London

Cold one day, foggy the next, grey the next, and the next and the next and the next. And then summer is over and winter is on its way. Winter in London is not for the faint-hearted. It can be tough going, unless you are one of those odd people who prefer a climate with no sun or light for months on end; like Swedes or Norwegians or zombies.

The only people who spend the (really) cold months in the English capital are hard-core tourists, international backpackers who want to experience a London winter, Queen Elizabeth, locals who don't know any better, and homeless people who can’t afford to move the hell out of there.

The tube is the only way to get from one side of London to the other in one hit and it is very easy to understand. Even people from Tasmania could understand it. For comparative purposes, it’s much better than the Paris underground system, because it makes sense, it runs like clockwork, it’s not full of French people and the station names are not in French. Other than those obstacles, the transport system in the French capital is tops as well.

I used to live in Kingsbury, near Wembley Stadium, which is an area that you would mistake for Macquarie Fields whenever Manchester City is in town to play, well, any team in the Premier League. Kingsbury is located in Greater London, which is on the outskirts of cool, inner city London.

In the spirit of the British, who love to segregate everything into class, Greater London is to cheap Indian restaurants, fear, hooligans, random knife attacks and tube station creeps as Inner London is to Chelsea.

Westminster Abbey is a homely little church in the middle of town that you may simply walk past if it wasn’t for the fact that it is about the size of a Westfield Shopping Centre.  It is GORGEOUS. The Abbey was founded in 960, which is mighty impressive, yes?

The Abbey is totally self-supporting, so I imagine its Investment Committee are extremely busy right now organising scone drives to cover the costs of Willy and Kate's shindig in April this year.

And then we have the Houses of Parliament, where a conga line of successive Labor Prime Ministers has spent alot of their time ruining the lives of ordinary British folk. This is my favourite landmark in London, with its beautiful limestone exterior that took 14 hits during the Blitz and still came off better than the other guy. Don’t even try to mess with it.