Sorry, Belsize Park, it's just those awful bike lanes…

Times

23-06-2025

O n Saturday, in an otherwise glowing review of a new restaurant called Von Crumb, I wrote that it was 'squished between a charity shop and some sort of mouldy printing outfit opposite a big Budgens on a wide-pavemented dog of a main drag in Belsize Park, which is the saggy arse of Hampstead', and copped a fair amount of flak from local readers.
Some below the line, such as Philip Bergman, diagnosed 'envy from someone who lives in Kentish Town', while another, Victoria Coren Mitchell, who had somehow gained access to my personal email, wrote: 'Lovely review of Belsize Park… we must have you round more often'.
Replying (immediately) to Mrs Mitchell and (with a smidge less urgency) to all the others, I was at pains to point out that I love Belsize Park in principle, but was merely talking about what had happened of late to that particular section of high street, due to chainification of the shops and the madness of Commie Camden Council's people-hating (not car-hating; people-hating) traffic scheme — specifically, the hideously ugly double cycle lane that nobody ever uses because the hill is too steep, which means there is no parking at all, so nobody can access the shops and local commerce is being strangled to death.
Mrs Mitchell accepted my clarification but added, 'Bit harsh on Harry at the print shop though, he's one of the last independent shops left from the old days — he's lovely! He printed the orders of service for Daddy's memorial at a 15 per cent discount!!!'
And that was a bit of a shocker for me because Mrs Mitchell's daddy was also my daddy. I read at that very service. And there I was describing the printer who had printed the programme for it as 'mouldy', without ever having been inside.
'If you ever return to the subject,' wrote Mrs Mitchell, 'do throw in a nice mention for that print shop. But he'll probably be gone. Nobody can survive that parking thing. What about the framers? That's the other one that's still surviving from the old days, but how can it? Because how can you collect a big, framed item on a bicycle?'
Research from the City University of Hong Kong suggests that asking someone for help can lead to romance. 'The reason why asking for help can be very useful to initiate romantic interests,' explained the study's co-author Professor Xijing Wang, is that 'when we ask someone for help by having them solve a problem for us, we signal that we trust and want to rely on them.' So, ladies, now do you understand why your husband doesn't want to go over and ask that big hairy farmer for directions to the lake, and would rather just carry on fussing over the map?
Paired with the above story in yesterday's Times was one about research from the University of Queensland, which shows that engaging in benign masochism with others can bring people closer together. Examples of activities that can help people to love each other more include 'wild swimming in a chilly river', 'running into a freezing sea' and 'skinny dipping in the cold waters of a lake'. The research does not, however, go into the flipside of all the love these activities generate between participants, which is how their whanging on about it all the time makes everybody else hate them.
A redesign for the government website which, after a long consultation with M&C Saatchi, has done little more than move the dot in 'GOV.UK' very slightly upwards, is reported by critics to have cost ministers £532,000. So now all they need to do is hire someone to move the comma.
Food-shaped candles are 'the latest middle-class homeware trend', with candles in the shape of fried chicken, sausages and even layer cakes costing anything from £17 to £95. Seems a bit extravagant, but I suppose it was inevitable, what with the Ozempic boom meaning that nobody wants food you can actually eat any more.