I highly admire all those London bloggers who manage to keep writing great stuff in regular intervals. I don’t have the time. Hence I shouldn’t blog. Who needs another London blog anyways when there are so many other excellent examples?
and the site of my hyperlocal journalist London SE1 (non-SE1’ers might appreciate Londonist instead)
There are, of course, many more, and now there is one less. And that’s a relief for me, because it’s one less thing on the edge of the mind, thus removing some of the bad conscience that steadily grows with every item undone. I originally started this blog in an attempt to retain a ‘feel’ for writing in my native language (German), and later switched to gain more routine in writing in another language (English). Useful and enjoyable at the time, but a major time investment: With every article taking between 20 minutes and two hours, I spent days exercising my writing skills. But as I sit in front of a screen all day, I much prefer spending my spare time doing something other than occupying an office chair in an isolated room.
I will still share things here and there, some things public, some things hidden from public view. The heres and theres are listed on my landing page over at www.commonline.org, and at the moment I expect Google+ to become my main hub for all content that I produce, which is mostly photos, occasionally a video, and sometimes a bit of text with an added hyperlink or so. Google’s engineers still have to do quite a lot to meet my requirements, so I won’t retire my Twitter feed just yet, but G+ is heading in the right direction and suits my workflow nicely.
This site, commonlondon, will remain live, but only as an archive.
Right, this is it.
All that remains is a friendly invitation to visit my Google+ page, and, if you want, to add me to one of your circles.
Or follow me on Twitter.
Thanks!
Yes, I know: After a long hiatus, this blog seemed dead. But trust me, it isn’t.
Anyways, the new year has started, and new years are an opportunity to do things differently. Well, actually every day is an opportunity to do that, but you have to start somewhere, do you not?
[simage=298,200,y,right]Here is the change: Life documentary doesn’t work for me. Nor does daily blogging. Nor a-few-times-per-week blogging. Nor weekly blogging. However, I find this blog useful for myself, as there are a few nice tips on how to enjoy London here and there, which is probably the blog’s main value. Thus, I will be stripping out all the semi-personal anecdotes and concentrate on compiling thematic tips, roughly once per month to keep it manageable.
Having lived in London for six years, I think I have developed a solid understanding of how this micro-cosmos works and where to find the occasional gem. There are people with vastly more experience who can write much better than me, and who have much more time on their hands, so I’ll leave it to them to document London life and provide current event tips. I instead will compile personal selections of what I think covers a particular theme or topic well from my viewpoint, and I will do that in a top five or best of format. This will be based on things I have done myself, so it won’t be a complete selection, but after six London years, I have enough material to keep me going for many months.
Strange title for a post. It is an unimaginative attempt at meshing a whole evening into a short phrase: a drink at Redchurch Bar, followed by Up in the Air at Rich Mix cinema, followed by a curry on Brick Lane, followed by a final pint at Woodin’s Shades. Continue reading »
Just a little bit too far from my office for the lunch break lies the Fleet River Bakery at the edge of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Pity, because the food offerings look gorgeous – though don’t expect varieties of bread here, because the bakery products are focusing on cakes: it’s a proper bistro-café.
Oh how I’d love to sit down for a while and enjoy nice pastries, but no, today I am just picking up a coffee to go. I have chosen my venue carefully, of course, as I have been told that the Fleet River Bakery serves Monmouth Coffee. Just the standard blend but that is not a bad thing.
While waiting for the coffee to be prepared, you can wonder why there is almost a square metre of a see-through glass tile in the floor just in front of the coffee counter. To provide the cellar with daylight? Or a design feature to make customers like me wonder? Anyways, a nice little quirk.
Fleet River Bakery, by LoopZilla via flickr
The coffee itself is good Monmouth quality and well prepared. Not as strong as what you get from Monmouth directly, and therefore ideal for a flat white – I had it as a latte, though. As Monmouth is just a few minutes down the West End maze of side streets, I cannot see myself buying coffees here in great quantity, but as a place to sit and relax a little, it is a nice breakfast or afternoon haven in the middle of a busy area. And let’s not forget the food.
I’ve been kissed by a man! Eeek!! It was my first time ever, and most probably won’t happen again (sorry to disappoint). Of course, my kisser wasn’t any random man, but more on that later – first things first.
I have been following Jackie Leven‘s outputs since his first ‘proper’ solo album, i.e. under his name, more than 15 years ago, and I went to a few concerts, one of the most memorable being 2008 in a wild-west-style pub in Leytonstone, Far East London, which I must write up at some point, because it was so utterly bizarre. Jackie Leven himself hints at the bizarreness in the first three paragraphs of his June 2008 blog entry.
Tonight’s gig was at the Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, and frankly, I cannot possibly conceive how this pub has managed to elude my radar. Not because it is the most atmospheric pub in the universe, even though it is quite inviting, relaxing and nice. But the competition for the best pub in Clerkenwell is high, so to stand out, a venue must have an additional attraction. The attraction of the Slaughtered Lamb is the gig room in the basement.