Borough Market

For my final day in London, last Saturday, I wanted to go back to a favourite haunt - Borough Market - and could think of a no better companion and guide than Pete, the lovely friend and fellow foodie who first introduced me to it years ago.

Together we spent a few hours slowly meandering through the market and grazing on delicious morsels of food as we walked past the multitude of stalls.

While I don't really spend much time trawling farmers markets in New York (considering how rarely I cook here), I have a particular affection for Borough.

Even though I couldn't buy anything (due to the strict US customs rules), I still reveled in the atmosphere and found myself imagining which occasions other people there were shopping for - A large family gathering around a roast organic chicken? A romantic steak and wild mushroom dinner for two? Or a decadent and solitary cheese fest?

Over the years, Borough Market has become a rather posh affair and while I think it has lost nothing of its charm, it has gained many, many more visitors and making your way through the small lanes can be quite challenging.

I love the fact that it is located in the arches of the old railway viaduct at London Bridge and despite the gentrification, it still retains a slightly gritty, old London feel to it. A little bit like stepping back into the London of "Oliver" ...

http://www.boroughmarket.org.uk/

Back in Blighty

I have spent the last couple of weeks in London as my US work visa was up for renewal (2 more years in NYC!).

The last time I was in here was over a year and a half ago and I have been delighted/amused/occasionally annoyed to realise that in all that time I was away, I had forgotten :

How intelligent, interesting and caustically funny British television is. Without a doubt the best programming in the World.

How yummy Pret A Manger sandwiches and salads are.

That whilst it doesn't rain nearly as much as one would think, the skies do bear a shade of grey most of the time unfortunately.

How much I miss English pubs (dark and cosy, complete with exposed bricks, low ceilings and ideally an open fire place) and even more when they serve a proper Sunday Roast (lightly pink and thinly sliced beef, perfectly roasted potatoes, string beans, a voluminous Yorkshire pudding and rich gravy).

How the other half lives until one of my friends let me stay in her $1.8M apartment set in a quiet Chelsea mews for a week, minutes from ultra-chic Kings Road. Living the life of a posh girl about town was really, really hard but someone had to do it!

What normal/human sized packets of crisps and chocolate bars looked like.

How eye-wateringly expensive public transport is, with a return zone 1 ticket on the Tube costing almost $8. And to add insult to injury, the noticeably increased presence of taxis on the streets is only explained by the fact that they are now prohibitively pricey!

That I am apparently old enough now to genuinely enjoy listening to Radio 4 every morning ...


I've had a really wonderful time rediscovering London, going back to old haunts and finding new ones, but most of all catching up with a ton of friends. One thing is for sure ... I won't leave it as long to come back again.

New Yorker v1.1

It seems that you notice even more how much of a New Yorker you have become after spending a week in London when ...

Your friends are concerned that you are mildly obsessed with Barack Obama because you have read both his books and are recommending them to everyone you talk to, you brought the Time Magazine Special Election Commemorative Issue with you and you explain that you ended a recent casual fling on grounds of "irreconciliable political differences".

You keep calling London "the City" causing many confused looks - while in New York the City refers to Manhattan, in London it is the nickname for the Financial district.

You find an English accent utterly endearing and charming, realising you had somehow become immune to it over the years.

You almost choke when having to pay $120 for a taxi ride from Central London to Essex where you were staying for a night - in New York, this could almost get you to the Hamptons!

You make twice a day pitstops at the Starbucks around the corner from the office for a Tall Black Americano - not because you like their coffee but because it "feels like home".

Your resolution to take the Tube everywhere lasts for less than 24 hours! After that, most of your time is spent desperately looking for a black cab, loudly cursing their elusiveness outside of the city center.

Your face drops when, after spending the night at a friend's in South West London, he suggests that the best way for you to get back to Central London is to take a bus ... a bus! And then you of course spend half an hour looking for a taxi instead.

You think that hanging out with a 6'8 transvestite that you randomly met in a nightclub and talking about the merits of push-up bras is completely normal.

You take an hour train ride from London to Kingston and back and wonder how you managed to do that commute every weekday for nearly 7 years without losing the will to live - it gives a new meaning to the rat race which I don't think I could ever go back to.

When having said that, you find London trains to be very clean but ever so narrow and Londoners to be extremely polite and reserved compared to some of the more colourful characters you have encountered in the New York subway.

You feel that London is too big or at least too spread out compared to Manhattan. I am never more than 20 minutes away from where I want to be, whereas in London going back to wherever I was staying after going out seemed like a mini-adventure, without the reassuring part of knowing I would actually find a way to get home.

Cold Britannia

Since moving to New York, I always make sure that I stop over in London for a few days twice a year, usually on my way back to France to see my family. Having lived there for 12 years, a lot of my "extended" family and very dear friends are there. This time, the trip was little more complicated - I was in London for 5 days, then in Paris for 2 before finally joining my family in the South of France for a week.

Moving to another country is always challenging from a friendship perspective and I must admit that I fear fewer and fewer people will still want to see me as years go by ... although it hasn't been the case so far, thankfully. When I see my London friends again, whether I am in touch with them on a weekly (or sometimes daily) basis via email, or just once in a while, it always feel like we only saw each other yesterday, despite our lives changing and evolving all the time.

I therefore always look forward to going back to London ... although this time I had the distinct impression that London didn't want me there, considering the number of things that went wrong during my short stay.

It all started with the constant rain, grey skies and surprisingly cold temperatures. I had only packed summer dresses (a case of misguided optimism) and was eventually forced to buy a pair of trousers and borrow a friend's coat, after a couple of initial days of shivering, constant cursing and getting soaked to the bones (usually while lugging my heavy suitcase in the streets!).

Things got worse as I moved into my hotel after staying with various friends for a few days. I was staying in a guest house in Belgravia and was given a dark and damp basement bedroom with a tiny bathroom - so small that I felt I was showering in a coffin (an experience I would not recommend!). And with only one towel (not much larger than a hand towel) for the entire 3 day stay, and a TV that wouldn't have looked out of place in a museum, I was close to tears.

Even a trip to Brighton turned into a much less straight forward affair than it should have been. I was making my way down to have dinner with Charlie, one of my oldest friends, but was delayed by over an hour because of violent storms. I finally made it and had a wonderful evening, at the issue of which I thought I had overcome my streak of bad luck ... until I took the train back to London the next morning and got fined $40 for buying the wrong ticket - something that has never, ever happened to me in the numerous times I have made that journey!

As the final touch to a fairly disastrous trip, I realised after leaving London that the Ipod Touch I had bought for a friend of my brother's had been stolen from my luggage, leaving me $400 lighter ...

But I didn't let London (quite literally) dampen my enthusiasm and I had a wonderful time catching up with as many friends as time allowed. It did bring mixed feelings to the surface however: a sense of belonging (enjoying seeing old faces and old places) but of detachment as well (being very aware that it is not where my life is right now).

I feel at home everywhere, yet nowhere in particular at the same time. They say home is where the heart is ... right now I feel that my heart is scattered across France, London and New York. I hope that one day it will settle somewhere finally.

Back in Blighty

Being back in London was a strange feeling. It felt like I never really left, although I realised when I was there that I've been away for 6 months already.

It was wonderful seeing everyone and picking up right where I left off. I was constantly on the move, staying with close friends in Streatham, Primrose Hill, Mill Hill and finally Kingston over the course of 10 days. I never had time to unpack but I quite like being a nomad anyway.

London was very much unchanged bar the odd buildings having been torn down in Victoria. I spent an unreasonable amount of time in Topshop and Marks & Spencer (just admiring the perfectly arranged vegetables, how sad!) - guess I missed those shops more than I realised.

I was freezing cold though, having ignored most people’s sound advice about packing plenty of jumpers. I had optimistically taken a few summer dresses with me, which obviously never saw the light of the day.

The main change really was the smoking ban, which the city seem to have taken extremely seriously. It’s almost fanatical actually – I even had a complete stranger tell me on the street that I was “too beautiful for that cigarette’! As any girl would do, I decided to take the compliment and ignore the insult.
Special wardens seem to have been given the specific role of shooing away people who attempt to smoke outside of office building or from outdoors areas that happen to have a tiny bit of a roof over them – I decided that it must be some kind of job creation scheme. There were also constant announcements in Victoria station reminding evil smokers that they were not allowed to do the deed anywhere inside or near the vicinity.

It’s a positive thing though, but not just because of the obvious reasons (death and other bothersome health conditions for example) … it means that almost every single bar and restaurant has now managed to find outdoor space on pavements or courtyards I didn’t even know they had to set tables outside. It struck me how much it now looks a little like New York and that therefore a lot of the alfresco areas here are designed to accommodate smokers. I think it creates a lot more atmosphere and livelihood, right in the streets.

I had a wonderful but exhausting week, very much burning the candle at both ends – I’ll be back at Christmas doing it all over again though!