I wouldn't normally feel comfortable sticking a score on a place after sampling just 2 dishes from a menu, but I will make an exception for the Knave of Clubs for two reasons. Firstly, they have put the rotisserie "centre stage" at one end of the large dining room and that is what, I imagine, the large majority of their visitors will be ordering. Secondly, I bloody loved the place, so I don't think they'll mind me writing about it even without trying most of what their kitchens can offer. We started, though, with oysters - an extremely reasonable £20 for 6 large, lean specimens supplied with all the correct condiments. In a town when the average price per bivalve is hovering around the £5 mark (and in some cases is well above that), it's nice to know that there's somewhere still offering value like this. The same sense of value is evident in the rest of the menu. They really could charge a lot more for a whole chicken than £38, especially given the quality of these birds (from arguably London's best butcher Turner and George), and even if they didn't come with a giant helping of sides. For your money you get loads of chicken fat roasties, a nice sharply-dressed green salad, some slices of baguette and a little pot of light, homemade aioli. All of this generosity would have come to naught if the chicken itself wasn't up to scratch, but fortunately thanks to the provenance I mentioned, plus judicious use of brining (not too salty but just enough to ensure every bit of the flesh is tender and juicy), plus a really lovely chermoula spice rub, the end result was a truly impressive bit of rotisserie - the best pub roast chicken I've had the pleasure to tear into in recent memory; certainly the best value. We absolutely demolished the chicken then spent many happy minutes mopping up the chermoula cooking juices with the slices of baguette, and for a while, all was well with the world. The bill, with a £32 bottle of wine came to £51pp - you really can spend a lot more than this and get a lot less, and not just in central London. In fact the whole experience, including the lovely and attentive staff, made me forgive the only real complaint I have about the place - bloody communal tables. But the spots are spread out around them quite generously, and actually just gives me an excuse to return and try the bistro-style One Club Row upstairs in the same building, where chef Patrick Powell (ex- Allegra) is really stretching his wings. I bet it's great. Watch this space. P.S. Anyone who subscribes by email I am aware of the fact that follow.it have started to be very annoying and not posting the content in the body of the email, just a link to it hosted by them. I didn't ask for this, and am not making any money from it. If you want to continue receiving the full posts via email, can I suggest you subscribe to my substack here, where you can opt to receive the full posts via email, for free.

25 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in May 2025 1) Last year 712 trips and falls were reported on the stairs of buses in London, of which 52% led to a minor injury and 3% led to a serious injury. 2) The paint codes used to coat the exterior of tube rolling stock are RAL 3020 (Traffic red), RAL 9002 (Grey White) and RAL 5002 (Ultramarine Blue). 3) Since the launch of the ULEZ, more Penalty Charge Notices have been issued to drivers living outside London (4 million) than inside London (3½ million). 4) Last year the tube stations with the most reported injuries on escalators were Waterloo (116), Kings Cross (101) and London Bridge (91). In total there were 1521 injuries of which 33 were major. 5) Of the 18,038 bus stops across London, 93.79% are deemed accessible. This relates to the raised height of the kerb in relation to the floor of the bus. 6) Aboard new buses, in addition to wheelchair users and priority seat occupants, a minimum of 51% of seated customers must have an unobscured view to at least one digital screen. 7) Last year 13,263 ULEZ Penalty Charge Notices were cancelled after the vehicles were identified as having cloned plates. 8) Last year TfL issued 253 permits to film or take photographs on the network, including 52 on the Underground and 2 on the cablecar. The majority of permits applied to roads and buses. 9) Last year TfL spent £22,093.35 on name badges. Each badge costs £4.50 with a pin/clip or £2.50 with a magnet. There is no additional cost for adding pronouns. 10) Since the start of 2024 bus drivers on route 17 received more passenger commendations than on any other route. In second place was route 1 and in third place route 111. 11) Within the 'Legible London' wayfinding scheme, maps and signs assume a walking speed of 1.3 metres per second. 12) Regarding street lighting, TfL are responsible for a total of 34,862 lighting points. 13) During the six months since bus routes W12, W13 and W14 were restructured, route W12 averaged 3900 passengers per day, route W13 2900 passengers and route W14 just 280. 14) During the year 2023/24, 130 lost smart watches were found on buses, 112 on the Underground, 6 on the Overground and one on the cablecar. 15) 58% of bus fare payers use contactless, 41% use Oyster and less than 1% use paper tickets (these are mostly one day Travelcards). 16) The axonometric diagram for newly-step-free Knightsbridge station is available here. 17) No passengers have been prosecuted for vaping on buses because vaping is not included in the current legislation that would allow for prosecution. 18) In the last six years no prosecutions have been brought by TfL under 'Using Instrument to Produce or Reproduce Sound' within the Railway Byelaws. 19) The three Elizabeth line ticket offices which sold the fewest tickets last year were Acton Main Line (3343), Hanwell (3410) and Maryland (4882). 20) On the Overground the least used ticket office last year was Caledonian Road and Barnsbury with 25 sales, followed by South Hampstead with 91 and Brondesbury Park with 151. 15 ticket offices sold on average less than one ticket a day. I've made this map to show 2024 ticket sales. 21) On digital bus blinds, the screen displaying the route number on the front or rear of the bus should have minimum dimensions of 450mm x 330mm. 22) In its first year of operation 7,326,963 passengers rode Superloop route SL8. During the previous twelve months, when the same route was numbered 607, total passenger numbers were 6,340,632. 23) 92 million Oyster cards have not been used in the last 12 months, with a combined total unspent balance of £268m. 24) Reducing the frequency of route G1 from four buses an hour to three is expected to save over £700,000 per annum. 25) In the last financial year, the estimated level of fare evasion on the London Underground was 4.8%. This compares with 4.7% on the DLR, 3.3% on the Overground, 2.6% on buses and 7.2% on trams.

I'm going to start this post about the Parakeet, with - unfortunately (for them, and possibly for you) - a bit of a rant. Why is it that no matter how much money has been lavished on a place, no matter how starry the chefs, how extensive the wine list, how exclusive the whisky collection (the Parakeet has some very interesting bourbons), the beer offering is almost always absolute garbage? I've lost count of the amount of gastropubs I've turned up to for a pre-dinner pint that seem to think it's OK to serve an exciting, seasonal modern British menu with a straight face alongside Camden Hells, Moretti, Guinness and bugger-all else. There's nothing poisonous about any of these bog-standard beers, and not everywhere can be the Wenlock Arms, but honestly guys, it's not difficult - serve the mass-market crap if you must but why not have one or two taps available for something from Deya, or Verdant, or Signature, or Pressure Drop, or god knows how many other great independent craft breweries on your doorstep? Would it really kill you? So yes my evening at the Parakeet got off to a bit of a humdrum start, with a pint of something entirely forgettable, but I'll give them this - at least, unlike so many 'gastropubs', it's still a proper pub, with a handsome and tastefully restored high-Victorian bar area supported by banquette seating at least equal in size to the dining section. And they're both beautiful spaces, with stained glass details and dark wood panelling, the dining area theatrically unveiled with the raising of curtains at the beginning of service. They can do a good Negroni too, and know how to put together a supremely attractive Spring menu, with a lot of my favourite words - crab, asparagus, wild garlic, oysters - offered at prices that, these days at least, seem almost modest. The point is, the Parakeet are doing lots of things right and so when they do slip up it only serves to remind you how much better it would be if they'd paid slightly closer attention to the details. This, for example - described on the menu as "Poached oysters & sea buckthorn granita". Now I'm going to be generous and forgive the plurality as a typo, rather than anything more sinister, because it's £5 for a single beastie is pretty much the norm these days. But am I right in thinking "poached" means served warm? This was ice-cold and tasted raw - again, perfectly fine if that's what you want but not as described. And doesn't "granita" mean a kind of shaved-ice frozen affair? This was a very nice dressing, with what can be a sharply astringent sea buckthorn element tempered by apple juice, but I wouldn't call it a granita. Duck hoi sin tartlets were very pretty little things which tasted as good as they looked - bags of salty, syrupy hoi sin flavour and with nice soft chunks of pink duck. Crab lasagne bites contained a good amount of crab meat and a very seductive cheese-toastie style arrangement of textures. They were also something I'd genuinely never seen before on a menu, which for this jaded blogger after nearly two decades in the game is impressive by itself. Hopefully it's not too much of a criticism to say that this plate of artichoke, broad beans (properly peeled, thank you) and sunflower seeds possibly would have been better described and sold as a side, rather than a starter. It had nice shaved artichokes, plenty of big juicy broad beans and the seeds added an attractive crunch, but in the end there wasn't quite enough going on to justify itself as a standalone dish. Nevertheless, we did quite happily polish it off. The only real dud of the evening, food-wise at least, was the turbot. Under-seasoned, with an unattractive flabby skin and a strangely blobby-textured, soily flesh, it really wasn't a very pleasant thing to eat and was a poor advertisement for what can otherwise be one of the best fish to eat on the planet. The pickled white asparagus and grape dressing it came with, however, was lovely, which although hardly making up for the turbot did mean there was at least something to enjoy on the plate. Bizarrely though, considering the poor state of the turbot, this battered, deep-fried red mullet was an absolute joy. Inside a nice crunchy greaseless batter was a fillet of superb mullet, every inch of it properly seasoned and bursting with flavour. I'll forgive them missing to remove a few bones from one side - they were easily dealt with, and the masala and curry leaf sauce it came with was rich with tomato and spices. I know through bitter experience that red mullet does not always taste this good, so this was a surprise as well as a delight. Desserts were enjoyable, but didn't seem to have had the same amount of care lavished on them as the savoury courses. Chocolate mousse was tasty enough and a bed of crunchy puffed oats (I think they were) gave it a bit of texture, but it's not really the best chocolate mousse I've eaten this month (step forward, yet again, the Devonshire) never mind longer ago. Citrus Bakewell tart was slightly more interesting and I liked the fragile ribbons of caramelised fruit they'd draped on top, but the cake element was slightly dry and crumbly. Overall, though, the Parakeet are doing more things right than wrong, and if that seems like damning with faint praise it still puts them ahead of a lot of spots in town. I hesitate to mention service on invites like these but everyone seemed very enthusiastic, and kept exactly the right balance between friendliness and professionalism - they also passed the folded napkin test with flying colours. And although the food menu wasn't exactly at the budget end of the scale, they do offer a house white for £29 which is approaching a genuine steal these days. So yes, if I was going to spend this amount of money and take a journey across town for this kind of food there's a few places (not least the Devonshire, but also the Baring, the Drapers Arms and the Pelican) that would be ahead of the list. But if I was a local, I think I'd be pretty happy to have the option to visit. And perhaps that's all that matters. I was invited to the Parakeet and didn't see a bill, but totting up what we ate and drank from the menus comes to about £70pp which isn't bad really.

I went out yesterday morning, inspired by something I'd read, and visited somewhere on the other side of London. When I got there I had a quick look round and took some photos. And I haven't told anyone else about it. One thing about living by yourself is that there's nobody else at home to chat to. If you have an opinion on the news, nobody's there to hear it. If you come up with a really good joke, it's wasted. If you cook something unusual for lunch, nobody comments. If you do a really good job of cleaning the windows, nobody notices. If you want reassurance that what you're wearing looks OK, the mirror never answers back. And if you go out for the day, nobody's waiting to hear all about it when you get home. Who else cares that I've watered my cactus and kept it alive? Who wants to hear that I've been back to the library and what I thought of the last book I returned? Who might help with three down in the crossword? Who can I rail at when the price of chocolate biscuits goes up again? Who'll notice that stray eyebrow hair or the splodge of sun lotion that didn't quite blend in? When I get home from visiting X, Y and Z who wants to hear details of how unusual X was and how the journey almost went wrong between Y and Z? Some of us are bursting with mundane stories and have nobody to tell. I do have one significant outlet, obviously, and that's this blog. It's not just me reporting back on points of interest around the capital, it's also my chance to tell you carefully curated snippets about my life. Over the last month I've told you about the pink tie I saw on the Overground, the bacon and sausage baguette I ate in Lyme Regis, that time I won some free chocolate digestives, a man I saw vomiting on a street tree, how good the tulips are in Enfield, a parking ticket I once bought in Basildon and that time I saw the Pope. These are all minor things of the kind you might tell a live-in partner merely to pass the time, but I manage to share them with thousands of people I've never met and it simply counts as 'content'. When people have lived with someone else for decades, I'm often in awe of how they still have things to say. They must know by now what the other person thinks of immigration, how they like their toast or whether to switch off the TV before EastEnders starts. The news can be a gift to long term conversation because it provides a never-ending canvas to comment on. Plans and targets help too, like making progress towards a new kitchen, remembering which bin to take out and spending the best part of two decades bringing up children. A top conversational tactic for older couples while out and about, it seems, is simply to 'say what you see'. One partner provides a running commentary ("ooh a cat" "the sun's come out" "she's riding on the pavement") and it helps keep everything ticking over rather than just sitting there in silence. So today I thought I'd offer an opportunity to those of you with something to say and nobody to say it to. Tell us now. What happened to you yesterday that you haven't had the chance to tell anyone else about? comments if(postComments['123456789012'] != null){document.write(' (' + postComments['123456789012'] + ')')}else{document.write(' (0)')}; So much of what we do goes untold, to any audience, especially for those of us who go through life by ourselves. It's by no means always a bad thing, but also potentially an enormous waste when we could have much to say.