Embrace winter at Winter Wonderland

Much as your author tries to deny it, it is now winter. The weather is awful, everyone is tired all the time and you can't sit down outside. It's not Christmas yet, whatever the advertisers say, but it's time to get used to the coldest time of year and look for ways to make it better.


As I'm sure anyone who has passed the park has noticed, over in Hyde Park, they've got wise to this, and erected a temporary shrine to all things wintry on that lucrative patch of grass where they put festivals in the summer.

In amongst the fun, there's London's largest ice rink, a giant Ferris wheel and a tent for Zippo’s Christmas Circus. There is also a German Market with 50 chalets, a North Pole Slide and plenty of Christmas oriented fun and games. The only problem is that it all comes at significant cost.

For more on the Winter Wonderland, visit http://www.hydeparkwinterwonderland.com

_{^Picture courtesy of rp72}

Have Pie and Mash at F. Cooke

Your author is not clear on whether it's open on a Sunday, and it's pretty wet out, so maybe save this one for a nicer day, but F. Cooke's Pie and Mash Shop, on Broadway Market, is an interesting place to visit.


The decline of Pie and Mash shops seems to be continuing, with the loss of Goddard's in Greenwich a few years ago taking away one of the most visible examples, but F. Cooke's seems to be doing well.

Your author isn't sure he can recommend it as a culinary experience as food quality is a little patchy, but pie and mash and a cup of tea is certainly good value and will stop you feeling hungry and you will have had a genuine East London experience, if you encounter the owner, who author understands is called Bob Cooke, who was born above the shop and talks of the Pie and Mash trade with great pride, your day will be all the richer for it.

For more information see the East London Local blog.

_{^Picture from Wikipedia under Wikimedia Commons^}

Watch the skaters at the Soutbank Centre's Undercroft

It's easy to assume that the skate boarders and BMX riders who hang out on the South Bank underneath Queen Elizabeth Hall are a relatively new phenomenon. A bunch of feral hoodie kids who are an absolute nuisance. In fact, skaters have been practising here since since the 1970s and it is acknowledged to be London's most distinctive and popular skateboarding area.


Known as The Undercroft, it was originally an architectual dead-spot which has become the home of British skateboarding.

When rumours circulated that the area had been scheduled to be converted into shops last year, a campaign was mounted, and a petition from the Prime Minister even prompted a statement from Number 10 Downing Street, confirming that "The Southbank Centre has said that it has no plans to redevelop the Undercroft used by skateboarders. In fact, they are in close discussions with the skateboarding community about how to improve the current skateboard area and about how the community might become more involved in the Southbank Centre’s artistic programme"

Even so, there is no way of knowing how long it will last. However, one thing is for sure. If you're an angst-ridden kid with low slung trousers, a battered skateboard and an interest in falling over and you're looking for somewhere to hang out this sunny Saturday, you could do a lot worse than head for the South Bank.

For more see an article in Cooler Magazine.

_{^Picture courtesy of Afreen Rahim^}

Drink at the Blind Beggar

Your author struggled to choose the hook for today's item, as the truth is that the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel is a legend in itself. The pub is probably best known for its connection with the Kray Twins, after the incident in 1966 when Ronnie Kray shot and murdered George Cornell, an associate of a rival gang, as he was sitting at the bar. but there is so much more to it than that...


The pub is also the birthplace of the Salvation Army, as it was outside the public house which previously stood on the site that William Booth, founder of the organisation, gave his first open air sermon in 1865.

The pub itself was built in 1894 on a site previously occupied by another inn. The pub is named after Henry de Montfort, a son of Simon de Montfort, the famous leader who called the first directly elected parliament in medieval Europe. Henry was apparently wounded and lost his sight in the Battle of Evesham in 1265, and used to beg at the crossroads, becoming referred to as the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

For more on the Blind Beggar, visit http://www.theblindbeggar.com

_{^Picture by stevecadman^}

Listen to a lecture at the Royal Society

Many of London's seemingly impenetrable institutions are actually more than happy to welcome you along if you scratch beneath the surface, usually for free. That's very much the case with the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, better known as the Royal Society, in Carlton House Terrace, just off Pall Mall. It is the oldest scientific society in existence, and is the Academy of Sciences of the United Kingdom.


The Society was founded in the 1660s, and has moved a number of times in its long history. In 1710 it moved to Crane Court in the Strand, by the 1780s it was at Somerset House, and in 1857 it moved to Burlington House in Piccadilly. In fact, it wasn't until 1967 that it moved to its current location.

They run a series of free events and lectures, which are open to the public and cover a range of topics related to science, scientific history, technology, engineering, medicine, mathematics. For details, visit http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/events-diary/

_{^Picture courtesy of Matt From London^}

Find the house where Ian Fleming wrote James Bond's adventures

The author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming, was a Londoner. He was born born into a wealthy family at 27 Green Street in Mayfair, but most of his books were written after he moved into number 16 Victoria Square in January 1953.


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At about the same time, he published his first novel, Casino Royale, in which he introduced an unknown secret agent called James Bond.

Live and Let Die followed in 1954, Moonraker in 1955, From Russia With Love in 1957, Dr No in 1958, and many others. Fleming lived at Victoria Square until his death in 1964, and a new James Bond novel appeared every year until the short stories Octopussy and the Living Daylights in 1966.

For more, see here or for more on Fleming see here.

Get your skates on at the Lee Valley Ice Centre

The time is upon us when everywhere in the middle of town is preparing to open their overpriced tourist ice rink, but out in the Lee Valley Regional Park in East London, England they know how to do it properly, and do so all year round.


The Lee Valley Ice Centre was opened in January 1984 by Jane Torvill & Christopher Dean, in the same year they won their Gold Medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. The ice rink is international sized and can host over a thousand skaters and spectators.

It is the home of the Lee Valley Lions amateur English National Ice Hockey League team, and also is the base for four synchronised skating teams. For the novices amongst us, there are public skating sessions every day for £6.60 (+£1.60 skate hire), and there are also lessons available and even 'Disco Skate' sessions.

The centre is on bus routes 48, 55 and 56. For more information, visit http://www.leevalleypark.org.uk/en/content/cms/Leisure/Activities_and_Sport/ice_centre/ice_centre.aspx

_{^Picture from Wikipedia^}

Climb the mounds of Northala Fields

Standing right beside the A40, a short distance from RAF Northolt, are four conical mounds, the the tallest stands at 26 metres. These are part of Northala Fields, one of London's newest parks, opened in 2008, and were constructed using waste material from the original Wembley Stadium the new Westfields shopping centre.


The mounds shield the rest of the park, created on the former Kensington and Chelsea's Playing Fields site, which includes a model boating lake, play areas and an amphitheatre, from the noise and pollution of the A40.

The project cost £5.5m, and started in 2000, but Ealing Council hit on a cunning plan to reduce costs, charging £70 to £90 per lorryload to dispose of spoil from the Wembley and Westfields sites, and using it to build the mounds, allowing the developers the added bonus of only transporting it 10 miles rather than the usual 100 miles to a landfill site.

Northala Fields lies within the Northolt and Greenford Countryside Park, which covers approximately 45 acres. For more information see http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/environment/parks_and_open_spaces/new_developments/northala/

_{^Picture from Wikipedia under Wikimedia Commons^}

Have tea and toast at the Market Coffee House

The Market Coffee House, opened in 2001 on Brushfield Street overlooking Old Spitalfields Market, is run by Peter and Kay Sinden, a builder and City economist team who seem to have a pretty good idea how to run a nice cafe.


Some parts of the building itself apparently date from the 17th century, and it was formerly a warehouse for the Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. The beautiful panelled interior was put together using the salvaged interior of The now closed Bell public house in Carter Lane, and salvaged oak from Hawksmoor's Christchurch, Spitalfields.

It is a lovely place to escape for a few minutes for a nice cup of tea, though your author did balk a little at being charged £8 yesterday for a cup of tea, toastie and a can of pop. Those behind the till seemed to think this was perfectly acceptable so we carried on.

It appears the Coffee House is soon to open an upstairs licensed restaurant, which sounds nice. For more on all aspects of the Market Coffee House, visit http://www.marketcoffeehouse.com

Pub on the Park

It's a Saturday, so if you get bored or rained off wandering Broadway Market, why not seek shelter, a bite to eat and something to drink at the Pub on the Park, notionally on Martello St, but mainly on London Fields in Hackney


Formerly the Queen Eleanor public house, the Pub on the Park is a great spot in summer, with its large terrace overlooking London Fields, but its not bad in winter either. There is a well stocked bar and a reasonably priced food menu and it's always at its liveliest when showing Saturday afternoon sport, which it does very well.

For more, see http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub543.php

_{^Picture courtesy of Ewan-M^}

Shop for foreign language books at Grant and Cutler

Grant & Cutler, on Great Marlborough Street, is the biggest foreign-language bookseller in the UK. The store stocks more than 55,000 books, DVDs, CDs and games in over 150 languages.


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Established in 1936, Grant and Cutler specialises in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian, but they claim to cover all living languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu.

The store is a short walk from Oxford Circus underground station and is open seven days a week. For more information, visit http://www.grantandcutler.com/

The Three Kings of Clerkenwell

The Three Kings of Clerkenwell, on Clerkenwell Close, is a great little pub in an area which is lucky enough to be full of them. Will the Guardian's decision to move to Kings Cross have an impact on this the rich seam of excellent establishments, with less rich upper middle class Guardianistas to rinse away their cash there? Who knows. For now, let's just embrace them.


Your author sometimes feels he writes too much about pubs, but when you have so many excellent ones in town, and there are other countries in the world with none at all, he thinks this is fine. The Three Kings is a cosy little pub with an eclectic interior with a range of art-school rhino head and chinz style features, but not too much to make it overbearing.

It's a friendly place too, with an excellently stocked bar and food at lunchtimes and in the evenings, and when your author once stumbled into an upstairs poetry reading by mistake he was asked to join in, so we can add welcoming to that.

For more information, click here to see a review from the Guardian kids themselves.

_{^Picture by MattFromLondon^}

See the Queen on her journey to Parliament

It's tough to get a ticket to be on the pavement today in some areas of Westminster, but in others, if you pick your area well, you might catch a glimpse of every tourist's most sought-after London celebrity-spot, and one of the year's greatest displays of pageantry.


This morning, the Queen makes her journey from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament in order to open the Parliamentary session for another year. She's not the only one to be making the journey, and if you keep your eye out you will be able to see a number of royals and hangers-on all dressed up in their finery. The Crown even has its own carriage.

Down on Whitehall and Parliament Street, guards line the route and military bands play to anticipate her arrival. The Queen arrives in a horse-drawn coach, entering through Sovereign's Entrance under the Victoria Tower. The Royal Standard is then raised over the Houses of Parliament and remains in place until she leaves.

She then dons the Robes of State and the Imperial State Crown in the Robing Chamber, using a small worn throne that has been used by every monarch since Queen Victoria, and then proceeds through the royal gallery, usually accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, to the House of Lords, where there is a grander throne upon which she sits.

After the summoning of the Members of the House of Commons by Black Rod, she then gives a speech to announce the legislative programme for the next Parliamentary Session, which as it can only last until June at the very latest, is likely to be a controversial one this year.

Your author could go on about this forever, but probably best for him not to. If you are interested, please have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Opening_of_Parliament

_{^Picture of the Queen's carriage in 2007 by your author^}

Find St Augustine's Tower, Hackney's oldest building

Bit of a one for those who live in Hackney this, but it also helps to underline how much our city has expanded over the years. St Augustine's Tower, just off the Narrow Way in Hackney Central, is all that remains of the parish church of Hackney of St Augustine.


Built in the early 16th century, and formerly a place of worship for many noted dignataries including Thomas Cromwell, constant increase in Hackney's population meant that galleries were added to the church, by the 1780s it was no longer big enough to hold the constantly growing parish, and consequently the main church building was knocked down in 1798, in order to build the new Church of St John-at-Hackney, often using the old stone as building material.

After the eight bells of Hackney were relocated to the new church in 1854, the tower was for a while used as a public mortuary, and a tool shed, before eventually falling under the care of The Metropolitan Borough of Hackney in 1912. Ever since then it has been preserved for the Borough, either by the council or heritage organisations.

For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Augustine's_Tower_Hackney

_{^Picture by Fin Fahey^}

Drink in a nursery rhyme pub - The Eagle, City Road

Another piece of East London trivia relates to The Eagle, on City Road. You may be aware of the site, even if you have never been to the area, for the Eagle plays a key role in the nursery rhyme, "Pop Goes the Weasel".


The rhyme, which apparently has its origins in the mid 19th century, contains the words:

"Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That's the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel"

A bit of digging in the London Encyclopaedia tells us that the rhyme probably refers to the music hall which was here as early as 1825, and this makes sense because the earliest record of the rhyme is in a music sheet acquired by the British Library in 1853.

After being a music hall the building became a Grecian Theatre, playing host to melodrama, music and ballet, and it was not until the early 20th century, after demolition, a rebuild and brief spell as a Salvation Army centre, that it became a pub.

It remains a pub, albeit one full of loud music and poser kids who spend too much time on their hair, to this day, but still manages not to quite be as rubbish as some places in the area. Tuesdays are wine night, where a bottle of wine is £7.95. Avoid the quiz, as when your author last visited on quiz night the chap who ran it was unfeasably annoying and loved the sound of his own voice more than life itself.

For more information, visit http://www.theeaglehoxton.co.uk/

_{^Picture from geograph by Stephen McKay^}