Thames path to Putney

Thames path to Putney

A Little London Lockdown 25.5.20

  • I took the bike to Putney along the Thames path.
  • Just started using the Strava app, thanks to Gyuri.
  • 23K 1 hour 50 mins
  • Lots of toddlers and families about so low speed.
  • It’s not a clear run to Putney, you have to get off at certain points and use the road, but it was a beautiful day (26c). Sun, sun, sun.
  • It felt a bit like the High Line in NY, but somehow lower.
  • Lots of little gardens along the way.
  • On the road near Albert Bridge I saw a young couple riding a Vespa
  •  And I thought…
  • It’s a beautiful sunny bank holiday, you’re young, you own a Vespa and you’ve got your bird on the back.
  • Does life get sweeter?
Strange Battersea wildlife
Mud Larks
Michael Caine owns a flat in that building. Not many people know that. Well he used to, we did and interview with him there in 1999.
Battersea Powerstation. Who’s going to buy all these flats?

Covent Garden

Lockdown Lowdown 23.5.20

  • SPAD Dominic Cummings in big trouble for breaking lockdown.
  • Toy MPs piling in on his behalf, presumably told to do so by No10.
  • Wonder if it’s worth burning so much political capital on him, just a day after screeching U-turn by PM on NHS staff having to pay for their care.
  • Beautiful bank holiday weekend.
  • C-19 infections way down in London.
  • Lockdown seems to be breaking down, hope this doesn’t mean a second spike.
  • Roads in our neighbourhood being closed to through traffic.
  • Very happy about this, but let’s see how it works out.
  • Yesterday changed an inner tube on my bike. #quietlyproud. Haven’t done that since I was 15, don’t think we had YouTube videos then.
  • Helped pack up the firm’s offices in Holborn.
  • Homeworker bee from now on.

Took another 8am Saturday morning trundle. This time to Covent Garden.

Doesn’t look much does it? But in the 80s this was the Zanzibar Club where a bunch of us fools had more fun than was strictly necessary.

Shuttered Soho

Lockdown Lowdown 16.5.20

Took the bike and trundled up to Soho at 8am this morning to see if it still existed. It’s been my preferred place to have fun for more than forty years. Plenty of nothing going on now.

Soho Square: Lot of homeless people being cleared out by police
Want to be back at Ronnie’s the night it re-opens.

See you there when it all wakes up.

Lockdown Lowdown 15.5.20

Lockdown Lowdown 15.5.20

  • This lockdown is a bit like those magnificent men in their flying machines, sometimes you feel up-tiddly-up and then down-tiddly-down.
  • Jack Daniel’s can help.
  • Having just returned from a bike ride around Hyde Park on a beautiful spring morning I’m definitely on the up-tiddly-up side of things.
  • One day my lovely London will return, just been put in the deep freeze. Despite being 20c today
  • Stat attack 1: Only 24 new reported cases of C-19 in London yesterday, down-tiddly-down from 200,000 daily cases in March.
  • Stat attack 2: Around 7.5 million people in the UK have been furloughed. If you combine that figure with those who work in the public sector the government is now paying the wages of almost half the working population.
  • As you can see, I now have a matching mask and hat combo. So important to remain stylish in these trying times.
  • Gentlemen, if you want the essential Lockdown Look then support a British business and click here.
  • The firm I work for is closing their offices in Holborn on Sunday. Going in to collect my bit and pieces. Working from home from now on. Still have a job, hurrah!
  • Bingeing on Ozark, the sleeziest, shadiest most squalid money laundering box set on Netflix. Required viewing for a certain warped kind of viewer.