Precision shopping in London: the West End route

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I've got this route planned out when I'm up the West End, precise tube connections and street intersections all mapped out in my head. I don't know if it is the quickest route, or the most sceenic. But it's my route. I feel like it's a friend of mine, I have adopted the landmarks, looking on with pride as tourists gaze in wonderment and clamber all over them.

Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, the tramp with the cute dog on the corner of Brewer Street. They are all part of the fabric of my London, the London I don't actually live in so can't really stake claim to any of.

But on any random Saturday and even the odd weekday, you will find me striding purposefully between my own personal landmarks.

Should any of you feel the urge to discover this route yourselves on one bright morning (London is crap when it's raining), it goes something like this:

Surface from the tube (Bakerloo line from Embankment) at Piccadilly Circus. Take the North Regent Street exit, past the loos with the rubbish 'wash soap dryer in a hole' hand dryers, up Glasshouse Street into Sherwood Street, past 'London's most central backpackers' hostel' and across Brewer Street to James Street. Past Golden Square , glance into Bape and do a quick circuit of the Hideout. This is a recce mission, checking out what they have in and banking it to mull over.

Exit left out of the Hideout, left into Beak Street, head to Regent Street, casting an eye over Albam and the Playlounge, Left along Regent Street, cross into Vigo Street and along past Abercrombie and Fitch and its gaseous odour to New Bond Street, right at Gucci into Stafford Street, and right at Dover Street to the five-floor emporium of crazy couture that is Dover Street Market. Buy a Monocle in the basement, check out the Supreme, Original Fake, Uniform Experiment, Visvim and the like in their little market-stall type spaces.

Exit right into Dover Street, past APC, left into Hay Hill, right into Berkeley Street, across Berkeley Square to Dunhill in Davies Street, quick scoot around, plate of quail eggs and a virgin Mary, exit right on Davies Street, up to Oxford Street, turn right, run the gauntlet to Uniqlo, try to buy a +J blazer, swear, then walk to Liberty via Harewood Place, Hanover Square, Princes Street Street, Regent Street and Great Marlborough Street, scan the menswear then head to the furniture and lighting department. Drool, exit through the perfume section, quick squirt of random Diptyque cologne, head south along Carnaby Street, left into Beak Street, right into Upper James Street and the Hideout. Decide if I want to buy anything I'd spotted on the recce visit, buy some Kuuma joss sticks (White Amber), exit right.

Past Golden Square again, pulling in to the Nordic Bakery for a filter coffee and smoked Salmon on rye with a slide of mayo, then back to the tube.

And that is what I call precision shopping.

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