As you will notice from the right-hand column of this blog and the many great recommendations on the site, we have a lot of cool people who contribute to Metrotwin, experts who know and love their cities… but how much do you know about them? The Metrotwin 15 is a new, occasional feature where we will profile contributors on our blog and ask them fifteen fundamental, searching questions about life, the universe, London and New York. And all things being equal, I thought I would kick things off by having a little chat with myself.

Name: AnyaD

Profession: Website editor, professional rambler (in the literary sense, the closest I get to rambling itself is walking home from the tube)

Neighbourhood: Crouch End, London (a.k.a ‘Near Finsbury Park? Arsenal? North London?’)

Favourite city smell: The launderette at the end of my road.

Favourite bagel filling: Brie, watercress and honey.

Tell us a London/NYC pop fact: Stephen King wrote a short story where Crouch End is a portal to hell. He clearly never went to North Finchley.

Opinion of pigeons: Pretty irritating, but then I always get a pang of sadness when I see a dead one.

Currently reading: Palestine by Joe Stacco and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Oh, and Chat magazine for a bit of light relief and tips on how to make lovely photo frames out of old crisp packets and bits of string.

Skins or Gossip Girl?: The Inbetweeners is a view of teenagers I most relate to.

Law and Order or The Bill? Law and Order, although the spinoff all about rape I find a tad disturbing. That it exists, mainly.

Items that are always in your grocery basket: blue cheese, hot cross buns, really horrible cheap fish pies and popcorn.

Favourite building/monument/statue/tree/shrub: Alexandra Palace (see below) Liberty’s and the magnolia tree in downstairs’ back garden.

Definition from UrbanDictionary.com:

When something is out of control in a good way.

In celebration of it being Friday afternoon, I have created my own, somewhat North and East-centric  list of the best places to go for a big crazy night out in London.

Okay, so actually I can’t drink at the moment and am spending the entire weekend entertaining child relatives, so it is more a case of misty-eyed longing and daydreams of what my friends will be up to while I am busy discussing the relative merits of WarHammer and watching unsuitable horror DVDs*. But I digress.

Not featured: The ‘bongo hell’ hippy rave somewhere off Kingsland Road that inevitably features on nights out as a desperate last 3am resort. See, we have standards here on Metrotwin after all…

Photo by Alison Tyreman used under a Creative Commons License

* one does endeavour to be a ‘cool cousin’, even if if this mantle is slighly tarnished by my inability to watch so much as an episode of Lost without squalking and hiding my eyes behind my fingers like a massive WUSS.

Inspired on by my own recommendation of Highgate Cemetery, I decided to revisit the graveyard this weekend to make sure it was still as beautiful inspiring peaceful ummm lovely as I said it was! Okay, so it is hard to describe a cemetery without sounding like a massive goth, but hopefully these photos will finally convince you that wandering around the final resting place of 16,800 people is actually a really plesant way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Anyway, before I shut up about graveyards, goths and the like for at least twenty-six days, why not check out this great article on irresistable dating prospects from the gothic personals.  It’s about ten shades of amazing (and ten shades of black, natch)

Photos by yours truly used under a Creative Commons License