London
There’s a tendency in this country for quite mediocre businesses to survive or even flourish based on their proximity to large groups of lazy people. There’s the Station-to-Pub-Proximity-Rule to illustrate this (in that by and large the quality of a pub will be inversely proportional to its distance from a train station), and then there’s the fact that a sizeable part of any office population will quite happily go to the pub or sandwich bar nearest to the office because… well… it’s the nearest.
So, with that introduction: Cafe Fresco.
It’s …

London
Have you ever wandered into a restaurant because you were getting really hungry, were in a rush to be somewhere else, and the place had (lots) of empty tables?
Well, in this case, the best advice would be to keep looking.
2 colleagues and I had originally hoped to get into Chowki for a bite before a gig, however it was completely heaving and we didn’t stand a chance. After some furtive darting about Soho we settled on the Piccadilly.
Appearance-wise it seemed functional enough – a little tacky in that 70’s/80’s …

Westminster
After reading about all of the wonderful coffee places springing up in the City in the last few months, jealousy began to take hold of the workers in the St James’s Park/Victoria area. Around here it’s all been the main chains, and lunchtime sandwich bars. Quality’s therefore ranged from acceptably-above-mediocre to DIRE.
With the arrival of Fabio & Charlie and The Flat Cap Coffee Company however all this has changed, and proper coffee can be found in the streets of Westminster!
Fabio is an expert barista with incredible knowledge and …

London – Eating & Drinking – Pubs & Bars – Pubs
Many elements must converge to make a great pub, and The Gunmakers is one of a handful of central London pubs which exemplifies this.
The main drawcard is the always-changing selection of immaculately kept real ales. Landlord Jeff takes great care of his beer, and won’t serve a shoddy pint. He’ll typically have 2 regular ales & 2 rotating guests based on the season – you’ll often find a lineup like Harvey’s Sussex Best, Purity Mad Goose, Theakston’s Old …

I’ve loved reading Viz magazine since I was about 16. After first being exposed to the wholesome, 1950s-style optimism of British “Fish & Chips” comics like Dandy and Beano there was something that spoke to me in the subversive and sniggering-behind-the-bike-shed humour of Viz and its motley band of characters like Felix & His Amazing Underpants, The Fat Slags, Buster Gonad & His Unfeasibly Large Testicles, and Roger Irrelevant.  Reading Viz was a bit like listening to Derek and Clive: you knew you weren’t really supposed to be doing …

Tuesday night saw the much anticipated arrival of the Boffoonery show – a comedy fundraiser benefitting Britain’s historical codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park.  If the name’s not familiar, Bletchley Park is the site where British cryptanalyst Alan Turing – with the aid of his dedicated team – cracked the formidable German encryption codes being used on communiques, and turned the Allies’ fortunes around during World War 2.  So in the interest of raising some badly-needed funds for the centre, a computer scientist named Jason Gorman decided to assemble some of the …

Olympic Way was abuzz in nerdy expectation & excitement last Tuesday night as Housemate James & I approached former swimming pool Wembley Arena: mock-rock gods Spinal Tap were playing the UK gig on their single-date world tour.  The fans were out in force and I spotted many sartorial nods to Tap, such as a yellow-trousered green-skeleton-tank-topped bloke with a white cowboy hat, and numerous Polymer Records shirts.
As seems to have become customary at these things, the support act was folk trio Mark “Marta” Shubb, Alan Barrows and Jerry Palter — …

Hmm, been doing a bit much waving around of opinions & reminiscing, and not enough recounting of what in the Dickens I’ve been up to lately, so here’s a roundup (in reverse chronological order).
29th : Night of 400 Billion Stars / Robin Ince & Friends – returning to the Bloomsbury (the scene of Ince’s Atheist Christmas gig), we (Housemate James, Trudy, Dancing Dave & I) settled in for another Rationalist-sponsored gig.  Again, an eclectic mix, with some excellent performances (Simon Singh and his pickle demonstration, the incomparable Gavin Osborn, and …

What a weekend!  This year saw the 75th anniversary of The Morris Ring, celebrated at the Thaxted Ring Meeting (I know, the what?!), and once again the Westminster Morris Men were honoured to participate.  What this translates into for our young hero is a weekend absolutely jam-packed with dancing, beer sampling, travelling around Essex, watching other people dance, singing in pubs, listening to top-class folk music being played in the same pubs in an effort to drown out some of the less-good singing, and generally having a mad and slightly …

Adelaidean superstar BKK & her sword-wielding boyfriend moved over to sunny London fairly recently (I say “recently” – I think they’ve been over about 6 months now, but then I’m still working on blog posts from that long ago too, so it’s all relative, innit?), and it’s been marvellous fun to have more people from home to play with occasionally.
As it was BK’s birthday the other week, I thought I’d treat her to a nice drink and try to find an unusual & memorable Londonny experience for her – as …