Secret London Lunch Breaks

After psyching myself up and dusting off my walking boots and camera, I'd been waiting for a dry day to venture out on my first Jessless lunchtime trip. FYI Jess, I have failed miserably in coming to terms with lunchtime Jesslessness! However, m y ongoing distress aside, not wanting to let the side down, I am attempting to get back on track with lunchtime London reports, while Jess reports from the land of clotted cream, picture postcard thatched cottages and cider, where she is now living happily ever after. She's ahead of me, as the Devon adventures are well underway (check out her new most marvellous sister blog, Secret Devon Excursions). So I must press on! I examined the panorama from my birdseye view of the City at the office. A dynamic sky stretched out over the skyline, filled with dark and forboding clouds, heavy with a potential and likely imminent downpour (despite the weather forecast) but lit up with light poking through from the west - very dramatic. Bu

Today, we come full circle.  This is our last lunchtime excursion together, which is far too sad a notion for me to spend any amount of time contemplating, for fear of degenerating into a blubbering wreck.  And that wasn't a pretty sight last time, to which Jess can testisfy if called upon.  But!  They will continue...albeit in a different format...although I will leave that to the lovely Jess to explain. We started with a mummified cat and thought it only fitting we end on...a mummified cat.  What else!  Secret London devotees, we have come up trumps this time and found you another Dick with another long since expired, dusty moggy.  Yay!  From Dick Whittington's mummified furry friend in a cling film-covered case on the back wall in an old mans' pub in Highgate Hill, to Dirty Dick's decrepid feline in a basement cabinet of death in a historic city pub on Bishopsgate, we leave no stone unturned in the search for the wonderful and the bizarre. Come with us a

Nothing like a bit of withered hand on a Thursday afternoon.  I appreciate a statement of this nature obviously requires some explanation.  I will start at the beginning... St Etheldreda's is a beautiful old church, built in the Middle Ages (1250-1290), tucked away up a gated side street, just off crazy busy Holborn Circus and close to Hatton Garden, where gold, silver and diamonds are traded and millions of pounds change hands daily.  When you enter Ely Place, the calm of this old London street instantly hits and soothes you, but the church, sandwiched between two buildings at the far end, cannot be seen until you are upon it.  How secret is that, Secret London Lunch Break enthusiasts?  Pretty secret, I'm sure you will agree. St Etheldreda's Church was the town chapel of the Bishops of Ely from about 1250 to 1570. It is the oldest Catholic church in England and one of only two remaining buildings in London from the reign of Edward I. It was once one of the most