The smoke omnibus

as you can see from my recent short pictorials, i was in london recently. i was in london for a mere 8 hours last sunday. we made a promise to ourselves that we’d make a pilgrimmage to the hallowed road in NW8. so, off we went, led by jo, who played the role of the venerable bus route guide for the day (thanks!). also, i feel that i should divide this blog entry into bite-able segments. and as you can see, food played a major role in this 8-hour trip of mine!

Camden Town
(Eh, kenyang lah!)

first stop of the day. we needed lunch. i’ve only been here once before (after living in this country for 16 years). made several stopovers. the market had loads of cheap tee shirts. got meself the obsolete fuct tee with the faux ford logo (just like zack de la rocha), along with a classic atari one. made a boo-boo where i bought a ratm tee one size tooooooooooo small. so, any of you who thinks (s)he has a waif-ish bod that would fit the tee, give me a shout. of course, they are all fakes. there were quite a few record shops as well, although most of which had real crap choices. anyway, i managed to wrangle myself a exile on mean street reissue. yeah!

food-wise, loads of choices near camden lock itself. simply loads. vendors basically pestering all passerbys with their culinary wares. yum. though, i have to say you get stuff which looks good, but the taste ain’t (the donuts above). then, there are some which looks bad, but sure smells good. take the unappetising-looking tartiflette. it was a problem for me as the tartiflette got babi one. in fact, i joked that it looked like the sisa for the babis on the farm. there were crepes, curries, japanese fried rice, indonesian ayam goreng, freshly pressed/blended fruit juices. hoho. lunching al fresco was the way to go with the weather being absolutely gorgeous.

Tin Pan Alley

the neon has delusions that another valve amp in the works will be a good idea. denmark street was our next stop. forget that gold prs. or even that burns. it’s the ’75 jazz bass i’m drooling over. maple fingerboard with block inlays. three-tone sunburst with a genuine worn out finish. vintage hardware, including ashtray bridge covers and everything. sod the relic series. if i have the ongkos to part with, this is the real shebang to buy. checked out some second-hand amps. no hiwatt. hehe. most of the stores were shut, though. so, we were left to salivate over the vintage and boutique stomp boxes in the window display.

Eh, lapar lah! (part VI)

more food. to anyone on the south beach/north coast/atkins/watkins/whatever diet, no apologies offered. i say, give yourselves a break and get stuck in! leicester square was our next stop. this time it was haagen-dazs. i had the praline caramel crunch. jo had the cookie crunch, and the neon, belgian waffle. click on the pic above to know what’s in them ices.

Abbey Road

a few minutes walk away from st. johns wood is abbey road. the one with the most famous recording studio in the world. the beatles in the 60’s. pink floyd in the 70’s. for all you movie buffs, the soundtracks for star wars and the lord of the rings trilogies were recorded right here. grafitti can be noted on the white walls of the studio gates. it does look like it gets painted once a week, only to be covered by more grafitti soon after. in fact, an mpv stopped by the roadside and this kid got out to write some words on the wall under the watchful eye of her mom. in full view of the close-circuit cameras.

to walk the walk, we monitored the pattern of the traffic, so as to know the best time to get jo to stand in the middle of the road for that shot. also, there were these american kids who were also re-living the album cover, like 5 times or something. it gave us an idea that the shot could be easily done as the traffic was not too bad. a sense of achievement was definitely in the air around us after confirming that we finally had the best shot.

ERRATUM

the title of the seminal rolling stones’ album is exile on MAIN street and not mean street. apologies to those who had to pull off their hair fidgetingly on noticing the said typo. hehe 🙂