Tea for Two

The place: Orange Pekoe, Barnes

I do like a spot of tea and cake. This is because I a) like to eat and 2) like to pretend that I have an enormously elegant life of swanning around a variety of teashops and chatting about high-brow things*.) So when the Sister of Virtue suggested we go for tea and scones** near where she lives I said 'Yes! Let's!'*** and went.

It is the most adorable place, combining ye olde-ness and a modern feel very well (that wallpaper with the birdcages on; quirky mismatched china displayed in a very interiors-mag way; dinky outside furniture for the pavement cafe element.). It's a very good-looking place.

The food and drink was likewise very good. I had a steamed milk, cinnamon and honey concoction that was very nice, although rather too heavily milky for mid-afternoon; I should have gone with the honey latte. I had a scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam (it was a bit posh; they called it preserves). The scone was home-made, I don't know about the cream and jam. Sister had a lemon cake, which came in a pleasingly large wodge (I didn't taste any; we're eaters, not sharers, in our family).

Apparently Orange Pekoe is really into tea. To the extent there was a little book on the table, which you could buy for 5.95 English pounds, and it was all about the Orange Pekoe and how into tea they are. We didn't have any tea, but I'm sure it's excellent. We did, however, look at the tea, which is arrayed on a whole wall in big jars, and that was very nice, like a sweetie shop of yore. They also do sandwiches and light bites, and a full-on afternoon tea with finger sandwiches and cake stands and general indulgent loveliness, and who among us doesn't want a bit of indulgent loveliness now and again?

* Not actually the case.

** I'm not that into scones, but have a fondness for them because when I was little I won a prize by ringing into the radio and telling them my joke, which was:

What's the fastest cake in the world?

Scone.

Everyone laughed. I was pretty cute back then.

*** The title of a game I used to play in drama class, consisting in one person shouting out something to do (e.g. hop on one leg, jump up and down) and we all had to shout back 'Yes! Let's!' and then do it. Sometimes I feel that this attitude could take me far, and sometimes I think it's a barrier to wisdom.

Too-be much to take

A couple of years ago I had a temp job a forty-five minutes away from home, and I hated the drive, because other drivers are such wankers. If only I'd known that two short years later I would have no car, and other people on public transport, are also wankers, but - crucially - without the calming barrier of a whole car or two between us. Then I would have been grateful for the drive.

To commemorate this I have created this list of the most significant sins committed by people on London's (in other ways really very good) public transport system. Most of these could be avoided by the simple expedient of people considering for a tiny second that actually, other people exist. These are in order of their coming to me, rather than in order of infuriatingness. They're all unforgivably infuriating.

1. Sitting on the inside seat on the bus when it's very busy and either pretending not to see anyone else (annoying) or just looking at you with the dead-eyed impudence of 'I'm not going to move and you're not going to ask me, in case I kick off' (very annoying).

2. Standing in front of the window in the door on a packed Tube carriage. That's EVERYONE's air. Stop using it all.

3. Holding onto the overhead bar with two hands in the Tube carriage vestibule (parallel to the doors), taking up loads of room. Funnily enough, I only ever see men doing this. One day, I will break, and start tickling.

4. Corollary to 3: people who lean on an upright pole (Tube and bus). Other people are also trying not to fall over, you know.

5. [Tube drivers] When the Tube stops and they don't say anything for about five minutes, while I break into a sweat and fan myself with a bookmark, trying not to elbow other people in the face, and start contemplating whether I would take my heels off I had to walk to the surface and whether I have suitable receptacles in my bag for weeing into, if it came to it, and whether there's enough water in everyone's bags to keep us all alive if we pooled it. Essentially, not being given information quickly makes me assume I need to start planning to recreate human civilisation on the Northern line, halfway between Waterloo and Kennington.

6. People with buggies on really busy buses who never appear to consider for a moment that they might want to fold the buggy up. Even though it says on the sign that in busy times they may need to fold up the buggy to make space. It's part of the social contract of public transport, same as getting up for people who need the seat more than you. You can tell because signs ask you to do both things. (If you've bought a buggy you don't know how to fold up, there's no hope for you. You probably ought not to have bred.)

7. PDA. Especially on a commuter Tube in the morning.

If you do any of these things regularly, I hope you will rethink your ways. Failing that, I hope TfL comes up with a way of catapulting you off all public transport based on facial recognition technology within my lifetime.

Anniversary

Today I have been living in London for a whole year. To celebrate I have flipped my mattress.

The other thing I did today was go on a Wellcome Collection walk, 'Conspicuous Consumption', about the link between medicine and money in the 18th and 19th centuries. It started at Great Portland Street and ended at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road and was pretty interesting, despite it starting pissing down about halfway through and devotedly wetting the streets and us for a good hour. (A number of people didn't have umbrellas, but stiff-upper-lipped their way through the inevitable dampness; one can only assume they had never been to England in October before, or heard anything about it.) We criss-crossed Harley Street and the surrounding area (gorgeous majestic buildings) and then trundled through Fitzrovia, stopping at various blue-plaqued buildings to hear from the guide about their stories. His name was Richard somehting and he was excellent, highly engaging and very knowledgeable. A poignant moment was at the building site that used to be the Middlesex Hospital, where the guide had trained as a doctor starting in 1998; they've left the building's facade and apparently a grade 1 listed chapel on the site. For a city with a long and storied history not much of London's historical fabric seems to be left, before perhaps the 19th century, so it's a shame to lose buildings steeped in history and development.

After the talk I had lunch at the Wellcome Collection cafe. Both the lunch and the walk (free!) are to be highly recommended.