London

I wouldn’t normally visit Coq d’Argent, which I think means the chicken of money. It is a moderately famous restaurant in a pink and brown tower in the City of London, once owned, as so much has been, by Sir Terence Conran, and now by D&D, specialists in soulless food barns. As restaurants go, it feels unlucky. It has — how to put this? — a circular roof garden from which people sometimes throw themselves off. One was a restaurant critic, but his last meal was not at Coq d’Argent. That was at Hawksmoor in Spitalfields. He had good taste, then, and he quoted Samuel Johnson on Twitter as he left: ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’ How true.

Nando’s, c. 1987, is a restaurant in the Great North Leisure Park, Finchley, N12, off the North Circular, which is my favourite orbital, solely from familiarity. The Great North Leisure Park includes a cinema, a bowling alley, a Pizza Hut, something called Chimichanga, and Nando’s. But the real draw of the Great North Leisure Park is the car park. If you live in north London, free parking is a destination in itself. Put it next to a nuclear reactor, and they’d come bearing toddlers. I fell into Nando’s due to sloth. I was with children, and people who can’t vote shouldn’t have destination restaurants, but they do, based on their firmly held conviction that Blu Tack coated in sugar is an ideal food, plus speed of delivery.

New York I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it. New York, they say, is much too far away and much too shabby. Basically, the Bagel’s attractions are the karate, the occasional judo session, and the weekly Brooklyn parties chez Michael Mailer. The women are better in London, but the real draw are the friends. I have many in London, very few in New York. The past fortnight in London was magical. Then the scene went sour, as parasites and social-justice warriors such as Bianca Jagger and Ed Miliband jumped in to hog the headlines, joining protesters in calling Trumpa racist, a sexist, an Islamophobic bigot and a hate-monger. La Jagger was described in the media as an actress. Funny that.

The Petersham is a fading hotel on Richmond Hill. I went to a bar mitzvah there in 1986, which gives you a good idea of how fashionable it is. I grew up near Petersham. I always thought it smelled of eternal summer, but it was the late 1970s. The Petersham is also a new restaurant in Covent Garden, a sequel to Petersham Nurseries, the garden centre café by the Thames, in Petersham, that won a Michelin star in 2011. So, the name is either a deranged lack of imagination or a monument to Petersham. I hope it is a monument. It deserves it. Now there is another Petersham restaurant, in Covent Garden, in a square off Floral Street which used to be interesting but now looks like a Lego city of the future built on the ashes of Charles Dickens.

In the shadow of the Shard, not far from Borough Market, is a £1 billion public artwork, an allegorical sculpture entitled ‘What is wrong with the world today’ by the reclusive wunderkind Netwór Krail. It was officially unveiled by the Duke of Cambridge earlier this month. The reason you may not have read about this monumental piece is that most of the press coverage failed to notice this structure was a landmark in experiential art. They mostly used its banal official name: the new London Bridge station. Next time you visit this ‘station’, I urge you to appreciate this installation for what it really is — a brilliant, scathing commentary on the modern age.