Braving the January Cold

On my day out in London, went to check out the Photographers' Gallery in its new location. It doesn't yet feel right, like a supermarket that's reorganised its layout. Ramillies Street is a drab cul de sac in a particularly sterile corner of Soho. A commercial desert tucked away behind the tacky facade of the retail Hell that is Oxford Street.

Well away from the bookish bustle of the Charing Cross Road and the crowds drifting between Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Well away from the cultural ambience of theatreland and the National Galleries. It takes an effort of will to leg it from familiar territory to somewhere with so few attractions, except perhaps for the HMV store on Oxford Street. The only compensation a chance to ramble through streets I knew so well in my student days, Wardour Street and the Berwick Street market. I might even start to become a customer again of Cowling and Wilcox in Broadwick Street.

I suppose it's character-building to have the comfort zone of your routines shaken up a bit by change, so I hope I will start to find my way to Ramillies Street when I'm in town. It's nice to see the cafe unchanged by the flit, and perhaps the gallery will rediscover its talent for putting on exhibitions of significance – ones that linger in the memory for years.

OK. SELF-TEST: Name some shows from long ago that I still remember.

• Danny Lyon (bikers)
• Koto Bolofo (fashion/portraits)
• Martin Parr (The Cost of Living(?) consumer culture)
• Historical photographs showing the construction of the Forth Rail Bridge

An odd selection, others would spring to mind on a different day.

Of the two shows on at present, I preferred the downstairs show, Soho Nights.
Far too small in scale to do its Brassai-like subject justice, it nevertheless gave a tantalising glimpse of the smoky bohemian glamour of London-noir. Anna Jay says some nice things about the show in her mondo a go-go blog.

The French Pub: Unofficial HQ of the Free French
From: Picture Post, 1941. Photographer: Kurt Hutton

Even in my student days (the seventies), the York Minster (AKA the French Pub) in Dean Street retained its glamour as a thrilling place for a student to go for a drink, carrying as it did the exotic ambience of dangerous and subversive worlds beyond our own provincial shores. And always the odd disreputable celebrity (of the George Melly type) spotted but studiously ignored in the smoky gloom. At least that's how I remember it!

Speaking of remembering, I must find time one of these days to go for a meal again at Jimmy's in Frith Street. Fiona took me there when we were students. She had been there for a meal with Adrian Henri, so it had a kind of kudos. It must be twenty years since I last ate there, but it's still very much alive and kicking according to a great review by NilliJoon.