Nataraja's Foot: North London

East Dulwich from the Bus

I. Am. Broken.

Training went stupendously. Hugely productive, lots of fun. The way work ought to be.

Finished around 4:30 and hit the road by about 5pm. Negotiated central London in rush hour to get to East Dulwich. My funny valentine, Cathryn, moved out of Fran's house (with the cats) and back into her own place around February, shortly before we cut off Lies' dreads. She took with her clothes, makeup, and boyfriend Danny. They've been together a couple of years now but this was the first time I got to meet him. Top bloke.

Stayed with them Wednesday night and sank a few pints at their local pub, The Great Exhibition in East Dulwich. It's a gorgeous place with lovely mood lighting, a selection of good ales, and outside seating.

Woke up really lazily on Thursday and noshed down on a fry-up before making my way up to Highbury & Islington in North London.

Heading to Peckham Rye Station

First port of call was Elle, my best friend from High School, who I only seem to see once every few years now. Went to meet her eight-week-old new arrival, daughter Delilah. Don't think she'll mind me sharing this picture.

Mum and baby both beautiful. Baby also very quiet. She slept through the entire couple of hours without a peep! That's how impressed she was by Aunty M, obviously. Don't blame her. We gassed non-stop. It was fantastic to catch up. Though I had some sad news to share. In the village where we grew up, there was a bench beneath a tree outside our primary school. From the day we went to upper school and started walking home together, we used to get sweets from the Post Office and sit on that bench, talking. From the ages of about 11-16 we sat on that bench every week. I blush to think of the stories it could have told.

A few years ago, the Post Office closed and moved further down the village, but last week I noticed they'd also taken away the benches!

We were both gutted. If we'd known, we would have sawn off a piece to keep.

Right: Our Bench

We ended up at The Alwyne Castle, where we met up with Will Davis, who is an author friend I met last year at a book festival in Northamptonshire. I owed him a book in return for one he'd given me, but it took a whole year for me to get to London to give it to him.

He also lives in the Highbury & Islington area so, after Elle went, we embarked on a major pub crawl. We started off in this gorgeous little candlelit bar, the name of which I've completely forgotten, supping G&T and wine. Then we headed for food at Pasha, a totally delightful Turkish restaurant with an impressive selection of cocktails.

He opted for a very sophisticated French Martini:

Vanilla Vodka, Chambord and Pineapple juice shaken and fine strained

I went for a Nutty Turk, which was something to do with frangelico and cocoa powder (scrummy!) then switched to a Pomegranate Martini, which had little pieces of pomegranate in the bottom - very cute.

It complimented the stuffed aubergines and duck with pomegranate (running theme) and walnuts.

Delicious.

Then it was on to another bar for more cocktails! Including something extremely strong and fizzy with sloe gin. Very annoyed with myself as I took photos of the cocktails, but the effects of the cocktails caused me to accidentally delete them. Ho hum.

Stayed over at Will's, who lives in a wonderfully dramatic house which even has a dance pole through the middle of the living room! He's an aerialist by profession and therefore ridiculously fit, as is his sister, who runs a fair trade fashion label called Nancy Dee.

He's a fairly early riser, as were the workmen with the pneumatic drill outside, so I headed back south of the river quite early.

By the time I got there I was fit to drop. Cathryn had been out drinking too and hadn't had a very good night's sleep, so we popped to the shop for lots of nibbles and sprawled in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon. We watched Anna Karenina and Office Space. Now I finally understand the pop culture reference with Stewie and the CD in Family Guy's Bird is the Word episode!

When Danny got back from work we found our second wind and headed out for more drinks at the Exhibition.