Tat London Journal

The Easter egg arrived on shelves sometime around Valentine’s Day, and by now you might be thoroughly sick of the sight of them—stacked, shr

I saw somewhere a post saying "The Economy Is So Bad You Might As Well Follow Your Dreams." Yes, glib and with many potholes, but the gist is good. Although we all still need to eat and have a roof over our heads, we perhaps could look at injecting our energy into something that exists in the real world. So why not take the plunge and have a go at one of the below.

We did it, we got to March. The clocks are going to change, the bulbs are going to bloom, and I am not entirely sure what else will happen but for the moment let us focus our minds on spring. Even better, once we have made it through March we are rewarded with a glorious four day weekend in the form of Easter. But before we get there, let us bask in the occasional day of good weather and that forgotten scent of new blooms.

The talk of cinema going down the pan makes me feel a little queasy. If you have been to the cinema lately, it is golden. You sit there, perhaps with a treat in hand, and let yourself be swept away by the gloriousness of storytelling as it arrives on the screen. I am all for movie nights at home, but one must admit there can be the occasional glance at another screen. Here in the cinema you are locked in, and only if you are truly ballsy, and willing to upset your fellow cine

Let us all become carpenters, artists, upholsterers and the like. Yes, of course it sounds more romantic than the reality, but perhaps it is exactly the right thing for you. In a world where every job seems to be under constant review, waiting to see whether a group of tech bros can flatten it, automate it and hand it over to a robot, there is something quietly reassuring about becoming better with our hands.

Yes, “a train ride away” doesn’t narrow it down much, but most of these jaunts take under two hours — a small price to pay to see some of the finest houses in the land. You can’t say fairer than that. If you’d rather stay close to home, go to Ham House. It’s an extraordinary place, right on the river, where the air still smells faintly of the seventeenth century.

'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ So said the great Taoist thinker Lao Tzu. I don’t know where I sit on the enlightenment scale, but I have taken his advice and recently found myself chopping a lot of wood.

There has been a rise in chatter about London of late. It seems to have become one of the world’s cesspits — at least, that’s how it’s spoken of. The far right in particular seem to hold a special disdain for the city, convinced that to take any joy in the capital is to somehow endorse the melting pot that it undoubtedly is. I’ve lived here for most of my life, walking more or less the same six-mile radius the entire time. Adventurous? No. But you can take from that a certain

Dear reader, I have been meaning to say this for some time. The subject is a delicate one and I have been nervous. This declaration may send parts of the interiors industry into meltdown in one fell swoop. My moral compass, however, insists I put pen to paper and rally a few followers to a noble cause. The matter is, of course, the scallop.