The 38 to Clapton Pond

Look up high in Fleet Street. You can still see the London smog clinging to the stones. Look closely at the old Daily Telegraph HQ (at no.135, it's the building that looks like it is auditioning for a starring role in Batman's Gotham City). You can just about read the newspaper's masthead spelled out in silhouette by the grime of the years. Fading with every passing year, but still there. Fleet Street is London's most rewarding street in which to lift your head above the traffic and homogenous shops. It's all in the detail.

"Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,  That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,  Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?" Robert Bridges

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Sir Toby Belch, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare (c.1600/01) (Cakes courtesy of Maison Bertaux . Ale: The Coach & Horses , both Greek Street W1)

A Christopher Wren spire from 1687, all that remains of Christ Church Greyfriars, destroyed on the night of the 29th December 1940. Four other Wren churches burned that night. Shot from what was once the nave of the church, the bombed-out shell is now a public garden. (Taken: 21:45 Tuesday 27th October 2009)

Spittalfields is London's best Sunday market by a mile.

Perhaps not quite Orwell's Ideal (scroll down for yesterday's post) but with no sport on TV and no piped music, The Salisbury punches well above its weight for a pub on the main drag in the West End of London.

In his essay The Moon Under Water (1946, published in the Evening Standard ) George Orwell provided a detailed description of his ideal pub, which he would name the Moon Under Water. The ideal pub, he wrote, must meet ten key criteria: • The architecture and fittings must be uncompromisingly Victorian. • Games, such as darts, are only played in the public part of the bar. • The pub is quiet enough to talk, with the house possessing neither a radio nor a piano. • The barmaids know the customers by name and take an interest in everyone. • It sells tobacco and cigarettes, aspirins and stamps, and lets you use the phone. • There is a snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a specialty of the house), cheese, pickles and large biscuits with caraway seeds. • Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch for about three shillings. • It should serve a creamy sort of draught stout, “and it goes better in a pewter pot”. • They are particular about their dr...