She Loves London

Author: She Loves London

  • 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.

  • An Enlightening Selection of Good London Blog Posts

    An Enlightening Selection of Good London Blog Posts

    Internet High Five

    Studies have shown that it’s statistically impossible for you to read everything on the internet all of the time.

    But luckily for you, I can and frequently do spend a fairly sizable chunk of my day doing precisely that.

    So here are some interesting, amusing or just plain good London related blog posts and articles you can read while I think up something original to say.

    (Thanks, internet.)

     

    Hipsters are better than you, say researchers

    Hot on the heels of my “oh, you’re calling everyone in East London a hipster…again. Yawn” type posts, came this gem from The Daily Mash:

    Hipsters tend not to breed as pregnancy is difficult to accessorize, meaning their numbers will always remain low, but Hayes also argued that while their conversations make you want to yank your brain out through your nose, they probably feel the same way about your ghastly children.

    (thanks Emma Saunders for the heads up)

    We Went On a Quest to Find the New Dalston

    I think everyone in the entire internet read this last week, but in case you missed it, here were Vice’s predictions for “the new Dalston”.

    Look, I’m not saying Edmonton’s the Bronx – I’m sure it’ll be fine in the long run, but there was a cardboard cut-out of a policeman stood in one of the supermarket windows. There was just a palpable sense of unease, is all.

     

    Who loves London? And who does not?

    I liked this post on the Guardian’s London blog by Dave Hill, where he delves into November’s YouGov survey results revealing more Londoners are unhappy here than ever before. There was light, however, below the line in the shape of a comment from one half of a retired couple, who did things another way.

    We moved to London just over 12 months ago. We did it as part of our retirement plan swapping a 5 bedrooms house in Cambridgeshire for a 1 bedroom flat. London is the perfect place to retire to. First you have the Freedom Pass. Travel around the whole of London at no cost. Before we might have thought of going to a concert or theatre but felt the time and the expense wasn’t worth it. Now we just hop on the tube.

     

    Love on the Lines

    It is almost Valentine’s Day, so here’s an article from December about the tube lines you’ll need to inconspicuously stalk in a non-weird way if you’re looking for love on the Underground. (tl;dr Avoid Victoria, embrace Bakerloo.)

    A lot of those boarding at Victoria in the morning are married suburbanites who have moved to south London or Kent for cheaper properties and better schools — so you’ve probably already missed your chance there.

     

    Searching for Something…

    A brilliantly observed blog post that most singles in London can probably relate to. No? Just me then.

    I’m pretty sure I won’t find the love of my life at 4AM in the Dolphin.  And yet there he was; an incarnation, a very close imitation of my perfect man.  Granted, he hated the Sopranos and insinuated that every Smiths song sounded like a cover of their one original, shit song, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right?

     

    Admittedly, even the pros occasionally miss stuff, so feel free to share  anything London and Good you’ve read lately and I’ll smother you in the sort of affection usually reserved for monkeys at the zoo.