Finding music on the Tube

This evening, in a foul mood, having just stepped out of a shivery drizzle and into the Tube, I heard something of a rarity: live violin music. I love the musicians who perform in the official spaces in the official busking spaces of Underground stations. But here was a man on a train, travelling along the line, making beautiful music as we journeyed home. He was obviously homeless or at least had fallen on hard...

The best holiday ice skating in London

Over the past several years my family and I have criss-crossed the city trying out different ice skating rinks. I’ve loved it since childhood, when I would force my mother to drive from 2 1/2 hours to the nearest ice rink so I could pretend I was an ice princess. (I have a great picture of me trying to do an arabesque on ice — the minute my mother hit the shutter, I hit a chink in the ice and she...

Jumping on the giant inflatable Stonehenge

I thought the coolest thing that Jeremy Deller has done was his documentary about Depeche Mode fanatics, “Our Hobby Is Depeche Mode“. That was until we visited Sacrilege, his inflatable Stonehenge. This is surely the only giant bouncy prehistoric World Heritage site in the world. It’s travelling around England and, looking for something more inspiring than another day at the local park, I sent my...

Day out: Crazy golf on the roof of Selfridges

It turns out you can have your cake and golf it too. The clever chaps behind Bompas & Parr have teamed up with Selfridges to create an installation on the roof of the department store – a cake-based crazy golf course. These were the guys who last year flooded the roof to make an emerald green boating lake. Now they’ve created this 9-hole course with hazards made of cake. For years Bompas & Parr...

Video: Spitalfields Life

I love this video of Spitalfields, which I found on The Women’s Room blog. I took a walking tour of Spitalfields with the kids about a year ago, so can play a bit of “where’s wallace” with all the locations. If you’re interested in the area, check out my latest post about Box Park and Bukowski Grill, in Shoreditch, East...

Photo Friday: Bukowski Grill, Box Park

I’m taking part this week for the first time in Photo Friday, hosted by DeliciousBaby.com. I took this photo on my iPhone at Bukowski, one of the eateries at Box Park. Box Park opened a couple of months ago near Shoreditch House in East London. It’s a pop-up shopping “mall”, an installation of shipper containers housing groovy fashion boutique and eateries that will live in this space for the...

A good children’s bookshop in Dulwich

I don’t make it over to Dulwich very often, although we do go for the Midcentury Modern Fair. (See my review of the fair.) Now I have another reason to go: the Tales on Moon Lane bookshop. I’ve heard things here and there about this bookshop – great for kids, enchanting, and so on. In a recent blog post, Nell Gifford – who founded the excellent Gifford’s Circus of which I am a personal...

Mum blogger video review: Four Seasons Park Lane

We recently visited the Four Seasons Park Lane, bordering Hyde Park and Green Park, for an overnight stay away from the kids. It’s a city hotel, which usually means more compact facilities and an urban feel. Here, the lobby is sumptuous, the spa has prime position on a high floor with wraparound views, and the bartenders dispense cocktails with hospitality and warmth imported from their native...

Battersea Park – my Instagram/PhotoToaster gallery

One of my favourite things to do on a Sunday morning is walk through Battersea Park. I used to do the same thing in Prospect Park when I lived in Brooklyn, in Windsor Terrace. (About which: don’t be fooled by the celebrity status of Central Park. Prospect Park, also designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, is in my opinion a far superior park, with fewer crowds, less trampled grounds and just a...

Google maps include UK trains at last. Only one thing missing….

One of the things I love about living in big cities is the public transport – trains, the Tube/Subway/Metro, and the general lack of needing a car. But one thing that consistently drives me crazy is how much the transport planning sites and tools lag real-world knowledge. If I want to know the quickest way to get from one side of London to another, I’ll ask my husband (a longtime resident) or a London...