Listen to a Londoner: Natalie Lester

Listen to a Londoner is a weekly interview with a Londoner – someone who lives in this city, born here or elsewhere. If you’re up for being interviewed, email littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk.

Natalie Lester

Natalie has a BA in English, BSc in geography and MA in publishing; She loves English literature and her outlet is writing. Her favourite gelato is found in London at Gelato Mia in Notting Hill (dark chocolate and Biscotto). She loves the theatre and when she was younger, wanted to be Christine in Phantom.

LLO: How long have you been in London, where did you come from originally and what brought you here?
NL: I’ve been in London for a little more than a year – I just finished my MA in publishing at UCL…turned in my dissertation in September so here’s hoping for the best! I grew up in Idaho (in the US) and during my undergrad I did a study abroad in London. Ever since I have been planning to come back. In my opinion everyone should live in London for at least a little bit!

LLO: What’s your favourite way to pass a Saturday afternoon in London?
NL: Nothing beats the markets in London on a Saturday. I live right next to Regent’s Canal (Little Venice) and you can easily walk along the canal to Camden Market. If you go early enough then usually you are the only one along the canal and you get to breathe in the crisp air all by yourself. On my way to Camden I sometimes take a detour into Regent’s Park with my book… but I always make sure I get to Camden for my favourite treat in London – Chocolate covered strawberries and pineapple on a banana leaf!

LLO: Where is your favourite place to pick up an American treat if you’re craving something from home?
NL: One time I was in desperate need of some Root Beer and happened to be in the Leicester Square area so I had to pop into Ed’s Diner and pay a ridiculous price for a can of some A&W…it was worth it!

LLO: Which part of London are you most familiar with and what’s the best part about it?
NL: Well, I live on Edgware Road, which is pretty central London, so probably that area and then the Regent’s Canal area I was talking about earlier. London is great for its diversity and there is no better place to see this than Edgware Road with its plethora of Middle Eastern restaurants. And while the rest of London seems to close ridiculously early, you can venture onto Edgware at midnight and it still has the liveliness of midday.

LLO: If I told you I would be in London for one night only and wanted to get off the tourist trail, where would you send me to eat and drink?
NL: Ok, maybe this is still a bit touristy, but you can’t beat their chicken and leek pie at Doggetts Pub. It is right on the southbank by Blackfriar’s Bridge and if you want a nice meal you can go up top to the restaurant and sit by the window and watch London light up at night.

LLO: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced as an expat in London?
NL: Maybe this is a lame challenge to have, but I miss my clothes dryer every day! Jeans just don’t fit the same here with nothing to dry them back into shape. Like I said, lame, but other than that…oh, and trying to find a frozen turkey at Thanksgiving (an adventure that ended with my flatmate and I carrying a frozen turkey in our arms for 45 minutes on our walk back from Camden). Other than those two things I have very few complaints about London.

LLO: Tell us about a favourite London memory that could only have happened in London.
NL: Keeping on the Thanksgiving theme, last year my flatmate and I were hosting a Thanksgiving party for a lot of people and we had purchased two turkeys. Somehow we forgot that this wasn’t America and not only did we not have room for them in our fridge, but we didn’t have two ovens. On Thanksgiving day we rang up some friends that lived about 15 minutes away to ask if we could borrow their oven. We ended up carrying the pre-cooked (but stuffed and seasoned) bird down the road and stuffed it into their oven which was even smaller than ours. Four hours later I picked up the bird—who was now full of juices and twice as heavy—and proceeded to walk down the very busy Edgware Road with a 20lb bird and turkey juice sloshing all over me everytime I placed a foot down! Surprisingly, after all that poor turkey had been through, and my arms shaking for about 20 minutes afterwards, Thanksgiving dinner never tasted so good!

LLO: Favourite London discovery?
NL: My favourite place in all of London is one I discovered with my fiancé. He is a Londoner and loves to walk on the southbank by the London Eye at night when the trees have their blue lights. While we were sitting, gazing up at the Eye through a sea of blue, we noticed that there was a break in the hedge and on the opposite side of the trees was a park…with swings. Now, it isn’t like this playground is exactly hidden, but it is further back from the main southbank walkway and I had never noticed it before. We quickly climbed over the rest of the hedge and snuck into the playground to swing (my all-time favourite past-time). In front is a large tree, and when you swing at night you catch glimpses of the London Eye lights through the trees and it looks like the London sky is full of stars that you can almost touch. I think it is one of the most magical places in London.

LLO: What would you suggest if I asked you to plan a creative, off-the-wall or otherwise unique date in London?
NL: Saturday morning head down to Borough Market, bring your appetite! Spend the first little bit just wandering around the stalls and take advantage of the free samples. Then, just about midday choose something that either a) you can’t possibly resist or b) something that is really strange and you have never tried before. Don’t eat it yet, but walk to Shakespeare’s Globe and wait in line for the groundlings so that you are the first ones in. While you are waiting break open lunch and enjoy! When they open the gates make sure that you get front and centre and you can lean up against the stage! Enjoy!

LLO: If you move back to America in the future, what five things will you miss most about London?
NL: Where do I start, once you have lived in London it becomes a part of you and I think there will always be something that I miss. But, if I had to choose 5, I would have to say 1) waking up on a crisp Autumn morning, getting a Chocolate Milano at Café Nero and crunching through the leaves in Hyde Park; 2) Big Ben at night…it just looks so magical and everytime I see it at night I think that Peter Pan will come land on the hands of the clock at any moment; 3) Amazing fish and chips the the hole-in-the-wall chippies (they are always the best); 4) Christmas time in London, from the Harrod’s Christmas Parade to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park; 5) Low-tide on the Thames on the southbank skipping rocks.

Thanks Natalie!

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Listen to a Londoner: Jackie Kingsley and Michael Shamash

Listen to a Londoner is a weekly interview post with people who live (or have lived for a while) in London. If you fit the bill and want to be interviewed, give me a shout at littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk. Always looking for new volunteers.

Michael and Jackie from London RIP

In this ever-changing city that is slowly being devoured by corporate coffee chains and high street shops, Michael and Jackie have frozen a few favourite London locations that have been lost to the times on their website, London RIP. They welcome and encourage others to reminisce and contribute their own loved and lost locations from London life.

LLO: Tell us a bit about your website London RIP.
M&J: London-RIP celebrates the London places we’ve lost and are losing. It’s a very personal record of an ever-changing landscape and we invite people to contribute their memories of their favourite places. We’re not particularly interested in places that are “important” – more the pubs, clubs, cinemas, record shops and bookshops that make up the city as people really experience it. We’ve been friends since the 70s, so London-RIP tends to focus on that era a bit, but we’re just as interested in what’s happening now, especially as London is going through such a period of change.

LLO: Which London loss has been the most disappointing for you?
M&J: Our ex-local pub, The Royal Oak, in Temple Fortune. There wasn’t anything particularly special or wow about it, and that’s the point. It was just an average local boozer which happened to be at the heart of the community. Its loss is emblematic of all the local pub closures going on in London. 

LLO: What was the most unique place you can remember that has now disappeared?
M&J: Production Village in Cricklewood. It was a faux village that was actually a film set, and had a pub that served a vile beverage called Hog’s Grunt. The whole place was mad as a box of frogs and utterly unrepeatable.

LLO: The two of you met in the late 70s. What were the best pubs and clubs in London back then that aren’t around any more?
M&J: Neither of us ever saw the Sex Pistols at the Roxy or anything like that, so we can’t pretend nostalgia for anything particularly lionised, but we do miss a lot of the mid-sized music venues that seem to be disappearing – the Music Machine, later the Camden Palace is an exception because it’s still a venue, but places like The Moonlight and The Nashville have sadly gone.

LLO: You ask your readers and share Emma Thompson’s anwers – what aspects of London’s past do you miss most? What are your own top 5 answers to this question?
M&J:
1.) Cheap and cheerful cafes
2.) Non-ironic, sensible specialist shops (eg haberdashers as opposed to chichi cheesemakers)
3.) Being able to park in Regent Street (not environmentally sound, but very handy)
4.) Green line coaches
5.) Someone we met recently remarked that 15 years ago you could safely shout at policemen if you felt like it. The context of this was watching some bloke handcuffed on the ground surrounded by angry coppers after what looked like a pub scuffle. Not sure if you really could shout at policemen (at least without getting a good hiding), but we like the idea of everything being a bit less serious and officious than it is now.

LLO: What has been the most drastic or surprising way London has changed since your childhood?
M&J: The move towards the city centre, particularly the east. In the 70s and 80s, some people predicted that London would become like an American city with the centre dead apart from commuters and life revolving around the suburbs. That so hasn’t happened, with places like Hoxton becoming the new Camden (and rapidly evolving into the new Hampstead).

LLO: Share a photo of a well-missed London location?
M&J: The picture is of Oriental City. It certainly wasn’t very promising from the outside, but this oriental shopping mall and all-round food paradise was a wonderland at the Colindale end of the Edgware Road. The real Chinatown, RIP.

Thanks Jackie and Michael!

Website: www.london-rip.com

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Listen to a Londoner: Colleen Wagner

Listen to a Londoner is a weekly interview post with people who live (or have lived for a while) in London. If you fit the bill and want to be interviewed, give me a shout at littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk. Always looking for new volunteers.

Colleen Wagner, 33

Colleen moved to London for her husband’s job three months after getting married in 2008.  She’s a high school English teacher who is at present working part-time for a London relocation agency rather than duke it out in the city schools (hey, it’s not like she didn’t give it a try…), and while she wouldn’t recommend undergoing three major life changes in one summer to even her worst enemy, her and her husband have come to truly, ecstatically enjoy their new life together in London.  

LLO: How long have you lived in London?
CW: A year and a half.

LLO: If not London, where are you from? 
CW: Chicago, Illinois

LLO: What is your favourite London discovery?
CW: Brompton Cemetery, a 40-acre plot of solitude among Victorian graves.  I almost don’t want to promote it, as I’d hate for it to become too populated with the living…

LLO: Where in London do you go to get a taste of “home”?
CW: Partridges on Gloucester Road provided us Stove Top stuffing on Thanksgiving Day.  Also picked up some Kraft Mac-n-Cheese and Golden Grahams–basically, a 10 USD box of cereal, but worth every darn pence.

LLO: What’s the coolest part about living in your postcode?
CW: On the SW10 / SW5 border, the Troubadour is ideal for coffee or cocktails and live music in the club downstairs (Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, and Joni Mitchell played there in the ’60s).  We attended the BRIT Awards last week just a 10-minute walk from home, and my bookish self particularly adores that Beatrix Potter lived only a few blocks away * sigh *

LLO: Heard about any interesting places you’d like to check out but haven’t had the chance to yet?
CW: After going to Proud last Saturday, I’d like to revisit the Camden Stables Market in the daytime.  Otherwise, after reading the book Longitude, my inner dork would really like to see the sea clocks at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

LLO: If I had one day in London and wanted to go “off the beaten path”, where would you send me?
CW: I would send you first to one of my trusted pubs like the Drayton Arms on Old Brompton Road for a proper English Breakfast.  Then, so you can get at least one London museum in, you’re off to the Cabinet War Rooms–its right by Westminster and St. James Park, but its low profile renders it easily overlooked by other tourists.  If you’re thirsty, I’m sending you deeper into the city to at least gawk at St. Paul’s Cathedral from the outside before you wander over to the hidden shops and pubs around Bow Lane and/or to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese tucked away off Fleet Street (during the day, though, before the work crowd filters in).  Or, if you’d prefer a quiet, leisurely day, scrap all that and head to Hampstead for the village atmosphere and rolling heath.  Regardless of the daytime itinerary, by night you are being sent to Edgware Road for Middle Eastern cuisine and shisha.

LLO: Favourite London shop?
CW: Zara, but for non-high street shops, the stalls at Portobello Road Market.  

LLO: Tell us about the most random thing you’ve seen in London.
CW: Feathers stuck to my store-bought eggs, as though straight from the chicken’s va-jay-jay.

LLO: Best place to try to meet new people if you’ve just moved to London?
CW: [insert shameless plug here]  Why, the new London Living social network at http://www.londonrelocation.ning.com!

Thanks Colleen!

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People Watching: Number 6 Bus

Oxford Street…A black-suited business woman with florescent M&S-bag-green hair, black roots. Toxic. I’d like to stick her under a black light and see if she glows.

A man with a straggly brown beard perched on a concrete bench, beer balancing precariously between his legs, unlit cigarette dangling between parted lips. On the same bench, a couple kissing.

A woman, late 20s, pulling a hard yellow Sponge Bob Square Pants suitcase down the pavement. No kids in sight.

A middle-aged man emerging from Selfridges lumbered with three sizable gold Gucci bags. No woman in sight.

A group of feathery-haired teenage girls with fringes sitting in a row along the windows of Primark, brown paper bags at their feet, smoking; most wearing sunglasses and playing with their phones. Probably texting each other.

A woman in a purple jacket frantically ridding herself of a pile of London Lite’s, thrusting them in front of people chasing after a bus.

Shortly after… 

Edgware Road is like a different city. A man smokes a water pipe outside the Lebanese restaurant Al Arez. There are Arabic shops and Arabic signs, Mediterranean food, halal butchers. Shop names like Shahi Sizzler, Roar! Betting, Take Cover (selling curtains) and the oddly-placed American Nails Design.

In Brent, the bus is teeming with people speaking different African and Asian languages, innit-English and random European languages. Passengers are every size, shape and colour with dreds, corn rows, afros, sleek, straight, curly hair.

In Brent, nearly 47% of people were born outside the UK. Only 30% are white British. Having been born and raised in a city that is 98.5% white and was once known as a “Sundown Town”, it’s an amazingly refreshing feeling to live some place so diverse as this.