Majority of my readers would most likely not know Mottingham. Do you mean Nottingham, of Robin Hood fame?… Native Londoners may recognize the name of the village but give me a quizzical look as to why I would choose to highlight a rather nondescript location instead of one of hundreds…
I was checking the score of the last night’s MNF game on ESPN, when I came across Chris Berman’s “Fastest 3 minutes in Sports”. Introducing the annual NFL game played in London, he made the frequent mistake of misidentifying one of the iconic city landmarks. People! Let’s get this straight!…
Here is an illustration to my post about European markets. We found ourselves walking through the Borough Market a few days ago, and I could not refrain from snapping a picture of the mushroom stall.
Our desire to move house has been quickly replaced by the pragmatic contentment with staying put. A sizable reduction in the rent amount has that type of effect on us. At the same time as we started to look for different accommodations, we suggested to our current landlord that in…
I have been working on a big post for a couple of days, and it is nowhere near being ready yet. I can’t have two days in a row without posting something, so here is one of the random things that I find amusing. Let’s forget for a…
At the beginning of the market area of Portobello Road, there is a popular little shop selling various kinds of signs. Do click on the picture to enlarge. And here is one particularly fun sign stand. I live by several of these, as it happens. And it’s always nice to…
I first mentioned the phone-enabled parking charge payments in this article several months ago. Recently, while visiting friends in northwest London, I came across an entire area where all of the parking meters have been converted into the pay-by-phone operation.
Remember my posts about usage differences in English language? Here is a little illustration. As I was walking by this sign posted at a construction sight, I had to stop and spend a few moments to juggle the different meanings of the words in my head so they fit together.…
The southeast fringes of the Greater London, where we live, are home to several strings of little parks, fields and playgrounds collectively known as the Green Chain Walk, established in the 70’s. Many of these are in various stages of disrepair and neglect, and the walks between them are not…
Taking advantage of what might be the last – and first – nice-weather weekend in September, on Saturday we took the kids for a long-promised visit to Legoland. Of course, half of London had the same idea as us… The amusement park, located near Windsor, failed to make a great…
London’s Metropolitan Police (taking after the NYPD, unless I’m seriously mistaken) is testing a website that would map certain types of crime for all areas of Greater London. The crimes accounted for so far are only robberies, burglaries and vehicle crimes, but it still could be useful for any prospective…
Our guests not only managed to visit several of the London sights that we thus far shunned; they also came by an audience with Her Majesty the Queen. Ok, not really. But we ourselves only see the reigning monarch on TV, despite living just a dozen miles away from the…
The weekend was spent in various activities involving our latest visitors, which explains the first non-travel two-day post gap since sometime last year. With our approaching long holiday, it should be the last active “home” weekend for a couple of months. Anyway, here is a brief re-cap. On Saturday, we…
Lest anyone thinks that we long exhausted potential destinations in or around London, let me assure you that that is not true. Our target list has certainly dwindled down from several dozen point of interest to less than a dozen, but that less than a dozen remains. Today, we used…
The notion that we might have exhausted travel destinations by now could not be farther from the truth. Still plenty of places to go and see. So, today, we made a visit to Canterbury, the medieval spiritual center of England. The chief attraction is the soaring cathedral that dates back…
The weather has been holding up pretty well all week – sunny at intervals, and quite warm, – but turned colder on Saturday. I had an idea all week, of visiting a couple of museums that I would be unlikely to visit in the company of my ladies, and the…
The spring showed a bit of skin today, and I could only look out the window for so long before deciding that I’d better get up and go out. One of the first thoughts was a round of golf, but my last round in December managed to dampen my enthusiasm…
A quick check of my posts for the last few months reveals that the chronicles of our daily doings have been lately limited to weekend happenstance. I can’t say that I am surprised by that. Sitting here thinking about things to write about, I am quite perplexed to pick something…
Today, we went to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts called “From Russia”. It presented over a hundred paintings from the collections of four leading Russian art galleries, of French and Russian painters, such as Monet, Renoir, Repin, Petrov-Vodkin, Chagall, Malevich, etc. Too much space for cubists, abstractionists…
The indefatigable London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has just inaugurated a low emission zone (LEZ) scheme. It establishes stinging fees – £200 per trip – for high-polluting vehicles’ privilege of driving within Greater London. The heaviest lorries are subject to restrictions effective today, while other lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large…