London not all that old

I'm moving to London soon, because I fancy myself genteel. When I say I'm moving there I mean I am visiting it for a period of one week.

If only people knew how to use phone boxes.

London (or Lun-Den as I call it in a slightly pretentious Oxford accent) fancies itself as the capital of my mother country by another mother, and it is also very old.  That's how the story goes anyway.

If history is merely a cumulative account of all the ways a bunch of dead people have screwed up in the exactly the same ways living people are screwing up London right now, then it's also historical.

London has in fact confirmed that it is not really that old at all, it has just made all of its buildings look vintage and distressed to get a huge slice of the tourist market.

Thus, that whole story about London, or Londinium, being established around AD 43 is really just a bunch of hokum.

While there is much to admire about London during the day and also at night, a lot of it is not vastly improved by daylight.

In London everything is named something improbable or totally inappropriate in the way that only the English manage to get away with - Cockbush Avenue anyone - and the sky is all but permanently the colour of grey slate tiles.  That said, it is also full of delightfully british teatowels, tearooms and teapots, the ambience is mostly agreeable and I just love it to death.