By Emma Silverthorn, @HouseOf_Gazelle Don’t go to Umami for the ambience - the restaurant is on the first floor of a Crowne Plaza Hotel - and though ‘Smooth Jazz’ was advertised, the music sounded more like muzak to me. The décor is certainly aiming for stylish contemporary but could be better described as corny. And on the Friday night that we went the hotel had been taken over by a loud wedding party, so drunken guests provided the night’s entertainment. Bluntly:...

Our hectic London lifestyle doesn't stop when we go abroad. Latest figures indicate that three in five of us check Twitter every day while on hols, and depressingly, half of us check work e-mails, with a third admitting that they regret it. We're in serious danger of changing the dynamic of holiday - instead of getting away from it all, holidays now equal checking our phone on a beach rather than on a sofa. It's a habit that's hard to...

By Bea Patel, TLE Property Editor and Director of Shop for an Agent Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) has launched a new service - Find a Pro - in partnership with Plentific. It gives you access to thousands of UK Property professionals and local tradesmen for home related projects and services. The service lets you access a network of over 35,000 professionals nationwide, covering more than 50 home-related service categories including conveyancers, surveyors, mortgage brokers, architects, electricians, locksmiths, plumbers, gardeners, painters...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Strength: 3.8% ABV Brewed: Kings Bromley, Staffordshire Priding themselves on producing a range of drinks that only use England’s finest ingredients, Cambridge-based drinks company Green & Pleasant have recently added a Cider and Golden Ale to their range. The latter of which is our Beer of the week. The brand’s craft Lager is already very popular across London, featured as the house Lager at The Ritz’s Rivoli Bar, and the new Golden Ale looks...

Guttural gospel-punk guardians Algiers are preparing for a European tour this August. The band will play two London shows, the intimate Waiting Room on 18th August and the Scala on the 19th in support of Canadian post-punks Viet Cong. Check out a taste of what to expect below with Algiers' Deezer live session. Algiers European Tour 09/08 - Poland, Katowice, OFF Festival 12/08 - Germany, Berlin, Sommerloft Festival, About Blank 14/08 - France, St Malo, La Route du Rock Festival 18/08 - UK,...

By Lucy Gill, Director: Apps & Technology Fundamentally Children Many of us are dreading long journeys with our children this summer, struggling to work out what will fit in the suitcase to entertain them when we get to our destination or simply wondering how to fill all those hours at home on a rainy day! Technology is certainly not the only solution to keep children entertained, far from it, but there is no doubt it can help! For many of...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Desiree Akhavan is not Lena Dunham. Yes, both are females, both hail from New York and both are filmmakers but one does not subsume the other. Why are “minorities” so often reduced in this way? Minorities in double quotes because women are over half the population after all! Yet still in the context of filmmaking females are still unfortunately counted as a minority. It’s true that comparisons are always made within the arts and fair enough,...

By Fay Gibbin, Training Manager, Busy Bees Training Today, completing an Apprenticeship is a perfectly acceptable route to a stimulating and rewarding career or embarking upon a degree course, yet it is often wrongly assumed that those forgoing the traditional route of academic learning to pursue vocational training lack the aspirations or academic ability to achieve. Over 130,000 businesses across the UK offer Apprenticeship programmes because they recognise that they produce enthusiastic, dedicated individuals, who hold a company’s values and...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Having visited Mr Ramsay’s relatively new Heddon Street Kitchen, as well as Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa (the competition that’s situated just next door) to Bread Street Kitchen, in recent months, I find myself very excited to finally sample what’s on offer at BSK, having enjoyed my trip to the restaurant’s little sister situated in Central London. Arriving at Gordon’s corner of One New Change (the shopping centre that’s located mere metres from St. Paul’s Cathedral)...