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Writing is the only job in the world which largely consists of staring into space with your mouth hanging open. Often, when I’m stuck on a novel, I go mooching around the city to fire up my ideas. When it comes to having spaces in which to think, the French have their boulevardiers, the Spanish [...] Articles in once-trendy magazines like Time Out are celebrating the diversity of London theatre at the moment, but there’s a problem for experienced theatre-goers. Theatre draws largely from its pool of accepted successful plays, so if something is a proven hit it comes back again, and there’s a good chance regular theatregoers have already seen [...] You may have noticed that very bright colours are in at the moment. Gone is the sterile white and grey and glass and concrete of the past few years, and everything now looks like a rainbow is being sick over it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Improved lighting techniques are changing night skylines all [...] There are two books on London’s lost rivers out with the same name, one of which, Tom Bolton’s book of walking the rivers, I wrote a foreword for. A recent reference to the “river Fleet buried below” the new King’s Cross station raises an interesting point. The new ticket hall takes its semi-circular shape from the [...] Last year I wrote a story called ‘Killing The Cook’, in which an inner city housewife attempts to kill the TV chef Nigella Lawson because she is unable to live up to the cook’s demandingly upmarket lifestyle. The story was inspired by a real problem. In one of Lawson’s cookbooks she said ‘Get your butcher to [...] I’m not entirely sure whether she’s a real barmaid, but she’s definitely not from around here. This is apparently the modern equivalent to the traditional ‘busty barmaid’ of yore, now slimmed down and underdressed for modern tastes. Like her predecessor she does, however, have a bewildering array of drinks to serve. And just when you think [...] Every day on my way to work I had to pass the Protein Man, Stanley Green. Remember him? He used to walk up and down London’s Oxford Street booming out in a sonorous voice ‘Buy my book’, and carried a sign proclaiming the dangers of proteins, saying that they caused lust. His solution was “protein [...] I have a very nice neighbour – the Guardian newspaper people live opposite my living room, close enough to make me remember to put pants on in the morning, and they do a lot of good local reporting – or maybe they’re too lazy to go anywhere else. Anyway, they’ve put out a local app [...] Here’s a new competition for all you Fowler completists – that’s both of you, Mr and Mrs Stalky, although I have to say there are a couple of other nutters fans coming up fast behind you… WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO: In 1948, with Britain still enduring ration books (they would for another five years), the GB Olympics team had to bring their own sandwiches if they wanted lunch during the games, and sports kits were of the itchy school gym variety. Now we have a fashion show just for the unveiling of Stella McCartney’s futuristic [...] |
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