Popped into the National Portrait Gallery this weekend and was bowled over by these portraits by Susan Aldworth. 

With my newfound interest in stitching, I loved this idea featured on PSFK: a stitched restaurant. 

The Stylist has a set of interesting city guides featured on their website. 

And on the topic of cities, they continue to fascinate me, and I am promising myself to deep dive into this piece on William “Holly” White’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. 

Loneliness kills (great article with loads of links to original research). 

Swissmiss highlighted Like Knows Like, a set of short documentaries about what inspires people working in the creative industries, must dive into these too. 

Went to Balthazar London and had waffles for breakfast. Really like the room, staff were friendly and helpful, can’t complain about anything. And yet I wasn’t bowled over. I still prefer The Delaunay for breakfast. 

Books read: 1. John Lanchester’s ‘What we talk about when we talk about the Tube’, part of the Penguin series about London tube and underground lines. Transport nerd in me loved it, full of stats and nerdy facts. 

Amount of directions given to people in the street last week: 6. An all-time high even for me. 

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” (Julia Child) 

Oh, how I love living in London, this city has really stolen my heart. And one of the best things are the wonderful museums. I stole a couple of hours this morning to head over to the Royal Academy to see the newly opened exhibition about Richard Rogers’ work (spurred on even more by this review by Ben Terrett). 

I don’t know much about architecture, but everyone knows at least a couple of Rogers’ buildings: the Lloyds building in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Milennium Dome (or whatever it’s called now that someone is sponsoring it). I loved how the curators have set up a peak behind the curtain, with sketch- and notebooks, his manifesto and thinking behind his work, and of course the obligatory architectural models of buildings built and not built, but also books that influenced Rogers. 

And I think that living according to this ancient Athenian motto ‘I shall leave this City not less but more beautiful than I found it’ is a pretty darn good way of going through life. 

I really liked it and if architecture and cities are your cup of tea, then I can highly recommend going. 

A quick set of photos of today’s lunch visit to Dr Johnson’s House (on my “1001 things to do before I die list” for a long time now). Loved it, lovely atmosphere and I’m happy I made the pilgrimage. 

Approaching Dr Johnson’s House on Gough Square

First floor drawing room

The reconstructed garrett, bombed in WWII, where Johnson wrote his Dictionary

The Dictionary entry for ‘dictionary’