Foodie nights out

This week, I have been lucky enough to eat out twice at two very different but equally fabulous venues.

Monday night was more of a gimmick than anything else, my dining companion wanted to try a funky place in Soho called Inamo - mainly because you order your food via a touchscreen table. Having got very excited about the prospect of this, I was a little disappointed to find it wasn't actually the whole table which was touchscreen, but rather a small corner of the table worked like a mouse pointer on the rest of the table. After 10 minutes of faffing about with it (and ignoring each other - don't go here on a first date!) we finally plucked up the courage to click and order some drinks, followed by thin cut beef with garlic, tempura, spring rolls, black cod and rice. Everything was delicious and the evening flew by, although we could only have the table for an hour and a half which was a shame, as we could have done with maybe 20 more minutes.

The advantage is that you order what you feel like when you want it, so no waiting around or trying to attract attention, and the dishes are brought to the table within 15 minutes of ordering. Highly recommend this place, but more than 2 people and I felt it would have become overly complicated to try and organise all the ordering.

My second evening out was at the lovely 1901@Andaz which is right next to Liverpool Street Station, although once you are inside, it could be as far away as you like. I have been here before, but I'd happily eat here anytime. The atmosphere is relaxing, you aren't too close to the other tables and can hear each other talking, and the chairs are more comfy than my sofa at home.

We ate on the Toptable £21 for three courses deal, but where the bill creeps up here is the wine. There is a book with about 20 pages of wine inside it. If you don't know what you are looking for there is also a helpful Sommelier. Use him, he knows his stuff. Our table happily munched through salmon or wood pigeon starters, but we all immediately went for the braised rib of beef for the main. Delicious and falling to pieces, it was perfect. Trying to behave like proper grown ups, we ordered a dessert wine which the girls weren't that keen on (I think I was a bit tipsy at this point and described it like tasting shoe polish), but the boys seemed happy enough to drink.

I'd happily eat here any time, probably for a special occasion so we could have a half decent bottle of wine, and with the toptable deals the food really is worth the money, so worth watching out for one of them.

All in all, I have spent this week happily stuffing my face. What could be better than that?

Tons of music

This week I had the pleasure of seeing Fightstar do an acoustic gig in a teeny venue in Camden to celebrate the re-release of Be Human with the live DVD and a few new songs. A few hundred of us packed into Dingwalls to listen to them play songs from all their albums plus a couple of covers. My two favourites from Be Human were on the set list, along with the lovely 'Vincent' covered simply with just Charlie and his guitar. I had shivers.

All in all a fantastic gig, which didn't cost a fortune. Support acts were half of Lower than Atlantis who were particularly amusing when they made up the words when they couldn't remember the lyrics to a song they were going to cover without missing a beat.

Also supporting were Watford group Spy Catcher who I've been following for a while, but sadly hadn't managed to get along to one of their gigs. As luck would have it, I already had the tickets before I realised they were supporting, so that made it all the more fab for me. But live they were excellent, really rock and roll and I can see them going far. I came away with a copy of the EP and their catchy songs playing in my head for the whole tube journey home. If you get a chance to see them live then do it!

Finally, I'm not too sure why, as I'm a normally very chilled out and happy girly, but this song has been floating around in my head ever since I heard it yesterday - there's something soothing to me about singing along to angry songs - and the lyrics of this one just make me grin, it's kind of angry and a purge of bad feeling all in one. Take Cover - Resolution.

Dancing! And, well, more Dancing!

The West Side Story workshop was fun. From the first second to the last (I didn't want to go home). Slightly harder than I expected, it was straight into it, no mucking around, but thankfully I picked it up. The routines gave my whole body a good workout, but the aches that I was expecting the next day never came. Fantastic!
I'm definitely going to be taking more classes, and if you're in London you can check out what's on offer here.

So onto Friday night, and time for one of my favourite nights out in London, EQ Live. A chance to see newish acts in a fantastic bar with a great atmosphere. I grabbed a group of friends and headed over to Bar Music Hall last night to see what was on offer. As usual, the evening didn't disappoint, all the acts were fab, but it was the Red Blooded Women who had the whole crowd packing out the floor (they sure know how to work it). Amazing as ever, and I now have some new music ideas to listen to, thanks to Raj again for making it all happen. And because I was utterly sensible, I am hangover free and happily kicking off my weekend with a fantastic Full English brekkie. Life is Good.

Tonight, Tonight, it all began tonight

It's been well over a year since I did an actual proper dance class. There was a whole period in the middle where I went to the gym, but sadly it had no dance of any sort. Now I've moved office again and there's a dance place just a few minutes around the corner.

I seem to have a problem with restarting things gently (I always have - last time I did a step class I couldn't walk properly for about a week), and so tonight, I am off to a 2 hour workshop, themed around West Side Story. This is one of my favourite films of all time. It's taught by someone who was actually in the show in the West End. Can't really get much better than that unless Arlene came along to teach it. And I'm sure if that happened I'd be crying a couple of minutes in.

Thankfully, Frame sells itself as exercise whilst having fun. Phew and thank goodness for that, I am a little bit scared as I tend to get with new places. Sadly, I'm no longer a spring chicken and I'm one hip operation down, so getting down to the floor and up again can be somewhat challenging. But whatever, I just feel pretty unfit and I'd be happy to do something I love and have some fun.

I shall report back on how it goes!

February check-in

It's funny really, isn't it, how something which seems small and insignificant can balloon into something much bigger.

I'm trying to think back to what I would do with my free time roughly a year ago. I think that the answer is not much. Probably play a few computer games, watch some TV, go for walks, that sort of thing.

Less than a year ago, I was re-introduced to Green Day. Not that I didn't like them before, but the only song I really remembered was Basket Case. I guess I must have liked them way back then though, because I remember very vividly that I was sitting in the spare room of my parents house on the computer listening to it, spinning around on the office chair, with my dad telling me to turn the volume down.

I've been back and listened to their recent stuff (I'm pretty addicted now). It made me realise there's a heap of music that I'd not even considered. So, point one, more music. This in turn led to more gigs. Rob and I over the last year must have gone to at least 20 gigs or concerts, a huge amount more than in previous years. We've tried some favourites, we've also been to ones that were hosted by the Electroqueer blog that I found early last year. They mainly host new artists, so this is interesting and the gigs have been incredible so far.

We went to the Green Day Art Of Rock project which was on at the same time as the gigs at the O2. I loved the art so much, I went and looked up the artists. I discovered that I really really like stencil art. So I'm going and taking a bunch of my friends to the Eelus show in London at the end of Feb. and I've also decided to try some simple stencilling for myself. Thanks to Ed Roth of Stencil 1, there are books which help me to have a go.




On top of that, I've also started up my stitching again. The penguins are complete. The Iris is a quarter done. I've joined a photography group so that I can try some modelling. The results from the first shoot were promising, but gave me ideas of things I need to work on. The experience was incredible fun.

I wonder what I used to do with my free time - compared to how things are now, it seems like I used to do nothing but waste it.

Pick up a Penguin

Only a week late of my deadline (lets face it, after this amount of time an extra week is hardly going to make the difference), I have finally finished cross stitching 22 little penguins. I thought the day would never come. But spurred on by the prospect of a new project to continue after this one, plus the boots I would buy myself once I had finished, I managed to complete them last night. Hooray!

Below you can find one of them, but if you want to see the full set, please take a look here.

Last day of Jan

So, we've reached the end of January. I have been successful in one of my tasks - No Shopping January... All I have spent money on over the last month has been food and drink. No books, toys, cds or games. I am pretty glad that January is at an end though, because tomorrow, I've seen some vinyl that I would like to buy, and I want to order a couple of books that I really cannot do without. Still, then I think I'll go back to the no spending for a while longer.

The task that I haven't managed, and not sure that I will now, is the one set by Rob in the middle of the month before he went away, to finish my Penguins on Ice cross stitch by the last day of the month. I'm not too far off, but sickness and distractions (ok, yes I decided to go to the pub a couple of times when I should just have come home and stitched) have meant that I didn't make it. I guess the boots he promised me will not be mine. Even I cannot be bribed all that well. Tiredness and drinking usually wins.

So, that's all for January... it kind of went by in a bit of a blur... but that's ok because it is winter. However, the daffodils are appearing in the shops and people are selling spring flowers, when I leave work it is daylight and after each weekend things seem just a little better...February is already looking like it's going to be busy, hopefully it will also be fun.