london

Quincie, that's haleem - spicy lamby stick-to-your-ribs lentil stew which is popular as something to eat before Ramadan sunrise. You can buy Shan packets with the lentils and spices and a recipe on the side of the box, price 99p. Go to the Asian shop in Boswell Street (closest one to Rosewood) and get a few boxes to try making at home :-))

pondering a brief (3-5 days) visit in ... September, i guess?

Anyhow I kind of failed at London today. Slept quite late and by the time we got out it was raining cats and dogs, so instead of gardens we ducked into a nice pub and had fish and chips and true british cask ale.

Was going to say, this qualifies you for citizenship iirc

Morbz I will be away :(

Boston then! will probly book by Friday

i did make it to the top of Primrose Hill, huffin and puffin.

then had to quit Regents Canal after a bit cuz it was too damn dark.

I was in town today for a few hours, went to the Imperial War Museum, need more time there so I'll go back again next time I'm in town

Would be interesting to hear morb's opinion of transport in London as an outsider.

didn't get to the IWM, but the affiliated Churchill War Rooms. Labyrinthine and claustrophobic as you'd expect despite the shiny displays in the roomier biographical museum within.

Oh, i was on the tube maybe twice at rush hour, and the ride from TottCtRoad to the City was madness! Trains are too damn small for your needs.

and those walks through the passages after you enter that go on and on for minutes, with 2 giant escalators... need a train to the train...

was just reading that the Joy of Life fountain in Hyde park has been turned off because homeless people have been cooling off or washing themselves in it. Stay very classy Westminster/Royal Parks dept.

accumulation of bits of anecdotes and experience says that the royals parks administration are utter cunts.

nearly ended up working for them in the early 90's, but the CRB check took so long I had found a job by the time they wanted me to start.

hello london ppl

what are good resources nowadays for finding a flat to rent in london?

what areas do you think currently have the best quality/£ ratio? anywhere really, but say west of the northern line in particular

pls help me

at 'west of the northern line' you can imagine me scowling and shrinking back into the shadows like in the lion king when scar says 'the hyenas....they are the real enemy!'

there are adverts for some new thing called 'tipi' in wembley park though, maybe you could be a tipi pioneer

Don't know about no West London, but lots of folks on the more modest end of the income scale are setting up in Walthamstow these days, and out East into Leytonstone and Forest Gate. All pleasant if a little suburban, with some decent pubs and restaurants popping up.

TY

perhaps depends on your definition of modest, but I lived in Walthamstow 2007-2016 and it was definitely not very affordable when I moved away. Our landlord put the rent up by 50% after we moved out. think Leyton/stone are still fairly cheap tho

A few people I know are renting in Balham at the moment. It is ok but, again, like pretty much anywhere, is getting much more expensive.

Aren't rents meant to be going down around London, or is it just house prices?

Currently happy in my corner in SE London.

I’m in Peckham and while it’s much more expensive than it used to be, you can still find pockets of value near Queens Rd. New Cross and Deptford are still not too hideously expensive and have lots to offer. Nunhead/Brockley will give you a more leafy environment and a higher volume of farmers markets at similar prices thanks to not being as well connected.

If you really want to be West of the Northern Line, and north of the river, try Kilburn, Cricklewood and Willesden. Some lovely streets and really good links to town. When I stayed in West Hampstead I could be in town in 15 minutes and also well-connected for Overground.

Lewisham is great, with fantastic links to Canary Wharf, Bank, London Bridge and Waterloo. It's a lovely friendly multicultural area and very green on the sides toward Blackheath.

no point revealing that now the east is ruled out

Well, we can save it for ourselves. SE will always be seen as "uncool"

thanks folks

‘Friendly’ might be overstating ime.

Good cinemas showing diaspora movies w/ subtitles? Chinese, Indian, Nigerian, etc. Strikes me I live in a huge multicultural city and should take more cultural advantage of that.

I wonder if there are cultural centres to check out. Certainly South Korea and Japan do some work in showing more films in London.

Keep an eye on this page for later in the year? https://www.filmafrica.org/

I see also that the Japanese embassy (?) is running events again, looks like you can go see this for free: https://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/JAPANUKEvent/event/2022/202207/10-JHL-Film-TheHiddenFortress.html and also the events calendar there are other film screenings you can attend, some online but most not.

i've heard the actual japanese embassy has some strange entry requirements (a passport? something like that). oh but that's Japan House, which is just a shop, so probably won't.

i always mean to see it the polish centre in hamersmith is screening anything interesting. website looks dead(ish) though.

Thanks for the recs - to be clear I am less interested in govt curated festival circuit arthouse type stuff (well not "less interested" just have a better grasp of that stuff) and more about grass roots popular cinema hitting rooms to cater to local immigrant groups.

Anyone made themselves an itinerary for a London visit recently?

Arriving into Marylebone and then walking to Ottolenghi's NOPI (Warwick Street, W1B 5NE).

What's good around? (I know that's a vague question, depending on taste).

What kind of recommendations are you after?

A major Cezanne exhibition opens at Tate Modern tomorrow if that’s your thing.

I heard about that on the radio this morning and it sounds like a really interesting selection of works.

The Wallace Collection, one of my favourite medium-sized galleries in the UK, will be a pleasant stroll down Marleybone High St

Last time I went to London (after a long break, having previously lived there), I really enjoyed just mooching around and finding new shops and cafes and (forgotten rather than new) pubs, so I was being deliberately vague, gyac. I do just quite like wandering across a city.

Ok thanks for the clarification

The Lucien Freud exhibition at the National Gallery looks pretty special.

I saw a notice for the Lucien Freud exhibition but ooft, £25 seems like a lot?

My farty answer to your question, djh, is to map something using Nairn's London and go from there.

That's not a bad call.

Slightly random thought: does Bradley's Spanish Bar still exist?

it absolutely does yes

and the other spanish bar does too

"Last time I went to London (after a long break, having previously lived there), I really enjoyed just mooching around and finding new shops and cafes and (forgotten rather than new) pubs, so I was being deliberately vague, gyac. I do just quite like wandering across a city."

I used to live in London as well, and one of the things that surprised me about returning every now and again was how walkable it was. How close together it was. When I lived there I used the underground to go everywhere, so I never had a sense of how the topside fitted together. The topside. Allabove. Upthere. The sunside. It was a mythical place, the allabove. In the downbelow it was safe and clean. Aboveground was scary, and blinding. It had cars!

I worked in Kilburn, and I remember being surprised that I could e.g. walk to Camden Town after work. One day it dawned on me that I was just around the corner from what was then the Saatchi Gallery and Abbey Road. And a famous modernist / brutalist housing estate:
https://goo.gl/maps/nHwrYgkSx8uJz38w9

I remember thinking "one day I must go there" and one day I did. I looked at a paper map and worked out a route. I still remember it. The last time I visited I essentially walked from Waterloo Station to Notting Hill and back, via Hyde Park and South Kensington, which (looking at the map) is about four miles each way but on the flat. It looks odd without posters of the last two Hunger Games films all over the place. They really went to town advertising that film. London feels empty without Jennifer Lawrence peering at me. And Cara Delevingne.

Er, where to go? The Science Museum's IMAX cinema periodically shows actual films. Not just documentaries about Hubble and seals. I remember going to a double-bill of The Terminator and Robocop a while back. At the Science Museum. Why did the Science Museum show those films? Because they both had robots in them. "But technically they're cyborgs" - the Terminator is not a cyborg. Even if it was a cyborg the Hunter-Killers at the beginning of the film are robots. And so is ED-209! ED-209 is a robot. Not a cyborg. Somerset House had an exhibition of photos by Chris Stein a while back that demonstrated it was very hard to take a bad photo of Deborah Harry. And when I say "a while back" I mean "late 2014".

Late 2014. Where has the time gone? Where has it gone. Why do I return? Life is meaningless unless you're in London. It doesn't matter what happens outside London. No-one cares. It's "local news" if it happens outside London.

Obviously I can't visit London now because there are continual train strikes. South West Trains used to have a £15 return offer. Now it costs £45. That's... I mean, it's nothing nowadays, but I'm old enough to remember when £45 was a lot of money.

Think of London, a small city
It's dark, dark in the daytime
The people sleep, sleep in the daytime
If they want to, if they want to

I saw a picture earlier of a huge billboard or maybe a giant screen featuring a netflix depiction of a famous American necrophile/rapist/cannibal/serial killer dominating the side of some ugly looking building on Tottenham Court Rd. Stay classy London.