OT The best things in life are free

If so I'm glad to say there seems not to be much enforcement of that in London. Chippies round here ain't online but posher places even have it on menus online eg

Yes - their coffee is not very nice at all. IMHO. Might be better with milk of some sort but I always drink black coffee these days.

Does that set them apart from the others? Well I hate the crockery but at a services I'd rather have a Costa - always seems to be a high caffeine brew (which is good). Elsewhere I'd rather have a cup from Caffè Nero.

My mother always said 'If you are from North of the River you can never be happy south of it. It's true, I get lost south of the river. I once drove from Greenwich intenting to go over London Bridge, I ended up in Wandsworth and finally reached civilised parts via Putney bridge.

Sounds like you were following the South Circular - never a good idea. ;-)

Or 'Huss'?

London was built north of the river. In the mental map of anybody born in North London, north of Watford and south of the river are marked 'here be dragons'.

Colin Bignell

Are Highgate and Islington (and other areas full of socialists) north of the river? That might explain a lot.

Yes.

Places you may have hear d of south of the driver would be Peckham..Battersea..Dulwich..kent..;-)

I doubt you will find many socialists as members of the Highgate Golf Club. Mind you, I see that Highgate School has stopped taking boarders.

Colin Bignell

There is, of course, this Old Boy:

Don't think so, but then how would I know! I think the trouble is somewhere on the approach to the bridges there are signs to various northerly destinations and I follow whichever one seems to offer the most direct route back to safe ground; which seems to result in following a daisy chain of bridge approaches. I have similar problems whenever I drive back from Dover, outgoing I get to the Blackwall Tunnel and follow the signs to Dover, returning I get to the M25 and thereafter it's rather random whether end up crossing anywhere between there and Waterloo bridge

how very true.

In my case I think anywhere N. of Euston Road is foreign territory.

Be great in this computer age if someone invented a small device that would fit in a car and navigate for you. ;-)

"Nothing good will ever come of such a thing". Besides, it would bankrupt map-makers.

"Take 4th exit" means nothing on some of those Kent roundabouts. Often you can't see anything at all apart from the trucks on either side

So how do you know which exit to take if you can't see it - even without a satnav? ;-)

Russian roulette. Trouble is, you could end up in Sheppey

The bullet might be better....

Whilst you are in the Smoke, I would recommend buying a ticket for Jeeves and Wooster(farce, bit like UKdiy!) at the Duke of York theatre. We went today and thought that performances from all the actors was better than anything we've seen for a great many years. Laughed for 2 hours!