Stories From Another London - One Eye Grey anthology

I'm pleased to report that my short story London Stone has made an appearance in the latest collection from that delightfully ghoulish penny dreadful, One Eye Grey. Details below!

 

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A brief word on Rivers of London

A while ago, my lovely friends Darren and Laura bought me a hardback, signed copy of Rivers of London. They reasoned that it looked to be exactly my cup of tea, and it was dedicated to a dear mutual friend of ours. It went on my to be read pile and then stayed there for a bit, because at the same time I got a kindle, and the whizzbang bit of tech was my new best friend.

            Well, just recently I decided that if I wasn’t going to shove the very lovely hardback into my handbag then I would bloody well get the ebook version and read that. The hardback remains pristine on a shelf... the point is, I recently finished Rivers of London and now I’m on to Moon Over Soho, and I’m very glad I got my finger out and read it, because these books are great.

            I’ve read genre books before set in modern London, and apart from the fabulous Neverwhere I’ve never really connected with them. They never really felt like my London, the London I grew up in and work in and live in now, the London I love right down to my toes. Arronovitch knows the city and loves it, and he writes it brilliantly. It probably helps that he’s writing about places I have a fondness for (Soho, Covent Garden, Holborn) but it’s about more than that; PC Grant is a modern Londoner in every sense, and his droll affection for the city, wary street sense and family strife are London all over. Plus, he’s an immensely likeable and genuinely funny character; add that to a sprinkling of geeky references (how can you not love a book that mentions Doctor Who and Fringe and Playstations?) and a cast of supporting characters that brighten the story rather than distracting from it, and you’ve got a pretty top series of books, in my opinion. 

Maaaybe it's because I'm a Londoner... that I love London pubs!

Yesterday it was my lovely boyfriend’s 40^th birthday, so being wild and crazy party animals we decided to spend the afternoon moving sedately around the London Bridge area (very sedately, as I appear to have broken my foot in an argument with an oven – don’t ask) taking in the frenetic pace of the area and checking out a few historical pubs I’ve had my eye on. So in place of a proper blog post, here are a few thoughts on some of the places we visited.

The Old King’s Head

To be honest The Old King’s Head looks rather more exciting on the outside; it’s down a dodgy-looking alley and the sign has Henry VIII’s cheerfully inflated head on it, so you expect to walk into some backstreet dining hall revelry, where jesters hang from the oak beams and swarthy men eat entire chicken carcases with their hands. Alas, no, although it is still rather charmingly old fashioned and has some beautiful stained glass in the windows (a dragon, a lion and a whippet, I think).

The George

The George is an excitingly old place, and even has various notices from the National Trust telling you how it’s the last surviving galleried coaching inn, and Shakespeare and Dicken’s hung out there like writerly bros (not at the same time, sadly). In terms of actually sitting around and drinking, it is a weirdly uncomfortable place. It took us a little while just to get inside – you open a door onto a room full of people sitting and drinking, with no bar in sight and no doors to anywhere else – and you have to peer into a few windows before you figure the layout (we did our usual “It’s like the Crystal Maze/Krypton Factor!” bit). The seats were oddly high, so our feet dangled above the floor, and a small bottle of pear cider cost £4.50. Yikes.

The Barrow Boy and Banker

This one was cheating slightly, as we have a long and exciting history with the Barrow Boy; a huge pub, with an upstairs balcony area (off which we once infamously threw some plastic men with parachutes) and an enormous sweeping staircase. It's often heaving to the rafters but yesterday afternoon it was quiet so we ate lunch there, and thanks to it being Marty’s birthday we got a free drink! Can’t say fairer than that. Also, the fish pie is amazing.

The Tiger

Now this one isn’t in London Bridge at all, it’s in Camberwell, but it’s worth mentioning here for several reasons: a) it always smells of lovely food being cooked b) the staff watch Game of Thrones c) it’s decorated in a explosion-in-an-antiques-shop-with-a-load-of-tat-on-the-side fashion, which is exactly how I would decorate a pub, and d) it used to be the Silver Buckle, which was a terrifying place with bullet holes in the walls and drug addicts chewing the tables. Now it’s not, and that certainly deserves celebration. 

 

 

Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly

I had plans for a sensible update today but the violence and nastiness happening in London at the moment has pretty much consumed all my attention. Anyone who knows me will know how dearly I love the city, and it pains me to see it put through the wringer like this. Here’s hoping for a quiet night and a better tomorrow.

Life sits on the writer and squashes her a bit

Alright, I've been rubbish at updating this thing lately (I wonder how many blogs across the blogosphere begin with that?) so it's time for a quick sum up of recent weeks. If that's possible.

In my last entry I was very excited about my week off, and all the tremendously writerly things I was going to do. Every day. Yep, every day, I would do writerly things.
Well, as often happens, life intervened that week, and I ended up not doing quite as many of the little jaunts that I had planned. Pyra, our small and cheerfully destructive cat had to be taken to the vets to have stitches removed, and this turned out to be more traumatic than I expected. She had a bubble of fluid under the scar, which the vet proceeded to remove with a needle (much to the combined horror of both Pyra and I. Having to hold her down while he carried out this procedure meant I felt like the evilest cat-mummy that has ever lived). It wasn't the cleanest scar, and I spent the next couple of days watching Pye constantly, convinced she would start leaking or something.

Also that week, the electrics in the flat started to play up wildly, resulting in a few days of electrician visits, a further traumatized cat, furniture turned upside down and ripped up floorboards. Oh, and me being stuck in the flat making tea for electrician chaps (who were very nice but, you know, I sorted of wanted to be elsewhere).

All this meant that my writerly trips were rather cut short, but, I got enough done to feel like I had a good week off. I went for a wander up Ludgate Hill, where an important scene happens in A Boy of Blood and Clay, and actually went all the way up to St Paul's (I've never been close enough to touch it before). I walked down Cannon Street to look at the London Stone, which is both tiny and largely unremarked- I peered through the grill to look at it only to find a man looking back at me from behind it; apparently it's just in front of an office window. I went to Monument, looked at some old street names (Fish Street Hill, Pudding Lane) and spent a long time in some pubs writing and writing and writing (the London Stone pub has it's toilets hidden behind a fake bookcase, if you happen to end up in there).

I also had a few trips to our local pub, which is becoming one of my favourite places to write; it's light, spacious and usually quiet, with an "interestingly" arty clientele. I find that I get much more done away from the flat, where the temptation is to watch telly, read or listen to the radio.

So that was my week off. In the week since then, we've had builders in to rip out our bathroom (*sigh*) and having been chucked out the flat early every morning, I have been spending a couple of hours before work writing (in another pub) and consequently, A Boy of Blood and Clay is coming along nicely. Now, if only I had the discipline to get out of bed early every day to do that. Oh, and blog regularly.

If this works, here are a few pictures of the London excursion:

A break from London in London

It is finally here. The week off. The week of freedom.

This is a very good thing, because I was beginning to approach the London Commuter Boiling Point of Doom. If I don’t count Christmas (which I don’t, because I had flu throughout the entire Christmas holiday- yippee) I haven’t actually had a full week off work since last September, which is roughly, oh, a frigging long time. What I find when I don’t have a break for a while is that my temper gets shorter and shorter, and I develop a tendency to do foolish things, like call people twats if they push in front of me in Sainsburys or quietly seethe because some weirdo insists on sitting next to me on the bus even though there are plenty of empty double seats available.
It’s when I’m walking down a London street scowling and muttering to myself that I realise I really need a break from the 9 to 5. As soon as possible.
This coming week I will be spending quite a bit of time at home because our little cat Pyra still has a bit of a sore tummy, and I still need to keep an eye on her in case she does any crazy things like swinging from the lampshades. She has some ninja in her heritage somewhere.
The rest of the time I will be making short trips up town (as my brother always points out, I am already in town, but you know what I mean). My plan is to go to different places in London that I haven’t been to before, have a scout around and an explore, and then find a café or a pub and do an on location writing session.
A Boy of Blood and Clay isn’t just set in London, it’s about London; it’s history, mythology, and stories. This coming week I’m looking forward to getting out there and getting to know the city that I love a wee bit better, and hopefully getting a fuckload of writing done at the same time.
So if anyone has any tips or favourite places to visit in London, a particularly atmospheric street, a busy park or an interesting building, I’d really love to hear about them!