We picked Hidden London on a Sunday morning, and had the city to ourselves, more or less. There’s something magical about exploring those sleepy streets that are usually so bustling with commuters and workers.

Between us, the boyfriend and I have lived and worked in London for over 25 years. I’m a big fan of exploring places through a quirky lens, liking to think of myself as a modern day flaneur. But Alex was able to show us places and spaces we hadn’t seen before, and put an interesting spin on those we had. Who knew that maypoles, trees, and cats had such a bearing on the history of our City?

We started off with an essential safety briefing, and some training. In those first few minutes I was ready to hang up the towel, convinced I’d fall off, crash, or break a bone, possibly all three at the same time. I persisted, and with reassurance from Alex, was soon up to a healthy speed. You ride predominantly in cycle lanes, which have had a lot of investment during Covid, so it feels pretty safe. I get bored easily, so the idea of over two hours had me pretty daunted, but the pace and rhythm of the adventure was perfect, and it never felt a slog. Not a moment to get bored.

eScooters are surprisingly affordable to hire. ScooTours partner and have a deal with Dott, but if you’re picking one up yourself, it’s just £1 to unlock, then 15p a minute. It seems a no brainer for a fast jaunt from meeting to meeting, or the tube to the office. I can see a day when it’s not just about tourist and weekend discovery, but a part of the commute.

Maybe the modern day flaneur will use an eScooter. Until then, jump on a ride with ScooTours.

ScooTours were kind enough to gift us the tour, and send some photos of another ride as I forgot to take any! Thank you!

Thames Rockets do things slightly differently. One warm September evening we embarked a bright red speed boat at London Eye Pier for a guided tour that genuinely blew our minds. The 50 minute Ultimate London Adventure. We might have started off at the Houses of Parliament, a place we all knew well, but never before had I been told that the flag at the top is the size of a tennis court – and it’s my new favourite fact. We were taken out east past Somerset House, the OXO Tower, the MI5 building, Tate Modern, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Shard, Millennium Bridge and more as interesting facts and new revelations were told in a fun and interesting way to our merry band of six people – all socially distanced of course.

But it’s once you get past the river police building just up from Tower Bridge that things really start to get exciting. Because that’s when the speed restrictions lift. And the driver cranked up the engine as we zoomed and twisted and curved at speeds of 30 knots – which is 35 miles per hour for those of us without seafaring experience. Tunes blared out, we smiled and cheered, and it was an utter delight to be on board. We often walk along The Thames, or cross bridges over The Thames, but are rarely actually on this river that is the life blood of London.

As we cruised back towards our start point, the sun began to set on the city, and it looked as beautiful as ever. A can of Pimms helped. Thrills and spills aboard Thames Rockets are wholly recommended.

Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Maggie Humm’s Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel—as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.

It’s evocative and engaging, sweeping landscapes simmering next to psychological interior exploration. Picturesque Cornwall and busy London are the backdrop for a young woman growing up, and an older woman reflecting back. We’re treated to details about the captivating Lily Briscoe and her relationship with herself, her art, and the women and men in her life. It’s a great read, from a clearly very knowledgeable writer.

I caught up with Maggie to find out more.

Why did you decide to write Talland House?

Everyone has a novel inside themselves somewhere. I wrote my first ‘novel’ aged eight, told from the point of view of an encyclopaedia who dropped on the head of a burglar to save a library. I didn’t get a gold star because the teacher said it was unrealistic ‘no-one burgles libraries Margaret.’ But libraries were my world and so I’ve always written books – before Talland House academic books. They say write about what you know and as an academic specialist in Woolf, I know about Woolf and about myself (all debut novels are autobiographical in some way).

Virginia Woolf has a very distinctive style – were you trying to echo this at all?

Initially, and almost subconsciously, I wrote with Woolf’s indirect discourse and use of multiple viewpoints. At my first reading in my Diploma of Creative Writing course the tutor Gillian Slovo quite rightly advised me to choose a less confusing style so that readers could identify with Lily. But Talland House is full of events, people and places Woolf knew and some vocabulary (‘granite and rainbow’ feature!).

Why are you interested in Virginia Woolf?

My first book Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics has a chapter on Woolf and my interest grew from there. Like many people, I identify with Woolf’s politics: feminism, pacifism, socialism and her ideas about democratic education and living in touch with each other and with nature. In addition the Woolf societies around the world are very welcoming and sustaining with annual conferences which trigger further interest. This year even the fashion world loves Woolf with the 2020 Met Gala and Givenchy’s collection devoted to her novel Orlando.

Why did you take To the Lighthouse as your starting point, rather than another novel?

I first read To the Lighthouse as an adolescent after the death of my mother and fell in love with the mother-figure Mrs Ramsay. Later I discovered that Woolf’s mother Julia Stephen was 49 when she died and Virginia 13 – the exact ages of my mother and me when my mother died. There’s something so extraordinarily moving about mothering in To the Lighthouse, but Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly and in parentheses (apologies to those who haven’t yet read the book!) and I knew I had to write a novel discovering how Mrs. Ramsay dies.

The book centres around Lily Briscoe’s painting – what interests you about this art form, as well as writing?

Although not trained as an art historian, I have long been a devotee of the arts in particular Bloomsbury’s dedication to different genres: murals, textiles, pottery, book design, as well as paintings, and to collaborative, decorative projects. Lily Briscoe paints Mrs. Ramsay’s portrait twice in the novel with the final version a more abstract painting, described by Woolf in terms of shapes, mass and colours, rather than only representational figures, much like her sister Vanessa Bell’s approach to art for example, Bell’s 1912 portrait of Woolf – Virginia Woolf. As Vanessa Bell said “artists, in the opinion of many are little better than lunatics [but] besides being rather mad, artists are apt to be revolutionaries”.

Did you have to do lots of historical research?

The research was huge but so enjoyable. As a Woolf scholar (my last three books focus on Woolf and the arts) I’d read all Woolf’s writings and writings by her family and friends. For Talland House I read Cornish newspapers for the times Lily is in St. Ives for weather, incidents, and atmosphere. I loved being in the airy map room at the top of the British Library looking at old photos of St. Ives for housing types and street scenes. I read artists’ memoirs, turn of the twentieth century art journals for a sense of artists’ lives and studios. I read everything on-line about World War I in London and how it felt to be there, for example, when the Germans suddenly switched from Zeppelins to Gotha bombers in 1917. Virginia Woolf herself experienced Gothas in Richmond December 1917. She wrote in her diary: “discussed the raid, which, according to the Star I bought, was the work of 25 Gothas, attacking in 5 squadrons & 2 were brought down”. I googled about music halls, other leisure pursuits, clothes, transport, and the accurate names of buildings. St. Ives and London became characters in my novel.

The most difficult task was keeping the research to a discreet underpinning not, as academics often do, glorifying it in long footnotes. Also difficult was that Lily gradually took over my life, my feelings, even my physical characteristics. She’s always early for appointments, she’s an only child herself with a dead mother, and her fingers are the shape of mine. Sometimes I wondered if I existed outside the novel.

But what the research did do was to bring me much closer than ever before, to a fuller sensation of Woolf’s worlds—the smell and feel of Talland House’s escallonia hedge, an almost bodily sense of the impact of bombs on London’s buildings, streets and inhabitants. This feeling for history and sensory experiences hopefully continues in my second novel, Rodin’s Mistress, about the tumultuous love affair of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the painter Gwen John.

The three days of classes, workshop, shopping, and fun are open to new tryers and expert yogis. This year, the show is bigger and better than ever before, with over 200 free yoga sessions taking place in nine areas. All open classes are suitable for all levels, giving the perfect opportunity to try something new.

Over the last fifteen years, the OM Yoga Show has grown ever more popular, becoming the biggest yoga gathering in Europe, and one of the largest events in the world.

A ticket to the OM Yoga Show also includes free entry into the Mind Body Soul Experience, taking place in an adjoining hall. Two shows for the price of one! Tickets are available here.

Sorcha Richardson has been buzzing around for a while, but this is her first visit to London, and she’s chosen the tiny Servants Jazz Quarters for her debut show in the capital. It also happens to be the hottest day of the year to date, and so this tiny little room is something of a sweatbox.

She starts off with ‘Lost’ and ‘Can’t We Pretend’ before Petrol Station kicks the packed out audience into gear, singing along to the bouncy tune. She’s spent the last twelve months recording a new album (First Prize Bravery set for release in the autumn) and we’re treated to some new tunes, which seem to bear the same trademark laidback and observational style, underpinned by sketchy synths and poppy melodies. ‘Don’t Talk About’ It is a jaunty infectious indie-pop that is brilliant fun, a spiky, hook-laden lament on the intricacies of romantic miscommunication, and will capture new fans. The Dublin born star moved to New York when she was 18, and it marked a gear shift in her writing and performing, but Ireland still shimmers through her storytelling.

She’s supported by Morning Midnight, who play some rocky folk, and also come back to play for Sorcha, ramping things up a gear from their support set.

The sound isn’t great, ricocheting around the room and bouncing back from the sound desk, but Sorcha is enigmatic and friendly, her warm presence and uplifting rhythms buoying the crowd. She seems genuinely thrilled that we’re all here – and we’re pretty happy too.

Vocalist and guitarist Dan Howe offers an insight into the meaning of the track: ‘It’s about being in a loveless relationship, but rather than going through the pain of a separation, you continue to lie to yourselves and to through the motions to keep up appearances. In case the mother of my children is reading this; it is not autobiographical!’

Gathered in a bunker near London Bridge, are a couple of hundred people to see Self Esteem, the newest project from Rebecca Taylor. The sold out gig at London’s OMeara sees old fans, nwTaylor has been part of the Slow Club duo, along with Charles Watson, for ten years now. But tonight’s crowd are very much here to see her, not the songs of the past.

Kicking off proceedings are Militant Girlfriend, who have a pop punk aesthetic, with short, riff heavy songs and pounding beats. Songs like 2K17 Was For Dickheads hint at a sense of humour through the boisterousness. They fire through a short set, before disappearing off to ‘drink our own body weight in whiskey.’ They seem to be having a damn fine time being angry and rocking out with riotous guitars and loud drums.

Taylor’s solo stuff is more reminiscent of the electronic pop vibe that the pair edged into in their latter years, rather than the early twee folk tunes. Your Wife was produced by Django Django’s Dave Maclean and is full of pulses and glitches over its catchy chorus. OMG is a punch of a beat heavy tune that shimmers with intricacies and brings in brass. Wrestling aches with tension and brooding, even as it flickers with melodies. ‘You’ve got to calm down ‘cos this one’s about all my feelings and terrible stuff’ she says before She Reigns, whilst Your Truth is about ‘shagging straight guys.’

Backed by an all female cast Taylor performs and preens around the stage, oozing sensuality and sexiness. There’s choreographed dance moves and sassy shimmering. Empowered and confident, she tests boundaries and pushes musical limits. Her bold and powerful voice is almost diva-esque, but her on stage banter in a thick Sheffield accent shows how down to earth she is. She ends on Favourite Problem, because she’s ready to go off and get drunk, the sip of a can of Fosters not quite cutting it.

Self Esteem also includes an art project, clothing range and social media brand, and sees Taylor questioning the male dominated world in which she, and every other female, operates in.

Tonight’s gig proves that two heads aren’t always needed to be better.

The double A-Side was recorded early this year in the band’s own studio in Haringey, North London. They favour a quick, predominantly live way of recording. ‘For us this is the best way to do it. We work fast, we try to retain the human element in our recordings wherever possible.’ Lewisburg are currently putting the finishing touches to a pending EP which will be released in the autumn.