Alex pretends to live in Chiswick. He really lives in Acton but his postcode is Chiswick. I actually much prefer Acton to Chiswick.
I feel very safe walking around there unlike Shepherd's Bush down the road. There are lots of immigrants around there too, particularly Polish people. I like this. It's more interesting. People are a lot more friendly and laid back. People obviously feel at home. A week ago you could see Portuguese flags hanging out the windows. Surely there are not many places in London where they could do this.
When I was a kid a particularly fun weekend involved going to Southall and getting Indian shopping (vegetables, meat, spices). My mum would then cook delicious Indian food for the week. In mango season we would buy mangoes flown in from India/Pakistan. Due to my superior mango tastes I wouldn't touch mangoes in the supermarkets...they are kack. Waitrose do now stock Alphonso mangoes...I'll have those...
So I was very excited to find you can buy good, flown in Mangoes in Acton.
These mangoes can be bought in Egyptian shops. You can also buy lots of other exciting things. Such as a tub (3/4 size of a pint glass) of olives, pickled chillies, lemons and garlic for £1.25. Dolmades, elephants beans etc... I also bought my brother a
Hookah for his birthday. We spent a large part of Friday night in a fairly inebriated state trying to figure out how it worked with my cousin, Sujoy, who was visiting from India and his wife, Utsha. We finally got the apple tabacco going. Very smooth. Even for me a non-smoker. My grandfather used to smoke one and my mum used to make up the little packs of charcoal and tobacco that he used.
Other cool things about Acton.
1. Lots of restaurants which look like they will be good and cheaper than Richmond. (Wouldn't take much Richmond is mega over-priced in my opinion) Lebanese, Korean, Mexican, Jamaican and Spanish.
2. The Morrisions sells salt fish patties and lamb patties.
3. We went to the Acton carnival last year. There was lots of food (we had jerk chicken and rice), Capeiora displays, Samba displays...generally nice atmosphere.
4. Crazy people. It makes life more interesting. We went and lay in the park on Sunday and there was a man walking around with a guitar playing it and singing. (I think he was playing and singing we were too far away to hear and I didn’t like to get too close. It looked like he was though.)
5. Alex saw some one getting arrested for smoking pot in the park. I’m not too sure if this goes under cool things about Acton.
To summarise, Acton is an interesting and cool place. Though the road works on the main street are a bit stressful at the moment.
Labels: My Life
