And I would walk 500 more

More reasons to be cheerful about leaving London. Last night I had one of those evenings which you tend to write off when you've been in a city for about eighteen years, but when you're just about to leave said city, it becomes more of a carefully presented package of everything that you find irritating about it.

I'd suggested going to a fancy-ish gastropub with a friend - I'd read some great reviews of it (Fay Maschler gave it four stars!), it wasn't far from where I live, and I could walk there from the office. Problem number one was the fact that the street it's on, the South Lambeth Road, is very long. And I'd started off at the wrong end of it. If I'd gone to Stockwell tube, then it was literally five minutes' walk round the corner. From Pimlico, however, it took me about forty minutes - which, in high heat and high wedges, wasn't ideal. I arrived feeling frazzled. 'Still', I thought, 'lovely food awaits me, hurrah!'

The menu, however, was shorter than Ronnie Corbett when he's sitting down. There was nothing I particularly wanted to eat. This is so disappointing when you've revved yourself up into a froth of culinary anticipation all day. One of the specials for a starter was 'radishes with butter'. Radishes with butter? How the hell is that a dish? I hate radishes anyway. The other specials were a chicken for two (with chips - does that come in a basket?) and some lamb thing that required at least five people to eat it. In the meantime, we were brought two very small pieces of slightly dry white bread, and a miniscule amount of butter. I was also on tap water, as I'd ruined myself at a leaving party on Saturday night and booze was no longer my friend.

I gazed at the menu. It was going to have to be two starters and a pudding. I chose some chilled pea and mint soup and smoked salmon with cucumber and horseradish. The soup arrived in a shot glass, with a teaspoon. I was being charged £3.60 for something that surely can't have cost any more than 20p to make. And we had to ask for more bread (this time, two pieces of brown - better, but still: bring us more bloody bread!) I think it's the '60' on that price that really wound me up - £3.50 is an unreasonable price for a shot glass of chilled soup, but the extra 10p seems to be totally thumbing its nose at you. 'Yes, we'll charge you a really stupidly inflated price', it seemed to be saying. The smoked salmon was fine, if what you want is a plate of smoked salmon, with some tiddly bits of cucumber and some horseradish cream. They could've bothered to make it look nice, or provided some, you know, bread with it or something, though. All the reviews had raved about such exotic treats as foie gras toasties (surely the ideal foodstuff for my limbo-land week between South and North; poncey Southern crap expertly melded with the down to earth fayre that I'm expecting north of the border?) But no, I ended up with three mouthfuls of cold soup, some smoked salmon and bread, and a scoop of pretty ordinary ice cream. Also served in a small glass. Had they got chronically over-excited in the glassware section of IKEA or something?

I'm not exactly a stranger to London pricing after all this time, or to being overcharged for mediocre food (I did, after all, go to boarding school, where the food is resolutely horrible, despite the thousands that your parents are paying in order for you to attend). But such high prices for what's essentially a not-particularly-gussied-up-gastro in Stockwell? On a really horrible main road? That I do object to.

And then the women's loos were horrible as well. Why on earth do gastropubs serve pseudo-upmarket, fancypants food, and then not bother to do up the loos? It's a real disgrace. I read somewhere the other day that if the lighting in the women's loos in restaurants is flattering, then the women will stay for dessert. And if it's not, then they insist on leaving. Which I can well believe. So they're not only being lazy by not doing up the loos, they're also losing a lot of money and custom every year. I'm sure I'm not alone in favouring returning to restaurants, bars and gastropubs where the loos are nice.

All in all, I felt pretty cheated. And then I spent twenty minutes waiting for a bus to get home, because the driver was changing shift, and the stop where he was supposed to meet his replacement was closed, so he went wandering off to look for the next driver. I finally got on, only to be chucked off again ten minutes later at Brixton. 'Would you all like to get on the bus behind this one?' the driver asked. Not really, thanks, I've just waited twenty minutes to get on this one. I did as I was told, and spotted lots of seats on the back row. 'Seats!' I thought, 'at least I've got a seat.' (Shot) glass half full attitude, there. I sat down and promptly burned the back of my legs on the metal part under the seat, which had got searingly hot. Bloody, bloody London! Even the buses are out to get you.

Still, on the plus side, I'm now loving the idea of Edinburgh even more, as my new boss wasn't going to be there when I start next week, which she thought would be weird for me, so I've now got three days off, which I'm being paid for! Result.