She Loves London

Month: February 2013

  • Surviving Cafe de Mort: Clearly Not Quite Deadly Enough

    A wise person once said,

    If you have to sign a waiver form before eating in a restaurant, you should probably just go to Pizza Express instead.

    But then Pizza Express put a flyer on our table last week asking people to Instagram their meals while they ate, which is the sort of thing that makes me want to die anyway.

    So last night I went to Cafe de Mort, picked up a pen and did this.

    Signing my life away in Cafe de Mort
    JHC – silliest of billies.

    Wise people and me, we’ve never really got along that well.

    Cafe de Mort is a two day, pop-up restaurant held at the Crypt at St Andrew, which is across the road from the home of ping pong in Holborn.

    Much like Ping Pong, death was a distinct possibility – albeit not at the hands of me wielding a table tennis bat – but unlike Ping Pong, this event was completely free and all in aid of Remember a Charity – an organisation that’s on a mission to get people to include good causes in their wills.

    Having acquired a Death Wingman earlier that afternoon on Twitter, myself and Holly walked through the candlelit arches to join a load of other people who clearly needed to be eradicated from the planet toute suite; including but not limited to Christopher Biggins, whose career suicide mission to the “I’m a Celebrity” jungle had evidently been unsuccessful, a couple of the (not-as-hot-as-the-other) girls from Made in Chelsea and Donna Air…from, err, the 90s.

    Gregg Wallace off Masterchef was also there hosting, and we were relieved to see a man from St John’s Ambulance standing by – you know, just in case.

    Ah, and then there was the food.

    Cafe de Mort

    We were served five courses and accompanying cocktails all containing poisons and toxins that could potentially kill you if you complained too loudly in front of the chef, starting with Fugu (ref: the Simpsons), middling with False Morels and concluding with a healthy shot of 84.5% ABV rum. The compounds of choice included Cyanide, moonshine, Ghost Chilli, Tetrodoxin, Alfatoxin, Theobromine, and… are you dizzy yet?

    I confess, after the first course – I was a little bit.

    It wasn’t so much the food that got me, or the blissfully strong Bloody Hell Mary, as the paranoia. Suddenly, we became hyper-aware of the slightest belly tingle mid-scoff, the sudden onset of a cough, even waking up this morning with a slight twinge in my lower back is giving me a healthy dose of Puffa Fish Hypochondria in the cold light of day.

    I think I might make that will after all.

    The good news, kindly blog readers, is that I did wake up this morning. But the bad news is that means the members of the Made in Chelsea cast did too.

    I suppose you can’t have everything.

    C’est la vie.

  • Dogs in Shops: Art Hounds on Cross Street, N1

    Listen here, shops of London: there are a few things that will definitely, 100% make me want to be in you.

    Firstly, your sales assistants will be friendly without asking what I had for breakfast, and you’ll sell a selection of artfully chosen and beautifully placed products that I can’t find online for significantly less (or at the very least, wrap your more expensive wares in pretty paper). Thirdly, you’ll ideally provide changing rooms with curtains that pull all the way across – and finally, most important of all, you will recruit a four legged animal to prowl the shop floor.

    Following the news that London’s first ever cat cafe looks like it could actually be happening, and with Brixton’s sausage dog cafe currently in the fundraising stages, I am clearly not the only Londoner out there craving their creature comforts.

    So if seeing dogs in shops makes you ridiculously happy, then welcome to my world. And the collection starts here.

    First up, I give you:

    The Art Hounds of Cross Street

    Dogs in Shops - Cross Street N1
    Cross Street Gallery, N1

    I didn’t go in to meet these two, mostly because my art chat isn’t great when it’s 2pm and I’m already half a bottle of red wine down, but also because my friend had just deposited a glass of water on my lap in Le Mercury so I was a little bit chilly.

    Still, these connoisseurs of the art world looked ready to assist anyone who might wonder through the door. I liked them. They made me smile.

    Seen a shop dog? Cat? Horse? Please send it my way, and let me know where you found it so I can go there myself and bathe it in the right sort of love.

  • Why Everyone *Really* Goes to the British Museum

     

    Last Sunday afternoon, I went to the British Museum.

    You know, as you do – just casually dropped in on a whim in the same way that you might mosey on into a playground: to see if everything is as you remember and to have a go on the slides.

    (n.b. there are still no slides at the BM.)

    British Museum

    The British Museum is always there, but being a twenty-something in London means your weekends often start with “Yeah, we should really do that” and end with Dominos pizza in a darkened room.

    As such, the British Museum and places like it tend to drift into the background when you’re thinking of things to do.

    They’re a legitimate option, but one that has remained unexplored since you were packed off there on a coach aged 10; activity sheet in one hand, and that week’s Best Friend in the other.

    Although the day was ripe to fully explore everything the museum had to offer, I, like everyone else, was really only there for one reason.

    You might dutifully look in on Africa, or pass through Asia, Ancient Greece, or the Renaissance rooms…but really, you’re only killing time before the main event.

    Because much like you only really go to the Natural History Museum to see that massive blue whale, or the London Aquarium to walk through the underwater tunnel, everyone knows you only really go to the British Museum to see the dead people.

    After elbowing and tutting past the shuffling backpacks of the slow-moving, camera-wielding tourists, excusing your way through a cacophony of languages you don’t understand, dodging the wagging fingers directed at children with drifting attention spans, you arrive at the glass cases in question.

    And there they are. Case after case of embalmed, bandaged, and very, very deceased Egyptian mummies.

    By far the largest crowd, though, is reserved for the Gebelein Man.

    Holding a thousand gazes a day, he’s still curled up in the same position as when he was buried in 3500BC, and unchanged (perhaps unsurprisingly) since the last time I saw him when I was ten.

    Morbid curiosity sated for another few years, you can head for the exit now – giving Europe a cursory glance as you go – out of the doors and back into the winter sunshine; safe in the knowledge that yes, everything is as it was.