Santa's very little helper

They say that charity begins at home. Sadly this year it can’t find its way out of my front door.

This week I discovered just how hard it is to be kind to my fellow Londoners. Several months ago I decided to volunteer with the Salvation Army on Christmas Day. After years of snorkeling in vats of gravy on the 25th, it felt like it was time to help serve up lunch to someone who might otherwise go without.

My newfound thoughtfulness may have had something to do with the fact that everyone I knew in London (all six of them) were fleeing the city for Christmas, but suspend your scepticism and assume that my intentions were entirely honorable.

After putting my name down to be a volunteer I waited for my call back. The call never came, and so last week I called to check where I was needed and at what time. Needless to say I hoped that they would understand that it would be ever so inconvenient if I was expected to be anywhere before midday.

‘Oh no, it’s too late to volunteer, you needed to file an application and we have to do a police check on you which takes 10 days to come through.’

‘But I put my name down weeks ago and gave you all my details, no one said anything about filing an application. What do you think I am going to do anyway? Steal the baked potatoes?’ This was in fact exactly what I intended to do. I had spent all my free time in the weeks prior trying to calculate the best way to walk away from the Salvation Army with a large volume of gravy on my person.

I cannot tell you how bad it is for one’s self confidence to be rejected by the Salvation Army on Christmas Day.

So I called Crisis; a London based charity involved with helping the homeless. Surely these guys would need some help on Christmas Day.

‘Sorry but we have enough help.’ Said the voice on the other end of the phone.

Remember this is a charity we are talking about here.

My last hope was to type into Google ‘I have no where to go on Christmas Day.’ Another charity popped up, but it turned out they would only take my help if I committed to working from 7am to 3pm. Happily by this stage I had been invited to a Christmas lunch, so my goodwill for mankind needed to be wrapped up by around 1pm. This apparently didn’t work for them.

So I sit here wondering whether Londoners have bigger hearts than I thought and that just maybe the bureaucracy here makes it hard for us to use them.

Then I realise that someone has swiped the notebook which was perched next to me in the pub where I am writing this. I think my charity and belongings are better off at home whilst in London.

Gobble Gobble

I have just survived my first Thanksgiving in the States unscathed, however now I do walk around under the impression that consuming just three meals a day is for people who lack ambition.

When I was there I had to eat something I didn’t want to, which for me is saying something. I had to eat my words.

For some time it has been a sport for of mine (and most Londoners) to slag off Americans. Maybe the participation rate of this sport is so high because it is pretty darn easy to win a place in the finals. Three words: war on terror. But our cousins across the pond do have something over us Londoners: a genuine capacity to relax and enjoy themselves without artificial stimulants (yes this includes X Factor.)

The joy that radiates from Americans during Thanksgiving is almost thermonuclear. At first I just assumed that the saturated fat had finally triumphed to become the number one ingredient in their brain. Then I realised that these jolly people were just genuinely happy. This emotion was difficult for me to recognise after living so many years in London. Their joy was also contagious. I even eventually gave in and found myself saying ‘happy holidays’ to every person who crossed my path. The odd poodle also had to endure my new found desire to spread goodwill. I didn’t even know what my annoying new greeting meant...admittedly I should've been able to crack this verbal code.

I only truly understood its meaning when Thanksgiving Day itself came around.

Never in one place have I seen so many potatoes, and I have been to Ireland on several occasions. Happy holidays indeed. My first task of the day was to peel all 20lbs of them for my hosts. Manual labour has never brought me so much pleasure.

Had I had an understandable heart attack at that moment, I would have died a happy woman. Nothing could have topped the sight of all those potatoes sitting in the pan, waiting for greatness. That is until I saw the cooking appliance in which my gravy was being made. I say ‘appliance’ deliberately, because anything that needs to be plugged in is surely an appliance. My gravy was being housed in the world’s largest crock-pot: undoubtably the two sweetest words in the English language.

Now I finally understood my host’s insistence that I wear sweat pants to lunch. This meal called for clothing without boundaries.

As promised the day consisted entirely of eating, drinking and watching TV in comfortable trousers that could sleep two. The genius of Thanksgiving being that unlike at Christmas time there is no requirement to make a pilgrimage to church, and no pressure to spend money on others (when you would obviously rather be spending on yourself.)

So I wondered why us London folk have not adopted this truly transformational holiday, after all our love of lard based products would make it easy for us assimilate. When it comes down to it, I am convinced it is simply because Thanksgiving would require us to relax to a point that would make us feel uncomfortable; loose clothing, spontaneous displays of affection and the decision to set a straw next to the knife and fork to aid gravy consumption. What if someone saw us? Making an arse of ourselves is reserved only for reality TV shows. Reality is something else.

So sorry Londoners, the Americans have got at least one thing right (please note that Americans have got the following things wrong: The Amish, cheese products in a spray can, any member of the Bush family, American Football, Dr Pepper and Britney Spears.)

I do wonder however whether I would be so happy to eat my words if said words weren’t smothered in gravy.




God bless the gravy makers: The Moore, Zajac and Plunkett families.

Sticks & Stones

I knew I had been in London too long after I found myself explaining to a perplexed ambulance driver that he would have to wait to take me to the emergency room until I had moved my car.

It was a great inconvenience to me that the night I had woken up in agony was the same night that I had failed to park in a residents bay. If my car was still there at 8.30am I was looking at a £60 fine, and if it was still there 24 hours later it would be towed away.

To put my dilemma in context; I was unsure whether my BMW was worth £60, and I was damned sure that I would never bother to recover it from the police pound; as it would undoubtably mean driving outside of Zone 1 to Zone 2 or god forbid Zone 3.

I didn't want to risk the altitude sickness.

In the end, I gave into the stomach pain that had me reaching for the phone in the first place, and I begrudgingly agreed to get on the stretcher.

Mainly really for the sake of the neighbours: it was after all only 3am, and as a result of all the screaming from me and the sirens, one by one the lights in the neighbouring houses had gone on. My prioritising the avoidance of further embarrassment over and above anything else at that moment was also surely a sign that I had been in London too long.

I don't remember much of my journey in the ambulance. Regrettably I do remember announcing to the paramedic that I needed painkillers, and that if I had had the foresight to bring my wallet would have happily paid him for them. I even went so far as to offer to buy him a little stash for himself. He thanked me for my not entirely unpleasant offer, but said I would have to wait for the doctor before I took anything.

Surely there is no better sign that I am a failure in my chosen career of advertising: I am unable to score drugs even in the back of an ambulance.

After spending several hours in A&E and being given no less than three shots of morphine (and warned that if I didn't keep the screams to a minimum I would have to be gagged,) I was wheeled into the 'Critical Decisions' ward.

I think the London hospitals would benefit from spending a bit more time brainstorming the names of their wards. I mean if my new ward had been called the 'Double Cheeseburger' ward or the 'Saturday Morning' ward, I would have been more optimistic about how I was doing. A sort of verbal poker face if you will.

I would still be in that ward had an incredibly kind girlfriend not come to visit me, and asked me why I had not been transferred to the private section of the hospital. The truth was that after 18 hours of morphine I could barely move my hands let alone negotiate a bed transfer. The NHS had successfully managed to take my blood, urine and my spirit.

So with some much needed help from a friend I found myself in a private room with all the luxuries not available to the patients on the NHS: water, food, a shower, and visits from a doctor. A doctor finally diagnosed my kidneys and gallbladder were not functioning; somewhat of a story anticlimax given my performance started at 3am.

The rest of my stay was a bit of a blur: I was in a self induced Ribena & 'Antiques Roadshow' coma. It was several weeks before I could look at vase without being tempted to swipe it.

After my first day back at work I came home to find a letter from my health insurance company; they were seeking payment for the excess on my hospital stay.

I am glad my car wasn't towed away: I may now have to live in it.

A NOTE: The author of this blog would like to thank everyone who visited me armed with cupcakes and jelly. I am now considering using the leftovers to build a second bedroom.

High priestess of London

This morning I walked past an ad for a church called ‘The Church of London Reality.’ Ironically it had been posted on the frontage of a Foxtons. It tempted me to attend mass for the first time in years. Confession at school had put me off as I had found myself constantly lying to the priest about things I hadn’t done just so I could get out of there as fast as possible.

According to the poster the service started at 10.30am. I was embarrassingly unable to work out what time it was, as the clocks had changed at midnight. Despite having several degrees under my belt I was unsure whether the clock had gone forwards or backwards. I mentally drafted a letter to the two universities in question for a full refund for my education.

I wanted to go to the church out of sheer curiosity: I mean what happens in the Church of London Reality? I had images of kids shooting up in the pews and images of just plain old shootings. I wondered most of all who the priest would have been. I answered my own question as I recalled the Tracey Emin lecture I had attended a few weeks back.

Thinking about the lecture, I became convinced that Tracey Emin would be the priest at my new favourite church. At this same moment she also found her way onto my hypothetical list of people who I would like to invite to my fantasy dinner party, (fantasy, firstly because I don’t cook and secondly because I had also planned on inviting loads of corpses.) I am still undecided whether it would be more dangerous to seat Emin next to Napolean or Cleopatra. Perhaps she is best next to Cleopatra; I don’t want to scare Napolean off home before the main course.

Emin arrived to her lecture late. Parking, traffic and public transport surely are three of the vices that the Church of London Reality will warn us all against. Her first words into her microphone were, ‘Can we get a bottle of wine up here?’ As a result, throughout the interview whenever she was asked a question there was a good chance she had a mouthful. The benefit for the audience was one less obscenity.

When she did speak, her answers (regardless of what the question was) invariably involved underage sex, abortion, smoking, drinking and poverty. It was like listening in to an NSPCC helpline call. She was a woman who had literally seen everything…and as an audience member, I can now say I have heard everything.

Emin was a woman of the people in not only speech but dress, dressed in black and wearing heavy cowboy boots. The outfit would have made it possible for her to disappear into crowds at Tesco, and yet gain her entrance to any restaurant or club in London. The greatest benefit of living in London is that black tie just means ‘please look arty.’ As I listened to her talk I kept trying to ruffle my hair to give the impression that I too might be on the brink of artistic greatness (if my bed was anything to go by, I was mighty close.) She was also bronzed like any other Londoner in September. Those than can afford it have been to the South of France or to Spain, whilst the rest of the locals settled for a sun bed.

At the end of the lecture she offered to sign copies of her new book ‘One Thousand Drawings’, a book (as the creative title would suggest) which contains one thousand drawings. Most of these involved vaginas. It was a bit like flicking through Hugh Hefner’s second grade exercise book.

I had selected the exact drawing within the book that I wanted her to sign (vagina count: zero.) The drawing was, in fact, about writing and she herself, on being asked what her favourite genre of art was, had replied ‘writing.’ I was ready to worship her, in church or otherwise. When it was my turn to present the book for signing she asked, ‘Don’t you want me to sign the front? I explained that I wanted this particular page signed so that I could frame it and hang it above my desk.

‘You’re going to tear up my book?’ She asked. I repeated my plan and again she asked, ‘You’re going to tear up my book?’ The penny finally dropped. I realised what she was saying was ‘Don’t tear up my fucking book.’ She repeated herself and in the end all I said to her was, ‘I’m a bit scared of you right now, so I’ll do anything you want.’ She laughed. I wasn’t kidding.

So I could think of no more qualified a priest for The Church of London Reality than a scary, cowboy boot wearing, foul mouthed, wine guzzling, and highly creative woman…especially if she is somewhat preoccupied with female genitalia.

As I sit and type, I look up at my framed, signed Tracey Emin drawing hanging above my head. She’d understand. She’d know that the reality of London is that no one listens to anyone else. In church or otherwise.

Driving test

When I told a friend I was planning on buying a car she told me that having a car in London was a luxury. I laughed at this. Having checked out the prices of second hand European cars I knew that I could get a BMW for less than a meal at some restaurants. So with brutish stubbornness I picked up a nice little 318. More specifically I bought ‘Leroy’, a black model who in a previous life looked like he had been used to sell crack to kids.

Almost immediately I discovered that my friend was, in fact, annoyingly right. She was not warning me about the toll it would take on my wallet, but rather my mental health. Having now lived in London for almost four years I was hanging by the thinnest of threads as it was.

I find it impossible to believe that the wonderfully optimistic Wombles of Wimbledon could have hailed from anywhere near the DVLA head office. I left there in floods of tears after being forced to use my married name on my new license. Even though I no longer use the name and every other government organisation recognises my legal right to use my maiden name, the DVLA wasn’t having any of it. As the man serving me ate his own ear wax as though he was tasting some kind of sample menu, it seemed unlikely that he would be familiar (let alone interested) in my constitutional rights. For the record I was not the only one in tears that day in Wimbledon. The man being served next to me found it to be all too much that the man serving him spoke less English than he did. This was quite an accomplishment given he himself may actually have been the voice of the Swedish Chef in The Muppets.


On the way back from the DVLA in my new car I realised that I lived in the congestion charge zone. Whilst I understand that you may find it hard to muster sympathy for a woman who has to suffer the stress of living so centrally, regardless of where you live in London you should be able to empathise with the notion of being ripped off. I was unable to drive my new car home unless I paid £8. This was more than my bumper bar was worth. As it turned out I was able to apply for a resident’s discount. Not much consolation as I was already paying £80 per month council tax in order that I may NOT use the local schools, doctors or any other community service Kensington & Chelsea offered. I actually joined the Notting Hill library to feel like I was getting my money’s worth as a resident. I might even start ripping out some pages to even things out.

The next test on my nerves was applying for my parking permit. This step came the closest to breaking me, and I have shopped at Primark on a Saturday. It started out well enough; I had got there early so I could experience the thrill of being the first person to take a numbered ticket. In Australia we do this in delicatessens, so you can imagine my disappointment that no one offered me any small goods. My ticket joy was short-lived when I discovered that my insurance papers (a pre requisite for a permit) had not come through via fax to the council as promised. After repeated phone calls begging the insurance company to fax the papers and sprinting every 30 minutes to throw more coins into the parking meter outside, (I didn’t yet have a permit) a council worker finally came up to me and said, ‘You know our fax isn’t working, right?’

So I left without my permit, £6 worse off and still unable to park my car anywhere.

The act of slipping into my car spot at work however made my attempted murder of a council worker seem like a distant memory. The thought of being able to get into the car at the end of the day got me through some of the unnecessarily long meetings that come with my job. As I walked back to the car I fantasised about picking up groceries on the way home and so avoiding having to cross Notting Hill Gate with an eight pack of toilet roll under my arm. I looked at the driver’s door; there was a massive dent in it. London - 1. Sally - 0.

Group Therapy

If London were a person, it would have been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder a long time ago. The therapy bill from Harley Street would have just about been affordable, if we split it 7 million ways. I make this observation after two very different pieces of junk mail were pushed through my letterbox this week. The first was promoting a local cab company, which proudly claimed; ‘If the driver is not wearing a tie, there is no charge.’ The second was a promotion for the NSPCC, claiming that one in seven kids in London are victims of domestic violence. The only consolation for these kids appears to be the fact that their dads are likely to be well dressed and will say ‘thank you’ after giving them a good belting. How can any city have such two very different sides to its personality?

Take my local area for starters.

I had a hunch that I had moved into one of the better areas when I went to my local butcher and discovered that they handed out postcards of the shop to customers. I had only come in for a kilo of sausages. This is the same kind of service you would expect to find an expensive hotel offering over paying guests, (Sadly my butcher didn’t extend to getting me an escort for the night.) The printing costs they incurred explains why my lamb & mint sausages cost £8.99 a kilo, at that price I had wondered whether ‘mint’ was a euphemism for a more aromatic and illegal substance. I confirmed that it really was mint after conducting an experiment whilst cooking, which involved me putting my head under a tea towel and frantically sniffing.

Yet on the same day that I went to the butchers the London papers were reporting on a very disturbing survey, conducted by home delivery giant Ocado on the capital’s shopping habits. It turns out that my neighbourhood buys the least amount of deodorant per capita in the whole of London. This includes the areas where the residents can’t even spell the word deodorant (this doesn’t really narrow things). There are two possible reasons for our seemingly poor hygiene: firstly we know that the more money you have, the more likely you are to try and subject people to your scent; Britney, Kylie and Jade being exhibits a, b and c. Perhaps more plausibly the locals in my area may just be just rubbing their underarms with fifty pound notes in lieu of having a bottle of ‘Sure’ (that’s ‘Rexona’ to you antipodeans) to hand.

The rest of the city provides other symptoms synonymous with multiple personality disorder to support my diagnoses. Take life North and South of the Thames. Very simply the difference is that there is no life South of the Thames. This is not my opinion; it is the opinion of the town planners who came up with the aptly named 'Dulwich.' Never did two such different places exist or evoke such rivalry (slight exaggeration if you take into account the whole West and East Berlin thing). I once had a heated row with a girlfriend when I pointed out to her that there was nothing worth crossing the river to go south for. She reminded me that the member’s bar at the Tate Modern was South of the river. I agreed to concede that this was indeed a reason to cross, if she would concede that the cocktails served there would have to be pretty strong, to numb the pain of being mugged at the end of the night. I passed out before I heard her reply…the hand luggage size handbag she swung at my head, was faster than my vodka affected reflex to duck.

Then there is the East end of London which has an entirely different personality to the West end of town. Apparently the East end is cool. Again I struggle to see this as I rate coolness and access to weapons after nice restaurants on the list of things I am looking for in a community. A guy I work with proudly wears an ‘I love Hackney’ t-shirt. I think that it came free with his 100th gram of cocaine, as there is no other way to explain pride in an area where a London Transport worker once explained to me that ‘you can’t get the black cab where there is the black people.’ Apparently arty people need to live in the East as it enhances the tortured, creative souls. Maybe if they moved West they would feel less tortured. They tend to, but only after they have sold a diamond-studded skull to an art collector for 50 million pounds. The artist in question probably had to take out loan for the rest of the deposit he would need to buy a two bedroom flat in the Royal Borough of Chelsea and Kensington. And he is probably still saving up to be able to buy a local residents parking permit.

I am told that the first step towards psychotherapy is recognising that you need help, but I have a feeling that there are 7 million people perfectly happy to embrace the madness that is London. We just don’t want professional help. As I sit typing this I notice that another flyer has been slipped through the letterbox on my front door mat. It is a timetable for church services asking me to come and ‘repent’ this Easter in order to save my soul. I will think about it, but they had better give me a free postcard.

Heathrow injection

If someone were to find my wallet they would be forgiven for thinking two things: firstly that I could use a little more cash and fewer credit cards. Secondly they may believe I was Colonel Sanders in a past life – my wallet is literally filled with restaurant cards and vouchers for food...and often covered in grease, despite the hoards of moist towellettes I keep in my handbag.

Whilst it is perfectly natural for a woman to be besotted by food, I live in a city where most of us don’t even walk up escalators unless they are the moving kind and therefore we cannot possibly burn off all the discounted food we eat.

If you are planning to move to London you will invariably be warned that on arrival you will be given the infamous ‘Heathrow injection.’ It is even more painful than it sounds. This term describes what happens to people who move here: as soon as you get off the plane you will almost immediately put on weight. This is true for most of us; I do spend far too many work hours pondering how it is that Elle McPherson has managed to escape this fate. In the vain hope that her skinny genes are contagious I recently moved into a flat around the corner from her. It appears I have not been able to prove my ‘slim by osmosis’ theory. As I look down at the zipper on my jeans, I note it resembles a python that has just swallowed a large marsupial. I am definitely more Colonel Sanders that Charles Darwin.


There are over 6,000 restaurants in London. People may wonder how they all survive. That is easy; as obsessed as we are with food, the one thing we will never do is cook. Many new build flats are not even being built with kitchens, just enough room for a fridge and a hot plate. This suits me perfectly as it gives me more room to store my cookbooks. I own 12 cookbooks and haven’t used one. This is somewhat fitting as these books have all been written by chefs who have TV shows rather than kitchens. Chefs in London are now of the same social standing as rock stars, apparently whipping up a hollandaise is up there with penning the lyrics to ‘Hey Jude.’

The increase in cookbooks written by cooks who don’t cook has increased the number of organic stores, which are now scattered around London. It has also fuelled our need to drop the word ‘organic’ into every sentence we utter. Not buying organic is more frowned on in London than adultery; shag your brains out, but for God’s sake make sure that carrot came off a traceable farm.

Every week I buy a vegetable that I don’t even recognise and leave it on the sideboard in the kitchen as decoration. People comment and I feel as though I have impressed them with my knowledge of exclusive, funny looking vegetables. I used to be peer pressured into smoking, now I feel pressured into buying aubergines. I have a three a week habit. Despite all this, when I am alone I secretly trawl the local fast-food joints looking for my next culinary hit. The choices are endless. Anything you could hope to find in polystyrene or plastic wrap is at your fingertips.

Since it came to light that the banks had been lending cash to anyone with a pulse (I don’t think they checked), more and more cash strapped Londoners are turning to junk food for comfort. Every major fast food chain has reported increased profits and there isn’t an organic radish in sight. So the upside to the recession is that in addition to blaming our parents, our moods and the weather, we can now blame the economy for our poor eating habits.

I am not sure whom we blame for the store ‘Iceland.’ During my first week in London I decided to show off my domestic skills and had a dinner party. I cooked a lamb roast, as winter was rapidly approaching and as an Australian I am obliged to consume at least a herd a year. My guests had a little trouble cutting through the meat on their plates but were too polite to comment. One finally asked where I bought the meat from. When I replied ‘some supermarket called ‘Iceland’ all five off them dropped their cutlery, one so violently that they cracked their plate. I did not know that Iceland was called Iceland because everything was frozen (could have guessed) and that Kerry Katona was chosen as the spokeswoman because she was the MOST respectable of their customer base. The rest can't afford her crack habit. The store survives because that lamb roast cost me £3…. it also cost me a dinner plate and several knives. So I gave up cooking, no need to cook when there are so many other culinary options for Londoners – Pot Noodle has just launched a kebab flavour noodle. The only downside is that I can't claim to have burned off any calories walking to the kebab shop anymore.

Caesar once said that his army was unstoppable because his men were always well fed. If we Londoners are full of something as unnaturally sounding as ‘popcorn chicken’ what will our fate be? I will ask the banker begging on my street corner what he thinks.

Culture clubbed

I cried last week for the first time in months. I wasn’t crying for the two million unemployed people in the UK, or crying because Foxtons has opened one of their multicoloured real estate showrooms right around the corner from me. (A tip for Foxtons: I won’t pay 100k extra just because you offer me a latte.) I cried because my Sky TV box wouldn’t work.

At the risk of making myself sound even more pathetic you should know that I didn’t cry because I injured myself trying to repair the box, or because I was frustrated at my inability to repair it. I cried because I felt lost. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself for the rest of that evening. It was raining outside so I couldn’t go for a walk. Not that I should have to, if Sky was working there probably would have been a great show on about walking.

When you ask most people why they moved to London their answer will invariably involve one of three things; work, love or a chance to live in one of the cultural hubs of our time. London’s status obviously coming into question this week as Dixie Fried Chicken opened up their 50th store here. Another sure sign that London is losing its status is that visitlondon.com listed this shrine to lard as a ‘restaurant/brassiere,’ as opposed to the place you go when you are so drunk that even the local kebab shop won’t serve you.

I came to London for all three of these things, well four if you count the Dixie Chicken experience. Let’s just say that I have since discovered that the first two can’t satisfy me (the jury is still out on whether the Fried chicken can nourish my soul), so I am relying on culture to enrich my life. Yet I realised this week that my idea of culture is an overpriced pay TV subscription, I didn’t even take out the optional ‘culture’ package. How is it possible that anyone who lives in London can end up so void of culture?

A contributing factor to my shallowness (apart from just being thick) maybe that like all Londoners I often simply find it hard to make my way around the city to go culture hunting. We spend so much time travelling underground --that eventually life at street level becomes a little disorienting. This is the reason that you see people scrambling for the tube stairs so quickly; there is something comforting about signage that tells you where to go, where to stand and even how you should hold your handbag. Life above ground has become far too complicated.

The tube has also messed with our sense of direction, and ability to gauge distances. Most tube stops are only hundreds of yards apart, but the tube map was designed by someone who wanted passengers to be convinced that they were travelling great distances to justify the extortionate ticket prices. As we fear getting lost (or fit) if we walk further than 100 yards, we will gravitate towards anything close to the tube station. How else can Primark at Marble Arch or Leister Square be explained? So no matter how amazing the Imperial War museum may be, unless they move it half a mile I ain’t going.

You also have to look very hard to find actually find culture in London. London is a bit like one of those holiday brochures that mislead you by getting you all excited looking at photos that are thirty years old. When you get there things aren’t quite as the photos led you to believe.

Postcards of London feature all the wonderful traditional things that one might expect to find - Beefeaters, Palaces, scones and pots of tea. All these things do exist and are wonderful, but you have to look at little bit harder to find them. They are hidden behind chain stores. Chain stores are an architectural cancer that is ravaging the city of London.

Every High Street in London looks exactly the same as the next; the only thing that varies is the number of muggings. The exception to all this is the truly magical Primrose Hill. Primrose Hill is notably the only town in the UK to successfully oppose the opening of a Starbucks. Not surprising when you know who the locals are: Robbie Williams, Sadie Frost, Kate Moss and Jude Law. I am not sure though why these people, of all people, would say no to an espresso.

I read this week that Starbucks was planning to expand further around London. There are currently eight Starbucks within a ten-minute walk of my flat. So I can only imagine that they have planning permission to build stores in people’s lounge rooms. Maybe they thought it necessary, as so many of us are left house bound by our Sky subscriptions.

Just when I think I am being a bit harsh on us Londoners I recall the woman I saw the other night at the pub. A well-dressed middle-aged woman was snuggling up to the fire with a book. She had a smile on her face, the kind of smile which only comes when two characters finally get together after hundreds of pages of agonising unrequited love, or when you have solved a murder that would have had Miss Marple dialling 118 118. Then I realise that this woman is reading a copy of ‘Tesco Spring/Summer Catalogue.’ I now no longer question the study released recently, which claims an immigrant’s grasp of English actually decreases after spending time in London.

After my incident with my Sky Box I took out a weekly subscription to London Time Out magazine. If ever I was stuck for something to do again I would be able to refer to this social bible. Maybe I would even make an effort to turn my Sky off more often. My first copy arrived this morning after what seemed like an eternity. I tore it open with the enthusiasm of a four year old at Christmas one who had eaten its body weight in sweets. I flicked through the glossy pages and then I sat down on my sofa and not surprisingly read the TV guide first.

Peek a boo hoo

‘All the world’s a stage,’ if we are to believe Shakespeare, who admittedly does come across as a pretty knowledgeable sort of a chap. Much to my surprise it seems that Londoners do not agree with his stage direction, or for that matter his belief that people should extend their communications skills beyond grunting. Grunting, as we know, is something that bus drivers can only aspire to.

The city in which celebrities choose to give birth on TV, have their wedding vows printed in magazines and give press interviews on their deathbed apparently has a limit. That limit has come surprisingly in the form of Google’s new Street View service, which has turned the city of London into a stage.

Londoners this week were outraged that Google had jeopardised their privacy by launching a service whereby people at home could observe every street in the capital whilst the locals performed mundane tasks. Channel 4 on the other hand were outraged that Google had managed to turn the entire city into an over crowded version of the Big Brother house, just with better haircuts.

The only mistake that Google really made was not telling Londoners that they were going to be apart of the world’s biggest reality TV show. Had the people of London thought that this was all some kind of audition the only complaint would have been that they had not been featured for long enough, or not at all. Their attempts to make sure that they had their 15 minutes of fame would have given Google and us armchair spectators some far more interesting footage. Which would be a breath of fresh air to workers in the office blocks where Facebook is banned.

If I knew that Google was auditioning Londoners I would walk, rather than run to my garbage bin every morning in my pyjamas in an attempt to impress any talent scouts watching at home. Given I wear pink pyjamas covered in piglets it is unlikely that I would be picked up for any TV work, other than maybe a cameo in The Muppets.

Google could have spiced things up further by promoting the fact that Simon Cowell and his X Factor judges would be trawling the images for his next star/puppet. If they are interested in doing this they should do it before Danni Minogue’s Botox induced facial paralysis spreads to her eyes. The latest photo on her official website would indicate that this is imminent.

Revenue from a public phone vote covering categories such as the worst dressed homeless person, the best vomit and teenage girl most likely to give birth in nine months would have ensured that the service paid for itself. It would also pay for the fleet of security vehicles Google will need to take more of these images in future. Google’s press office (run by Americans I would guess) didn’t think it was an issue to reveal to the knife wielding population of London, that Google had a number of spy cars with cameras on the streets taking these shots. My money is on the next version of Street View only covering a select number of the less dangerous areas, that or Google investing in some really long lenses.

There will be some people who are genuinely worried about their privacy, who would be relived to see the Street View service discontinued. I have in mind the middle-aged couple which I overheard panicking recently on a BA flight coming into Heathrow Terminal 5. The landing video announced that passengers would be filmed on arrival at the new terminal. The woman was in quite a state at the thought of being filmed like a common criminal, until her husband put down the copy of the Daily Mail he was studiously reading and reassured her that only foreigners would be filmed. I wondered at the time what they had to hide (and whether in fact they were the two people on the planet best suited to each other.) I guess we all have something we want to hide, such as the flowers in a vase on my dining room table which look suspiciously like the ones in my neighbour’s flower box. It’s times like this I could really embrace Google’s policy to blur the faces of people caught on camera. Alas the piglet pyjamas would be a give away.

As it stands the things I am most distressed about are: realising that my mother will know I am lying when I say I am keeping my front garden tidy. Also on Street View there appears to be a good looking guy walking past my place and had I been given prior warning of this phenomena I would have placed a bear trap outside my front door.

I do find it interesting though that Google has managed to launch this service in other countries without journalists or would be Daily Mail readers self combusting. Hell, they even launched it in Australia without much fuss. I can only assume this is because Australians were just relived that someone other than Baz Luhrmann had decided to bring an interpretation of Australia to the world.

Most curious of all is why anyone who has spent time on the streets of London would want to use this service in the first place. A friend of mine recently gave me directions to her flat. They went something like this: ‘Come out of the tube, walk past the Cock pub, you’ll run into an army of charity collectors, go past McDonalds, keep going as far as KFC, and then we are the flat above the betting shop.’ If all the world really is a stage then just maybe this is one play that should never be adapted into the movie.

Unpopular kid at school

The museums of London are just like those kids in the playground who no one wanted to play with. These little fellas were so desperate to attract play mates they would have done just about anything to make themselves popular. If you ever wondered what happened to these sad things you can tune in and watch them on Big Brother.

I make this comparison to museums after my recent visit to the V&A. I should say upfront that the V&A is my favourite of all the London museums. Admittedly for an entirely unscholarly reason: the homemade beef pies in the café. The fact that they have resorted to baking us treats should tell you that they are a tad on the desperate side for friends. Baking is the adult version of doing someone else’s homework. I must also admit I wasn’t opposed to it then and I am certainly not opposed to it now.

It isn’t just the pies, which gives away the museum's desperation.

The museums are in an unusually tricky situation, most of the great unwashed British general public go to the museums because they are free. I don’t judge as we have already established I go for the baked goods.

In the face of economic downturn back in the 1980’s the British government managed to democratise culture, art and history. It was as if Marie Antoinette’s ghost was their financial advisor; ‘Let them eat cake Prime Minister.’ Or in this case pies. Let the Londoners go to galleries and they will forget that they can’t afford bread and milk. If the working classes survived their impoverished childhoods they grew up with a very well informed opinion on whether modern day architecture is influenced most by the Greeks or by the Romans. This is incredibly useful if you get stuck for something to say to the person next to you in the benefits queue outside the Post Office on a Monday morning.

So after years of telling people that museums are free, or in other words, ‘I’ll pay you to be my friend and hang out with me’, it is then very difficult to be taken seriously. This is despite housing some of the most magnificent wonders in the world, such as my beloved pie and various other priceless artefacts.

The first sign that the V&A is desperate for friends is the decision to have a donation box at the front entrance. Their first mistake is using the word ‘voluntary.’ Not just because most people walk straight past it without putting their hands in their pockets but because most people born of the X (Factor) generation cannot pronounce such a big word, let alone know what it means.

I watch as everyone walks past the sad little empty box, everyone except for the people who seem least likely to be able to afford to make a donation: an elderly man and woman who has a bible hanging out of her handbag (circa 1973.) Maybe they didn’t read the sign outside, took one look at the architecture and thought they were walking into a church. I watch the same couple put £1 into the box for a museum map. I hope by this stage that they have realised that they are not in a church and that they are not buying a map to heaven, but rather to the men’s room.

The security bag search is also somewhat on the pathetic side. I walked in with a relatively large bag, not only because I am a woman and my gender mandates it, but because I am also carrying a laptop and more shopping than I expected to lug around London on a Saturday afternoon. Behaviour also mandated by my gender. I sling my bag on the table in front of the security guard begging to be searched. I take some pleasure in disappointing security workers by not carrying corrosives. The security guard takes one look at the bag, then at me and says, ‘No, it’s OK.’ I again was left with the impression that he didn’t want to stretch my friendship with the museum too far. OK, his leniency may have been influenced by me looking like a walking Gap ad rather than a threat to national security.

Once inside, like most visitors, I headed straight for the museum gift shop. Why look at a Venetian fresco when you can look at a Venetian fresco reproduced on a tea towel?

The shop itself takes up a significant part of the ground floor. I can just see the architect saying to the Director of the museum, ‘Now if you want the punters to come, you will have to give them a reason to hang around. I suggest we downsize the Chinese Pottery section in favour of a wall to house overpriced pretentious postcards.’ Never mind the centuries of priceless artefacts, the pencil sharpener in the shape of a pyramid will be a bigger hit and make us more popular with the cool kids.

Perhaps the most obvious sign that the museums are desperate for friends is the instruction printed on my map (the one I didn’t pay £1 for): ‘Please keep mobile phone use to a minimum.’ Only to a minimum? If there is one place on the planet where you should live in fear of phone confiscation it is a museum. Especially a museum that looks a little bit like a church. But at the V&A they don’t want to rock the boat, so you and your phone can roam freely and piss off as many people as you want, just as long as you hang out there a little bit longer. I long to experiment whether you can also talk with your mouthful and run with scissors in here.

Admittedly my beloved V&A doesn't come across as desperate as the Science Museum: on a Friday night they serve cocktails. I can only assume that this came out of a brainstorm where the thing most commonly associated with science for most people was being drunk in the back row of the science lab, after testing, and re testing the beaker labelled ‘100% alcohol.’

As I head to leave this particular Saturday I smile sympathetically at the two women standing in a booth near the exit. They are selling memberships to the V&A. How silly do they think I am? Actually maybe the last laugh is on me: my pie was £6.99. Maybe like all the geeky kids at school they will end up millionaires.

Just like in the movies

The sight of two grown men scampering up to a rooftop for some sunshine epitomised the reason why the rest of the planet felt sorry for the residents of London. Well that and fact that they seemed to be impressed by whatever it is that Peter Andre does. It also made 'Notting Hill' a damn amusing film and in turn one of the biggest hits of the 1990’s. ‘How sad.’ I thought at the time to have to sit on a rooftop to get a suntan. Cut to 14 years later and that same judgemental woman is cozying up along side the duck pond in Hyde Park, complete with hat, gloves and scarf, trying to catch some much needed sunshine on her pale face. The Japanese tourists sitting next to me burst into fits of giggles when I tried to subtly slip off the bench and test whether the ground was too waterlogged to sit on. I sprung up with such haste that they checked under the bench to see if a duck had bitten my bottom.

Until I moved to London I hadn’t given much thought to the true meaning of the phrase ‘catch sunshine.’ To catch something means that you in effect trap it in an attempt to hang onto it for a period of time. So I use the expression to explain my behaviour today very deliberately. Today I am among thousands of Londoners who have flocked to the park having made our first sun sitting in months. It is no longer a mystery to me why the ancient Druids worshipped the sun: it appears so infrequently here it does take on mystical qualities.

We modern day sun worshippers have carried around our faith for the last few months waiting for a sign. When it comes we behave very much like super sized kitchen plant: leaning to one side to catch the sun’s rays. In winter we lean towards Gregg’s the baker. Their pasties are not a reliable source of vitamin D but they do provide a certain amount of solace from not only the lack of sun, but from Sky’s decision to run ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ yet again.
In the search for sunshine we will lean towards to park, towards the Thames or towards any open space that can accommodate us. It suddenly becomes possible to get a seat in the pubs, but not so easy to get to them, as all the regulars have moved outside and are invariably standing in front of the door.

We hibernate like bears through the winter. We venture out only to perform the most essential of tasks. Anything trivial such as socialising and exercise grinds to a halt until the summer months. Eating however doesn’t grind to a halt, in fact in most cases it increases significantly. The increased food consumption helps us store fat which gives us a little something extra to live on when it gets so dark and cold that you can’t even be bothered to go out and buy food. If you have eaten enough Gregg’s and bar snacks you can delay that overwhelming cold trip to the supermarket as long as your personal supply of blubber lasts.

As I sit here I notice a phenomenon even rarer than the sun itself. The people walking past me have their lips parted and the corners of their mouths are upturned on either side. They appear to be doing something that Londoners rarely do: they are smiling. Some of them are doing it as though they are little uncomfortable with the new placement of their lips. Some look like they may be doing it for the first times in their lives and some look they are practising, but aren’t quite competent enough to go pro yet with it.

A visitor to London in winter could be forgiven for thinking that years of evolution had rid the locals of their teeth. You can go months without seeing a set. The sun changes this. When I left home this morning my next-door neighbour was sitting on her garbage bin reading the Saturday papers in the sun. She looked happier than she had in months, so I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was awoken last night by a couple of young guys relieving themselves against that the same garbage bin.

The Japanese couple next to me are discussing how friendly they think the locals are. If only they knew what the locals were like the rest of the time. Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe it was just wonderful that this couple will go back to Japan and speak of the friendly English folk in sunny London town. I know how warming it is when people go out of their way to be friendly to you in a new country.

As I am questioning whether I may have been wrong about the humanity in London the couple stand up with their camera in hand. They approach a passing man to take a photograph of them with the gaggle of the ducks that they have been feeding a prawn sandwich from Prêt. The man they approach for help doesn’t so much as stop. He continues walking and shakes his head at them. Under is breath he mutters, ‘fucking tourists.’ Ah, thank god, I was worried that too much ‘Vicar of Dibley’ had thawed the hearts of Londoners. We need a little bit of hatred here; it makes the traffic flow faster.

Identity Crisis

Recently whilst sitting in the doctor’s surgery I was asked to complete a customer service survey by the monosyllabic receptionist that the NHS had undoubtedly recruited as some kind of social experiment. The interruption broke my train of thought, I had been preoccupied weighing up the pros and cons of killing the four year old who had just managed to ram a toy truck into my ankle whilst his mother looked on. In the end I decided that it would be more painful for his mother if I kept her son alive.

I agreed to do the survey, knowing that my 4.30pm appointment stood the same chance of actually happening at 4.30pm as the receptionist stood of knowing how to use the pen she handed me. NHS appointments are run with the same efficiency as the London buses. Sadly unlike the buses doctors never come in threes.

Once I had managed to get the pen to work (I assumed yet another social experiment by the NHS) I began ticking boxes with the proficiency of an epileptic civil servant. Often on surveys it is easy to be tempted to bend the truth somewhat. Answering such questions as ‘how old are you?’ or ‘how much do you earn?’ no good can come of you telling the truth. A year off here and an extra zero added there and everyone comes off feeling good. As I was completing this particular survey wearing Ugg boots, odd coloured socks and old sweat pants and looking every one of my 32years, it seemed pointless to lie.

Then there came the question which I would never dream of answering with a lie: ‘how would you describe your ethnicity?’ As ‘bloody foreigner’ didn’t seem to be an option, I scanned the boxes for the best fit. Having been born in Australia of Anglo parents I could have taken pleasure toying with the NHS by ticking ‘Caribbean,’ but the NHS appeared to already have enough problems to cope with. There wasn’t a box for Australian; apparently the survey designer had never been to Earl’s Court. I didn’t want to tick the box ‘other white,’ for two reasons: firstly being the 'other white' made me feel a little too like the other white meat: pork and secondly I didn’t ever want to be grouped into the same box as the Americans. So I ticked the box ‘other’ and scrawled across the line left for further explanation the word ‘Londoner.’

I looked at the paper, realising the significance of what I had done. I had for the first time perhaps most accurately pinpointed the way I saw myself. I was a Londoner. Well, only as ‘floating misfit’ wasn’t an option.’ Maybe that’s what being a Londoner was? I wasn’t even sure if such an ethic group existed. If it did what distinguishes it from other groups?

A Londoner in 2009 is unlikely to have actually been born in London. The fact that so few of them are reliant on surviving a stay in a London hospital ensures the continuation of the race. Those that have been born here will speak with affection about the corner of town that they grew up in, they needn’t tell you where as their accent will tell you that. Perhaps it is more pride that affection. It is a tremendous accomplishment to survive your childhood in a city where more teenage girls carry knives than handbags and where the boys carry sexually transmitted diseases. I looked at the teenager opposite me in the surgery and tried to imagine what he had. He looked like a pin up for Chlamydia.

I wasn’t born here and it remained to be seen whether I survived my first hospital experience. So what made me feel like a Londoner? Sure, I live here, but I have lived in other cities without ever feeling the need to adopt its identity. Was it the fact that every time I saw a moving staircase my body would move to the right unconsciously? Was it that I thought it was unacceptable to have to walk more than thirty metres to get to a beer tap? Or seven metres to a rat? Or two metres to a Starbucks?

Perhaps more interesting was the fact that I would I never be caught dead in an English rugby jersey, yet I would proudly sport a London jersey if such a thing existed. Was I simply a geographical snob? Not much of a snob really to be proud of a town where Z list celebrities have taken on the role and status of Roman Gladiators? These people perform like caged animals while the crowds decide if they should survive or not after each battle. Those that do survive have ‘Celebrity Come Dine with me’ to look forward to. Those that don’t survive have ‘Celebrity Come Dine with me’ to look forward to.

It wasn’t just the people I had to question my affection for but actual the city itself. It had been designed centuries ago by groups of aging men who never expected in their lifetime to physically have to cross the city and so they didn’t allow for that practicality in their planning. Or the need to go to the bathroom during said journey.

So it wasn’t the people. It wasn’t the city. The fact that I was dressed like an Eskimo who had been let lose in a North Face factory sale meant it sure as hell wasn’t the weather. So what made me publicly out myself as a Londoner? I had better work it out as I had ticked the box ‘contact me to discuss further.’ And in a moment of madness I had given my real contact number. This was a rookie mistake, something perhaps that no true Londoner would have done. Where had this sudden outburst of honesty come from? I could feel the convict blood thinning in my veins. In an attempt to reinvigorate my Australianness I handed back the survey but I made sure I slipped their pen into my pocket.