Paul in London

Scenes from South Kensington Tube - Tuesday 16:41. District Line Eastbound. 

Not much to blog about in the past few days… Well there has been but I have been otherwise preoccupied on my holiday, but this weekend will be a chance to put that right…

Scenes from the Westminster Tuesday - 19:17. The joys of the internet and live feeds... You can watch him rub his hands, talk on the mobile and wave to photographers... It's just like big brother! 

In a spot of diversionary sightseeing from other more pressing events later in the week, I caught the Chinese photography exhibition Between Past and Future at the V&A this afternoon. I understand that it isn't a terribly popular exhibition and while it has some great photography in it, Modern China isn't the most exciting thing to see – unless overdeveloped grey concrete bunkers in a cold and hostile environment is your idea of living. Interestingly one of the collections of photographs by Song Dong I had seen in Brisbane at the APT in 2002 (so there was a touch of the so-three years ago about the exhibition as well)… Anyway, you do leave with a sense of wondering about this emerging superpower as to what sort of future is in store for a country going through rapid industrialisation and upheaval. And it still wasn't enough to convince me to have some dim sum for lunch…  

I missed that part of the summer tour of Parliament back in 2003 – where you can scale the building and unfurl a banner about not getting access to your kid. This is what happened this afternoon when yet another protestor scaled the Palace of Westminster. The BBC is being kind enough to show a live feed of the man on top of what looks like Westminster Hall. At the time of writing you can watch him make calls and wave to the passers by as there is still enough light around. It is pretty exciting stuff, and watching it you can't help but wondering in a perverse sort of way… Will he slip??    

Scenes from Bloomsbury Sunday 14:11 - It isn't everyday when you find a working fridge freezer for £35 outside your front door... Not surprinsingly (as Londoners love a bargain), within an hour it was sold... Just in time to beat the heavy afternoon rains that would have probably rendered it less useful... In another curiousity the central heating came on this week in the building... Apparently winter is here even if it isn't... It made me wonder whether: The other residents of the building are fearful of temperatures below 15 degrees, The authority that runs the building gets a good deal on the gas used to heat the boilers, The other residents missed the furnace-like atmosphere of the stairwells over the past three months when the heating was turned off, The basement rats turned it on after eating their way through everything else down there, The authority that runs the building doesn't have any idea as to what it is doing, or All of the above. In another pr

Kate Moss stories this week have been fascinating. While we are all relieved to know that she wasn't so low-brow as to do crack , as more and more labels are dropping her, more dirt is being dug up on her hoovering up the cocaine before switching to ketamine. So that's how she can take listening to the Babyshambles… The images of cocaine Kate have been tightly controlled by the mirror but Gawker has an interesting take on it all before the Mirror's lawyers stepped in. One suspects that the Met Police is more interested in this story than in the past as the current police commissioner is keen to focus on middle-class drug users … Moss is not getting off as easy as when resident toff and former Squidgy-lover James Hewitt was let off with a warning over cocaine use. On a more sanguine note, St John Ambulance is hoping that London poddies will take advantage of first aid tips that can be downloaded to your iPOD. Another post-July must-have download perhaps…

Scenes from Stockwell Tube Northern Line Northbound Thursday 22:43 - Heading back to Bloomsbury after some sensible drinks with friends in Brixton... Unexpectedly I also managed to get a few presents as well including a bottle of champagne and a bottle of fizz from Australia. These were consumed on Friday evening in WC1 which has left one feeling a tad tired today...

Oh and for dinner on Wednesday, A treated me to Chez Bruce in Wandsworth, which has just been voted in Harden's London's favourite restaurant (knocking off Covent Garden's The Ivy from the top spot). It isn't hard to see why it is a favourite . It has great food and is a smart restaurant without being too pretentious. For the main course I had a baked cod which was fabulous and A had a pig's trotter. I asked whether this meant there was a three-legged pig wandering around Wandsworth Common but the waiter assured us that all the legs were taken off the pig so no wandering about the common could take place… It has been around for ten years as well and no doubt the latest publicity will bring in new punters to SW17 (afterall, it is only a short trip from Victoria Station)…

Scenes from the South Bank Wednesday 18:28. Royal Festival Hall is now covered in scaffolding for the big refurbishment, but the front of the building is very sensible with the new eateries and establishments along it, and very very popular as basically there has been only rubbish along here before...