She Loves London

Author: She Loves London

  • 14 Good Podcasts That’ll Improve Your Terrible Commute

    14 Good Podcasts That’ll Improve Your Terrible Commute

    Does anyone actually enjoy their commute?

    Obviously no one enjoys getting up for work in the morning, no one enjoys being seated within close proximity to other humans at 8am (or any other hour of the day, come to that) and no one enjoys spending upwards of £100 per month on what is, essentially, a daily exercise in self restraint.

    But can we agree that every commute has its flipside? For me, that’s having 45 minutes to listen or read or watch something without feeling like I should be doing something else. Looking out of the window soundtracked by some gentle pre-recorded chatter instead of a man shouting “I HAVE FIRM FEELINGS ABOUT THIS. CAN YOU SEE THIS? THIS IS WHAT I THINK’ and flipping his middle finger up into his iPhone at 9.30am.

    Problem is, once you start listening to podcasts – you sort of start wishing your commute was actually longer. If that sounds like something you can live with, here’s some recommendations for your journey to and from work.

    Song Exploder

    Ever wanted to know how Mobb Deep came up with the piano riff on Shook Ones? No? About how they found this Herbie Hancock sample and reversed it and slowed it wayyyy down and that’s how it came together? Do you care? No? Then this podcast is not for you. It is, however, for me.

    Search Engine

    Once upon a time there was a great podcast called Reply All, and then like all good partnerships there was a scandal which caused hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman to part ways. Like Ant and Dec, or Bill and Ben, or Mel and Sue, these two men are interchangeable, so one of them – Alex and / or PJ, created Search Engine, which is a show that tries to make sense of a question that’s been plaguing them.

    This is Love

    I’m Phoebe Judge and This… is Love. This is one I put on and fall asleep to, not because it’s boring, but because it has such a nice gentle way of telling a story that isn’t explicitly about love but also very much is. Phoebe also presents Criminal.

    Where Should We Begin?

    If I could pay to have a voice in my head telling me what to do in life it would be Esther Perel’s. Relationship therapist and author of Mating in Captivity, each episode is a one-time counselling session between a couple or person, and edits the shit out of it to get all the boring fluff out.


    Modern Love (NY Times)

    Length: 23 minutes

    If you’ve ever read the Modern Love column in the New York Times and liked it, or even if you haven’t and you just like listening to stories about relationships in whatever form they take. These are really lovely essays read out by a well-known person. Nice and short.

    Start here.

    Heavyweight

    Length: 50 minutes

    A new podcast, and probably one of my favourites. How to explain this one? Each episode is about someone wanting to change or fix something that’s been weighing on them for ages. Like, the person’s estranged from their brother, or they want a CD back from a friend (who happens to be Moby), or they need to scatter their dad’s ashes on the 18th hole of a golf course but haven’t done it and it’s been 16 years – and it’s how they work it out. It’s hard to explain, but it’s usually poignant and funny and lovely. Am I explaining this terribly? Yes, yes. I am. Just listen.

    This American Life

    Length: 1 hour

    Probably the best and most well known podcast on the list, this is an hour long radio show hosted by Ira Glass. If you listen to Serial, and liked it, then hurrah! These are the women and men behind it. Each week there’s a few different real life stories based on a chosen theme. It’s really good.

    Death, Sex and Money

    Length: 25 mins

    This podcast focuses on honest discussions of things everyone thinks about at some point throughout the day: relationships, money, work, family issues, and features both celebrities and us normals. Usually pretty thought provoking, especially the series they did 10 years after Hurricane Katrina.

    Snap Judgement

    Length: 50 mins

    It takes a little bit to get into, because the presenter usually does a bit of a story told to music at the beginning before they get into the actual thing. But even if you don’t listen to anything else, click on this episode about the bloke who found hip hop legend J Dilla’s “Lost Scrolls”. It’s amazing and if it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye on the bus, you’re dead inside.

    Criminal

    Length: 20-40 mins

    A good short one if you’re lucky enough to only spend 20 minutes getting to work. As the name suggests, each episode tells one story with a criminal theme. I liked this recent one about an officer and his new police dog. Obviously.

    Serial

    Length: 1 hour

    I’d harbour a bet that even your most elderly relative probably knows about Serial by now. But if by some miracle you haven’t listened to the first series which investigated, week by week, the story of a teenager called Adnan who was in prison for murder (rightly or wrongly, the debate still rages), then start there. Otherwise, as you were: frantically refreshing every Thursday.

     

    Want more?

    I also dip in and out of Love + Radio (54 mins), Longform (1 hour), Hidden Brain (20 mins) and TED Radio Hour (55 mins), Revisionist History, and Note to Self.

    If you listen to podcasts on the way to work, tell me, educate me, let me know which ones.

    That way, along with stories about our awful commutes, we’ll never run out of things to say at a party.

    This post was originally published when we all commuted daily in 2016, and was updated in 2026.

  • 11 Good Books To Improve Your Commute

    11 Good Books To Improve Your Commute

    I don’t cope well without books.

    If I don’t have a book on the go, it makes me nervous. I carry one in my bag every day even if I know I’ll be listening to podcasts on the bus or walking to work. You never know when you might need one, just in case.

    And since I decided social media is a waste of time and I’d rather be reading, I’ve read quite a lot. Big props to my local library for supplying 90% of the books on this list.

    Here are some of the good ones I’ve read over the last year.

    1. Ordinary Human Failings – Megan Nolan
      Really enjoyed this, found the ordinaryness of the characters really compelling and liked the story and the writing style.
    2. Wasteland – Oliver Franklin Wallis
      Brilliant, compelling, interesting, really engaging book about waste and where it goes. Genuinely changed what I throw away and buy.
    3. Our Evenings – Alan Hollinghurst
      Loved this brilliantly written, beautiful long book from one of my favourite authors (Line of Beauty, Swimming Pool Library).
    4. So Late In The Day – Claire Keegan
      Great short story, just 39 pages giving a snapshot of misogyny – just wished it was longer.
    5. Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart
      Intense and bleak, but completely absorbing story of a young boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow with an alcoholic mother – loved it.
    6. The Safekeep – Yael van der Wouden
      Good book, great twist, enjoyed it a lot.
    7. In Memorium – Alice Winn
      Found this in the ‘new books’ bit of my library and grabbed it thinking the blurb sounded interesting. Turned out to be a brilliant book set in the brutal, brutal trenches during World War 1. Pretty unflinching fiction. A proper page turner.
    8. The Haves and the Have Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra Rich – Evan Osnos
      Another impromptu library pickup. Collection of essays written by journalist Evan Osnos from the New Yorker about the mega rich oligarchs ruining the world. I’d say 90% of them were very revealing and interesting; some a little too American-focused for my British brain. Still, enjoyed.
    9. Heart the Lover – Lily King
      What a book! Brilliant. Excellent. Love story, farewell to youth, mortality, humans, oof. Sped through it, cried at the end. Didn’t even clock that it was a sequel? – Prequel? – to Writers and Lovers. If I ever write something half as good as this, I’ll be happy.
    10. All That Glitters – Orlando Whitfield
      Really enjoyed this memoir about a guy whose best mate was committing art fraud. Good little peek into the London (and worldwide) art world. Which is ridiculous.
    11. The Bee Sting – Paul Murray
      Pretty chunky (600+ pages), which made it difficult to get pulled into but then… it hooked me into the ins and outs of a dysfunctional Irish family, laughed out loud in places.

    And remember the golden rule of books buying: if you can, buy local, and use your library, and if you liked it, tell me what you’ve read.

  • Where to get lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street SE1

    Where to get lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street SE1

    The good thing about having a job in London and periodically moving to work in another part of the city is that you end up with a focused and unnecessarily deep knowledge of small, sometimes good, usually mediocre places to eat near your office. 

    And mediocre isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a universal truth that your food standards have to drop between the hours of 12pm-2pm Monday to Friday, when consuming five pieces of lukewarm falafel from a corrugated paper box becomes not just acceptable but a daily routine you actively look forward to by 11am every day. 

    You know that paying £6-£8 for a halloumi wrap isn’t really acceptable but you become oddly attached to these cafes anyway; living only for loyalty card stamps and becoming gradually recognisable to the people behind the counters. Then one day, you’ll move office, and never go back ever again. 

    It’s not about José, or Hutong at the Shard, or Flour and Grape, and please note, there is no Padella on this list – not because they’re not lunch-worthy options, but because they’re not Work Lunch-worthy options. And that means you’ve got half an hour, £8.50 on your Monzo, and want your meal served within 5 minutes of ordering to takeaway, please, in a box.

    So here’s my knowledge that I give to you: where to get your lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street, SE1.

    1. Caphe House, Bermondsey Street

    Also known simply as “Vietnam” to, well, everyone in my old office, who at one point had a spreadsheet to competitively log and track who ordered the most Vietnamese food throughout the year. In winter, you’ll want the prawn Pho, and in summer, you’ll be gunning for the roast chicken or coconut chicken and rice, and those are the only things I can recommend because another universal truth of Work Lunch is that you will order exactly the same thing every time, and never diverge from your choice, and also feel a point of pride when in the last week the staff take your order and don’t have to ask for your name.

    114 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TX
    website

    2. Petit Bleu, Snowfields

    Don’t be fooled by the a) French name or b) the lengthy queue outside, this is not some sort of high end Bistro and there’s anything remotely French about these peri peri chicken wraps. What you need to know is that this place serves £3 meal deals and the biggest slab of lasagne I’ve ever laid eyes on for about £4.50, and a jacket potato for about £3.50, and it’s basically The Cheapest Place in SE1 to Get Lunch. You’ll just need to get there pretty early and prepare to get slightly nervous about standing that close to other people inside.

    42 Snowfields, SE1 3SU
    website

    3. B-Street Deli, Bermondsey Street

    Salad in a box. Chicken with salad in a box! Salmon with salad in a box! QUICHE WITH SALAD IN A BOX. Soup! Jacket potatoes! ALL OF IT, DELICIOUS, AND SERVED IN A BOX.

    88 Bermondsey Street, SE1
    website

    4. Eatalia Cafe, Bermondsey Street

    First up, a warning because I’m pretty sure this place subtly changes the position of their counters and tills every week just to fuck with us. Secondly, if you want soup and a decent portion of pasta and also ciabatta… filled… stuff? – look, I’m not a sandwich girl – and also arancini or maybe chilli con carne and rice, anyway it’s all about £6.50. And if you go there often enough and look particularly knackered after a long haul flight, they might offer you a free espresso. Man that counter moves every week, I swear it.

    94 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UB
    website

    5. Flat Iron Square

    Yeah, I know, not really near Bermondsey Street but a good one for when your mate on maternity leave comes to meet you for lunch and you’re not sure if the box of re-heated Bolognese you usually consume at this time of day is actually good or not, because who knows if Work Lunch food is actually good, or if we’re all just hungry and need to taste something apart from our own salty tears by 12pm; anything, anything at all, as long as it comes in a wrap? Anyway, Flat Iron Square has loads of quick food places, it’s a 10 minute fast trot away, and the pasta probably costs a quid more but is made fresh in front of you and FYI, it’s now called beef shin ragu. 

    64 Southwark St, London SE1 1RU
    website

    6. Borough Market

    Another token mention, this time for the world’s most famous mass tourist feeding ground and your Special Occasion Work Lunch. Borough Market is inevitable and more on this list to make up the numbers, because if you work in London Bridge you won’t be able to avoid it. Someone will suggest it, someone will laud it as the best place to go when a colleague visits from another office, you will go there to meet your mate who works nearby too. But the rest of the time, Borough Market is a strictly Friday, three times a year affair. Go early. Get the pad thai. Then get the hell back to the office. 

    7. Tortilla, Tooley Street

    Burritos are important to London and the office workers of this city take them very seriously. That’s my disclaimer, because I don’t want this recommendation to be an indication that Tortilla is The Best Burrito Place, because it’s not. Remember, this is Work Lunch, we’re dealing with a tiny radius of choices: and for Bermondsey Street your choice is Tortilla, where I once laughed at the miniscule size of the small burrito they were making me with such gusto that they gave it to me for free. (Chipotle / Daddy Donkey 4 lyf)

    90 Tooley Street, SE1 2TH
    website

    8. More London

    Pret. Leon. Itsu, they’re all… no, don’t. Oh god, eurgh, ignore this entry. I feel so dirty. Let’s move on.

    BONUS! where to sit and eat it:

    • Your desk, obviously
    • Tanner Street park
    • More London Place
    • Grassy bit by Tower Bridge 
    • There’s a nice concrete sitting area in front of the university opposite the Shard

    It goes without saying there are places – many places – I haven’t listed, probably because I haven’t eaten there. Also, since I last updated this post so many places have closed. So, over to you.

    Any tips? Leave ’em below.

    Updated February 2026