the sartorialist

i worked my first saturday today and it was nuts. because the market is right there outside the door, everyone comes in for coffee. today this included ellie and kat, ellie's friend olivia and (the icing on the cake) patrick grant, proprietor of norton and sons (savile row tailors, have worked with richard nicoll). i nearly vomited. he's so lovely and impeccably dressed and handsome and incredibly well-dressed and he's the englishman i want, no, need to marry. not sure that i made a good impression, sartorially i mean, in my leggings, coffee-soaked converse and breton tee. hopefully he comes back when i'm not working and am clean and shining and pressed, and in my tweed (i think he would appreciate). what a nerd i am.

bits and bobs

a very social week...

on my way to soph's for dinner on tuesday

hippy nic is in town with his girlfriend, anna, who is/was a vivien's girl and is doing quite well for herself. met up with nic on wednesday and wandered around looking for food and ended up on the vegan bus in a carpark near brick lane. really, really good food.

i am my father's daughter. (thanks dad!)

victoria park again on friday. they don't call it Picturesque for nothing, i must have taken this same photo 20 times every time i'm in the park.  a very cold and grey day.

young sophie in my living room on friday night. we devoured a very posh cheese platter and a bottle of wine before brooke even arrived. and then dinner,  out to yang's briefly and potentially out on the town, though it was too cold and way too hard!

oh.

i came across this on www.book-by-its-cover.com and felt a little pang for 78s, and actually buying music.

hood

a building in the process of being demolished. it's around the corner from my flat and across the road from the post box.

walking down pitfield street towards old street there are a lot of off licenses and fried chicken places, and this, an independent art-book store that has many many wonderful hand-made stamps.

and back to rivington place to pay a proper visit. they have an exhibition of photographs by a south african by the name of santu mofokeng. beautiful black and white documents of southern africa and auschwitz that are surprisingly apolitical.  they also have a young man working there that has, at first glance, the same spectacles as me. i of course mentioned this and we then discovered that in fact they were quite different - his weren't made of plastic and also had wire ear-hooks. so much cooler than mine. he mentioned that the ear-hooks were essential for dancing; i guess his glasses used to fall off a lot, he didn't seem like much of a head-banger.

inside. the deal with this place is that it is mostly funded from charity, like the lottery commission, and barclay's bank. it cost eight million pounds apparently. i mention this because while it's quite nicely finished from a design point of view, the material finishes don't feel very expensive (for want of a better term). i myself don't mind this so much, and i think it will age beautifully.

this is the junction of pitfield and old streets. i encountered this as i was on my way home (via brick lane and various other places) and i thought to myself 'how urban and grimy' in an only semi-serious manner. you must admit, it is quite a departure from young perth. 

hanoi to brooklyn

i was supposed to cook for ellie and kat this evening, a kind of thanks for letting me stay so long / check out my new place thing but when i finished work the last thing i wanted to do was cook. so, we went out for more vietnamese! this is 'cay tre' on old street, very legit in the sense that they didn't seem to use any msg.

we moved on to 'the diner' for dessert. this is ellie and kat trying to vegan the very americano menu. i think they would end up with a table full of side orders.

my hipster-friendly local american apparel. 

i had banoffee pie. it's weird. ellie decided that it tastes like banana choc-chip muesli bars.

ps : soph, i know! i'm totally taking over your life. sorry about that!!

beat this

i partied with captain cook's descendent on australia day, what did you do? i also forgot to take my camera so words will have to suffice. i met a girl called brooke through bones and she's one of those people i should have known in perth but through the forces of the universe never did. weird. anyway she and her many house mates (most of them aussies) threw an australia day barbeque with potato salad, minties, fantales, pizza shapes and all. much fun and many midnight oil, crowded house, hoodoo gurus songs were played. and it turns out that brooke's boyfriend, anthony (very english) is descended from captain cook himself. so really, we were celebrating anthony.

a real bed

i could only stand one night in a sleeping bag so early sunday morning i awoke with a specific task in mind. i first went to argos (just round the corner really) and picked up a doona and a couple of pillows and then on to the joyous muji for sheets. i also picked up some lovely aluminium coat hangers and a couple of shirts for work. the added bonus came in the form of the paper carry-bag that is now covering the glass part of my door to keep the light out!

a room of one's own

at last, a place to live.

a parting gift from the previous inhabitant, papers and all.

the view from my window out to the stairs that lead to the communal garden.

what a mess. more info later, i have to find some coat hangers.

note : again with the quality, it's the ISO, i always forget the ISO.

ps : the hint from the 'rose bakery' post is that as kitchen simply isn't a kitchen without a delightful cookbook to get you started. in other words, i knew i had this place and that justified buying the cookbook.

it's a big wad of cash

had to pay my deposit and first month's rent in cash. this is what 1100 pounds in twenties looks like. pretty.

hint

tula and another green book, this one is full of delicious recipes, some gluten-free, and some adaptable (hopefully). they (rose bakery, in paris) are famous for their carrot cake and i'm pretty sure with a bit of trial and error i can substitute wheat flour for something else (i'm learning more and more - usually it's a combination of brown and white rice flours and potato starch).

kerry, second from the left, is my manager. he makes amazing coffee and is adorable.

pink and grey

i went to the v&a today and it wasn't as exciting as i thought it was going to be. and it was full of french people. not the good type either, the teenage variety.

this is the building across the street. i'm not sure that i understand it, but i really like it. london is so good at weird brutalism.

pretty lanvin in the window of joseph...

..where they were installing a launderette.

81 fulham road : the conran shop and home of everyone's favourite tyre man, bibendum.

note : i'm not crazy about the quality of these photos, my camera has potentially been in unusual settings all day. or one could blame my own laziness for not checking/changing the settings. you choose.

a bag full of...

hey there sophie (i hear you ask), what's in that big, duck-egg blue bag you've got there?

it's a bag of pandas (i reply), and some of them are quite surprised.

(for ellie)

(for me)

and a bright red pepper grinder that came in handy when making lunch.

schoolgirl style

new shoes that make me feel like i should be skipping down the cobbled streets of paris on my way to school. on the right (à droite) navy suede mary-janes that came in my a.p.c. package the other day. à gauche, black suede lace-ups that receive a surprising amount of compliments.

finally friday

january so far has been a bit weird. i'm still (still) looking for place to live which is incredibly (incredibly) frustrating for all parts (mine, ellie's, kat's) but we muddle through. i have been working a little bit though which is quite fun. i met one of the girls from bistroteque yesterday (they opened flash) and she invited me to come along to their sale early. yes! 

so friday finally rolled around after a bit of a non-week and my little package from a.p.c arrived which meant i was able to dress like a french schoolgirl when we went out to dinner here :

it was delicious. 

(photo stolen from s.c. taylor.)

rebuilding

i spent a rather uneventful, little bit rainy day wandering about in soho. foyles is an amazing and independent bookstore across the road from a borders on charing cross...

it's where i picked these up. two pounds each. yep, two pounds. and i thought $10 penguin classics was a good deal. this photo doesn't do the colour justice either.

flash flash

ellie, kat, olivia and i went to flash for a most scrumptious lunch today. it's a temporary restaurant in the royal academy set up by the bistroteque people and it was most delicious. the plates are commemorative wedgewood (it's their 250th anniversary) and they have various collaborations (a chandelier by giles deacon, thonet chairs etc) within. the place closes at the end of next week therefore everything is for sale... my reasoning is as such : seeing as though wedgewood is going under (horrible, shocking, awful i know. stupid recession.) and i like pandas (and i had to leave rosie at home) i shall go and purchase some lovely crockery and not feel guilty about it. they're collectors items. come on.

they also had a lovely man playing pop tunes on the baby grand. lunch became a mini game of spicks and specks. kat lost.

it was coming

i, quite literally, ran into young laura geddes on the street today. well not literally, but it was very much an unplanned reunion. she was heading here : to richard nicoll's studio (see where that big 'R' is in the right-hand building?) for an interview. of course i told her to do a bit of name-dropping (for the uninitiated, ellie has an internship here too). it was an hilarious situation but i knew that a bizarre meeting was bound to happen one day.

slowly, but surely

www.climpsonandsons.com

this is where i work. one down, two to go. many, many thanks to young sophie fletcher for introducing me to the manager and opening the door for me (she used to work there too).

a very long day indeed

it's still christmas on broadway market (though everything is half-price).

ellie, kat and i wandered down to wapping and found a contained pile of porcelain.

not entirely sure what it was, but ellie salvaged a dove and a geisha from the rubble. the strangest thing is that it was battery-operated.

the town of ramsgate. a pub, not a town. it was still christmas here too. i had winter pimms (pimms, apple juice and hot water) and bangers and mash. it was sweet, though i never need to eat again, nor do i want pub food very often at all.

wapping is full of opportunities to smuggle outlaws out of the city via boat (a la great expectations).

this church was rebuilt after the fire by wren, survived the blitz and various other things that i can't recall. pretty impressive though. now there's a back pain clinic and a pretty garden.

we ended up back on brick lane at story deli.

new friends.

that turned out to be a fun game.

sophie, victorious.