Thu
20-Sep-2007

the pineapple

Had a lovely collection of people gather in the Pineapple in Kentish Town for my thirtieth birthday. The pub's in the middle of refurbishment, so had a stripped out East Berlin vibe, but with more English drunkyards. I was given lots of presents, which I wasn't really expecting but much appreciated.

Mon
26-Mar-2007

wenlock monger row steamy fun

Well, Steve passed his viva which means the PhD saga is almost nearly just about OVER! Hurrah!

Matt and I joined him, his university chum Matt, Kal and Andy at the Wenlock Arms, where the ever-fantastic contender for best beer in the world - Crouch Vale Brewers Gold - is still on tap.

After that, Kal headed off, and the rest of us went to Ironmonger Row Baths near Finsbury Leisure Centre, joining Jo there for a session in their famous Turkish Baths. This was Steve's idea of a PhD celebratory night, and it was rather fun.

Only the steam room was open, so we spent a bracing half an hour sitting in there, getting so hot I nearly fainted, running and plunging in the freezing plunge pool, staggering back with legs all weak from the cold to sit in the steam room again. After the second time round you do start to feel really good. You sober up instantly as well!

Fri
26-Jan-2007

vauxhallville

Matt and Benjie, Lewis, Jordan and I went to VauxhallVille at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern last night. It was "Mad About Madonna" night, a celebrátion of Ms Ciconne. There were various bits and pieces, including a barbershop trio called Scales of the Unexpected who performed a medley of Madge's greatest hits, a performance of Like A Bear by a big out of tune bear, and "La Terremoto de Alcorcon" a fat Spanish version of Madonna doing an extremely funny version of Hung Up, set in a cheap Spanish gym...

They had an offer on bottles of cheap cava so we got to drink out of champagne glasses in the pub. I got rather pissed.

There was also a Madonna Altar which now adorns most of our phone wallpapers...

Mon
15-Jan-2007

fares and calvert in the old compton

Headed home this evening, and Matt cooked us a lovely Parsi dish, cothmir per eeda, or eggs broken on to a spicy mixture of onion and coriander. We also drank cava, with a hibiscus flower in each glass - Kat gave us a jar of hibiscus flowers in syrup for Christmas, the flowers bobbing in the fizzy bubbles works very well...

Then I popped out to see Fares, and try and practice my signing. We went to the Old Compton pub, and met up with his friend Calvert, who won the 2005 German Deaf Bear Competition, and has a cool jacket to prove it. I chatted to Calvert about different life stages, how he changed from being a chicken to becoming a bear, and the pros and cons of moisturising. Fares has brought me back perfume from Dubai - it smells interesting and exotic, and rather like the pan I had when we visited Charles and Miranda in Tooting Bec.

We got quite drunk and had fun until closing time. I left them as they went on to Bar Code and headed home...

Wed
13-Dec-2006

magazine

Went with Matt and Benjie last night to David Hoyle's Magazine at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, listening to his hilarious drag musings on mental health, before heading up to Abbie and Jim's place for the last stages of their glorious Christmas Nibbles and Getting Wasted night! We were there till around 2am till we finally headed off home to sink into alcoholic slumber. I was very tired today.

Sun
29-Oct-2006

highbury barn birthday

Much of the Oxford crew and others assembled in Highbury Barn last night to pre-celebrate Steve and Andy's halloween birthdays. Nice to be back in Blackstock Road area - I love all the north African and Turkish food shops and butchers. We had a great time, heading on to the mysterious T-Bird bar down the road once we were kicked out of the Barn at closing time. Matt and I had looked at T-Bird curiously back when we lived on Kings Crescent, though we never went in. Matt always maintained that the place must be home to an extradimensional portal of some kind. The interior is pretty cool - kind of ramshackle kitsch Americana, with fairy lights wrapped around the big ventilation tubes running the length of the ceiling.

I headed off around half midnight, for Trade later that night. Kal reminisced about the time he and Emily went to Trade and were slightly terrified by the hordes of topless muscular men. This is kind of what I was expecting from Trade too...

Sun
23-Apr-2006

the metropolitan bar

Matt's parents came to London to see the flat today, and we spent a nice day having a massive pub lunch and going for a walk on the Heath before dropping them off at Baker Street to catch the Oxford Espress back home.

We then went a for a quick early evening drink at the Metropolitan Bar, a Wetherspoons pub right above Baker Street tube station. I'd never been there before, despite many years being around the area, but lately I've been quite attracted not just to Wetherspoons pubs, with their lofty, atmospheric conversions and cheap varieties of real ale, but also to the kind of venues you find at stations and airports. The Metropolitan Bar is a good example of a kind of unsettled mixture of characteristics – ostentatious like an old pub, but also with a dark and modern bar feel to it, ornate mirrored toilets, it felt far away from being a local regular. But there is a lovely in-between feel to it, it's the kind of place you have a couple of drinks at while waiting to go somewhere, a place to read for a few hours before going back to your hotel room alone. It felt far away from a Sunday evening, far from the encroaching dread of Monday, everyone there with suitcases by their tables, laughing and chatting in that sweet timeless moment on the way to ... somewhere!

Mon
10-Apr-2006

wenlock arms with jamie

I just met up with Jamie S for a long boozy lunch at the Wenlock Arms as he was on his way from Oxford to Wales to do some teaching in the depth of Penbrokeshire for a while. I do love a couple of pints at lunchtime, and what a choice they have in the Wenlock Arms! The pub is a kind of real ale heaven, some fifteen minute's trek between Angel and Old Street. Well worth the visit. I had a Nethergate Priory Mild, followed by a Crouch Vale Brewers Gold, the light summery ale that won last year's Great British Beer Festival. I also had an excellent salt beef sandwich, with some serious horseradish sauce. Yum!

Thu
28-Apr-2005

listen to iron maiden baby with me

Last night, Matt and I headed over to the Fiddler's Elbow for another marvellous open mic night. Dan and Steve were performing again and managed a storming rendition of Teenage Dirtbag that was quite fabulous to behold.

Sun
13-Mar-2005

pam ann at the black cap

Henry and Richard H came round to the flat this evening, along with Wesley and Jamie. We had some chicken savoyarde, and then we all went to the Black Cap to behold the return of Pam Ann's residency. It was very funny - camp jokes about the class wars of budget versus long haul airlines. I do like cabaret!

Sun
20-Feb-2005

fiddler's elbow open mic night

We've been going along with Dan H to a local open mic night on Wednesdays. The pub is a small, friendly one called the Fiddler's Elbow just five minutes from our flat, and the night is really enjoyable. We sit around drinking Red Stripe while a range of diverse musicians have a go on the stage. Some of them are really quite good, and they sometimes join in with each other in unexpected and interesting ways. You end up with very London scenes: old white men playing harmonica alongside skinny youths of various ethnic persuasions; a Japanese girl who wails and plays like Thom Yorke; a guy who does these guitar-based, lyrically introspective hip hop performances; Dan H playing Shiny Happy People while incongruously bleeding down the frets as he'd cut his finger the night before!

Thu
12-Aug-2004

the white swan

After Spiderman 2 I headed over to Wesley's flat by Limehouse to join him and Matt for a night at the White Swan, a male-only gay pub in that area. Matt and I went there for a Friday night a couple of years ago and it was very loud and much like a club. On Wednesday nights though, it's their famous amateur strip night! It was compered by a very funny tall thin drag queen in leopard skin, who began with a silly song and then went round the room searching for volunteers and persuading them to get up and strip. She was very good indeed. You have to strip right down and get your cock out. All very amusing good old-fashioned gay fun. I got far too pissed though, and have had an annoying hangover during much of today.

Tue
23-Mar-2004

queens arms

Alex and I met with the Bell family minus Adam in the Queens Arms on Greyhound Road, by Hammersmith Cemetery and Barons Court. They were all well. Henry was in town having interviews at Lamda, for a director MA type thing, and Kayla was there for an interview at the University of Hertfordshire, for her art degree. It looks like the Bell children are going to end up in London, or in Exeter and Falmouth.

We all got quite pissed and Alex was savaged by the pub cat, which had no restraint when playing, and dashed around the pubs raking blood from people's arms and attempting to kill this bouncy ball it was chasing.

Mon
22-Mar-2004

engagement in the white hart

On Saturday, I got back from Devon, shaved Matt's hair with the trimmers so he's got a round little head now, and then we both headed out to the White Hart on Drury Lane, where Ceri and Sam were celebrating their engagement. It was a bit of a Zim event, with Charles, Steve and Graham there, though we were vastly outnumbered by loads of the couple's friends from their universities.

Steve and I had a mustard fight, and he got mustard all over my jeans, the bitch. Bright yellow it was. Though I then wiped lots of it on this random girl's beautiful white fur coat. I don't think she was too pleased about that. Luckily I was too drunk at the time to feel guilty.

On the way home, I had the fabulous idea of having a bite to eat, so Matt and I popped into China Town for a very late night meal. We finished around one in the morning, and realised that we didn't have enough to pay, nor cards with which to withdraw money. Doomed! Washing dishes! Triad won ton human soup!

We phoned up Michal, who at that moment was with Ema about to leap on a bus home from Oxford Circus. They took pity on us, and travelled across Soho to give us £10. Having paid off our good natured Chinese hosts, we fled home to drink tea and collapse in bed.

Fri
15-Aug-2003

doggets terrace bar

Images

Last night, after Spanish class, I joined Matt at the catchily named ICE Advisory Summer BBQ! It was a fancy dress do, and in Doggets, a basic centre of town pub, but with a rather splendid terrace overlooking Blackfriars Bridge and the Thames. The sun was setting gloriously when I arrived and there was lots of meat and wine! Hurrah!

Chatted to two girls about Switzerland. We spoke of the strange combination of wealth, tradition and rudeness that characterises the Swiss, the fact they have a really well-equipped army and a hardcore system of national service (everyone goes in the army for two weeks every year), the fact that in Bern marijuana is legal, and we'd just got on to Eliot - 'by the waters of Lake Leman I sat down and wept' - when I had to go and chat to some other people. These included a very drunk and amusing girl called Kerrie, who has a place in Dorset as well as London and was keen to wax lyrical on the joys of fossil hunting on the clay beaches of Dorset. We exchanged anecdotes on ammonites and I told her about my mother and her love of walking up and down beaches with her eyes on the ground.

Fri
25-Jul-2003

jim's birthday

Yesterday was Jim's birthday. We went to the Highbury Barn up on the hill and everyone got very drunk. Various random people from uni were there, like Nick, Dan and Livy, and I found out about how various people are doing. Nick, now dreams of becoming a kung fu instructor and kung fu has taken over his life. At the moment he does xml at JP Morgan, but hopes to give it up in a few years to be well 'ard. Dan is working for the IPPR, and Ben is still at Time Team, now being an assistant producer.

James' brother and sister, Ben and Sophie, were there, and James got given a box of ninety-five tools by his sister and spent the night shouting 'I've got ALL the tools!'

And there was an unspeakably enormous turd in the pub toilet, with a little flag saying 'first prize' stuck in it, the like of which we'd never seen before! Sophie and Abbie came into the boys' toilets, just to behold it. So thick, so improbable...

Upon our return to the house, we played very loud rap in Jim's room, and generally staggered around. At various points we kept lighting some of Russ' fireworks. Such fun having fireworks around!

This morning James was well and truly hungover, puking incessantly. Hopefully the wet, damp weather today is soothing his pain a little.

Fri
27-Jun-2003

lark in the park

I left work a little bit earlier than I have been yesterday afternoon, and chanced upon James and Abbie sat in Barnards Park, round the corner from BOND. They'd been lounging around in the sun all afternoon and were in good spirits. We chatted about jobs and NGOs, and the fact Jim will probably be forced by poverty to move out of the house soon, and the possibility of them both getting cute flat together somewhere. Abbie climbed the tree and I hung on it briefly. Climbing trees is so good. Nice to remember occasionly that I can still lift myself up a tree with my arms despite my chronic lack of any exercise.

As the sun went away, we strolled over to Lark on the Park, a nice spacious gastropub nearby, for a drink. They have an extension with a glass roof, very light and bright, and a barbecue area and a good outdoor feel to the place. The barmaid accidently served Abbie the wrong drink, which turned out to be very nice though. Vodka, lemonade, angostura bitters and a dash of lime juice. I found it surprisingly tasty.