If you like some nice cool beer, portuguese sweets (the once with yellow custard inside) tasty and affordable sandwiches, good strong coffee and football, at all hours. Max Snack Bar is worth checking out.

This independent cinema near Angel in North London is over 100 years old and has had several lives including hosting early Sex Pistol gigs. It now serves as my favourite place to watch films (along with the Rio in Dalson).

Great comic shop that stocks small press, and everything else you'd expect to find. The kids section starts at early ages and has something all the way up.

I go to the Heath every weekend (often via the wonderful Waterlow Park which skirts Highgate Cemetery) and during the week too if I’m working from home; it helps to put things in perspective when I’m thinking about my work. It’s great in the summer for obvious reasons but I love it the most in autumn and on those rare days it snows so much London grinds to a halt (which doesn’t take much). Everyone heads up there to make giant snowballs/cats/creatures and surf down Parliament Hill on anything they can get their hands on. Grown ups turn into kids for the day. My husband and I made this snow yeti last year, it was sad to leave him behind but he soon made friends and even made it into the Camden New Journal.

The nicest little shop for ceramics and glassware. The selection is lovingly curated by the shop's owner Momoko Mizutani who has impeccable taste.