I discover the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop

I've still not had much time for exploring the neighbourhood around the Temporary Apartment although I've worked out how most of the area links together and that includes the discovery of the nearby bookstore zone, which comprises quite a few bookstore cafes. T

The above pictured Interesting Coffee and Book Shop is my favourite and in addition to good coffee, cakes and wifi, there's a bustle of people visiting and quite often loitering for conversation.

My book of choice for such moments has been Popco by Scarlett Thomas, who wrote The End of Mr Y, which I reviewed here some time ago.

Popco was an earlier novel and there's some themes which I think were developed further in Mr Y, including virtual worlds, homeopathic remedies and some clever bits of science.

The book has also had a makeover so that it looks similar is style to Mr Y, complete with blue edged pages (Mr Y had black edges).

I noticed this with a wry smile when I realised quite a lot of the content of the earlier book is about how corporations market to consumers.

I like the personal narrative style of the book, on incidentals as well as the main storyline and the twists into cryptography and the chance references to William Gibson, who is another author whose books I enjoy.

There's also some sections about the people who divine lifestyle trends, which flipped me straight back into Pattern Recognition (also reviewed here at some time in the past).

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 4/5 of the book and the way the intertwined stories unfolded. I'll admit to a little disappointment around the last pivot in the story, although I think there needed to be some device to bring it all together. I'll admit I'd also worked out what the necklace was using before it popped out of the story.

I won't say more about that though, and the general narration, lines of thinking and main premises were all good fun and it was one of those books that I was sorry to have finished.

Maybe I should re-read Mr Y.

But for now, here's me crossing the road on the way to the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop.

noodling around at the airport

I decided to check my baggage for today's flight instead of taking it as carry-on. The airport at the far end is fast, so rather than hauling baggage around the airport it was easier to hand it over.

I see so many people agitatedly carrying everything onto the plane and stashing it in the overhead lockers. I do it myself for some journeys, but I'm not obsessive about it and would rather travel light.

Row three today and although there was food, it was more of an 'afternoon tea' with scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream. I made do with a cup tea.

The unusual thing at the far end is that the luggage reclaim sells beer and hot-dogs. I travel quite a lot but don't recollect seeing this facility in other places.

In fact, I diverted through the airport to pick up some Chinese noodles and vegetables in a little 'to go' box, before heading to the belt. I thought I'd take it back to the Temporary Apartment as a kind of supper.

Just finished the noodles. Yum.

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the faintly disturbing rubber duck

Is it just me, or is there something faintly disturbing about the chain clad rubber duck in the corner of the bathroom in the Temporary Apartment?

It looks even more severe when it wears the bath plug as a hat.

I may have to hide it.

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counting theologically perspectived buses in Oxford Street

I sometimes say that when rashbre central strays away from posting about London for too long then I'll put up a picture with a bus or a taxi in it.

As I've been away a fair bit recently (and that continues this week when I fly out again on Sunday), then its about time to bring on the buses.

And this time there's easy subject matter with the full theological debate on the streets of London, with the atheists providing one bus-sided view point and a publisher of Bibles providing another.

I gather the first advert was taken to the advertising standards authority, who ruled it fair and reasonable because it used "probably".

No such timidity from the Bible folk, who have used a rather more definitive statement.

The rashbre central bus advertising is neither one thing nor the other. And the whole episode finally gives me a chance to post Camille O'Sullivan superbly singing "God is in the House".

the horizon is a beltway and the skyline's on fire

I was chasing the sunset across the sky at 600 mph this evening, watching it as a red flamed stripe on the horizon pulling away from us.

The picture's in my head because all my electronics were out of reach.

It so fits with the Low Anthem songs I've been listening to for the last few days.

"You'll hear that distant love song when the wind blows right. Hear the whistle blowing, put a tear into your eye. You hear the distant love song but widows know the lie. The horizon is a beltway, the skyline is on fire."

Its a new CD that I expect will stay in my playlist for a long time although I've a feeling its far from mainstream.

The hand painted sleeve on my copy is numbered 2239, suggesting this band has a rather selective reach.

I also get the feeling that they can more or less play their album tracks in a single take. There's a rawness and live quality that gets edited out of many shiny productions and here the different sound stages and productions really work.

Mix some Waits, Band, Decemberists and Neutral Milk Hotel to get an idea of how to find the ghosts in the train yard and the ghosts in the drink.

foie-gras ice cream starters at the brewery

I left the safe comfort of the area around the Temporary Apartment this evening.

We had planned to dine in an Area of Possible Danger.

We'd arranged to meet in a converted brewery but I'd heard a few macabre jokes about the place before we arrived. Apparently it was close to the site of a recent double shooting and the area was being described as 'rough'.

I didn't have a clue where we were headed, but when we arrived the surroundings were bohemian renovationist rather than dilapidated.

You could tell quite a lot from the mainly well-heeled cars parked along both sides of the street. If it had been in London I wouldn't give it a particularly high 'alert' status.

We stepped into an 'in-crowdish' kind of place which served micro-brewed beers and food of the "foie-gras ice cream on single stick of toast starters" variety.

When we left, a couple of us decided it was safe enough to figure out how to walk home by the light of a fairly full moon.

the apoteket won't serve expresso

Tuesday's excursion from the Temporary Apartment was to a nearby small cafe called the Apoteket.

If I'd been in Holland I'd have thought twice before going to a coffee shop with this type of name, but we were elsewhere and the inside seemed fairly snug with plenty of crowded tables and people chatting.

Our well behaved mixed nationality group were handed English menus and we soon picked items to eat, but in some cases with requests for modifications. This was quite interesting, because there was a fairly stern 'No' from the waitress who was pretty keen to keep things orderly and in line with the menu's serving suggestions.

I smiled when this occured with the later coffees also; I'd asked for an expresso but it was explained that they had coffee - regular coffee - with or without milk.

OK.

I get lost and then blackberry latitude saves the day

A short walk from the Temporary Apartment today, after I'd returned from a meeting across town.

It was one of those occasions where I'd given the address to a taxi driver and had a feeling that I might be being taken in the wrong direction. Its like the London equivalent of Finsbury Park and Finsbury Square.

I'm fairly used to these little misunderstandings in certain foreign taxis and have some interesting reference journeys as well as improved renegotiation skills.

There's the time we were around Istanbul with a clearly lost taxi driver and improvised a Sat Nav on a laptop to find our location and the direction. That was before his taxi broke down on the bridge into Asia and we had to explain what we were doing to some armed soldiers.

Or the time in Riyadh when the taxi driver just kept saying 'Yes' but clearly didn't understand anything we were saying let alone knowing the way to the American Express office.

How things move on; on this occasion I could simply switch on my Blackberry, flip to Google Maps, show where we were and then point to the place I was supposed to be heading.

"Ah", said the taxi driver, with his own two separate sat-nav systems (one with the taxi system and another built into the Merc) as he recognised the location from my finger pointing, whilst being unable to recognise it from my handwritten address(kerching?).

I really should do something about my handwriting.

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are chocolate frogs endangered species?

I tried bringing some of those chocolate frogs back to the UK, but the Belgian 70% cocoa chocolate and the Brazilian liqueur filling seems to be too much for some people.

These are the only survivors from a box originally containing a dozen.

small guide for discerning cup-cakers

I've tested cup cakes in Magnolia's on Bleeker and also Primrose's in Covent Garden and now I'm starting to sense the march of American variants throughout the United Kingdom. I gather Marks and Spencer is about to start stocking the American type.

I thought it useful to publish a definitive guide before we all forget what British cup-cakes were like.

My view is illustrated above.

The British cup-cake was really a 'fairy-cake' made from victoria sponge with a dab of water based icing and something on top. A high sponge to icing ratio.

Chocolate cup-cakes were a factory made flat-top usually of chocolate, lemon or orange and undecorated. Crunchy hard icing edges.

Children's parties would feature Angel cakes, often partially made by the children, where the top of the cake was cut off, divided in two and then fashoned into wings, stuck on with butter icing.

And now - Thunk - the American variant.

Equal cake to icing ratio. Luminous colors(sp). Much topping to augment the icing part. Extended waistline because they are usually baked in American muffin cases rather than the smaller (UK) cup-cake sized holders.

I sense an invasion.

And in a related confession, I do like Cinnabon (in small quantities), which is another invader which used to only be available in the USA but has stealthily crept into Britain.

cover up

Back in the UK.

Zoe has sent the updated cover to the publishers.

I really need to spend some time reviewing the proof this weekend.

a mermaid, a shiny city and a low star

Three small marvels in one day.

The first, in the morning at the Temporary Apartment, is the faint singing sound that comes from part of the room. A high-pitched modulation which I can't quite locate. I've decided to consider it to be the song from a not-too-distant mermaid.

The second, in the early evening, slipping through clear skies over London at 500 miles per hour, banking to see all of London spread before me and a feeling that I could hold the whole golden glittering city in the palm of my hand.

The third, as I headed home and looked to the now inky sky, was a bright extra star, sparkling low and near. The space station shining as the brightest object just 200 miles above and speeding across the night.

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