The Overground is fast becoming my new favourite way to get around.
Sometimes you get on and there’ll be loads of dogs, other times you’ll be kept happy by the nice views of London, and occasionally you might even see the odd marriage proposal.
And other times you get on the Overground and see someone on their way to play hockey on a UNICYCLE.
Yeah. You heard.
Does this count as stalking?
The unicycle / hockey stick combo made me a bit curious, because while unicyclists are kind of par for the course around London these days – sort of – you don’t often see them on the tube, and the idea of riding one while wielding a large stick seemed like the last word in multitasking.
And I’m not going to lie, I was impressed.
Then this bloke was joined by another one, and I realised hockeying on a unicycle was in no way a solo pursuit.
So when I got home I Googled it, and apparently this is a real thing. There’s a league and everything (they shorten it to LUNIs. The website did not confirm whether this was a play on the word “looneys”, but I suspect it played a part).
Unicycle. Hockey stick. Banana skin.
This recent discovery is not only symbolic of the weird, wonderful and casually out-of-the-ordinary stuff that goes on in London on a day-to-day basis…
…but it also means that the next time you feel pleased with yourself for getting down the gym, or doing a particularly impressive downwards dog in yoga, you’ll probably think:
Somewhere in Hackney tonight, there are people riding unicycles and playing hockey at the same time.
Earlier this year, I applied to be a volunteer for World Book Night.
World Book Night first came to my attention last year when someone in our office was giving out free copies of Ishiguru’s The Remains of the Day and I broke land speed records (and probably her hand) taking one off her to see what it was all about.
Because if you haven’t clocked it already, where freebies are concerned, my motto is “grab now; shoehorn into a blog post later“.
These are books
It’s fair to say I’m not the target recipient of a World Book Night book because I basically eat words for breakfast; stuffing them all into my face like a literary Cookie Monster.
(Bookie Monster? No. Moving on)
But happily, that fact also makes me the ideal volunteer: and so it was that I became one of the 20,000 chosen to pick a book from the list and distribute 20 copies to people who wouldn’t normally read on 23rd April this year.
The book I chose was Damage by Josephine Hart, partly the description intrigued me, but mainly because I had never read it before.
In hindsight, this turned out to be a good thing, as I later found out that books largely centred around sex, incest, inappropriate relationships and mild sadomasochism rarely say as much on the descriptive blurb.
And it’s for that reason I am currently hoping my boss’ wife, mother’s friend and the man who sells the Big Issue on the Strand all have an open mind when it comes to literature.
Hurrah!
So, how do you go about giving free books to random people?
Well, at times I wondered whether approaching people might be seen as patronising – after all, how do you tell someone who doesn’t read, from one who does? What if they don’t want your bloody book?
It’s fair to say I wasn’t expecting to feel nervous about being a book giver when I signed up, but then gradually on the morning of the 23rd, it dawned on me that this is London.
London, where people don’t stop for anything or anyone, except to throw the occasional punch.
I jest, of course (I haven’t punched anyone in weeks), but the fact remains: my main goal was to aim my bookish sights at easy targets, i.e. those already standing still.
Which is partly why the Big Issue man outside Somerset House got one: he’s smiley, always there rain or shine, and, well, he can’t run away because that’s his spot.
He accepted my garbled offer of a book with a grin and polite “Thank you” (although it did occur to me that he’d probably just much rather I’d bought a Big Issue – maybe one day I will, then I’ll ask him).
The receptionists at my work were also only too happy to accept, as were a few colleagues, including my boss – eek, see above – and a girl from the next office who I offered one to in the toilets in a triumph against awkward small talk by the sink.
A lady at my pilates class refused one as she’s “picky about what she reads” (not into novels featuring darkly questionable couplings, clearly) but others gratefully took the new addition to their shelves, and soon I was left with only one or two going spare.
And naturally, that meant leaving one on the 243 bus at 10pm with a drunken note explaining what to do with it. Basically: take it. It’s free. Read. Enjoy. In short, no one’s going to lynch you for picking this up.
That was last week, and now World Book Night 2013 is finished and I’ve now read my copy (and yes, it is an excellent book, and a quick read to boot), meaning there’s now one going spare.
So do you know someone who’d like a free book? Would you like a free book that may involve some scenes of a graphic nature? Have you seen someone lately who’s made you think “Blimey, what you need is a BOOK about a dark, passionate, wildly inappropriate love affair”?
If so, leave a comment below and tell me why if you’d like it, or who you want to give it to, and it shall be yours.
Whenever people blog about stuff they received for free, their posts always seem to start with something like this:
“I’ve always been really interested in amphibious modes of transport. So when the Huge Cruise Company asked if I’d like an all expenses paid trip on their luxury liner to an exotic island somewhere really sunny, I jumped at the chance to check out the construction of the ship for my readers.”
For some reason, no one says “Look guys, I just fancied a freebie so bear with me on this”, instead they waffle on about doing it for their readers, or having a real affinity with the brand.
Well bloggers, the game’s up.
It’s high time we stopped pretending and admitted that occasionally, we all just want something for free so we can brag to our mates and make them wish they spent a large proportion of their time writing a blog about London instead of going out on a Friday night.
Zim Zimma, who got da key to my 4 star hotel room
Which is why …
…when the Cavendish Hotel in Mayfair asked me if I’d like to come for an overnight stay and dinner round their gaff, I was all YES, YES, ABSOLUTELY, YES, YES, WHEN? despite secretly having the following reservations:
The average Londoner seldom needs to stay in four star hotels in London
The average Londoner cannot afford to stay in four star hotels in London
I think Mayfair is the devil
Luckily for me, the reception staff at the Cavendish had already anticipated this moral dilemma, and promptly solved it by uttering the following words upon check-in:
Your executive king room has been upgraded to a junior suite. It’s on a private floor, so you’ll have to take the lift to the 14th and follow the stairs to the penthouse suites. Would you like any help with your bags?
And with the magic words “upgrade”, “suite” and “penthouse” firmly in the bag: that, as they say, solved that.
So off we went to the top floor and into the Berkeley Suite, where, it could be said, the views over London weren’t half bad.
The room itself had everything a Dalston native could want from their first London hotel stay:
a huge bathroom with a separate shower and bath
one of those low down basin things that blokes use to wash their nuts
bathrobes, slippers, a loofah
two sofas
a big TV with the option to watch stuff in black and white
a Bose sound dock for the room rave
a super king sized bed the size of Battersea and
a Nespresso machine that neither of us knew how to work.
It also had a surplus chaise lounge which, my date remarked, “doesn’t really fit with the colour scheme of the room”, but it’s fair to say that by this point, all we wanted was an excuse to call reception using the phone next to the loo.
So with dinner not booked until 9pm, we nipped off to the Three Crowns pub round the corner for drinks and a bowl of olives which looked and tasted suspiciously like wasabi peas.
I later found out they were, indeed, wasabi peas.
The pub was home to a few bewildered looking tourists and the friendliest bar staff you’ll find any side of Whisky Mist, one of whom spent a lot of time singing along to Adele songs in an Eastern European accent. All in all, I agreed with this reviewer who said the Three Crowns is quiet, but
a nice place to spend an hour escaping from the horrors of the West End.
In short, by the time 9pm and dinner rolled around, we were wasted.
Just kidding.
We were a bit tipsy though, so after returning to the hotel and getting directions to the Petrichorrestaurant on the first floor, we were well up for getting stuck in to our dinner.
I called shotgun on the best starter and main (quail eggs with brioche soldiers, then a chicken and bacon roulade), which meant my date – who suffers from an aversion to ordering the same thing as someone else – opted for a fish combo of scallops and trout.
While I was just pleased to find out that scallops actually existed in real life, not just on Masterchef, my date was busy panicking about the upcoming trout. Because that’s what happens when you panic-order pink fish, when you don’t really like pink fish.
*pointed look*
Bellies full, cheese board consumed, wine devoured, signature scrawled – we retired to the 15th floor, where London was lit up below us and looking spectacular.
Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it, so here’s one of me feeding a dog some Monster Munch at a party a few weeks ago instead.
Thankfully, the Cavendish doesn’t chuck you out until 12pm at the weekends, so in the morning there was plenty of time to take in the sights of Mayfair and have a quick shop in Fortnum and Mason have an extended nap and miss breakfast before checking out.
All in all, I would highly recommend the Cavendish Hotel. The staff are lovely and polite. The food is good. The suites have lovely views. The complimentary water is brilliant for a hangover. You’ll find it tucked behind Fortnum and Mason at 81 Jermyn St St James’s, London SW1Y 6JF.
At this point I’d like to wrap things up by saying how interested I am in feng shui and room design, and stress how much I really, really like four star hotels.
