Ignore Knightsbridge. Eschew the West End and Oxford Street. If you want a real buzz when you’re out shopping, head for Clapham Junction - where you can find the Hive Honey Shop.

It does have a real buzz - literally. There’s a five foot tall glass fronted hive actually inside the shop, so you can watch the bees going about their business.

There’s a range of different honeys - heath honey, orchard honey, English wildflower honey, all different colours from the palest gold to deep brown. You can buy honeycomb, beeswax, candles, mead and honey liqueurs. And if this really sets you off, the shop sells beekeeping equipment (but not bees).

Where: 93 Northcote Road, London SW11 6PL (Clapham Junction station)

When: Mon-Sat 10-5, except Wednesday when it shuts at 2pm

Photo by Peter Shanks on flickr

But all is not lost for the unlucky artists. The Llewelyn Alexander Gallery is running an exhibition entitled ‘Not the Royal Academy’ which, like the Salon des Refusés in nineteenth century Paris, has taken a selection of the works which were turned down by the RA.

If you’re interested in buying anything, it’s a much more friendly gallery than the RA - everything in the show is available to take away with you as soon as you hand your money over. The gallery reckons it can easily fill the space on the wall, helping keep the exhibits fresh.

It’s a self-recycling show - every three weeks new works are put on. So it may be worth scheduling a couple of visits to the show.

Downside for those of you who like cutting-edge art; there’s not much abstraction on view. The show is biased towards figurative art, with a lot of landscapes and still lifes. But the art is certainly highly competent and one or two of the landscape paintings struct me as quite spectacular. If you’re a big art fan or have a day spare and are wondering what to do with it, then it might be quite fun to go to both the exhibitions - a very different atmosphere in each.

Where: 124-126 The Cut, London SE1 8LN - Opposite the Old Vic (Waterloo station)

When: Mon-Sat 10-7.30 till 22 August

How much: Free

Those of us who hate the sweaty, heated commute to work in the summerwill be grateful for this innovation. Really, it’s amazing that we’re already nearly a decade into the 21st century and we still don’t have air con on the underground.

The bad news? Boris was trialling the new carriages on an Oxford test track, and the new trains won’t be in service till next summer - leaving us to put up with the usual sticky journeys this summer.

And if you’re on one of the deep level lines - the Victoria, Piccadilly or Jubilee, or the Northern or Central Line - you won’t get one of these new trains, so you’ll still roast slowly.

Of course there is one other way to avoid the heat of the Underground on your way in to work. Get a bike!

Some kinds of Great British Food I just can’t get on with. Winkles. Eel pie. Yeugh.

The Great British Pork Pie on the other hand is a marvellous (if not particularly kosher) product. It’s the pastry that I particularly like - not the crumbly shortcrust you might get in a quiche or the flaky pastry of sausage rolls, but a wonderful hard, chewy pastry with a gloss finish.

And underneath the pastry lid is a lovely sliver of pork jelly, before you get to the pork itself. The jelly is added after baking - it fills up any air gaps, preserving the pork inside.

Ah yes, the pork. Now there are two kinds of pork pie. There are cheap ones with garish pink processed meat inside them. And then there are the artisan ones, like the one in the photo - the Melton Mowbray pork pie, with uncured pork inside. (Actually they don’t all come from Melton Mowbray; there are some rather good Norfolk ones too.)

Actually there is a third version. There’s the pork pie remade - some come with apple sauce as well as jelly, others with apricot included in the mixture. But this is all non-traditional and looked down on by the pork pie purist (though not by me).

Where to get a good pork pie in London? Mrs King’s in Borough Market, where the pie in the photo was bought, comes high up the list - the pies are brought down from Melton Mowbray for Friday’s trading. The Ginger Pig in Moxon Street, Marylebone, though expensive (£5 a pie - I pay £2 for mine in my local pub), provides excellent pies with a bit more spice than most. (I think mace is the main spice but I could be wrong.)

You might try Fortnum & Mason for a rather less traditional pie, with pickled onions and cheese - these are monster one and a half kilo pies, for sharing, not for scoffing on your own at lunchtime!

How to eat your pork pie. This is important. Pork pies do not go with tea. Pork pies do not go with a glass of red wine. They go with beer - preferably a good strong bitter or a dark ale, like Black Sheep, or Theakstons Old Peculier.

And you’ll want a big splash of Colman’s mustard on the side of the plate (no other will do, particularly not if like me you’re from Norwich). Some people prefer their pies with piccalilli or chutney, and I have tried cranberry sauce (not such a success).

Photo by Dan Taylor on flickr. Believe it or not, there’s a whole flickr group devoted to pork pies. Just shows you how much some people love them!

Now, with airports operator BAA mooting a plan to let minicabs pick up passengers from Heathrow, it looks as if war might break out.

Black cab drivers’ association the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) has said it thinks BAA’s proposals go too far. Minicabs have to be pre-booked, but BAA wants to help passengers who are landing to book them - and will also give the mini-cabs free parking.

Black cabs often charge £50-60 for a ride into London - more if you have large amounts of luggage. Minicabs can charge less - though each firm sets its own prices. BAA will only be dealing with two firms, Addison-Lee and One Transport, so if you’re a regular service user, check some of your local cab or limo firms for prices (for instance in Stoke Newington, I was getting a better price from a good firm in Kingsland Road, because their drivers only had a five minute drive to pick me up).

There’s been a suggestion that black taxi drivers might blockade the airport if BAA’s proposals go ahead. That wouldn’t just impact taxi or minicab users of course - it would also make life difficult for anyone whose relatives or friends are dropping them off, or who use bus services to the airport. I’ll pop a post up here if it looks like anything’s happening on that front.

One of the most regular questions I get asked by friends coming to London is what they should see - and they’re not asking for the top ten most visited sights, they’re asking for the things they personally ought to see based on their interests. Some want industrial chic and green buildings, others want 18th century alleyways and old burial grounds (yes, I know a few Goths).

It’s Your London fulfil similar desires, but they’ve made it into a business. You tell them what you’re interested in, how much your budget is, and how many of you there are - and they will work out a personalised itinerary, fixing all the tickets you need.

Mind you, the service costs £200 a day. So if you’re on your own, and on a budget, it might not work out well. But if, say, there are ten of you travelling together, then it costs out quite well, particularly if none of you have the time to organise everything. If you’re seeing four sights a day, that’s an awful lot of phoning or website booking you’ve got to do - or an awful lot of queueing, which is never fun.

It’s Your London also has a page showing the most popular themed itineraries, so it might be worth looking at those even if you decide to go it alone. They don’t give their secrets away, but there are some interesting ideas - like horse riding in one of London’s parks…

Photo by Marc Evans on flickr

Back in the days of the Merry Monarch, Charles II, the court’s craving for entertainment was insatiable. Mistresses, theatre, fashion, silly bets, horseracing - since Lost and Big Brother hadn’t yet been invented, all kinds of other ways of using up the day were created.

One of these was the game of Paille Maille or Pell-Mell… or Pall Mall, similar to the modern game of croquet (which is one of those strange and rather useless things we English are rather good at).

Now I was reminded of this the other day by a marvellous video I was forwarded, which shows a re-enactment of the game of Pall Mall played by chaps in resplendent court costume and full bottomed wigs. Super stuff - and well worth clicking through to YouTube to see.

Visit London - Street Stories

One of the great images of Cockney London is a community having a sing-song around the ‘old Joanna’ (yes, it’s Cockney rhyming slang). But you don’t see that in many pubs these days, which is a pity.

Now artist Luke Jerram is giving Londoners a chance to get back to the old days with his installation ‘Play me I’m yours’ - brightly decorated pianos left around London in public places. There’s one in Soho Square, one outside Tate Britain, one outside the British Library…

And there are fifteen in the City - including one right outside the Royal Exchange and one at St Paul’s Cathedral. Check the map for the full list.

They’re not guaranteed to be concert standard, so there might be a few notes missing in your Chopin etude or Bohemian Rhapsody. They will be in tune though, as a piano tuner does the rounds every day to make sure they’re properly maintained.

Some of the organisers have said they want to induce a sense of ‘public spirit’ - I find it a bit disappointing though that the word ‘fun’ hasn’t been mentioned.

And believe it or not, the police have already been on the case, enquiring whether the players have a public entertainment licence. Yet another little erosion of our liberties - and how we are meant to have a sense of public spirit or indeed fun when you need a licence to play an instrument outside, I don’t know. (In fact, a friend of mine who is involved in licensing as part of his job points out the Public Entertainment Licence no longer exists - it has been subsumed into the premises licence. So the coppers, I’m afraid, haven’t been keeping up with their paperwork, if the report in the Evening Standard is correct.)

Fortunately the score is : coppers nil, pianos one, since the artist had apparently already sorted out the licensing situation.  So if you’re in London between now and July 14, feel free to tickle the ivories all you like.

And if you can’t get to a piano, read the delightful account by Emine Saner in the Guardian of her experiences - which really does make the point that we need more of this kind of spontaneous event, and more of this kind of licit silliness, to lighten our days and help us connect with other people.

Photo by Carlos Madrigal on flickr

I’ve always adored the ‘living statues’ on the Ramblas in Barcelona. Now London has its own ‘living statues’ as part of an Antony Gormley artwork, and they will be occupying the ‘empty plinth’ in Trafalgar Square from July 6th, 24 hours a day, for 100 days, one person for each hour.

(I’d applied on the web site, and I haven’t been chosen this month - but there will still be draws for August, September and October. Maybe I’ll be lucky. I hope so!)

The ‘One & Other’ project features people who have been chosen by lottery from thousands who registered on the internet. Each person chooses what to do while they’re on view - whether that’s sitting still, pacing round, having a birthday party, or - as one architect proposes to do - using pedal power on an exercise bike to make lights flash on your electronic clothing! Some people will use the plinth as a soapbox for causes including disabled rights and global warming; others will aim to entertain, and others have said they will be tweeting during their hour on the plinth.

If you can’t get to Trafalgar Square, you can still see the webcam broadcasting on oneandother.co.uk.

I very much enjoyed Gormley’s Event Horizon a couple of years ago, when he placed statues modelled on a cast of his own body on rooftops around London. They stood enigmatically on cornices, and you might have missed them if you didn’t realise what they were; I know someone who thought one of them was a chap intending to jump, before realising the figure hadn’t moved for fifteen minutes. The new art work, I hope, will mess with our heads in exactly the same way.

Photo of part of Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon installation by Mairi McCann on flickr

Underwear is a matter of passion. The world is divided into two kinds of men - boxer shorts men and Y-fronts men - and ne’er the twain shall meet. And whether you’re a £5 for two from Asda girl, or a La Senza fan, you’re as defined by your underwear choices as by your career or which way you voted last election.

Underwear is also something essentially quite private. So there’s something a little bit naughty and voyeuristic in looking at the exhibition which has just started at the London Fashion and Textile Museum.

But it’s fascinating. For instance the whole concept of underwear before the nineteenth century didn’t really exist - it was just more shirts or chemises, worn under the outer one. Many people had no underwear at all. Most men wore their shirts continuously - going to bed in them and piling their other clothes on top in the morning.

More recently we’ve seen a huge change in the way women’s underwear is seen - moving from the functional  to the much more stylish. And of course Bridget Jones’s ‘Big knickers’!

In fact there’s a serious socio-economic point to be made when you consider how women’s underwear has reflected different views of the female body and even of the place of women in society - or as the exhibition organisers put it, how we’ve moved from the ‘flatten it’ to the ‘push it up’ to the ‘let it all hang out’!

The exhibition also looks at how research enables innovation in the world of underwear. This might not seem like the most scientific of areas, but think again - stretch lycra, underwired bras with a built in ‘memory’, and elastic fabrics have revolutionised underwear design. No more whalebone corsets! (If you’ve got Spanx, anyway.)

Where: London Fashion and Textile Museum, 81 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XF (London Bridge tube)

When: till 27 September 2009:

How much: £5

Picture by Marlen Slazar on flickr