please empty your brain below

A quirk of Simpson’s / Waterstone’s is that the lifts are labelled cars on the signs outside. Very American, very of its time I guess.
A former work colleague's young son when taken to Apsley House and told of the Wellington connection actually came out unprompted with the classic line " He couldn't have got much sleep with all the noisy traffic outside".
The Hard Rock Cafe had one of Carl Palmers gongs hung over the stairs when I visited years ago.
It’s actually the Trade Descriptions Act, but for some reason people almost always make the first word plural and often the second singular (which you don’t). I don’t know why it is, because the proper title entirely captures what it does - regulating descriptions used in trade.
A pedantic correction to something I wrote 20 years ago - possibly a record :)
I think of the employee at Fornum's as a doorman, rather than a footman. He's always polite, never fawning, when I pop in for some fish fingers and frozen peas.

Auntie Susan - in the lift industry, the box we travel in is usually called a lift car. Occasionally the cabin, or carriage.
Lovely to read the entries from 20 years ago. Your writing style has evolved quite a lot! I was just finishing finals in London in 2004 so brings back a lot of memories.
The BoE's inflation calculator tells me that something costing £10 in 2004 would cost £17.50 now. Both the prices you have given (Afternoon tea and English Heritage) have gone up considerably more than that.
I wouldn't normally be a pedant, but why not, others are?

It's Judi Dench, not Judy Dench
Nice to be reminded of a street I rarely visit, and only rush through as quickly as possible when I do!
Afternoon tea at a posh hotel used to be a very occasional but just-affordable treat (though I think the Ritz was less accommodating than the Savoy, which let you stay as long as you wanted and replenished the teapot as needed), but sadly — like your other examples — prices are now entirely geared to extracting the maximum possible tourist buck. As for the Intercontinental, not sure the architect makes it any less of an excrescence than it was in 2004.
In the '80s I often walked to work along Piccadilly. Alexi Sayle's memoir Thatcher Stole My Trousers has a very relatable riff on its peculiar grouping of strangely grim establishments like tourist boards, and the offices of Aeroflot - which I remember well - and something called the Egg Information Council, which (sadly) I do not.
That reminds me that the London Hard Rock Cafe, like Angus Steak Houses, is something I really ought to visit once in my life.
Frank F - that’s interesting to know and makes sense. What’s unusual about the ones at the Waterstone’s are that the next lift display above the doors say car, whereas usually they tend to show arrows, floor numbers or next lift. I wonder when or why the word lift took precedence in general conversation in this country. We rarely call it an elevator either, although that’s a word that everyone understands.

I guess it’s like how we sometimes refer to train carriages as coaches but rarely car like the Americans unless it’s the buffet car.
Given how horrible SNCF Connect is and the annoyance of getting a good connecting journey between the Eurostar and (domestic) TGV, I sure wish you could still go and book in person.

It does seem incredible though that airlines once used to operate travel offices. It must have been 15 years now since I last visited one. Now you can't even get staff at the airport to change your flight if needed.

Waterstones always seems to be doing very well there. Though it does seem to too touristy of a store, you get much better service at their other branches.
Auntie Susan, the London Underground refers to "cars" but then it has a strong US heritage from the days of Charles Yerkes!
My son asked to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for his birthday. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was - was expecting it to be a tourist rip off, like most of the theme restaurants that were coasting on our of date reputations and have since died off (looking at you, Planet Hollywood, especially).

Food was more expensive than a pub or up-market burger chain, but not hugely so, and it was very good quality and huge portions. The stuff on display was actually impressive, and the place was well looked after.

Certainly a good option for a family treat.
The Lionel Messi Children’s menu!? I know he is only five foot six inches on a good day but are we supposed to think that posh kids dining at a burger joint have a chance to develop their football skills by eating his recommended grub. This rates with the daftest bumph that you regularly quote from the PR industry in London
I haven't been to the Hard Rock for years but it's good to see Peter's description still matching with my recollections.

Nice, too, to see a name check for Moving Mountains. Just a couple of months ago I stopped at a pub in Chilham, looked at the menu, and - only wanting something light - ordered their veggie burger simply because it was smaller than the meat one (I'm not vegetarian). Well, it looked and tasted so much like a meat burger, and a good one at that, that I had to take another look at the menu to check I hadn't mis-ordered. Yup, I returned home with a new name to Google, just to see if there were any clues as to how they were made.










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