Lazing on a sunny afternoon.....

Last weekend I went to a music festival in a meadow in Crouch End in north London....

 and a park in Camberwell in south London.

Who needs to live in the countryside?

When did it become the norm for cars, vans bikes etc to drive straight over Zebra Crossings while you are actually still crossing?

Top tip: look left, look right and run for your life........

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

How do you know you're getting old? When the sight of snow flakes makes you groan with with fear and alarm at the thought of so many undone tasks, delayed trains, potentially twisted ankles and bruised butts rather than whooping with joy and punching the air in the certain knowledge that chaos plus cancellation equals untold fun. I'm still in the 'isn't it pretty' phase but it's early days. I remember my first winter in NY. We'd spent Christmas in Jamaica (so brilliant...but that's a whole other story) and got back on a Monday.

'Has it been snowing?' I asked the cab driver, fearful we might have missed the magic of a snowy Manhattan.

'Nope, not much.' he replied.

On Friday it started and didn't stop till April. April!! I kid you not. It was the coldest/biggest/whitest winter since the beginning of recorded time. But it was great. Well the first couple of months were. I even saw my one and only ice storm which is quite and extraordinary sight. But the thing is, everything worked. Snow ploughs cleared the city's avenues and streets, dumping tones of snow and ice in the river, everyday. The subways worked, the city schools stayed open, taxis came and went, the side walks were cleared. We'd go out in the evenings, all dressed up in full arctic kit (I still have my oh-so-horrid, green puffy coat, $25 in an Old Navy sale, glamorous it may not be but it works). We'd drink martinis and make snow angels on the way home. And the heating....oh what joy when the clank of those pipes herald the arrival of the heat, controlled from some distant boiler-room, buried deep in the bowels of the building.....

But life is very different here. A bit of rain and it floods, a couple of hot days and people are dropping in the streets, government health warnings are issued. And now it snows and everything stops. It's as if we've never seen anything like it before. Hello...was everyone on holiday last winter?

I have a friend..... waxed, plucked and packed for a quick trip to an Indian beach ....hoping to fly this weekend who's panicking big time. And were I in that enviable position I too would be cursing the weather Gods. However, I'm not. North London hasn't so far taken much of a hit, not compared to my friends in the south who assure me they're still trying to shovel a path to the tube. So I'm lucky. I'm lucky I can pay the bills again so the heating is set at Bombay, I can walk to Waitrose and the cinema, I can bake Nigella's scones for tea, my needs are few...... And the city is half empty as everywhere else is claiming a white out. It's quite nice really.

Top tip: check out this fabulous emporium of all things vintage: Detail, and from now until Christmas just enter XMAS on the checkout to receive 15% off! http://www.detail.bigcartel.com/

Some Like It Hot

London is not for everyone, granted, but I reckon if you can't handle the heat, stay out of the city. There is nothing worse than a neo-countryite taking a day-trip to town and then complaining about the cost and the crowds and the buses. They're our buses and only we can complain about them, we know they're too hot and too crowded and we hate the bendy-buses but they do, eventually, take us to some of the world's greatest galleries and museums, theatres and restaurants (even if they are prohibitively expensive). Plus, if I want to go kick coloured leaves in the autumn sunshine, I can in Regents Park, or Hyde Park or on the glorious Hampstead Heath. I can row boats on the Serpentine and eat ice cream on the South Bank, all within spitting distance of obscure Oriental underground films, cutting-edge, prize-winning art and every variety of Balsamic vinegar known to man. I live here despite the hardships and expense because, right now, there's nowhere else in England I want to live. And the onset of middle age has done nothing to change that. However, I know a number of people who have made the momentous decision to up sticks and move to .....the sticks. And well done, good for you, hurrah there's more room on the god-awful bendy bus, I applaud your choice. But, I do not need to be told every ten minutes why it was the best thing you ever did, should have done it sooner, and oh what a dark dangerous place London is. Because actually it's not. You know you'd be back in the city in a hot second given half the chance.

I never have to bang on and on about how wonderful the place I live in is because it's very name carries sufficient cache without any embellishments, as in Paris, New York, Rome, we all know what's missing. I think the older I get the more the city has to offer. I may have made room at the bar but there's still plenty to do out there that doesn't involve an illicit deal and a glow stick. Neither do I feel the need to slag off Brighton, or diss Diss, or go on endlessly about the joy of Gloucestershire's Daylesford Organic farm shop. . . . .and anyway, I can buy muddied vegetables every weekend in a school playground only 5 minutes walking distance from my graffiti tagged doorstep. No, I respect anyone's decision to call it a day, cancel the subscription to Time Out, give up their Oyster pass and go native, just please don't feel the need to share it with the rest of us. To misquote Samuel Johnson; when you are too old for London......

Top tip: Check out the website for The Union Chapel for an excellent London night out.