Please Do Not Touch The Walrus No. 9
A fantastic new series in which we attempt to catalogue some of the amazing things you can’t do in our fabulous capital city. Today: pointing at the sun in Greenwich. [see more…]
Tourists
by Andrzej Ryan
There is a bearded man in a pink dress behind me. He’s swigging lemonade from a two-litre bottle. For almost the entire year, the City of London is home to thousands of dark suits. Today, it belongs to flowing fabrics and shiny buttons. Today is the Pearly Kings and Queens’ Harvest Festival. [read more…]
Urban Intervention No. 51
On sunny lunchtimes, dress up as a giant duck and then sit by the lake in St James’s Park throwing torn off chunks of Ginsters pasties at tourists.
by Dale Lately
A “hip, funky, upbeat kind of stay” is how one online guide describes this distinctive London accommodation, and the shiny-eyed receptionist – barely out of her teens – gives you a hip, funky, upbeat kind of swipe card when you hand over a grubby twenty. Cell 14, she tells you. Sorry? She smiles. That’s what we call them. It’s part of the theme. [read more…]
by Jess Sully
A known introvert from a town with wide skies and a vast, shimmering expanse of sea, I didn’t think I’d be happy among the hemmed-in crowds. What I didn’t realise then is that within the anonymity of the ever-flowing throng, those shoals of fast-moving fish who swoop and turn as one entity, I could move silently, unobtrusive and unremarkable. And now I know, too, that sometimes at low tide the Thames smells of brine and seaweed. [read more…]
by James Hunt
I can tell they are from out of town because they’re all carrying M&M’s World bags. They’re deciding whether to go to Camden Town or Harrods when they finish their burgers and bottled cider. I glance in their direction and catch my reflection in the large mirror. I look appalled. The two sons are enormous. They’ve got matching fringes, making them look like talent show hopefuls pumped up with helium. Enjoy the M&Ms, boys. [read more…]
by Matt Haynes
They smile for photos;
Their shoulder-mounted rifles
Brush the toddler’s hair. [read more…]
Visitors from other parts of the Milky Way who wish to sample some of the more “off-beat” attractions of the Orion–Cygnus Spiral Arm might like to note that the British Interplanetary Society at Vauxhall stocks a wide range of maps and guides to the local area. [read more…]
by Matt Haynes
Man: Gee, hon, what is that thing?
Woman: What?
Man: That round thing.
[read more…]
Urban Intervention No. 31
With the aid of a small folding table, why not set up a stall on Westminster Bridge selling wire sculptures of John Prescott to Japanese tourists?