City Skills: The best places in London to drink alone

_{Monet obviously took his hipflask with him. This is just how it looks after a couple of swigs}

Drinking alone is not for everyone. Those of a depressive or addictive personality might want to give it a miss. Those who secretly enjoy being maudlin for romantic effect however…well, you know who you are. Just don’t make a habit of it unless you’re an artistic genius. In which case do whatever the fuck you want.

The Sun, Drury Lane (recommended drink: pint of IPA)

This pub has three regulars who are great friends to the solitary drinker: decent ale, a big mirror, and live cricket on TV. The first and last of these are commonplace, their appeal self-explanatory. The mirror’s the real hook. For what is drinking alone but an opportunity for self-reflection? Sitting before the glass you watch your pint diminish in your hand, draining slowly and inevitably away like all your youthful hopes and dreams. You see yourself as you really are: an ape who’s evolved just far enough to recognise yourself drinking a pint in a pub on your own. That’s all there is. That’s all you are. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. I recommend you watch the cricket.

Fitzroy Tavern, Charlotte St (pint of sovereign)

You’re exactly like Dylan Thomas.

Hoxton Square (can of Red Stripe)

Watch the pretty young people form their reciprocal social bonds. Mock them for their interdependence. Envy them their swagger. It could be both better and worse – you could be one of them.

A boat, the Serpentine (white wine)

Who says drinking alone has to be depressing?! Sometimes you’ve done a job and done it well. Sometimes you did it all yourself. You need a moment to celebrate with all the people who made it possible: You. Relax, feel the breeze in your hair, the water on your finger tips. You did it. You’re the king of the world!

Charing Cross/Hungerford/Golden Jubilee Footbridge (hipflask – contents of your choice)

Halfway across Hungerford footbridge is located the precise centre of London. Not the geographical centre, or the administrative centre, the entertainment centre or the transportation centre. The real centre. Suspended above the Thames, with St Paul’s to the East, Westminster to the West, the arts to the South and the pubs to the North, here is where the essence of the city resides. Toast it. Toast the city from its own heart. Listen to the waves rise and fall, like cities do.

See also:
Five best places in London to break up with someone
Five useful phrases that mean you’ll never lose an argument again
Five charlatans, eccentrics or otherwise notable personages buried at Kensal Green

Picture – Charing Cross Bridge by Claude Monet from Wikimedia Commons

Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com

Imperial's student newspaper admits rape is not funny, struggles to work out what is

The editor of Felix, Matthew Colvin, writes a contrite and impressive apology for publishing a piece which suggested a recipe for making rohypnol. The offensive piece (and it is offensive – this isn’t one of those faux-offensive offences), can be read here.

The apology begins:

In last week’s Felix, an article was published in the Hangman section which many readers felt incited sexual violence, trivialised rape and generally contributed to the idea of a rape culture. I would like to take the opportunity to assure readers that this was in no way our intention, and we all agree that a piece of content which does this is wholly unacceptable.

It goes on:

We are now taking the time to carefully consider how any section designed with the sole intention of being humourous can feature and simultaneously exist to the same standard as the rest of this publication.

The question now facing Imperial students is this: is it possible to (try to) be funny without also inciting rape? Time will tell.

Felix – A note on last week’s hangman
Rochefoucauld tumblr – Reprint of original article

Reviewed: Song Dong's Waste Not - the objects are winning

Newly opened, and free, at the Barbican is Chinese artist Song Dong’s Waste Not – a collection of all the items his mother hoarded through her lifetime.

When Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions for art in 2001, the act provoked thoughts about consumption, materialism, and similar unfashionable forces which everybody repudiates in word and promotes in action.

Waste Not provokes similar thoughts.

A life reduced to objects is a terrifying thing. A hundred goggle-eyed toys menace the viewing path. For every toy, a box, for every box a polystyrene block. Packaging outnumbers product, plastic obliterates organic. It’s a vision of earth as hell, with plastic in place of flames.

There are touching items too. Personal items. A chalk drawing of a girl. A bucket of shells, perhaps taken from some family beach trip. A cooker, which looks much used. Was it? I don’t know. But the image resonates.

Many items here are rich with associations. But the viewer must imagine them. The woman who amassed this collection has gone.

The corpses of 10 umbrellas lie side by side with 30 paintbrushes. Lined up like this, so many of them together, the objects are sundered utterly from their uses. The umbrellas are so far from rain, the paintbrushes so far from paint, it’s as if they have come full circle and are lying in a factory before being shipped out. They might never have been owned at all. The person who possessed them does not define them in any way. But they now define her. The objects are winning.

Free at The Barbican until 12 June 2012 – Song Dong’s Waste Not

Boris & Ken take note: Celtic and Rangers show how much rivals really need each other

For neutrals, watching big beasts like Ken and Boris slug it out is an enthralling spectator sport. But are these intense rivalries destructive, or do they raise the game of both involved? Mike Bonnet casts his eyes north of the border to see the damage that can be done when one half of a vicious rivalry throws in the towel.

City Skills: The best places in London to break up with someone

Breaking up sucks. It might be the hardest thing you ever do. Sometimes though, it’s for the best. If you don’t love somebody, you must set them free.

The question is, where?

Their house? But your unwanted apparition might taint their home forever. Your house? But they will have easy access to the kitchen knives. A pub? But strangers might gawp at you. It’s tough. Here are some ideas.

1. Hampstead Heath, a windswept winter morning

You wouldn’t break up with someone on the Heath on a bright summer’s afternoon. That would be wholly inappropriate. But in the wintertime, against a grey foreboding sky, to the howling soundtrack of the wind through the hollow dead oaks, it makes perfect sense. The breaker-upper would be fortified in their resolve by the landscape’s grand, implacable power. The breaker-uppee would be consoled in their grief by the landscape’s grand, implacable power. Win win.

2. A capsule of the London Eye

Risky, but potentially rewarding. If you get the break up out of the way first thing then you’ve got 25 minutes to work through all the psychological stages leading through to acceptance of the break up, and a shared conviction to remain friends. This timetable is challenging, but doable, and would save these issues being played out to no-one’s benefit over the ensuing weeks and months.

3. The Reading Room, British Library

So there won’t be any shouting.

4. Hampton Court Maze

A place which, thanks to Henry VIII, abounds with pertinent resonances: the passion and fragility of love, the possibility of romantic renewal, the inevitability of death. And the maze – what is the maze but a living symbol of a love withdrawn? The quixotic, duplicitous, enticing labyrinth of love, leading nowhere, signifying nothing. And you’ll be able to run away and hide easily if it all goes badly.

5. The place you got together

Not an obvious choice, I grant you. Indeed, some might think it rubs salt in the wound. But the principle of ring composition, whereby a piece of art finishes where it starts, is a well established aesthetic device. By breaking up with someone in the place you got together, you ensure that when they look back on the relationship it will be with a satisfying, almost novelistic sense of completeness. They may not appreciate that now, but in the long run this can only be enriching. In my case, it would certainly soften the blow if I knew the person breaking up with me had given thought to the memorial repercussions.

See also:
Annoying habits of Londoners # 2: Being upset when strangers gawp at you
The five best frozen pizzas on the London convenience store market
Five great London journeys into the sunset
Five filthy, dirty, obscenely sexual poems from the past

Photo – A Pillow of Winds on Flickr under Creative Commons

Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com

The "Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane" cause is ahistorical, sentimentalised guff

_{Brick Lane has about as much historical connection with this guy as it does with its surface}

The ‘Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane’ petition is one of the most ridiculous bandwagons of the year.

It’s absolutely fine that local residents and businesses should raise objections about a lack of consultation. But to complain that the resurfacing threatens “this historic street” is pure cobble cobblers.

Headlines such as:

East London Lines – Olympic Games take the bricks out of Brick Lane
BBC News – Brick Lane’s bricks to be covered over

imply that Brick Lane and its brick surface have some ancestral connection, are so deeply entwined, so symbiotically linked, that to have one without the other would threaten the integrity of the street itself. Rubbish. The current brick surface is about a decade old! Some real history:

This street existed under its modern name as early as 1550 when a survey of the Manor of Stepney mentions two tile garths on its eastern side. (ref. 1) These were places either where clay was dug to make tiles or perhaps where brick-earth was dug. In Agas’s map of c. 1560–70 Brick Lane is shown, apparently quite without buildings. [British History Online]

And what’s this?

In 1772, Commissioners were appointed with power to pave certain streets in Spitalfields and all of Brick Lane within and without the parish. [Ibid]

Roads get resurfaced. Different materials get used at different times. It’s still the same street. The decision to lay the existing bricks down in the first place can be seen as a ridiculous and sentimentalised attempt to fit the surface to the name, one which is now being corrected.

Argue against the lack of consultation, or the fact that the plans privilege cars over pedestrians, by all means. But appeals to history and character have absolutely nothing to do with either.

Petition – Brick Lane not Tarmac Lane!
British History Online – Brick Lane
Snipe – Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city’s self-esteem

Annoying habits of Londoners #2: Being upset when strangers gawp at you

City living can be tough. Time and space are seldom your own. That’s why I have always depended on the oddness of strangers. Whether I’m trapped on public transport, bored in a pub, posing round an exhibition or peeking furtively from behind my bedroom curtains, other citizens behaving unusually is one thing I can always rely on to spice up my day.

I’m not talking here about the unfortunate, the drunk, students or the unwell. These people warrant sympathy, not gawps. What fascinates me are ordinary people in moments of minor social crisis.

A list of such crises would include, but not be limited to:

People having arguments
People in romantic clinches
People who are lost pretending that they aren’t
People trying to get served at a bar without looking too much like they’re trying to get served
People who look underdressed
People who feel overdressed
People turning round in the street for no apparent reason and heading off in the opposite direction as if it were the most natural thing in the world
People dropping things
People with lots of luggage who are trying to navigate London without bashing into anyone even though they suspect, correctly, that it’s not possible
People falling over
People who are just as nosy as me who get caught being nosy and try to pretend that they weren’t being nosy at all

We’re all nosy. If there’s a Londoner out there who persistently minds their own business I haven’t met them and I don’t want to. People are interesting. That’s ok.

What’s not ok is to do something interesting, however inadvertently, and then shoot evils at someone for watching you do it. It happens to me all the time, and I’m sick of it.

If you live in a city you have signed a metaphorical pact: to live a partly public life. If you’re in the street, you’re on the stage. Let me watch you; and you, you watch others in return. There’s no need to look so cross. You’re the star of the show!

See also:
Annoying Habits of Londoners #1: Applauding at the cinema
Five most annoying habits on London’s public transport
Diary of the shy Londoner

Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com

The appeal of court: Leveson is a guilt-free fix for hypocrites, prudes and the terminally indignant

Self-regulation didn’t work in the newspaper industry, and there’s precious little of it on show among viewers of The Leveson Inquiry either, says Mike Bonnet.

East London is England's unhappiest place to live, says unscientific promotional survey

A completely unscientific promotional survey has revealed that moustaches, pop-up bone marrow restaurants and copious amounts of drugs do not, in the end, make people happy.

The Dorset Echo, which reports from a happy place, explains:

The questionnaire, put together by property firm Rightmove, looked at things like size, value and decor of homes, safety, friendliness of neighbours and the quality of local amenities.

The survey, like this one we covered last year, proves once and for all that people should just get out of this godforsaken hellhole before it’s too late.

Bottom 10

1. London: East
2. Ilford
3. London: Southeast
4. Luton
5. Romford
6. Oldham
7. Enfield
8. London: North
9. London: West
10. Harrow

Dorset Echo – Dorchester named as one of the happiest towns in country
Snipe – Survey reveals Londoners to be more unhappy than rest of UK. You miserable gits

Mayor Johnson's new campaign video makes £3.10 go a hell of a long way

Last week the Mayor announced he was cutting his share of the council tax by 1%, or £3.10 a year for a band D property. Everyone had a lot of fun with that figure, and it was all quite LOL, but now we get to see why he bothered – so he could make videos like this one. Subtle it aint.

You’ll note that there’s no mention of £3.10. And there’s a repetition of the disingenuous implication that Labour assembley members don’t support freezing or lowering the council tax. Dave Hill debunked this Johnson campaign meme here.

So, we’ve got to February, and the dividing lines for this campaign are now clear. Ken Livingstone says Boris Johnson means higher fares. Boris Johnson says Ken Livingstone means higher tax. That’s pretty much it.

Expect to hear those formulations again and again and again between now and May. So often, in fact, that as you enter the polling booth your ears will be bleeding and your head will be sore, and you’ll have forgotten that any third party candidates even exist.

Just embrace it, people. It will be over soon.

Snipe – Mayor Johnson cuts council tax by £3.10. What will you buy?
Adam Bienkov – Boris Johnson to save Londoners three whole pounds
Dave Hill at The Guardian – Ken Livingstone and council tax: porkies and possibilities