words, events and phenomena that mattered to me, and that I wanted to remember. Then slowly other people started reading my writing, and bless you, even responding. And so I kept writing, for me and you. And the pleasure it gives me gets greater and greater with every post and comment. Every so often I'm fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to write pieces for other websites too, often by people who have found my blog. And such opportunities I love to seize!

For the last few months I have been contributing as an occasional travel writer to the Travelbite website, (a great place to find holiday inspiration by the way!), as and when my busy work and uni schedule allow. So here is a link to my latest piece for Travelbite which suggests a few things to do in a weekend in London. It was a pretty tough challenge to fit all the top attractions and activities into 48 hours, and also to balance the typical tourist musts (which as a Londoner I try and avoid!), such as Buckingham Palace, with the things I'd love to do (as a local) with a free weekend, like potter round the Brick Lane markets on a Sunday morning.

It turns out London is a pretty fun place to be! And there's so much more I have yet to explore...

(The above photo was taken from the Thames Clipper river boat, which shuttles commuters, tourists and the average Londoner along the Thames between the South Bank and Greenwich - a lovely way to see the city.)

Full link to 'A Weekend in London': http://www.travelbite.co.uk/holiday-destinations/a-weekend-in-london

Biking with Boris - London's bikes for hire

2011-07-24T21:49:00.000+01:00

Finally I have achieved a London goal - I recently took my first Boris Bike ride. The Barclays-sponsored bicycle hire scheme has been in action across the city since the middle of 2010, and championed by our city mayor Boris Johnson, they have rapidly become known as "Boris bikes". After the scheme's introduction, bright blue stands (in sponsor Barclays' bright hue) popped up across town; on pavements, beside parks, on quiet side streets, outside stations. Often you see tourists staring at them in bewilderment. Ranks of bikes are held hostage in locked docks, beneath a short blue tower with an electronic panel. To borrow a bike on a pay-as-you-go basis, you have to insert a credit or debit card into these tower-like stands, buy your hire time, and receive an activation code that you punch into the panel on the dock of the bike that takes your fancy. Regular users can obtain a handy tag, for which they pay an annual subscription, and they simply insert this directly into the bike dock, without having to faff around with credit cards and codes.

Currently the 6000 bikes are distributed across docks in the more central areas on London, which is part of the reason I have not sampled a Boris bike before; there are simply no docking stations near my flat. Mornington Crescent is as far north as they seem to go. But the Accidental Boyfriend (who is spoilt for choice of docking stations where he lives) is a Boris biking pro, so he gamely offered to instruct me in the ways of these cycles. Our first attempt was in Hyde Park a couple of months ago. It was a total failure. Neither station we tried would accept my debit card to pay my single Great British Pound for access for 24 hrs, so that I could take a quick 20 minute spin around the park.

We abandoned that abortive expedition and tried again a few weeks later. Thwarted again. Finally hefting a bike from its docking point (actually the Accidental Boyfriend did that bit, I was too weedy) we discovered it had a flat tyre and a mangled front end. We attempted to return the bike but it wouldn't dock. We made the first of several calls to the bike office. My activation code would not be valid for another five minutes - we were advised to walk to the next docking station and try to use the code to extract another bike. As we approached the dock looked empty but we spied three bikes available. All had their red broken lights on. Grrrr. We were by now only a ten minute walk from our destination so just gave up on our plan. But after a wander around Kennington, and its surprising village fete, we tried again for the return trip.

I obtained a new access code, punched it into a bike dock, then watched as a mysterious flashing amber light blinked unhelpfully at me. Does this system ever work as it should?! Another call to the helpline, my third access code of the day and our fourth docking station, finally I obtained my bike. After fiddling around with my saddle, I took a short test-ride up and down the pavement and discovered the gears were a bit, well, shaky. Nevertheless with two bikes in our possession, we strapped our luggage onto the front of the bike with its peculiar elastic strap (wouldn't a basket have been more use?) and set off. Whilst the Accidental Boyfriend wore his cycle helmet (which I'd badgered him to buy when he started biking), here it seems the scheme is missing a crucial feature. Why encourage those unaccustomed to cycling to go wobbling off into the busy London traffic if you are not going to ensure they protect their delicate heads? I felt somewhat exposed as I followed the Accidental Boyfriend through Vauxhall's traffic. I had to pedal like a maniac to get the heavy bike to lurch into action lest I get swallowed up beneath the wheels of a van every time we stopped at red light. A few minutes after we set off we were back north of the river, and docking our bikes once more. My first trip was over.

So that was Boris biking. And whilst the scheme is a super idea, and should be an affordable and convenient way for Londoners to travel around the city, it has a few design flaws. Its limited geographical reach makes it less useful for travelling longer distances - or even shorter distances which extend beyond Zone 1. I would love to be able to hop on a Boris bike near my flat and cycle to the docking stations behind my office. But by the time I reach the nearest dock to pick up a bike I am practically at work already. Plus there's my inability (unless I get down the gym and start pumping some serious iron) to heft one of the heavy bikes out of the dock. I hate to play the 'poor little woman' card, but a quick survey of other girls who've tried to use the bikes reveals a common complaint that they are too heavy to use; this being a problem not only releasing and replacing the bikes from the docks, but also when steering and getting the bikes moving quickly at junctions. These bikes were designed to be a certain weight to discourage their being stolen, but you'd have to be a weightlifter to make off with one of these. I fear I need some more practice to try and master Boris' bikes. And I may need to put in some time in the gym to build up my biceps too...

Lost in the library

2011-07-16T12:08:00.001+01:00

I adore libraries, I really do. The British Library (oh ok, its Peyton & Byrne Cafe in particular) is what is making my dissertation anywhere remotely bearable. But many of the university libraries I have encountered down in London have been downright awful. When I did my first degree up in Durham I spent hours in a concrete termite mound of a library, grim from the outside but one could always find something useful inside. Everything from the computer rooms to the African Socialism section was where it said it was on the handy maps. It was designed for students and run for them, with a hopeful sense that it was all worth doing if at least one of them does something amazing in the future.

London university libraries however are designed as if to test whether you really want, or intellectually merit, your degree at all. Higher education facilities are apparently one of the city's biggest expenditures - so why are their libraries so poor? (And I mean in a non-financial sense here.) I remember fondly the helpful people who staffed Durham's libraries, many of them bright postgrad students themselves. The staff I have met down here are the complete opposite. They are unhelpful, lazy, and far more interested in their own conversations than the stressed cries for help of a struggling part-time postgrad, enquiring why they can't find a particular book where THE BLOODY CATALOGUE SAYS IT SHOULD BE. At the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and I kid you not, I have queued for a total time approaching two hours simply to get an external reader card to access their books. The queue of fed-up sighs moved painfully slowly as the three, yes three, librarians processed each request as a team effort, as if competing in some sort of reader-registering relay.

I could, of course, just sit tight in the small, cosy library at my own college, Birkbeck, but we have been urged, nay, instructed, that to do full justice to a post-graduate dissertation we must find resources beyond our own college's walls. So from time to time I brave SOAS, which has just completed a complex rennovation, complete with an odd interior decor scheme that looks like the building work has only just begun in some places. It is full of students that make me feel very old (I, at the grand old age of 26) as they slouch around clutching pristine books on Asian art, with huge hair and lots of eye-makeup, comparing hangovers. I left university to get away from these people, I have no desire to spend my evenings and weekends with them. Where are all the grown-up students? Senate House, the main library for the University of London is located a stone's throw away, so I thought I'd give that a try.

What an error that decision was. Imposing from the outside (legend has it that Hitler was a huge admirer of the place) inside the art deco building looks, at first glance, equally striking. Lots of brass and parquet flooring and luxuriant carpet stretch up to the grand Chancellors Hall. But it seems that those glossier areas are just for show. I had done a little online research to save myself time on arrival so I knew which books I needed and where they should be. But could I find even a sign to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (or ICOMMS) library where they supposedly resided? Could I hell. When I enquired at a reception desk I was told, laughingly, I was in completely the wrong place. I was directed away by a lady with an almost unintelligible accent, and soon found myself woefully lost heading for Russell Square. After being collared to sign some petition on cleaning staff average pay (pay them the minimum London wage, you administrative scumbags!), and being sent up in a lift then along a squiggly corridor by the second person I asked for directions, I found myself back at the start.
I tried again. The third directee totally failed to judge my pissed off mood and made some joke about catching a bus to another city for several minutes, which he thought was hilarious and I imagined being heard again in court as I stood trial for braining him with the brass (and oh so unhelpful) "you are here" sign beside the desk. He escorted me back down a hall, and pointed me to a tiny lift. Inside the brass plaque showed several options of floor choices: G, 2, 3, 4, Slavic Studies. Emerging on the 2nd floor (despite the options the lift was basically a shuttle between here and the ground floor), I almost lost it at the fourth person who informed me I was in the wrong place. His directions (back down in the rickety lift again) at last directed me to the Small Hall, which ICOMMS library was.

And my, but it was, er, Small - so Small I could cross it in two seconds and see this was evidently not where I should be. Two lugubrious souls were turning vast pages of paleography tomes, overseen by a silent librarian with drawn-on eyebrows. I quickly scuttled through the room, emerging into a deserted corridor, along which doors stood open at odd intervals. Codes and topics on a printed sheet of A4 blue-tac-ed to each gave an approximate description of the contents. It was the bleakest place in which I have ever seen books. Books usually brighten up a place, but here...here was were they put the books no one cared about. After two hours down there I had not seen, or heard, another soul.

And this is what it looks like. (Oddly my camera has also managed to make the place look a lot brighter than it is in real life - don't let it fool you.) It is a book-lined dungeon. And it really is that narrow. The window at the end, looks UP at the ground above. Everything is made of heavy clunking metal - shelves, doors, chairs. Now when one is writing a dissertation on the subject of civil war and thinking about the most vile things a human is capable of doing to another, this is not the sort of environment guaranteed to lighten the mood. Yet here is where they keep the books on this topic that I need to read, banished as if their subject matter is too depressing to be stored in more pleasurable surrounds. And so here it seems is where you will find me this summer, down in the depths of gloom and doom. If I'm not there, I have probably fled to the delightful un-university-affiliated British Library, where they have sunlight and comfy chairs. And, most importantly, decent cake. Remind me what I'm paying all these expensive university tuition fees for?

Dressing to impress - London's fashion style

2011-07-09T19:30:00.002+01:00

Numerous fashion journalists, models and designers often subscribe to a similar opinion - that London, as a city, is unique when it comes to style. It is very edgy and adventurous, not afraid to define its own take on a current global trend. In London anything goes when it comes to fashion. The French may be classically stylish, the Italians sharply tailored but here in London we are style chameleons, hopping schizophrenically from trend to trend, dictated by catwalks. There is no classic London look. Ecclecticism is what floats our fashion boat.

Let us not forget that London fell in love with punk; the movement of anarchy and rebellion (first born in New York in 1974, I am reliably informed). Punk style pioneered leather, studs and 6-inch high mohican hair. The Kings Road hosted the first boutique of grand dame of English fashion, Vivienne Westwood, (co-run with Malcolm McClaren) which was at one time provocatively titled "Sex". Not far from where I live, this look is still alive and well in Camden, home to numerous alternative fashion stores. Hopping on the bus outside the Camden branch of Sainsburys one often comes face to, er, pierced face, with some of the world's most ardent supporters of this unique mode. (Just this morning on my way to work, I noticed a wonderful head of bright blue hair and face full of silver studs was taking its cat to the vet. The cat, I hasten to add, did not look in the least bit punk.)

The soggy summer is presenting Londoners with quite the fashion connundrum. Should we dress for the summer (in its absence) and haul out our denim shorts, sun-dresses and espadrilles? Or should we dress for the never-ending rain in far less glamorous wellies and waterproofs? London's answer appears to be a combination of both. Recent festival-wear seems to be inspiring the current style of those who pound the pavements of this city, and Hunter wellies appear on the end of long, bare legs, topped with floaty summer-dresses. Never will a Londoner opt for the solely practical choice - every pavement is a catwalk, the city is the backdrop for a never-ending fashion show.

London is, and has been, home to numerous designers of world renown; Vivienne Westwood, Giles Deacon, Stella McCartney and the late Alexander McQueen to name but a few. London Fashion Week, held twice a year, draws an influential and international crowd, including the queen of the global fashion industry, American Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Formerly held at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington (Harvey Nichols famous windows once displayed fabulous dinosaurs made entirely from coathangers as a nod to the hosts of the event), LFW is now held at Somerset House on The Strand.

Not so far from The Strand is Oxford Street, an urban shopping Mecca for anyone in search of the season's latest styles. For the feint-hearted it is not, however. On Oxford Street one is reminded just how serious a task is clothes shopping. One only has to witness the scramble of a sale in Topshop at Oxford Circus to be reminded of the ruthless lust and desperate behaviour which fashion can inspire. If you're the sort who likes your shopping intense, you can take on Westfield, Europe's largest city shopping centre over in Shepherd's Bush - 150,000 square metres of wet-look leggings, Ugg boots, Japenese-style Obi belts, and endless stripes. Go forth and accessorize!

But whilst the big fashion retailers may churn out indentikit dresses in their millions, and every second person appears wearing the same Primark skirt, London style is not afraid to look to the glamour of earlier times to enhance the present. Vintage pieces are incorporated into the wardrobes of the truly stylish with a consumate fashonista's eye. As someone exclaims over an admired item of clothing, it is not uncommon to hear a reply indicating that the piece was picked up in "some little vintage place in Hackney" or that it was pinched from an older relation's wardrobe. Similar to London's architecture and culture, its sartorial style blends the ancient and modern in ways that clash, but some how also seem to look just right. It's the classic London style.

(For a far better picture of London style than I can paint in mere words, allow me to point you to the excellent StyleScout blog, containing snaps of the most stylish Londoners out and about around the city.)

Life in the London housing sandwich

2011-07-03T15:28:00.000+01:00

Here in London, space at such a premium that any old building will do to live in. Warehouses, factories, and most commonly large old Victorian terraces are frequently chopped up and turned into flats. The majority of us live with a neighbour above and below, like we're residing in some sort of house sandwich. (Unless you are a Russian oligarch with an entire Belgravia mansion to yourself which you visit but once a year. I do resent the buying up of potential full-time homes by those who intend on using them rarely, while so many Londoners struggle to find somewhere to live.) Inevitably when you live in quite such proximity with your neighbours the sounds from their flats drift up or down into your own, and with those sounds drifts also some eye-opening insights into their lives. With only one potential noisy neighbour down below, and no one above, top floor flats are thus highly prized in London.

At my first London address (the flat I shared with uni friends in Putney) we were the top-floor neighbours, and yes, we may have been those neighbours; the ones with the oversensitive smoke alarm and an inability to close a door quietly, who hosted endless parties of a slightly rowdy nature. Our downstairs neighbours were not our biggest fans. (Even less so after one housemate popped a note under their door at 1am one night, profusely apologising for the noise and signing off with much drunken, over-friendly love.) When I left Putney I lived for a few months above a restaurant, the trials of which I have documented in an earlier post. It was pretty noisy at times, and for several weeks the restaurant had a hazardous wiring problem which made our flat's lights flicker wildly as if we were on a sinking ship. But to some extent that is what one expects. If you move in between homes you would be a fool to imagine you will live in undisturbed, blissful silence. In fact, if that's what you're after, I'd suggest a nice, single-storey stone croft somewhere in the isolated highlands of Scotland.

Recently my downstairs neighbour moved out. From the first week I moved in, she had complained endlessly about the noises she could hear from my flat - music playing at 9pm on a Sunday (playing mind, not playing loudly), the television, the radio, people laughing. I learnt the former owners of my flat had been forced to lay down carpet to muffle the sounds of their feet on the beautiful (but now hidden) floorboards beneath, after her complaints. Sure, I heard her yelling at her son from time to time, and her neurotic dog barked through the night at random foxes, but not once did I complain to her about it. One day I bumped into this Accidental neighbour in the street and she began to deeply apologise for my being disturbed the other night by her houseguest playing loud music; she hoped I'd not been too bothered. Having actually not been at home that night, I had not been remotely bothered but seizing my opportunity for some moral highground points I fixed her with a long-suffering stare and said "Well, it's just what you expect if you choose to live in a flat, isn't it?" She never complained to me again.

I did sympathise slightly, for I too hear the muffled actions of the person who lives above me. My upstairs neighbour, who I have seen but once in the year I have lived beneath him, returns home pretty late every evening (I gather from other neighbours he works in the theatre) and proceeds to crash around a bit. One becomes inured to such noises however if they are regular, but at first they can be quite alarming. Three weeks into my new occupancy, as I lay in my brand new bed in my empty flat in this big, old house, I was awoken at 2am by a series of peculiar sounds overhead. Paralysed by fear I lay corpse-still in my bed, listening to the anguished grunts, dragging noises and occasional entreaties to God from above. My overactive imagination convinced me that a gang of burglars had broken in, tied up my neighbour and were right now ransacking his home, occasionally pausing in their thievery to beat him up a bit. For 45 minutes I panicked, unsure what to do, terrified that they would come crashing down the stairs and start on my flat next. Should I call the police? Or the Accidental mother? (She always knows what to do, although at 2am, miles away in the Midlands, with nothing but my paranoid mind to confirm what was happening her ability might be diminished somewhat.) Eventually after securing all entrances to my flat and leaving my neighbour to his fate, I fell back asleep, worn out by my own fears. Only in the cold light of day did I realise that the noises I had heard corresponded to those of someone frustratedly playing a computer game (probably one of those move-around-the-room-with-a-controller-attached-to-you kind of things). Now when my neighbour is busy killing zombies or playing championship tennis I never waken.
Part of being a true Londoner is the ability to sleep through anything, from the sounds of sirens to drunken youths carousing beneath one's bedroom window. But even harder to block out are the noises which come from within one's own house - the consequences of living in the London housing sandwich.

It's raining, it's pouring...

2011-06-23T21:26:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I know it rains everywhere, but right here in London, when we do rain, we really do rain. Right now summer appears to have been postponed. It has rained for the best part of three weeks, just as we all let ourselves dare believe that the freak 5 day heatwave we had in April was not the only summer we were going to get in 2011. Summer clothes have been resigned to the back of drawers and wardrobes as us Londoners revert to our winterwear. I am fantastically pleased I ignored the Accidental mother's raised eyebrow at my suggestion I bring my Hunter wellies to London; once I stomped across muddy fields in these green monsters, but now I use them to pound the pavements of the soggy city. And very dry and cosy my feet are too.

As most cities are, London is made of hard surfaces. Heavy, solid, impermeable concrete and tarmac. Water slides off or over it, rather than seeping away quietly through it. Pouring rain sluices down gutters and rooves, along streets and pavements, hurtling down any slick channel like a Splat-the-Rat down a drainpipe. Raindrops bounce back up off the ground into the sky from whence they came. Pavements become even less passable than usual, as Londoners go about their usual routines clutching the handles of cumbersome, drippy umbrellas. Eyes are at risk of gouging, ankles in danger of being spiked. I had a brand new pair of tights ruined before I'd made it into work last week thanks to the errant velcro strap on an unfurled umbrella on the bus. (I can't remember who first referred to them as "portable death-tents" but never was a nickname more apt!) Tourists never seem to bring umbrellas with them on holiday, so they instead shiver beneath those god-awful, crackly plastic ponchos handed out by tour-operators. Particularly harsh downpours force pedestrians to huddle beneath scaffolding or hoardings (which always amuses the hard-hatted builders) or in the doorways of shops or offices, like rain-refugees.

But it's summertime. Where are the blue skies and harmless white fluffy clouds? We should all be sitting out late in the balmy evening sipping Pimms and planning weekends spent having boozy picnics in the park. Instead we're inside sat on our sofas, watching The Apprentice and dreaming of summer holidays in places where the weather does what it should this time of year. Is this London's most disappointing summer ever?! Wimbledon has just begun beneath ominously grey clouds, where it usually guarantees hot weather and sunburn. What is going on? Of course it rains for Glastonbury which kicks off this weekend; it's as traditional as the sunshine over Wimbledon. Although so far the festival's fields are already waterlogged and the action hasn't even started! But here in London? How can mud get into the middle of a city?! However, the tiny wee silver lining which accompanies these big black rainclouds is that whilst it's pouring down outside I find it a lot easier to closet myself in the library to work away at my dissertation. So sorry everyone, whilst this summer's dreary weather may be cramping your fun plans, it may just be the reason I'll finally complete my degree. I actually hope it continues...

*of course, now I've written this we're guaranteed a heatwave. (Here's hoping!)

The 'Black Swan' effect: a visit to Covent Garden's Royal Opera House

2011-06-14T17:50:00.003+01:00

The release of the film, 'Black Swan', earlier this year has a lot to answer for. As one slightly irrate ballerina complained in a recent Sunday newspaper magazine, it did little to portray professional ballet dancers as more than psychotic hysterics. It also robbed the truly fantastic Jennifer Lawrence of the Oscar for Best Actress, which she thoroughly deserved for the perfect 'Winter's Bone'. Worst of all I could not bear to look at the ballet pumps perpetually worn upon my own feet without feeling utterly creeped out and expecting feathers to start bursting through my legs at any minute. On the other, more positive, hand, the film has also inspired more of the general public to go to the ballet. Although the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden apparently became fed up of the endless calls by people keen to book tickets for Natalie Portman's 'Swan Lake'. (It was only a made-up story, people.)

If you're in London, and fancy taking in a spot of ballet, there is one wonderful place in which you must do it; the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Originally built in the nineteenth century, the current ROH is the third building to occupy the site, and was heavily rebuilt, refurbished and modernised in the 1990s.

Entering by the columned entrance you pass into vast Paul Hamlyn Hall with its huge barrel roof, all metal and glass and plush carpets. You can even enjoy an pre- or post-show meal or drink in this lovely, light, yet enormous, space. Alternatively in the interval you can enjoy a restorative plate of smoked salmon sandwiches and a cold glass of champagne in the Amphitheatre Bar at the top of the building, reached by a very long, high escalator. A popular interval haunt, the bar opens also onto a refreshing terrace, with wonderful views over the centre of the city.
The main auditorium is lined with red velvet seats and opulent boxes for the wealthiest of ballet or opera fans. But if you're a student, or not sure you want to commit a lot of cash to a trip to the ballet, or just a tiny bit broke, you can get a bargainous £5 ticket to stand at the back of the hall, high up above the ranked seats. With many performances you can have just as much fun up at the back, and although the action seems far away the excellent acoustics ensure you hear every perfect note.

Back on the Amphitheatre Bar terrace at half-time you also begin to get a sense of how large the Opera House really is. As a visitor you can quite easily flit between your seat in the main performance hall, known as the Floral Hall, and the bar at interval time, without being aware that below street level is a cavernously deep basement. And up above the stage are a further four levels! The ROH's basement stores numerous stage sets and scenery collections in large wire containers, which slide around the floor like a giant puzzle game. Entire play-worths of scenery wait in the wings of the main stage, alongside racks of costumes. A rehersal stage, almost as large as the main stage, allows full trial performances for an imagined potential audience.
Backstage are hundreds of carpenters, lighting engineers, designers and scenery-shifters buzzing around like black-clad bees in a hive. They swarm up above the stage as well as over and behind it. High above the stage are the flights - the areas from where the lights and backdrops are controlled - narrow, floating platforms covering in snaking cables; furiously hot during a performance due to the hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of bright lights.

But beyond the stage are scores of offices and store-rooms, unseen and probably unconsidered by the majority of those who go to see the ballerinas leap about the main stage. There are wardrobes of lace and trimmings, with floors covered in scraps and exquisite costumes on headless mannequins. On the top floor of the building, not so far from the Amphiteatre Bar, are rehearsal dance studios, where many a dancer has practiced their steps for hours on end. The studios are walled with mirrors, whilst their floors are excitingly sprung - perfect for bouncing about upon. For any top ballet dancer in London, nay the UK, the Royal Opera House is a highly desired stage upon which to perform. Look up in the narrow street that runs alongside the threatre and there is a beautiful faceted bridge high up in the sky, linking the nearby Royal Ballet School to the Royal Opera House; its name is the Bridge of Aspirations. Within this extraordinary building, where so much is hidden behind the scenes, it is no wonder that so many long to explore its secrets.

Did you know I've just got back from Ghana?

2011-06-07T13:40:00.002+01:00

So, I don't know if I may have mentioned I've just been to Ghana? Oh, I did? I banged on about airports and Accra already? Oh, ok then I'll not mention it again. But just in case there is anyone who still wants to hear what I got up to on my Accidental holidays, you can read about me searching for elephants here, on the wonderful Travelbite website.

And here are some baboons that we also saw...they had vicious little teeth and liked to rip things apart (lizards, sticks, the contents of the washing line) but we don't have them in London so we thought they were quite cool!

Ok, ok! I'll be quiet about holidays now...back to gloomy, grey, un-June-like London...

Little Venice - waterways and watery homes

2011-06-04T08:30:00.002+01:00

Famed for its canals, gondoliers, and beautiful buildings, the Italian city of Venice is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. As a nod to the popularity of this place, Las Vegas has even built its very own city replica, inside one of its gaudy hotels. But Britain got there first. London’s Little Venice was first named back in the late 19th century, by poet Robert Browning who lived in this area of central West London for over 20 years.

Today "Little Venice" (a pocket of Maida Vale, W9) is home to some of the richest Londoners. An Accidental colleague claims there are also a lot of arty types about, but less of the starving-in-a-garret ones, more of the exhibiting-in-galleries-in-W1 types I would imagine. Vast Victorian stucco-ed mansions, that require a pricey re-painting every three years, line wide streets down which carriages once clattered. Even one of the very first gas lampposts still stands in the grounds of a slightly dilapidated mansion near Warwick Avenue.

The star resident of the area is the winding canal. In fact, two canals meet in Little Venice; the Regents Canal and the Grand Union. Once a transport route for the city’s many heavy industries now little moves up and down except tourist barges and the odd canal-boat moving between moorings. Along its length are a number of other boats that go nowhere at all. Permanently moored, these are floating homes, and some of the most prestigious addresses in the city. (In terms of boat residences these are on a par with the luxurious floating homes of Chelsea.)

Whilst many bricks-and-mortar London properties have little or no garden or outside space, some of these houseboats have alloted gardens on the stretches of riverbank opposite where they are moored. Despite the fact these green spaces are often tiny and very narrow, with a towpath splitting each garden from its boat, the owners tend them proudly and with a certain horticultural flair. Here a gazebo draped in trailing wisteria, there a pair of deck-chairs with a recently abandoned cup of tea and paperback book.

Where once heavy horses stomped dragging laden barges, the towpaths are peaceful now. Boat pets come and go. Residents sunbathe and chat. City visitors barge noisily, and unthinking, through these properties. For the owners of these extraordinary homes, some days it really must be like living in touristy Venice.

Putting the glamour back into travelling by train: the newly reopened St Pancras Hotel

2011-05-27T20:58:00.000+01:00

Over the past few months, as I have trudged off to work in the British Library, I have curiously peered at the huge hoardings outside St Pancras International station. For the last couple of years, vast panels have been proclaiming that something was "Opening soon". Fluorescent yellow-jacketed builders have lined the pavements, and diggers have been grumbling around moving earth behind metal barriers for months. The old St Pancras railway hotel loomed above it all, waiting for its make-over to be complete, and for its rebirth as the new St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Finally, earlier this May, and after a month or so of unheralded operation, the formal opening of the St Pancras Hotel took place. And, hearing tales of cracking cocktails and impressive interiors, I could not wait to go and explore it for myself.

If you're not staying there, choosing to spend time in a hotel can be an odd thing to do, however the St Pancras Hotel boasts a couple of restaurants (one is a Marcus Wareing effort) and a bar which are open to non-residents, so one doesn't need one's pajamas and a toothbrush to justify a visit. And the staff at the hotel seem equally delighted to welcome one-off diners and drinkers as they are those in search of a bed for the night. Their uniforms all appear to be inspired by railwaymen of yore, like someone had raided Bernard Cribbins' wardrobe from The Railway Children. They wore mostly dark blue, with purple and grey tinges, and small metal name badges, which reminded me vaguely of steam engine nameplates. Many of them seemed to be French (maybe they commute into work on the Eurostar?) and all were charm and efficiency itself.

The lofty, gothic architecture reminds me oddly of my old school; great tall walls and pillars in red and cream stone, candy-striped in places, with scalloped windows and glass-panelled doors. (Yes, I went to school at Hogwarts.) But despite the vast proportions the space feels stylishly comfortable rather than cavernous. Aiming for the Booking Hall Bar, the Accidental boyfriend and I were informed that the bar itself was currently full and that we could have a drink on the terrace (i.e. right on the St Pancras platforms) or in the hotel's lobby. We returned to the lobby, and settled ourselves onto a long, comfy leather banquette, from where we could watch the coming and going of the staff and guests, numerous items of luggage, and the ballgown-clad attendees of some corporate event happening behind a large frosted glass wall, from whence issued occasional rounds of muffled clapping.

The cocktail menu at the Booking Hall has been dreamt up by Nick Strangeway, whose alcohol mixing skills for Hix have garnered him much acclaim. And delightfully balanced and sophisticated they are too, served in beautiful etched glassware which must force serious care to be taken by the washers-up in the kitchen. (I wouldn't want to be the waiter who drops a trayful of those!) After one excellent cocktail apiece the Accidental boyfriend and I managed to break our way back into the bar itself, and were seated at a dark wood table, so low that both of us struggled to engineer our knees beneath it. The menu in the bar is unashamedly and stolidly English. From Melton Mowbray pork pies to the beer-battered "fish 'n' chips" (yes, the unfortunately do describe it thus), the culinary message is "Wherever you've come from, you're in London now." We both dined on excellent rib-eye steak and possibly the best triple-cooked chips I have ever had.

After merely sampling food and drink in one bar, I cannot vouch for the accomodation, although I read one review in which a guest had been somewhat surprised to be awoken at 7am by a platform announcement. (The closest I got was the corridor towards the rooms, which are lined with slightly lugubrious recreated portraits of the hotel's original staff. Think scary-looking kitchenmaids clutching doomed chickens.)

For years, after totally adoring the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station in New York, I have felt that London's terminals needed to up their game, and make themselves more of a venue for all Londoners, for those travelling out of the city and for those who are not. Finally, the St Pancras Hotel may be bringing some of the glamour and comfort back into travelling by train. Or at least into a few post-work drinks in one of the city's finest old buildings.

An Accidental triumph

2011-05-21T13:03:00.003+01:00

What a victory! After my plea issued last month you lovely readers have voted aplenty and I am thrilled to say that I won the April 2011 Dorset Cereals Little Blog Award. Thank you all for voting and for sticking with me as I ramble my way through life here in London. Every comment and follow is much appreciated.

Here's hoping it will be my first award of, if not many, another odd one or two! If I knew who all you kind voters were I would thank you all personally, and share out the vast amount of cereal the award has brought me, but such is the anonymity of the blogosphere that I cannot. So thank you all, you know who you are! Now I'm off to eat my body-weight in muesli...

Come fly with me

2011-05-19T21:43:00.000+01:00

One of the joys of living in a vast city is that, should you tire of it, its infrastructure presents you with numerous options for escaping and visiting other interesting places. These days, your average world-class city is possessed of a handful of train stations, usually at least one capable of zipping you away to another country, and an airport or two. London is well served by both, from the vast terminals of Heathrow International Airport, to the UK's busiest interchange train station at Clapham Junction. We have the Eurostar train which can whisk Londoners to continental Europe in mere hours. The ability to hop on a train and get off in another country is a glamorous luxury for a city-dweller, and the recently re-invented "St Pancras" station fully deserves its appended "International" label. Unfortunately the average train trip in the UK is fraught with hideousness, as I have bemoaned before. Even plane travel, for all the glamour presented by jet-setting celebrities can be pretty grim. By the end of a recent 6 and a half hour flight, during which two children screamed continuously from Accra to Brussels, I was ready to commit murder.

But for me the true delight of travel begins before boarding. I just love airports. Although apparently I am alone in this. My Accidental travel companion on my recent trip to Ghana declared he hated airports, before adding "Doesn't everyone?". Why then do people not love them as much as I do? The buzz of an airport is incredibly exciting. Once one has ditched one's unwieldy suitcase or backpack at check-in, you can skip merrily through the tax-free shops (bargains galore! Or not...). You can grab a coffee or something stronger, or eat an entire three course meal. Although I do admit that the champagne and oyster bars across Heathrow's terminals are an incongruous catering choice. In the middle of the terminal concourse men and women with designer hand-luggage slurp down bivalves and Bollinger as, by the feet of their high stools, small children whine and parents lose boarding passes and their tempers. Best of all, at airports, you can people-watch endlessly. People coming and going, families reuniting and tearing themselves painfully apart.

I have long wondered why I am so obsessed with airports, and it was only whilst sitting in Heathrow's Terminal 1 overlooking a dawn-lit runway that I finally realised where I had developed this odd passion.

For many years while I was young the Accidental parents would drag me and my brother up to the West of Scotland for our summer holidays. There we would spend two soggy weeks on grey beaches dodging jellyfish and midges. We would drive there and back in a Volvo loaded with waterproofs and picnic blankets. But we would often break the long journey from Staffordshire to Argyll, and our customary lunchstop usually happened somewhere around Glasgow. My parents for some reason decided that a suitable family refuelling venue was the bar and restaurant at Glasgow Airport, which excitingly (when you're under the age of ten) overlooked the runway. For me however, these visits to this airport planted a tiny seed of longing. As we walked through the airport I would jealously watch those people who were there to fly off on holiday, wheeling their suitcases, losing their passports, clutching paper tickets to exotic locations. I longed to join them in the security queues but year on year the Scottish drizzle called. After a few years my parents bowed to my demands for a change of scene...and we drove to France. Realising I was getting nowhere with my demands for a holiday reached by way of a plane I resolved to make my own holiday plans in the future. And for many happy years I have flown all over the place, from North to South America, from Europe to Africa. And I have enjoyed my hours spent in the airport as much as I imagined those Glaswegian travellers did, all those years ago.

And whilst I usually have a fabulous time visiting new countries, exploring new towns and observing new ways of life, for me the excitement peaks before I have seen any of that. There at an airport one is offered an unimaginable wealth of destinations, a vast range of possibility and potential. They are the launch-pads to exploration. Where could be more exciting a place than that?

Another day, another city

2011-05-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

Keen to make the most of the bank holidays with which the end of April and the beginning of May were so awash, I started eyeing the expanse of long weekends as a potential holiday slot as soon as the Royal Wedding was announced. It seems I was not alone in this, as many other Brits headed overseas to make the most of their bonus days off from work. Not for me, however, were the beaches of Europe, or even the (slightly chillier) beaches of the UK. Nope, I went instead to Ghana, where I have just spent two weeks adventuring ("holidaying" doesn't do justice to the pace at which we hurled around the country, or the number of exciting places we visited).

As a now habituated urban-dweller, wherever I travel I look at cities, and invariably draw comparisons between any new ones I explore and my Accidental home-city of London. However Ghana is not much like the UK, and where similarities and differences may be easily compared between, say, Berlin and London, the Ghanaian capital city of Accra is not much like our European metropolises.

Accra, like many similar, comparatively young cities, is not governed by long-established urban planning regulations and patterns. It is wonderfully disorganised and chaotic. Taking a stroll through Accra is a major health and safety risk. If you manage not to tumble into the open sewers which dribble merrily along where the pavements should be, Accra's road-users could take you out should you step carelessly into their path. The cities' drivers hurtle across its roads as if they're all dancing some wild, automotive hokey-cokey; rushing at once into the same tiny spot, then racing away again. It is no surprise that many vehicles bear the dents and dings of former smashes. Nor that their drivers bedeck their windscreen with biblical messages, as if to invoke some sort of spiritual protection. One backscreen reads simply, and somewhat desperately, "Oh! God" (note the placement of the exclamation mark - playing it fast and loose with punctuation as well as the Highway Code).

The city bears the architectural marks of its colonial past, in the former slave forts and British-built lighthouse of Jamestown. It commemorates Ghana's most famous leader, the prolific writer and pan-Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah, with a vast marble mausoleum set amid lush gardens and ranked fountains. It displays the staggering gap between wealth and poverty, in the varied landscapes of guarded compounds for the rich and the board-built, waste-strewn villages of the cities' poor fishermen.

The tourist in Accra will not find any guided tours of the city, no open-topped buses or maps of must-see sights. Any visitors need to find their own entertainment, and find their own way around. This is not a city for tourists. It is a city for everyday lives, being lived at busy, bustling speed. There are undoubtably attractions but you need to work hard to find them, and brave the stifling, sticky heat that turns even the delightfully eclectic national museum into a sweaty greenhouse.
Whilst night falls abruptly around 6pm, like a black-out curtain dropped over the city, the street-life pounds on, in a whirl of crazed cars and twinkling lights. Behind security fences and slightly further of the beaten track, a sheltered ex-pat microcosm co-exists with the local Ghanaian life. In that aspect Accra shares a little with London, Paris, Berlin, and even New York; it is being shaped by numerous nationalities and supporting multiple cultures. It is a city in development, growing before one's eyes. What will it look like in another ten or twenty years? Will it be more like London? Or even less?

London cordially invites you...

2011-04-24T22:48:00.000+01:00

With less than a week to go until an unassuming young woman hitches her wagon to one of the world's most famous families, London is gripped by Royal Wedding fever. See, I've even just absentmindedly capitalised the very phrase. The city is gearing up for an event which will be beamed around the entire world. Tourists are expected to arrive in their droves. TfL has already warned of delays on the Tube. Clapham Common is to be turned into a campsite for those unable to fit into the hotels which have been booked up for months. Plastic Union Jack bunting already flutters across streets, ready for the street-parties scheduled for 29th April.

However many Londoners are eschewing the festivities, and making the most of the plentiful bank holidays which Easter, the beginning of May and the royal nuptials have supplied. For the last few days I have watched endless taxis collect fleeing citizens from their front doorsteps, loading large suitcases into boots, bound for places where the wedding of a future monarch barely makes the front pages.

I also do not much fancy sticking around to be invaded by overenthusiastic wedding tourists, so I should announce a short Accidental Absence. I wish all of you who stay and watch a truly lovely wedding. I hope you all have your hats ready and your Union Jack flags to hand. Unleash the souvenir tea-towels and prepare the street-party fayre. I'm off to have a celebratory drink, nicely cooled by the ultimate in royal wedding merchandising...

How does your community garden grow?

2011-04-17T13:45:00.000+01:00

When wandering in New York I have always loved to peek in to the community gardens which are scattered across the city. Often with little more than a small sign on a metal gate to announce their existence, these tiny gardens sit between huge apartment blocks, bars, car parks and shops, providing a much needed flash of green and natural life in a large, man-made city. Sometimes they have children's play areas, or small ponds and fountains. Other times they are little more than brown dirt and some straggly flowers which look as if they probably planted themselves rather than had been dug in by some careful volunteer gardener. Blink and you may miss them as you walk right by on the pavement. (Or should that be "sidewalk"?)

Recently I was delighted to discover that this cooperative horticulture is going on here in London too. Groups of locals across the city give up their precious free time to dig, plant, water and mow. Using designated public spaces they transform unwanted and unused land into much needed and appreciated community facilities. In the summer, outside space is highly sought after by over-heating Londoners. Any space will do if it has sunshine, preferably some grass, and enough space to lie down and read the newspapers or have an impromptu picnic. Community gardens are the perfect place.

Last weekend as the sun drove everyone outdoors I discovered Culpeper Community Garden. Outside the gates an ice-cream van idled, its tinkly music providing the classic British summer soundtrack. Inside the garden, Islington residents were making the most of their green space. They picnic-ed and read papers on the grass. A crowd of small children squatted together, staring into the murky depths of a pond, wherein tadpoles made themselves scarce to avoid being poked at.

A gaggle of older kids draped themselves across a wooden bench, discussing proudly just how drunk they had been the night before. Hard at work amid the relaxing Londoners was a volunteer gardener, spraying the parched plants with a hose (and looking like he wouldn't mind spraying the uncouth, hungover teenagers as well). Perched on a low red-brick wall was a man having a screamingly-loud mobile phone conversation, whilst also managing to eat fish and chips. Beside a patch of mismatched tulips, under an old hat, with a discarded beer can by his side, snoozed an old tramp.

More than a place for frustrated Londoners without gardens of their own to exercise their horticultural skills, a community garden seems to be more like a village hall in the summertime. It is a meeting place, and a space for entertaining. It's a home for birds and small creatures, and a source of local food too. (There were some impressive fruit trees and vegetable beds marked out, although one row of lettuce looked as if it would feed more slugs than people.) The city should have more of these little green spaces. Despite the fact that they require a lot of work to keep them looking lovely, there is no doubt that they are far nicer than asphalt-floored play-grounds and wide grey concrete-filled yards. I know where I'd rather spend my sunny weekends...

Out on the town

2011-04-09T12:26:00.000+01:00

Another university assignment, another break from my social life. Nights spent in with a laptop and a stack of academic texts are interrupted by daydreaming about far more fun evenings spent out and about in the city. Once upon a time I did not trail home at 7 or 8pm, shattered with nothing but an evening of reading articles of the empowerment of women in developing countries ahead of me.

When I lived in the Accidental flatshare, fresh from my university days (most of which revolved around watching Neighbours and staggering from one ridiculously cheap gin and tonic to another) we made the most of every free evening. Not a single Friday or Saturday night went by without some form of 'we don't have to go to work tomorrow' celebration. Now this may have had something to do with the fact that one of the Accidental flatmates worked for a well-known champagne house at the time so we had a plentiful, and pretty high class, alcohol supply. Any remotely exciting event was met with the sound of a cork popping. Seriously, any excuse. A bottle was once opened to mark the momentous completion of a first draft of one of my essays. (Needless to say, our neighbours were not fond of us.)

Fridays in the office would be punctuated by a series of rapid-fire emails between us Accidental flatmates as we wound each other up for a houseparty that night. We would already have dancetunes crashing through our iPod headphones to get us in the mood as we sat at our desks, we'd email all day about outfits and when half five finally came you couldn't see us for dust. Once home, a huge pot of pasta would be whipped up (excellent for soaking up alcohol) and the first drinks would be poured. Bedroom doors were propped open and three CD players would crank up, creating an unholy mash-up in the corridors and hallway. Each of us would try on the majority of our own wardrobes before raiding those of each other. The over-excited process of preparation to go out was often more fun than the hours which followed when we had finally left the house. (And it frequently continued as guests arrived, then usually joined in.)

We had plenty of options for places to drink and boogie where we lived, with many of the city's hotspots for the young and loaded within easy reach. Generally these were eschewed however in favour of nearer and cheaper venues. As drinking out and about in London is pretty expensive, we'd usually do our drinking at home then simply head out to dance off our hyped-up energy. Our "local" club of choice was Putney's "Fez Club"; a classic basement club that usually got hot and sweaty pretty fast. A favourite amongst the post-uni London immigres, one stood a good chance of a somewhat embarrassing encounter with someone you recognised from a weekly lecture on the flashing dancefloor. If we were feeling adventurous we would hop in a cab to Fulham and wriggle on to the minimal floorspace of "Sugar Hut", where a guitarist and a steel drummer thrashed out 90s old skool tunes.

Up towards Chelsea was "Mare Moto", Italian restaurant by day and monied venue full of permatanned European lovelies splashing Daddy's cash on overpriced beverages by night. They could spend as much as they liked on their drinks however but the club beneath is nothing special. The dancefloors in the vast majority of London clubs will always be overcrowded, sweaty, sticky and strewn with shards of broken glass. And gone midnight the music will always revert from club tunes to the 80s rock numbers to which everyone just loves to scream tunelessly along.

Rather than heading west from our flat we could head east and south out to Clapham, to the notorious "Infernos". I am firmly convinced that this horrendous place was only so popular with our university friends as it was the closest thing we could find to the grotty student club of our undergraduate lives, where sweat used to drip from the ceiling but the drinks were delightfully cheap. Infernos reminds me of an enormous working mens club. (By which I mean the space itself was huge - it wasn't a club full of surprisingly large men.) Depressed, and probably deaf, fish swim backwards and forwards in vast tanks next to the bars. The carpet is permanently sodden from years of spilled vodka and cokes; after my first visit I vowed never to return wearing a pair of shoes I actually cared about.

By the early hours of the morning we would be headed home to collapse into our beds, probably still strewn with earlier discarded going out ensembles, make-up and odd shoes. The next morning, the flat would be silent. And then someone's phone would go, and it would be another of the us, calling from our beds to compare hangovers. Someone would volunteer to make the tea and we would congregate (like victims in a horror film, still in yesterday's slept-in make-up) in the tidiest bit of the house to relive the gossip and drama of the previous night. Then, when we could put it off no longer, we would crank up the CD players once more and tackle the clean-up operation.

Vote for "The Accidental Londoner" in the Dorset Cereals Little Blog Award

2011-04-05T12:17:00.000+01:00

To all my lovely readers, would you be so kind, if you feel so inclined, to vote for "The Accidental Londoner" in the Dorset Cereals Little Blog Award? I am very pleased to have been nominated in the Lifestyle category. You can vote in a matter of mere seconds, either by clicking on the widget on the right of my website, or by clicking here.

Next stop, a Pulitzer!

Many thanks,
Accidental Londoner

How did I get here?

2011-03-27T23:24:00.001+01:00

No thanks to another miserable British train network experience I have just returned from a weekend away, back in the Midlands visiting my family. Another set of cancelled trains, another slow crawl out to Birmingham on Friday night on an overstuffed train. What joy! But eventually I made it and have passed a lovely weekend seeing various family members - some belonging to me, some belonging to another. Despite the fact that I had always called Staffordshire home until about 3 and a half years ago, people are often surprised when I reveal my Midlands roots. I am constantly mistaken for a Southerner. On occasion people have refused to believe I have not been a London citizen all my life (not bad for an Accidental Londoner, eh?). I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the distinctly non-Midlands accent I have, honed by boarding school, but quick to slip a bit when I head further North than Sheffield. Maybe it's my obsessive knowledge of London bus-routes (including which one's TFL has ranked most dangerous). Maybe it's my furious loathing of tourists and people who don't come from London that disrupt my morning commute.

After I correct those convinced I have lived here forever, I get asked the same question: "So, why did you move to London?". To which the honest answer is, well, I didn't really mean to. (Hence my Accidental prefix. Keep up, people!) When I left university I was adamant that I'd never live in London. It just didn't appeal to me. It didn't have the buzz and excitement of Paris or New York (let alone the glamour), and I thought it was dirty and full of people who did not look happy to be there. Yet after two months of temping for a local council department in Staffordshire I was climbing the walls. I had a two week internship lined up with a charity in London to look forward to however, so I answered phones and input data until the time had come for me to head to the city for that to start. Within days of being down here I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The internship was fun, and I never had to be in the office before 10am. I had friends here who were all too keen to help me spend my weekly lunch and travel stipend on dancing and margaritas. I had a kind Accidental relation who didn't seem to mind me living in her spare room. I had freedom and London's wealth of entertainment at my feet. The internship was extended a week more, then another and another. When I finally returned to Staffordshire I suddenly wanted to return to London.

Together with a uni friend who was in similar local government office purgatory in Sussex (she administrated yellow lines being painted on roads, I dealt with the crazies at Social Services), I hatched a plan. Loads of our friends had done it, it couldn't be that hard. Sod it, we would move to London, find a flat and jobs. And with that, we did. Shuffling from sofa to spare room, between our nearest and dearest, we met with pushy recruitment consultants, attended interviews for a myriad of crazy jobs, picked the least horrendous sounding ones and signed on the dotted line. We were employed, now we needed a house. House-hunting, we discovered, was far more stressful and tough than job-hunting. (My jaundiced experience on the subject was captured in one of my earlier posts. Bottom line, estate agents are loathsome, and in London prices are high and flats microscopic.)

After trawling the dregs of the January flat rentals market for five weeks, and recruiting another potential housemate on our search, we did find a lovely place to call home for two years. We learnt to commute across the city, and curse TFL. We learnt the satisfaction of the first post-work drink, and the misery of the office hangover the next morning. We made new friends, and dodged old ones we were less keen to bump into on the bus in the mornings. We discovered the best places to shop and eat and explore. We began our education in becoming Londoners. Whilst the course may be long, with each person who mistakes me for a bona fide Londoner, I feel that I am slowly approaching my graduation.

If you prick a city, does it not bleed?

2011-03-18T22:19:00.000Z

The newspapers tell some pretty gloomy stories about our world at the moment. The eternal struggle between man and nature has claimed thousands of lives recently. A powerful few are making decisions which have an impact upon the lives of millions; often without a thought for anything but their own self-interest in obtaining more terrifying power. Lives are being utterly remodelled and everyday patterns turned upside-down.

In the past week poor Japan has been shaken then drowned. Its cities, towns and villages have been pounded by a force which has done more than caused financial damage and a bloody great mess to clean up. Infrastructure systems have been destroyed and disrupted. Roads have ground to a standstill. Businesses have been shut up or abandoned. In the unfortunate areas in the proximity of Fukushima, even breathing the air and simply staying put could kill you. Towns which were once safe homes are now threatening, dangerous places. It must be a terrifying, suddenly alien place to be, yet the Japanese are behaving with immense and quiet dignity. They are living their lives as best they can, coping with this hideous disaster.

Tokyo is a capital city, the nerve-centre of a country, yet it too is struggling; trying to keep the rest of the nation going whilst dealing with its own traumas. Cities are not merely collections of buildings and communication and transport systems. They are not all hard concrete and steel, tough yet before the power of the natural world pathetically brittle. Cities are alive. They are organic communities that experience happiness, sorrow, fear and hope. People do not shatter down their seams like skyscrapers in the event of a disaster. They absorb the impact of a threatening force (whether it be natural or man-made), rather than crumbling before it. A collapsing wall feels no pain, but cities hurt. Cities scream in shock and hurt, and they weep in grief and mourning.

After two planes tore a hole in New York City the entire island of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs cried out. The city's cries were heard in swiftly erected banners and flags, and photocopied prints of people who had vanished. They were heard in the establishment of volunteer centres where ash-covered firefighters slept in cots at the back of churches, taking breaks from desperately searching rubble for fellow citizens. In some places you can still hear the cries today, maybe softened as life has attempted a return to normalcy, but when a city is hurt the wounds take time to heal. No shiny tower, however high, will replace the Twin Towers, which in their absence have come to mean more than they ever did still standing.

Not so long after 9/11 London too came under a similar attack. I wasn't yet living here, but remember frantically phoning friends who commuted along the same routes hit by the terrorist attacks on 7th July 2005. The morning rhythm of the entire city was disrupted. The streets filled with shocked and disoriented people, passengers slung off transport services which had stopped running. And despite the oh-so-British practice of trying to go back to normal as soon as possible, the effects of the bombings could be seen in the everyday functioning of the city. Patterns which Londoners could normally reproduce with their eyes shut suddenly required full concentration to begin replicating once more. A once tedious and frustrating commute became a challenge, and formerly annoying fellow tube-riders became suspicious enemies. Even today, with an awareness of what once happened in this city, I watch seemingly unattended baggage nervously. Regardless of the fact that it probably contains nothing more scary than two weeks' worth of dirty laundry and a straw donkey, I imagine the potential explosive horrors which could destroy me inside. As a wound leaves a mark on one's skin, so an attack leaves an imprint on the collective consciousness of a city.

I am one, small, Accidental city-dweller yet I can all too easily imagine the horrendous feeling of violation, of one's city and home, currently being experienced by those millions of people who have built their lives in the cities of Japan, in Benghazi and Tripoli, in Sanaa and in Manama. Yet from the living energy of a city comes its power to heal itself. Buildings will not repair themselves, yet people will begin to piece a city back together. Not just by reconstruction of the physical environment but by speaking and sharing experiences and showing support for one another. Just as the human body is surprisingly resilient to the knocks it sustains in a lifetime, many a great city has witnessed violence, fire and flood. Yet there are few cities which are completely abandoned by their citizens in times of crisis. When the mourning is over the city slowly begins to regenerate, through the return to urban life by its inhabitants, driven by that most insanely optimistic yet utterly human emotion - hope.

Final reportcards: what you can learn from a wander round Highgate Cemetery

2011-03-12T12:50:00.001Z

I like reading fiction which is set in London. Somehow having a mental image of a place drawn from a memory or familiarity rather than having to construct it solely from the words on the page before me makes it easier for me to become immersed in a story. I read a book not so long ago, the second novel from a much heralded author whose first book had been an extraordinary hit, which was set in London, not so far from where I live. Highgate, and strangely its cemetery, was the location for this somewhat unlikely tale of ghosts and identical twins. And yes I know I should suspend disbelief, blah blah blah, but I just wasn't wild about this book's plot which got ever more unbelievable and fantastical as it went along. But its descriptions of London held my attention. It even created a desire in me to go and visit the setting for much of the book's action; Highgate Cemetery.

London has numerous burial grounds where hundreds of years of citizens have found their final home in the city. Many of the most famous Londoners, or frankly people of all time, are interred here; from great political minds to some of our nation's more peculiar television presenters. The cemetery is split in two, divided by a narrow lane; one on side is the East Cemetery and on the other, the older West Cemetery. Neither cemetery is the blank, organised graveyard which often springs to mind, with perfectly laid out rows of headstones and trimmed grass down the middle. They were designed as "garden cemeteries", full of trees and shrubs, hence a wander around feels rather like a visit to a slightly wild and tangly country park. As the West Cemetery is only accessible via scheduled tours, my Accidental companion and I pottered at our own pace around the East.

Despite the fact that the East Cemetery is still used to inter many recently departed Londoners (who had the foresight and finances to reserve a plot), parts of it feel very much unvisited or undiscovered. Maybe visiting it on a soggy Sunday gave a particular vibrancy to the green grasses and weeds and trees. In some corners nature was very much claiming the intrusive stone and metal. Tangled branches wrapped themselves around mausoleum columns and carved crosses. In some places stone angels or obelisks had been toppled by the force of an immovable tree root.

Beyond the tussle between man-made monument and plants however, we found stones commemorating The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author, Douglas Adams, and the final resting place of punk legend, Malcolm McLaren. A random group of companions clutching bunches of flowers huddled in the drizzle in front of a vast monument, atop which was a monstrous bust of Karl Marx. One particularly striking, and everso slightly tasteless, tombstone stood 5 feet high in dark slatey stone, with cut-out letters spelling out "D - E - A - D". We noted from the inscription the person interred below was an artist; suddenly this design went from slightly shocking to a tad pretentious.

A common feature of many of the graves in this site is the addition of what their eternal inhabitants did whilst upon this mortal coil. Most simply state a single word to define who they were, beneath their profession. An artist here, a nurse there. Doctors lie next to poets. Publishers share a plot with font developers. Other epitaphs indicate a little more about a person's style, how they were who they were. One person who had worked in media production was commemorated with "Memories of laughter and lunch".

I learnt that you can begin to know a lot about a person from what is written about them on their tombstone - a final and eternal report-card. You can learn even more about what is not written. The matching headstones of a husband and wife stood near the entrance. The husband had died first, his wife choosing the lettering for her beloved: "Loved by all". His wife had followed him out of mortality, although her epitaph had clearly been written by someone who didn't hold her in such high esteem as her husband: "Loved by many". (I'm guessing the less devoted minority had chosen the second tombstone's text, to highlight that she wasn't missed quite as much as her husband.) So be nice to everyone - you never know who will end up writing your epitaph.

All the books in Britain

2011-03-03T23:16:00.000Z

When I am writing an essay for my university course I will do anything not to sit down and actually do it. The television I rarely watch, my iTunes music collection, the washing-up, and even the laundry all seem more tempting than the reading and analysis which proceed the writing of several thousand words on development and gendered ageing experiences. I usually have to remove myself from my flat to work, to save myself cleaning the bathroom or baking a pie in order to do anything but get my essay written. Typically I seek peace in coffee shops, finding my university library too terrifying a place to work; it is usually wall-to-wall panicking students which does little to reassure me that I needn't be panicking too.

The other day however I made for the library to end all libraries in London - the wonderful British Library. The British Library has stood in its current position amid the train stations of Euston Road since 1997, when a striking new building complete with a sculpture-strewn piazza opened to house a significant chunk of the nation's collection of printed matter. Within this red brick edifice, which has oddly oriental elements to it with its sloping, tiered rooves, are housed literary treasures such as a handwritten manuscript of Jane Austen, Captain Cook's journal and ancient copies of religious texts. Many of these items appear in permanent exhibitions, whilst temporary displays appear to detail topics such as the changing nature of slang and the hidden propaganda of maps. Stretching up throughout the centre of the structure, spanning the floors, is a glass-housed collection, once belonging to George III. Occasionally you can see a shelf slide back and a librarian claim a tome before replacing the shelf and vanishing. Yet there are millions more books, papers, even every back issue of British Vogue, hidden away underground beneath this building and miles away in repositories in Woolwich. And these are the books that many hundreds and thousands of readers, writers and researchers come here to see.

Ever second person, i.e. those here to use the library for its original purpose rather than there merely as a tourist, clutches a clear plastic bag containing pens and notebooks and usually a laptop. Each looks oddly like they've just been through airport customs and been frisked of all their personal effects. They camp themselves on benches, at odd, tiny triangular-shaped tables on high chairs (along a wall in the excellent Peyton & Byrne cafe), and spread out along balconies and every square inch of space. Yet the building is so well designed that even when fully occupied the space never feels over-crowded or untidy. (Tucked away, several floors up on the back of the building, is even a secret garden. Visit it in the summertime and you can take a break from your hard work and look out over the busy city surrounded by a wall of unexpected roses.) At the British Library there is enough going on to make for absorbing people-watching, yet not too much to make it impossible to be equally absorbed by one's books.
I force my focus back to my work and type away and consult my notes and piles of photocopied articles. Surrounded by all the ancient words of notable authors whose works have illustrated history I hope desperately that some of their creative and literary genius will rub off on me. I visualise words and phrases creeping out of the yellowing pages and floating silently and invisibly in through my ear and out once again through my fingers tapping on the keyboard, populating the blank document on my laptop screen; a process of creative osmosis, if you will. And so fuelled by a lot of coffee and in the company of the world's greatest novelists, philosophers, poets and explorers I finally finish my essay.

Are you a member?

2011-02-22T20:37:00.000Z

There are certain exclusive places in London where you cannot get in without a much desired membership card, or a quiet nod of approval from a doorman. All over the city are unmarked or discretely labelled doors which quietly announce the entrance to private clubs, open to those who subscribe to their membership. The Soho House chain have numerous buildings all over town. There is the luvvies' favourite, The Groucho, in Soho. Another media professional's hangout is the unhelpfully named Hospital Club in Covent Garden, which is more album playback parties than heart surgery and waiting rooms. If you fancy something a little weird and wacky in the way of private clubs there can be nowhere more suitable than Sketch, just off Regent Street, where the toilets are white, spacey pods which tell you stories in French, and extraordinary artwork leaps off every wall. All have just a gentle hint of pretension, but are nonetheless always fun to visit. Thanks to a recent work event which was held within one such club, I recently got an extended glimpse inside, however as most of these clubs are pretty funny about their secrets of interior decor and styling being shared around I shall let you guess where I have been rather than give it away.

Once inside this mystery club the lack of signage and mystery continues. I travel in a lift which only visits the ground, 4th and 5th floors. The only sign I note on a door simply declares "Roof". The decor is somewhat eclectic, in an expensive East London kind of way. In our paneled meeting room lime green tub chairs surround a heavy wooden ships table. A small, surprised-looking owl stared out from inside a glass case on a bashed, black lacquered cabinet. One wall of the room was formed by paned window glass looking onto the private members lounge, where young, cool urbanites (the kind who wear glasses specifically to evoke geek chic, rather than for any sort of myopic need) sipped £4 coffees whilst tapping away on their Macbooks. For the privacy of both the laptop-clutchers and my work group however the windows are all cloaked in old faded green velvet curtains, reminiscent of those which covered the stage at my old school during plays.

Outside our closetted space are bars, a dining room and an area containing recondition arcade games and a pool table. 9 boxes (yes, I counted) of Scrabble sit bookshelves next to multiple sets of Jenga and Monopoly; although I wonder how many members actually play a single game. A gym is tucked quietly away nearby, with a television screen broadcasting a livefeed from a swimming pool on the top of the building. For the two days I spend in the club the streaming shows little more than raindrops plopping into the pool, apart from early one morning where a single swimmer ploughs solomnly up and down, seemingly unaware that their work-out is being broadcast to fellow club-members (and the odd interloper such as myself).

The food is flawless. As a departure from the usual egg mayonaise sandwiches on industrially thick white bread usually served at corporate events, we dine on thin, wood-fire toasted pizzas and groaning bowls of rainbow salad; purple and yellow beets nestling amid lush green leaves and creamy parmesan. The service we recieve from the clubs staff is utterly charming and competant. They anticipate a guest's needs with the skill of a modern day Jeeves, and are just as polite to us one-off non-members as they are to those who pay annually for the facilities. (One day I spy the staff eating lunch from the same kitchen which serves the exclusive guests, seated down the polished wooden benches which stretch the length of the dining room; now there's a "work perk" worth having!)

Photographs of the inside of this establishments are expressly forbidden, in case one accidentally snaps a celebrity, however the view from one of its upper windows is equally intriguing. During a slow point in our 2 days of meetings I watch a rainstorm approaching and a building going up, as a large red crane extended high up into the steely sky swinging buckets of materials above the rooftops. Against the blue facade of a huge box-like building a bright, fire-engine red helicopter crouches on its helipad. From time to time it whirls up into the sky and off over the city, before popping back to recharged on its pad again. I am glad to be inside this cosy place rather than in the dreary cold below.

Somewhere within this single building you can swim, go bowling, drink, eat, celebrate, screen movies or even rent a room and sleep. Yet I would find it hard to keep my head on a pillow here, with so much else going on. I would worry I was always missing out on something else happening just a few, unlabelled rooms away.

Liberty - a shop made from ships

2011-02-18T22:04:00.001Z

As London Fashion Week dawns once again the city's shops are abuzz. Themed window displays and promotions of British designers have appeared on all major high streets. London's fine department stores offer designer showcases and even host catwalk shows. London boasts numerous department stores, containing anything and everything from clothing to cutlery, some of which are part of nationwide chains and others which are unique to the city; many are popular stops on any tourist's trip to London. There is enormous, opulent Harrod's, high temple of commercial excess. The original, largest or just best loved branches of bright yellow Selfridges and middle-class favourite John Lewis are based here too. The outer facade of Harvey Nichols on Knightsbridge, with its stunning and imaginative window displays, is as much visited as its floor of shops and restaurants inside the building. But for sheer department shopping pleasure there is nowhere more perfect than Liberty.

The tudor-style building, all white plaster and black timber reclaimed from the skeletons of two ships, stands out among the heavy red brick and gaudy shopfronts of Carnaby Street on the corner of which it sits. Inside the ancient and utterly beautiful timber structure forms a Globe Theatre-like stage for the mannequins draped in fabulous clothes. Carved animals and less easily discernible beings peer down the five floors over the edges of the balconies. Even the glass and brass lifts are panelled.

The very top floor is home to antique and vintage furniture and homewares, whilst on the next floor down the vintage collection continues in womenswear; couture Dior, Moschino and Vivienne Westwood hang out together on brass rails, sharing glory day stories of fancy parties and red carpets, amid piles of collectible Chanel handbags. One floor houses the store's unrivaled haberdashery department. Having searched for a very particular type of button for months (the way one does!), Liberty was the place I finally ended my quest with success. Liberty is famed for its lawn and distinctive Liberty print, some of which features designs by William Morris. This fabric can be bought by the metre, or covering various Liberty souvenirs. Some are evidently geared towards the tourist (paperweights and playing cards), others towards the high class tweedy shopper (handkerchiefs and tea-trays), and some for those who just can't live without a beanbag frog covered in the stuff. Entire rooms are dedicated to gloves and scarves, or even scented candles (although distinctly high end ones, with matching high end price tags - quite literally money up in smoke).

Cocooned by the fragrant calm of Liberty one can easily forget the whirling chaos of nearby Oxford Street's retail experience. Its comparatively empty shop floors allow peaceful browsing of covetable items without the jostling and elbowing of Topshop, HMV, H&M and Zara across the road. I would happily shop here forever, although I fear my bank balance would not appreciate it. Maybe I will have to satisfy myself with a climb to the top floor once in a while, just to look down and admire the view...

Famous former inhabitants

2011-02-11T17:22:00.000Z

As I roam the streets of London, I am often struck by the wonderful eccentricity of its architecture. Solid square buildings many hundreds of years old stand huggermugger with brand new edifices, all angles and aerodynamic curves. Glass cosies up to ancient brick which abuts shiny steel. A city is an organism; it is dynamic. Bits of it live, die and are reborn every second of the day. Materials and land are constantly recycled. Offices move into shops, and warehouses are reborn as penthouse apartments. Owners pass on much loved homes to others, others who move in and change everything the previous owners adored. And in London, as in any metropolitan city, many of these former owners were not your average Londoners. Former inhabitants could be actors, writers, playwrights, architects, designers, artists, pioneering scientists and explorers.

In London, and across the rest of the UK, buildings which were once home to some pretty remarkable people are sometimes distinguished from their neighbours. A small, unobtrusive blue plaque appears bearing a legend describing who lived there, when they lived there and what was particularly remarkable about them. Professions celebrated include everything from chefs to astronomers, and from cryptologists to fraudsters. Even fictional characters are commemorated, as a plaque appears on the Baker Street address where Sherlock Holmes supposedly consulted with those who sought his crime-solving wisdom.

Jason Dunne, the app developer behind the clever Toiluxe app (which locates your nearest, and often most glamorous public convenience) has even devised a tool to help plaque-hunters with smartphones. Using the GPS functions on iPhones and other smartphones the app will show you where your nearest blue plaques are; which famous names have lived near you at one time or another? Although (little note to Jason!) the keenest blue plaque nerds might appreciate a check-list function to see the extent of their hunting.

English Heritage is the current organiser of the blue plaques scheme, although the system of commemoration has been ongoing since 1866. Earlier awarders of plaques have included numerous London Councils, whose names appear on the plaques they awarded. The plaque displayed in 1867 at the birthplace of Lord Byron was the first to take its place on one of London's walls. I'm sure, at English Heritage's head offices, they are, as I write, finalising the lettering on the blue plaque shortly to be mounted above my front door: "In this house lived the Accidental Londoner, from 2010 to whenever I finally leave. Office slave, aspiring writer, blogger and wishful thinker."

Spring is sprung in Marylebone

2011-02-07T19:01:00.000Z

London has sunshine, and even the odd hint of Spring in the air. Can it be that the miserable gloom and freezing fog of our latest winter is over until next November? I dare to think that once again our seasons may be about to change. At lunchtime I pry myself from my desk in the office and head out to stretch my legs. It really must be spring - I realise two streets from the office I have left my gloves behind but I can still feel my fingertips. My bare feet look strangely naked in my flimsy ballet flats, having spent the last few months cocooned in multiple pairs of socks and huge sheepskin boots.

(When I went back to take a photo of Marylebone to accompany this post it was vile and grey, so here is a cheering Spring-y flower instead!)

To blow away the lunchtime work cobwebs obtained by far too many hours spent staring at my computer screen, I start walking west. Crossing Harley Street I head for Marylebone High Street, moving thorough wide streets lined with large, bright white buildings. This area is known as "Mah-lee-bone" or "Marry-leh-bon", depending on how posh or pretentious the speaker is. Pronunciation issues aside, Marylebone is far more than a square on a Monopoly board, and much more than a train station. Sandwiched between the tourist-infested Oxford Street and the crashing traffic of the A501, Marylebone is a central pocket of the city's wealth. Property prices are exorbitant. Somewhere near here is a multi-million pound bachelorette pad previously owned by Sienna Miller, with a full sized Turkish bath in the basement. On my lunchtime stroll I spot three Hermes Birkin bags in five minutes; a cool several thousands pounds of leather and metal hardware, each carried as if they were of no more value than a Tesco plastic bag. Every second person walking down the street has perfect blow-dried, highlighted hair and manicured nails. Even the animals here are immaculate - I spy a divine French Bulldog sitting watching passersby in the window of a gallery, wearing a black and white stripy jumper. (Could he BE more French, without a string of onions and a packet of Gitanes?!)

Marylebone High Street is a perfect place to shop. Designer stores and the upper end of the traditional high street line the pavements, with the odd pub and cafe with little metal tables outside. The perfect place to recover from a heavy retail session and to do some people-spotting. Daunt Books, one of the few remaining independent bookshops in London occupies a prime spot here on the high street. Yet equally fabulous for those on the hunt for things to read is the Oxfam bookshop a few doors down. This wonderful literary haven has a whole range of books in excellent condition from fiction to travel, and at a fraction of the price of the pristine versions in Waterstones.

You can turn off the high street and investigate the tiny side streets too. Unlike the imposing Harley Street mansions and wide roads, the side-streets are ancient and cobbly. They are well worth exploring as they hold all kinds of wonderful boutiques, even a shop devoted entirely to buttons. They are also home to some wonderful restaurants, including the delicious Union Cafe, where I once had a work dinner that was a far cry from the hideous mass-catering one is normally subjected to at work do's. But make sure you don't go too far south or you'll end up on Oxford Street - not nearly so civilised or charming. It may not be Spring down there yet either...

Unsung London

2011-01-28T22:17:00.000Z

A British musician died recently who was remembered for one song above all his many other works. Despite his years in a popular 1970s band, it is this single song, with its famous saxophone solo, by which Gerry Rafferty will be forever remembered. "Baker Street" has reputedly been played well over 5 million times across the world. The royalties from this song command around £80,000 a year, but it never made No. 1 in the UK charts. In the US it climbed to No. 2, and only in Australia did it finally reach the top of the charts. Yet the song's subject is deeply British, and deeply London. The title name-checks not only a physical street but a tube stop and a tourist hot-spot. It's not the cheeriest of songs, lyricswise, but the saxophone solo is something else. As a 10 year old at a new, very musical school I was asked what instrument I wanted to learn to play. I looked around at a sea of clarinets and violins and I knew I wanted something different. One day I heard "Baker Street" and I was sold; I would play the saxophone, and I would get good enough to play that solo one day. And I did. But now, as my saxophone lies unplayed back at the Accidental parents' house in the Midlands, I am closer to that song than ever.

Baker Street lies a fifteen minute walk from my office, and when I lived in South-West London it was on one of my many commute-routes home. Weirdly, now I think about it, I don't think I have ever thought of the song while I have traversed Baker Street's pavements. Maybe it is that I find it hard to believe that such a staggeringly beautiful song could have been written about this actually pretty unremarkable street. And this brings me to a long-time wondering of mine. Why aren't there more popular songs about London? New York has inspired many a chart-topper or classic tune beloved by many far too young to remember its original release. From AC/DC to Armand Van Helden, and Sinatra to Sting, musicians throughout history have found inspiration in NYC.

So why not London? Why has no one sung a song about an American in London? (All we have had is a song about being a Werewolf in London - hardly an ode to anyone as fascinating as Quentin Crisp) Or proclaimed the joy of being a Native Londoner? (a la Odyssey's disco classic "Native New Yorker') After the terror attacks of 9/11 The Beastie Boys recorded "An Open Letter to NYC" - a hip-hop love-letter to an adored city struggling to return to its confident former self. Not even Bono, usually keen to make music in the name of drawing peoples' attention to misery, could be bothered to cover a song in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks in London.

I trawled my iPod in search of music dedicated to and inspired by London. I find a ballad named after an unprepossessing tube station ("Warwick Avenue" by Duffy), and the mockney, jaunty little number that launched Lily Allen's career, "LDN". Merrily singing about drugs and hookers however does not exactly showcase London's finest attributes. I find the soundtrack to the musical Me & My Girl, and "The Lambeth Walk"; yet more fake cockney accents over a bouncy melody. Is there not more to London than this? The Kinks dedicated a dirge to the sky around one of the city's busiest railway stations ("Waterloo Sunset"). The Pet Shop Boys tackled a slightly deeper topic, the city's East-West cultural divide, in their classic "West End Girls"; yet the underlying synthesised disco melody did little to establish the tune as a credible urban anthem of which the city could be proud.

However there is one song which crashes and rages as only the stormy city of London can. No surprise then that the Time Out list of top 50 London songs names The Clash's "London Calling" as its #1. This is certainly the first song I associated with the city when I began thinking about this. The punk anthem was a political rant which epitomised the late 1970s in which it was written. Yet as the streets of London once again fill with clamouring protestors and the city finds itself in deeply uncertain times, the words ring true once more:

"London calling to the faraway towns

Now war is declared, and battle come down

London calling to the underground

Come out of the cupboard you boys and you girls..."

The song rallies a resistance to the threats of war, terror and even environmental hazard. It portrays London as a stronghold for righteous anger and desire for change. The Clash had faith in London, seeing it as far more than the tourist pastiche created by numerous other artists. They capture its strength, its love of a good fight, and finally even the Londoner's ability to summon up half-hearted humour in even the darkest of hours:

"London calling, yeah I was there too

And you know what they said? Well some of it was true

London calling at the top of the dial

After all this won't you give it a smile?"

iLondon - our virtual city

2011-01-21T20:10:00.004Z

Finally I have succumbed. After months of lusting after the iPhones of my friends, and feeling as if technological advancement were passing me by, I have taken delivery of my very own iPhone. And I love it. The ability to check one's emails and even do a little internet research from the bus has given me a tiny fraction of extra time in each day. And, who am I kidding, it just looks so pretty!

I am not the only Londoner under the spell of a smartphone. (As I type I can hear a constant pinging from the iPhone belonging to the kind man who has come to fit my new oven. The noise is a price worth paying however; he reckons that the oven he is ripping out has probably been here since the original conversion of my building into flats, i.e. since 1983. It was older than me! But I digress.) The streets are full of iPhones, Blackberries and HTC handsets. They are clutched in hands, and sandwiched between ear and chin. And their shiny faces are so beguiling that Londoners seem unable to tear their eyes away from them. Smartphone-users walk the streets of London, eyes down, and index finger trailing across the screen. They weave slowly through the more alert pavement users, phones held out before them as they were using them yas some sort of water-divining device.

But the numerous inbuilt features of Smartphones indicate that they were made for cities. You've got your GPS (in case you can't remember where you are). You've got your compass (in case knowing which way is North is any help when you can't remember where you are). You've got your internet access (in case you need to check when the last tube is running or when the Waitrose on Holloway Road shuts, once you've worked out where you are). However all this useful information is usually displayed so tiny on one's screen that, although knowledgable, one looks a bit of an idiot squinting at a map with one's eye an inch from one's phone. Plus due to the handy accelerometer in many of these Smartphones, your map is likely to spin round if you tilt your screen by accident. And you end up confused and lost again!

If all those treats, besides the ability to actually make a phone call, were not enough, there is more city-living help to be found in the shape of the plentiful downloadable apps that you can festoon across the menu of your phone. You can arrange for yourself a virtual smorgasbord of maps, service locators and even perfectly pointless games to while away the hours of tedium spent on TFL's miserable tube trains and buses. London's Time Out magazine provides an app version of its handy "what's on" service. You can download location services which point you to the nearest public loo (the delightfully named "Toiluxe" app), or cup of decent, non-Starbucks coffee. The Museum of the City of London has a fascinating app which, using your inbuilt GPS, shows you historic photographs of the street or park in which you are currently standing.

Gone are the days of the A-Z book; papery maps across a hundred pages replaced by the neverending pixels of its electronic cousin. Smartphones may teach us much about our city's history and open our eyes to its vast wealth of opportunities and excitments. Yet with our faces glued to our tiny luminescent screens we miss much of the city we pass through. We are not looking at the people, or at the architecture. We are ignoring the exciting street drama which unfolds around us. Eyes down, are we really immersed in our real urban world? Or are we living in a parallel world, lived through our technology? Are we living in London...or iLondon?

Tell no-one...

2011-01-13T14:21:00.002Z

Ok, I can finally talk about this. The ban of silence laid over this event a couple of months ago is now lifted. From the moment I bought my ticket I was instructed to "tell no-one". I could divulge no details about what I was to do, and where I was to do it. And frankly I couldn't even if I wanted to - I had very little idea what it was I would really be doing one grey evening in November.

The email confirming the booking for myself and three others to attend "the New Wellbeing Foundation", besides giving us a time to meet at the not-so-clandestine Ladbroke Grove tube station, requested that all attendees bring certain items with them. We needed to pack a dressing gown (which we should put on as soon as we got to Ladbroke Grove), slippers, a stamp, a toothbrush, and a photo of something or someone we loved. We were also instructed that "you will need to bring cash to pay for prescription medication and if you are not on a nil by mouth instruction you will be able to buy food from the foundation's canteen. Unless you have booked an overnight stay you will be discharged before midnight." Curiouser and curiouser...

The event we were attending was one of a series of filmic experiences produced by the clever and shadowy Secret Cinema. Subscribers to their programme receive emails inviting them to sign up for a screening of a classic and, at its time of release, ground-breaking film each month, but you never know when you buy your ticket what that film will be. These screenings however are not exactly a trip to the Odeon. They are elaborate and surreal events which place the watcher deep within the film itself, before a film projector even begins to whirr. In anticipation we began a process of filmic sleuthing and clue-deciphering, and I and my fellow attendees tried to identify potential films which featured people who wore dressing gowns, and wrote letters, and brushed their teeth. We narrowed it down to a range of films set in hospitals and asylums, with "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" a strong contender.

The night of our booking we turned up as directed, donned a dressing gown (amusing the commuters at the tube station) and followed a trail of actors throught the streets of West London. The guidance of porters clad in white and nurses in sharp caps clutching clipboards directed us to an old, disused hospital. Here, we were handed surgical gowns to don over our dressing gowns (which were actually being much appreciated in the November cold), and had plastic patient bracelets attached to our wrists. We entered "The Oregon State Hospital", and began to explore. The stage was, as we suspected, set for "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest".
Actors roamed the halls as the hospital's patients, ranting, screaming and interacting with the slightly scared-looking event attendees. One old man desperately tried to wrestle my "painkiller" (a bottle of beer served in a paper bag with a prescription label attached) from my hands, claiming it was his medicine and I had stolen it. He finally shuffled off, threatening to tell the nurse. We explored the long dark hallways, poking our heads into doors everywhere when we felt brave enough. Some rooms were empty apart from lone items of terrifying-looking medical equipment. Some held patients, lobotomised and staring, or wild and raving. Others held doctors waiting to psychoanalyse anyone who made the mistake of peering inside. One room (not so far from an ice-house morgue we found, complete with dead bodies) held a violinist and 3 huge papier mache duck heads. Bunny rabbits slept in wooden cages just outside an electric shock therapy suite, and a real cat strolled casually along the hatch of a "dispensary"; where one could purchase alcoholic drinks, purely for medicinal purposes obviously!

After a couple of hours exploring this eerie place, we took our seats in a room earlier used to host a yoga class and some art therapy, and the opening credits rolled. We watched the story of new patient Randle McMurphy and his admission to a mental institute ruled by an ominous nurse unfold, with occasional appearances from McMurphy himself (an actor not without a passing resemblance to Jack Nicholson). He even appeared brandishing a bucket of fish during the film scene in which the patients steal a boat and go for a day trip. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest marked a groundbreaking era in the portrayal of mental illness by the media industry, and watching it surrounded by tortured artwork and dangling ceiling tiles highlighted its eerie sadness perfectly. One could all too easily imagine this gloomy place being a prison for the mentally ill and those whom society simply struggled to understand.

As we filed out of the screening rooms, the front door of the hospital was wide open. The faint figure of "The Chief" could be glimpsed making his break for freedom down the road outside. We too made out own break for it, and wandered out into the night. In the courtyard we were disrobed of our surgical gowns, and discharged for the night. Unlike poor McMurphy, doomed to remain there indefinitely. Or at least until Secret Cinema put on their next great show somewhere else...

Play as you go

2011-01-07T11:35:00.001Z

I have not been gripped by a game since I was a child. Yet here I am, edging towards late-twenties, and I am caught up in a game being played the length and breath of London; Chromaroma. The London Underground map is an icon of this city, and is featured on everything from postcards to umbrellas to tasteless underwear for the most tasteless of tourists. Now its real-life counterpart has become the board for a game making commuting fun, involving hundreds, and no doubt soon thousands, of competing Londoners. Using data gathered from Oystercard swipes (an Oystercard being a London travel card used to pay for transport on buses and tubes across the city) Chromaroma maps your commuting patterns, and awards you points for visiting certain stations and completing missions; missions like collecting all the stations in the city named for monarchs, or visiting a particular obscure station at a specified time of day. Boris' bikes, and tube trains and buses are the game tokens. Yet instead of being moved around a board by the players, they move the players around the city board. The Oystercard readers keep score.

Of course I am paying for the privilege of playing this game. TFL must be laughing, as the development company Mudlark have created a way to induce Oystercard holders to travel more, and donate more of their hard-earned cash to the London Underground and Boris' Bikes. I now use the tube more than I usually would, aware of the extra points I will earn. I have even started taking unnecessarily circuitous routes around the city to accomplish obscure missions. Chromaroma ensures that you only earn your points for truly visiting the areas where you swipe your Oystercard. You cannot simply swipe in then out a minute later to obtain points - you have to leave the station and potter around and explore the area for a bit before re-swiping. Maybe even pottering as far as the next station to gain even more points.

Coloured teams (you select one when you start playing; pick a colour, any colour!) compete to capture stations, by having the most team members swipe in and out of a station. (I am proud to say only a couple of days ago I took one of my local tube stations for my team; a one-time Red team stronghold now claimed for the Greens!)

Chromaroma's online visualisations show me exactly where I have been, how many bus rides I have taken that week, and just how far east or west I have ventured. Being presented with a pretty, coloured map of one's commute certainly jollies it up, and also provides one with a fascinating insight into urban transport systems. In accepting missions one is instructed about the city's architecture, its history and development; where London's ancient wall once ran, and upon which underground stations architecture Henry Beck left his stylistic stamp. Puzzle missions provide you simply with an anagram of a station, which you have to unscramble before accepting the mission and setting off for "Swearword & Ethanol" or "Flesh Studio" to claim your points.

One of the greatest things about living in a city is exploring its hidden corners. You discover the history of former inhabitants, and the ancient patterns of life which underlie your own today. Chromaroma encourages this wider knowledge of one's city, inducing one to learn and explore with all the fun of a treasure hunt. And it certainly livens up the tedium of urban commuting. Let this extraordinary game begin!

The Christmas Exodus

2010-12-24T12:27:00.005Z

One of the joys of living in London is that one never actually NEEDS to go anywhere else. Which means one is saved the tortuous task of trying to leave the city, and at no other time of year is this expedition more vile than at Christmas, when it snows. And this is an event for which London is always entirely unprepared. If it happened in July, fair play, we'd all be a bit surprised, but winter in the UK is supposed to be snowy, and even if it weren't going on the law of averages given the last few years climate history you'd think some weather bods would be scratching their chins right now and identifying some sort of pattern. In winter, in London, it snows. Message received? Now, please be so kind to tell the transport people, because I think this may come as quite a shock.

London's transport system has its shaky moments at the best of times but when it snows its default position is stationary. It stops dead. Planes are grounded. Trains vanish. Buses stay warm and cosy in the garage terminus. Cars remain frozen to the kerbs, and the less used roads become impassable. Tubes, to be fair, do generally continue to run, but it's not snowing under ground so they really have no excuse. The horror stories we have all heard in the last week about Londoners desperately trying to make it home to families outside the city have reached new levels of absurdity. Families taking £1000 cab rides to the Alps so little Jimmy could spend his Christmas on the slopes. People hiring cars to drive to other bits of Europe, which can actually handle snow, to get flights from their un-paralysed airports back to the rest of the world. Tales have flooded back into the centre from Heathrow and Gatwick of days and nights, sat on the floors of departure halls, eating old, limp sandwiches provided grudgingly by BAA, who cannot be said to have come out of this incident well. Again. (A little new year investment in customer service training maybe?)

As this week progressed these stories began to panic me slightly. Would I be forced to spend my first Christmas in London, apart from the Accidental family who I had been planning to join up in the Midlands? Trains heading up north have been endlessly cancelled, delayed and stopped this week, and I have watched online tracking services like a hawk, desperate for updates. A sinking feeling set in. Virgin Trains have screwed me over innumerable times these last few months, hence I had a ticket booked on a London Midland train which was set to crawl back towards the Accidental homestead on Thursday afternoon. Several days ago London Midland announced industrial action and cancelled my train. I raged and mentally composed a thoroughly irate letter to them. Then it snowed again, and, displaying a degree of humanity rare to public transport providers, they called off the strike, and my train was back on.

In deep gloom about ever seeing the Accidental homestead again I packed on Wednesday night, taking with me extra layers, food, water, and enough to entertain myself for a full night stuck on an unmoving, icy train; a la the horror stories from the beginning of the month when such a fate befell commuters on a Southeastern train. I trudged to Euston a good half hour before my train was due to depart, pre-paid tickets smugly in my bag, and was greeted by a departures board littered with cancellations and delays, and a main hall full of desperate travellers, their luggage, and confused-looking small dogs. A trailer for the new film of Gullivers Travels played on repeat. Solidly. For an hour. I now cannot bear to look at Jack Black.

"This is a passenger announcement for passengers expecting to travel on the 15:46 service to Crewe. This train is delayed and we are awaiting confirmation of rolling stock. We will inform you of the platform when it arrives." Not an auspicious start. Half an hour later..."The delayed 15:46 train will now depart from Platform 11" - cue mass exodus from the main hall as everyone else at Euston is also dying to go to the Midlands. We arrive at Platform 11 where a train to Birmingham awaits. Er, no. A hurried announcement over the tanoy: "The delayed 15:46 train will now depart from Platform 10". We swivel 180 degrees. There is an empty platform, nary a train to anywhere to be seen. We wait. And then wait some more. A train arrives and regardless of destination we all form distinctly unhelpful throngs around each door, as baffled arrivals to Euston station find themselves unable to disembark, faced with hundreds of anxious emigrants, brandishing metre-long rolls of wrapping paper, barring their way. We all sort ourselves out and the new passengers scramble for the newly-vacated, and alarmingly still warm, seats. Then we sit there. Finally an announcement informs us that London Euston is the final destination of the train and thanks us for travelling with London Midland and reminds us to take all our luggage as we depart the train. We ignore it. Ten minutes later the train finally moves off and everyone sighs in relief.

The journey is slow, and cold. My carriage companions are mostly inoffensively peaceful yet one individual, uses the endless extra hours on the train to row with everyone in her phone directory, in between munching fruit gums and painting her nails a lurid shade of orange. A miserable sluggish few hours later (after we had been stuck behind a train doing a regional tour of tiny, pointless stations) and the train pulls into a stop two before the one for which I had been aiming. Unable to face more hours of glacial progress and glacial temperatures inside the carriages I hop off here, having rearranged the Accidental parental taxi service, at a portacabin on the edge of a snowy carpark. Inside a mop and bucket have been discarded in the centre of the makeshift ticket office, where seven people huddled together for warmth. I picked my way across the soggy floor, and trundled my suitcase out onto an ice-rink strewn with cars. Only a brief car-ride back to the Accidental village, and I had made it home for Christmas. I intend to spend the rest of the festive season recovering (by which I mean drinking) from the trauma of my trip out of London. Merry Christmas!

Alexandra Palace: The palace of the north

2010-12-17T07:43:00.003Z

In the 19th century, when it was cool to advertise all the questionable evils we were inflicting upon our colonies, Crystal Palace was built in south London to house The Great Exhibition - a collection of colonial artefacts, culture, and, alarmingly, the odd live subject. The original building that housed the exhibition, an undoubtably stunning greenhouse of enormous proportions, moved out of Hyde Park to the area which soon became known as Crystal Palace. A wee while later the building and its contents burnt down. Worried that North London might feel left out, The Great Northern Palace Company set about creating a northern equivalent. They shouldn't have bothered.

Alexandra Palace stands high above Wood Green, looking down over Crouch End, and to the entire city beyond. It is an odd Frankenstein of a building, with new additions bolted on to the old structure here and there. Metal struts are grafted onto ancient stonework, and the monstrous antenna which broadcast some of the nation's earliest television signals is spliced onto the end of the building as if a space shuttle has had to make an emergency crash landing through the roof.
On a drizzly Saturday, metal crash-barriers from a gig the night before marked my approach to the palace. A torn ticket for "Vampire Weekend plus special guests" poked up through the semi-frozen grass. Up close the building felt like an old gothic railway station, with its cracked boards and high stone arches. Yet, on a Saturday afternoon, it lacked any of the energy and activity usually associated with a station.

The lugubrious bar, painted a virulent bright blue, could hardly have been said to be doing a roaring trade. Through the faintly steamy windows a grim-faced barmaid rearranged glasses and glowered across the bar. Disappointingly all of the sets of double doors into the main hall were chained shut with enormous padlocks. Huge palm trees were visible through the glass windows in the doors, but the portico was as far as we were destined to make it. Somewhat ironically, vast signs above extended warm welcomes to "The Peoples' Palace"; we were clearly not the right sort of people. I was reliably informed that all that lay round the corner I had not yet explored were "a rather grim boating lake and a children's playground", so I gave those a miss.

The one thing which, on a day clearer than the one I chose for a visit, may redeem this strange and enormous folly is the stunning view it presents across London. Even on the dreariest of afternoons the grey vista is still quite a sight to behold. The nub of Canary Wharf blinked resolutely through the foggy rainclouds. London lay down below the hill on which I stood, curled up like a cat in a basket. I began my descent down the hill, mentally redesigning Alexandra Palace, and imagining it into the fabulous venue it could be...if only someone would invest the time and plentiful cash.

The morning after the protest before

2010-12-10T19:47:00.002Z

London looks a little ropey today. A little forlorn and rough around the edges. Its benches sit blackened atop one another. Its vast white stone walls sport newly daubed tattoes of paint and offensive slogans. Metal crash barriers lie on the streets and pavements, twisted out of shape. Lawns have been trampled by kettled students, muddy and littered with discarded placards; some of which display mispelt slogans which demonstrate just why their bearers are so desperately in need of higher education. On the day that the government decreed that universities could change fees of up to £9000 per year, thousands of students took to the streets of London, and left their ugly mark.

These student (and I use that term loosely given the blatant hijacking of these protests by destructive vandals, acting in the name of anarchy) protests have got me angry. Both as a student and as a Londoner. Yes, it's expensive to go to university, because it is a privilege, not a right. The precious skills we learn at university should stand us in good stead for a solid, financially secure future. Why should we be given this gift for free? It is an investment. We are buying the skills and instructive words of academics and tutors, the access to world-class libraries and learning resources, accomodation and food. Even with the new increased costs the UK remains one of the most financially competitive places to study. Students in the US can expect to pay in a single year more than we could pay for a three year degree course. I am fortunate that I can afford my own fees, which are not inconsiderable, but in order to do so I have to work a full-time job. And it's tough. Very tough. (My social life has taken a colossal hit, and the least said about my sleep patterns the better!)

I would hate for anyone to feel they could not pursue a dream simply due to financial restraints, but there are always methods to achieve one's deepest desires. And they should not resort to the desecration of a city and violence against those who have no control over the protest issue. Setting fire to a Christmas tree and defiling a monument to those who fought and died to allow us to live in peace, are protests against freedom and happiness, and an attack on a city desperately trying to fnd something to celebrate amidst the doom and gloom of the media, and our new-found Arctic weather. What on earth will be achieved in graffiti-ing a statue of a former government leader, now long gone, and with absolutely no control over his political successors?

It saddens me, and other Londoners, to see our city violated in such a manner. What harm has London ever done to students? It has given them homes, and locations for learning. Its inhabitants have given them lecturers and admin staff and fellow students. Pity our local policemen and their poor bewildered horses (and yes ok, I know they were armed, and it got a bit six of one, half a dozen of the other regarding violent behaviour) who are also dealing with the effects of the government's cuts. When the protesters and anarchists are safely back home a new army will be mobilised, to clean up the mess they made. This army will set to work scrubbing stonework and sweeping rubbish and righting toppled street furniture. And within weeks the city will look much as it did before the events of yesterday. The vote has passed, fees will rise - what was really achieved yesterday?

An argument about okapis

2010-11-30T23:42:00.002Z

When I was little, and on a trip to visit the Accidental grandparents, I remember being taken to London Zoo. It felt so huge I thought we'd never see everything. Animals prowled enclosures that looked lush and spacious; they could have been at home in their savannas for all I knew about zoological husbandry and habitats. I remember the worry of not seeing it ALL, the smell of the reptile house and the desperation about not being able to see the penguins properly.

This summer I happened to be walking through Regents Park, past the back of the zoo, and encountering a high wire fence around a dirt enclosure, I paused with my Accidental companion for a heated debate about the "nocturnal-ness" of an okapi. He said they came out at night, I disagreed. (In truth, I had no idea about an okapi's daily routine, and to be honest I was not 100% sure I could even pick one out of an animal line-up. But I would defend my argument to the death.)

Here is what an okapi looks like for those who need a memory-jog - bigger than you were thinking eh?

(Courtesy of Kol Tregaskes)

To settle the matter once and for all I booked us both tickets to the final London Zoo Lates event in August. And yes, I know that seems like forever ago with ice and snow on the ground but cast your minds back if you can...imagine the balmy evenings, how late it was before it got dark, remember when it was nice to do things after work rather than dash home enveloped in a million layers of clothing. Got it?

Ok, so one lovely warm evening after work I took my Accidental, and argumentative, companion down to hang out with the animals. We saw gorillas and monkeys, hiding from the hoards of evening visitors beneath plastic sheeting and leaping about respectively; I idly contemplated stealing one of the smaller ones flying from tree to tree above our heads which would have fit perfectly in my handbag. But I feared for my handbag. Taking a break from primates, we sipped Pimms and watched the penguins (from a perfect vantage point my 9 year old self would have killed for), who were hungrily awaiting their supper. A strange conversation between three women struck up behind us, as one relayed her last penguin encounter which involved some smelly fish, a small child and Gail Porter. After about 3 minutes I realised my Accidental companion, who had gone strangely silent, was shaking with suppressed giggles, and we quickly removed ourselves in search of further refreshment.

In the original penguin pool in the centre of the zoo no one flapped or waddled; a stunning feat of architecture built to house birds who hated living there - the concrete slopes hurt their feet apparently. Across from the empty pen a vast enclosure housed several solemn lions, pacing and watching, waiting wistfully for a small child to stick a juicy arm into their lair. Before bringing myself down with thoughts of caged, depressed wild animals, we went to cheer ourselves up with some friendly llamas, some misplaced-looking donkeys, and a bathing hippo. We played "Spot the Lizard" in the dark humidity of the reptile house (still as malodorous as I recalled) - my experience of forest-life in Madagascar giving me an easy edge - until my companion begged for daylight and fresh air, and a chance to settle the okapi debate once and for all.

By the time we got to their enclosure the okapis, a mother and her young offspring with matching stripey stockings, were receiving their nighttime feed and being shut up for the night. Not nocturnal then - case closed. It felt rude watching them as they readied themselves for bed, so we stepped out and left them to it. We paused before three lanky giraffes who cantered a farewell lap around their paddock to the delight of their audience. Their bandy-legged gait seemed to have an slow motion filter, creating an effect similar to movement seen through a strobe light, which experienced outside of a nightclub makes one feel slightly drunk and dizzy. As the tall doors closed behind the tall creatures we felt we too might be ready for a late night feed, so we left the animals to their beds and went in search of a nice bucket of water and a bale of hay.

Down with Starbucks! In support of independent coffee shops

2010-11-21T20:53:00.002Z

London, like every other developed city in the world, is infested. Spreading its caffeinated tentacles around the world is Starbucks, its branches identical the world over, stifling independent cafes in a bid to supply every global citizen with mediocre coffee in a branded paper cup. I say all the branches are the same, with their small, round tables and comfy chairs and easy-listening playlists, but this is not strictly true. They do vary slightly. Behind the lust-worthy Christian Louboutin shop in Belgravia there is a very superior branch, full of gorgeous, Euro-cash lovelies (whom one would imagine could afford far more superior coffee, or even to fly off to Rome to drink it somewhere more fabulous), with a spiral staircase and gallery from which to people-spot. Bloomsbury hosts the most understaffed branch I have found, where a lone barrista scuttles to and fro, between grinder and till, making beverages for students who have nothing better to do with their time than wait for him to serve them very, very slowly. From the window of the Wimbledon Village Starbucks you can watch Kelly Brook go out for breakfast, and there's usually a tethered dog outside doing similar, dreaming about dropped blueberry muffin crumbs. But I digress...

My new neighbourhood is uncontaminated, Starbucks-free. I believe the nearest branch is down by Highbury & Islington tube station, which I am fortunately far too lazy to go anywhere near. Instead the Holloway Road is littered with bright and busy greasy-spoon cafes, with names like "The Croissant d'Or". They are cheap and unpretentious, and seem to do a roaring trade, but for me, with my journal articles and 3000 word assignments on the theoretical evidence for "new wars", they are not conducive to writing. I don't know what it is - maybe the pervading smell of frying, or the blare of an advert-punctuated tinny radio next to the toaster? I just need a little more quiet, and preferably a small well-lit table upon which to balance my laptop and a large bucket of coffee.

So imagine my delight when I chanced upon Tufnell Park's premier (and I believe sole) literary cafe - Rustique. Inside is an eclectic mixture of tables, chairs, lamps and local readers and writers. While the kind cafe staff fuel their creativity with coffee, cake and huge plates of salads, writers tap away on laptops and scribble in notebooks. No useless tiny round tables which discourage work and long chats, as favoured by Starbucks. Each writer or reader has plenty of space for their papers and writing technology, as well as an enormous mug of hot coffee. No one furiously tidies around you or glowers at you as soon as you've drained the last dregs from your drink and fail to vacate your chair in the same breath. A high table turnover rate is not a priority here - contented customers and good service seem far more important. The place is busy from breakfast at 8am until the end of poetry reading evenings at 8pm.

In cafes and restaurants today, it is refreshing to examine a menu and not know what to expect; in fact, it is refreshing to even need a menu, and not merely order from a large board above the cash register. The small independent cafes of our city are holding down the fort in the fight against the giants of Starbucks, Nero and Costa - the coffee-purveying Davids to their bean-roasting Goliaths. And they need our support. Choose decent coffee and smiling staff. Choose time to sit and freshly-baked cakes which originated in a kitchen rather than a warehouse. Choose independent cafes!