The top of this blog lies - it's been lying for some time. I don't live in New Malden any more, haven't done so for a while now. This could go some way to explaining the lack of posts: how can I claim to be the foremost authority on all things New Malden related when I don't even have the decency to live there? Sure, I was chased out by angry townsfolk armed with pitchforks; I could at least have the decency to sneak back when they're asleep, and bed down on a hammock made from bin bags in the middle of Beverley Park.
But those days are over.
My news is that I'm half-way to moving to Bethnal Green / Whitechapel way, which is no-where near the New Malden / Surbiton / Kingston axis, at all. I'm not sure how I'm going to cope; no longer will I be able to cycle down the river, or go swimming in Hampton Open Air Pool, or (under heavy disguise, of course) sneak back to New Malden to eat at one of it's fine Korean restaurants. Coupled with the new job I've just started, and various personal gubbins, it really does feel like the end of an era.
Now, from next month I'm going to be living alone and I'm probably going to go mad. So I decided that - as I finally have a job with vaguely civilised working hours, which means I have free time - it may be time for me to waste that time by starting a new blog. Unlike you guys, I'm not really able to write a personal blog about normal day to day life, which a lot of you do rather brilliantly, because my mind is wired in a manner that means I need to write about a certain theme. Before the theme was New Malden - but I can't write about that anymore, for the reasons outlined above.
So I had a new idea. I've always been fascinated by the local, about sense of place, and how people have little places near them that transform a collection of samey streets into a hometown, a crappy suburb into a warm blanket of reassurance. I note, with increasing incoherent anger, that every single bit of London worth writing about is turning into wanker flats for wankers, surrounded by a few chain restaurants and cafes for chain people with chain brains.
Oriental City in Collindale - gone. New Picaddilly Cafe - gone. Walthamstow Dogs track will be no more come August.
So far, so miserable. So what I find people who live in different bits of the city and get them to take me for a thoroughly LOCAL night out. For example, if it were New Malden, I'd expect to be taken to a lovely little noodle house, then eccentric pub Woodies, but it could be anything - cafe, knitting club, ukulele bar, cock fighting pit. As long as it's local, and as long as it's not a chain, and as long as it's not a place where wankers congregate. I think these rules are fairly clear.
What do you think? I raised this idea, initially, with foxinthesnow, and she suggested that the idea was basically so I can have lots of free nights out. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this is an outrageous slur against my character. I'm happy to pay my own way, and would expect nowt but your company, and directions to the nearest tube/bus/piggyback home.
So how about it. Can you show me a good time in your local area? Who will start the magical ball rolling? Come one, come all. If this was to work, I'd like for it to start of by being all about being taken out by bloggers, then see where it goes from there. You never know - if it's successful, maybe readers may start sending out invitations of their own.
Of course, one of them might lure me out with the promise an excellent local curry and end up locking me in their basement, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
Oh, and its name? "A Night Out In..."
