This London Adventure: June 7th 2012

Considering it feels like we didn't really do anything special today, we have a lot to write about...

We wanted to get to know the area around our flat a bit more, so we wandered up to Tufnell Park. It's a really short walk, only about ten minutes away, and when we got there we found the best shop ever.

Yes, that sign does say "Free books". It's an initiative to stop unwanted books going into landfills; you can pop in and just take up to three books. Utterly brilliant.

We then walked a little further — as in, another ten minutes — and reached Kentish Town.

Kentish Town is absolutely full of little cafés and restaurants that I wanted to go into immediately. I can see myself getting very fat in London.

Beautiful building

This is where things got a little bizarre/hilarious. We popped into a health food shop called Earth Natural Foods where I, after months of searching, found some hibiscus tea. We also bought some almond soap that smells like marzipan and Garry got a bag of cashews.

The nuts were self-serve — there were little tubs and you poured them into bags, weighed them and took them to the counter. As he was filling the bag another guy came over and just started putting his hands into the tubs to take out nuts and try them, talking to us. We both thought this was weird, but assumed that it was just some cool London thing that we were too common to know about.

Or at least, we thought that until he was dipping his fingers into the buttercream of a cake and tasting it.

As soon as we left the shop we were accosted by a guy who said the nut eater was working for him. Apparently we'd been undercover filmed for a Channel 4 show about social etiquette/reserve in Britain and we were "hilarious" (read: at one point Garry called him a twat under his breath). We've been interviewed for the show and it's going to be on in autumn. And this happened on our second full day in London. Sigh.

Anyway. We were pretty tired by this point (it's exhausting being a TV star, you know) so we headed home, stopping on the way at Rustique — The Literary Café.