Author: She Loves London

Questions People Ask When you Blog About London

When you’ve got a blog about London, people expect you to know stuff.

“Hey!” they say, bounding up to you all expectant ‘n’ that, “You know about London. Six people, Saturday night. We want jazz with a casual hip hop interlude, a sit down dinner and a fine selection of craft beer on tap, preferably north of the river. Where can we go?”

It is at this point you invoke the Knowledgeable Face – an expression that involves pursing your lips together, looking at the sky, crinkling your brow and counting to three – before running through the options.

“Hmm. Dunno. Not a clue. I’d ask on Twitter. Or, actually – you tried TimeOut?”

“Oh, I just thought…” they begin, disappointment etched across their face like rampant teenage acne, “I just thought you might know. Because of your blog and stuff.”

Then they walk away, muttering about there should be an Ofcom for blogs or something and you call after them, “Hey! Come back! I know things! Ask me the five different types of people you can expect to meet on the tube! Ask me where the cool kids sit on the bus! Oi! 139 FANS CAN’T BE WRONG, SUNSHINE.”

It’s like look, here’s the deal.

I might not know where you can find a decent meal west of Kingsland Road, and I think I’ve been to Western Australia more times than I’ve been south of the Thames – but that’s because my social plans are an exact science.

It’s taken years to hone this stuff, to get it down, to master the art of what I like to do in London – and when I find it, I stick to it.

I’ve come along way since those heady days of wandering aimlessly around Leicester Square looking for any bar that’ll have me, and I’m quite proud of the fact that now, my social life on any given day can be pinpointed with GPS accuracy.

Sunday? New Rose. Tuesday? Carluccios and Colebrooke. Saturday? Ruby’s, then the Lion. Friday? Anywhere, god dammit, it’s Friday! Then usually Barrio. Brunch? Dalston Emporium or Bardens. Can’t go home, won’t go home? The Nest. Weekday, starving, need food? MeatLiquor. Hungry after work? Wahaca, Covent Garden. Belly dancing? Gallipoli. Fancy a walk? Hampstead Heath. Dead people? British Museum.

Ask me where to go, where’s good, what’s new, what’s happening and I will reel off one of the above.

Ask me which carriage to stand in to get on the Metropolitan line train at Baker Street and off right in front of the stairs at Pinner? Depends on the platform, but your best bet is the second pillar down near the Snack Stop.

And sometimes, when you’re a Londoner, that’s the only sort of knowledge you need.

20th March 2013
Dogs in Shops: Model Behaviour on Marylebone High Street

Marylebone High Street has long been one of my favourite places to shop in London.

Well, I say shop.

Mostly I just wander through on my way to somewhere else, perusing the lovely clean boutique-y rails from the outside in, pretending my hair is glossier than it is and that I can afford to buy more than just a drink from Starbucks.

(What is a soy chai latte anyway?)

Fitting, then, that this is where we should find our second shop dog of the series, a hound who would definitely make me want to spend £100 on something I couldn’t afford in order to pat his head.

Clad in some sort of canine hoody – what else – and modelling his likeness on a canvas in the window, this dog has quite possibly the pointiest ears I’ve ever seen, and such artistic talent to boot.

“I tried to negotiate 2 for 1 deal, but sadly no such luck” said Kara, who snapped the pic and sent it over.

Such a missed sales opportunity: forget Advantage Card points, I want that pup.

See the other dogs here. If you’ve seen a shop dog, please send it my way. I am collecting them one by one, saving up their fluffy faces for a rainy day.

7th March 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.

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.

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.

27th February 2013