Wednesday, 30 December 2015
2015 Abridged
Travelling? Okay, go on then, ten foreign countries; ten UK cities. Which is respectable for a year. Although two of the countries were tiny and one of the cities shouldn't count. Fave foreign city? Not Zurich, despite the hype; I'm gonna go with Marseille - how comes I haven't been to France more? Fave country? Not Myanmar, despite it having been top of my list for who knows how long, obviously nowhere near as expensive as Zurich, but I still felt like I was getting ripped off at all turns. I'm gonna go with Uganda instead. What a humdinger of a country.
Music? Well there's not been albums that I've liked as much as last year - although I've probably not listened to as many either, but I actually went to gigs this year. Five of them. Although none especially cutting edge - two retro tours; two middle aged men who have been around for ages; one young polymath who has been getting regular mentions on this blog since it began. What was the best? The one that made me feel the youngest, obviously.
Theatre? I saw some pretty big shows this year - the new Tom Stoppard; Bradley Cooper in Elephant Man; Nicole Kidman in Photograph 51; Rob Brydon in Future Conditional; David Morrissey in Hangmen - and still the best thing was improv. Improv should be rubbish. This wasn't. I saw it three times. That's how un-rubbish it was. It even made me go and see other improv. That was rubbish. And all was well in the universe. Despite me doing a fair amount of research, Lights... was probably better than any stand up I saw this year too, although honorable mentions to Jenny Collier.
Books? I made the bold statement on the third of January that Station Eleven was the best thing I read all year. I was correct. Although I did really enjoy Smart, I'm looking forward to sucking the rest of Teri Terry's back catalog dry and I'm never gonna turn my nose up at a Parlabane novel (although you wait seven years for one and two turn up at once).
Art? I had an Art Fund membership this year and barely used it, which was slack of me. I got to the two biggest shows of the year: Carsetn Holler and Ai Wei Wei and sort of enjoyed both of them. The only thing that Art Fund really did was get me to the suburban nowhere to see Michelangelos. Which was unexpected.
Big Fat Bucketlist Moments? Northern lights. Gorillas. Getting my neck cut open. Tick, tick and tick.
Monday, 30 November 2015
Liechtenstein, Mistletoe and Wine
Zurich is spleen-poppingly expensive. Everytime anyone tells you the price of something it seems like a joke; it is at least double what you thought it was going to be, based on the London equivalent. Anyone who says it's the same price as London is misguided, lying or part of the aforementioned joke.
I'd been curious about coming to Zurich ever since it came second in a "Best Cities in Europe" list. The list had it better than Rome or Paris or Berlin or Moscow. Needless to say it isn't. It's pretty but it's basically a less good Munich. It would probably represent in a "Best Cities in Europe Beginning with Z" list, but then even second might be pushing it.
Still it loves Christmas here. Little gingerbread huts selling gluwein are secreted into every available cranny. There's a Swarovski Christmas tree in the train station. There are shops dedicated to selling over priced tree decorations. Santa is cruising town in his festive tram. Well Christmas.
We took a break from the staggering costs and festive exuberance of Zurich and headed to Liechtenstein. Now there's a train ride with some half-decent views: lakes nibbling the toes of mountains - that just about ticks all my Alpine train ride boxes.
Headed straight for Vaduz, the Capital city. I say "city" - it has the National Government building, a royal residence, a cathedral, a City Hall and a seventh of the national population, so it's basically London (plus it has a massive vineyard in the centre, which London doesn't have - better than London?) - I've worked in offices where there are more people. Still it is super pretty.
Back in Zurich now. Going to try and make the forty francs I've got left last the day. Wish me luck...
Sunday, 15 November 2015
Liberte Egalite Fraternite
I did see actual comedy though: Nish Kumar. His show did contain jokes, which made it far funnier than the previous night's abomination.
Went to a gig too. I saw that John Grant, he's a charismatic chappy and proper belted out some songs. Now you can read proper reviews of this gig if you want, they are very complimentary, although they don't mention the fact that most of the latest album sounds a bit like Visage, which seemed to confuse the audience somewhat.
And I saw some art. A double bill of A artists. Auerbach and Ai Weiwei. In terms of what I'd most like to have on my wall Auerbach wins hands down - it seems Ai Weiwei doesn't really go for the hanging on the wall stuff - and 200 tonnes of eartquake fractured rebar would probably just get in the way. A child burst a balloon when I was in the Ai Weiwei exhibition, given the politically sensitive nature of the show and what had happened in a nearby megalopolis a few hours earlier a lot of very scared people were incredibly grateful that it was a balloon.
Sunday, 8 November 2015
And a Bottle of Brum
It's pretty poor that I've never really had the opportunity to explore Birmingham before. Whenever I have been it's always been to do something specific (like change trains) so any exploring has been somewhat time limited. Put that right this weekend. Saw me some brum.
So what did I see?
First off I saw a skyline. Naively, I wasn't really expecting a skyline. But bam there it was. Not just the Bullring.
I saw a tiny cathedral, would barely have to duck its spire to get through the doors of Norwich.
I saw the Staffordshire Horde. I'm pretty impressed that the guy who found it realised how significant it was. If it had been me I'd have thought it was Elizabeth Duke flytipping.
I saw a length of the more-canals-than-Venice canal. There may well be more canals in Birmingham than Venice but the Venice ones are a whole heap easier to navigate. Locks ago-go in that Second City, it would take ages to get a boat through that lot.
I saw that there library. That's a mighty impressive building. And it had fennel on the roof. More public buildings should have fennel on the roof.
So yeah, Birmingham, you're alright, you are. Sorry it took me so long to get there properly.
Sunday, 25 October 2015
The Singapore of Africa
Saturday, 24 October 2015
Muzungu in the Mist
Friday, 23 October 2015
Channel?
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Bring Out The Chimp
Jinja and Free
Monday, 21 September 2015
Ham and cheese


Saturday, 19 September 2015
The Fat One

- But the Basilica of the Virgin of St Luke is one of the big attractions and that's 4km outside the city.
- Yeah it is. And yeah you can get there by portico.
Although it does beg the question of when a portico stops being a portico and becomes a what? A portico plus? A colonnade? An arcade? My limited architectural knowledge just can't answer that question.
Thursday, 17 September 2015
One Long Strip Mall

Sunday, 13 September 2015
Party Like It's 1994
Seems like there were a few people that were. One of them has made a film about them called Flawed is Beautiful and to launch it he got both bands to play one of those gig things.
Now I don't know how much of it was nostalgia, of forgetting that I wasn't a teenager any more or how much of it was that These Animal Men are just an amazing live band, but that gig was absolutely phenomenal.
Saturday, 5 September 2015
Surfing the Geekgeist
Turns out that over the last couple of years there's been a growing movement of people that aren't using computers for gaming, preferring instead actual interaction and doing table top gaming - you know? Boardgames. But like for grown ups. It seems boardgames have gone through a bit of a revolution over the last twenty years, with a lot more emphasis on strategy rather than luck.
About a year ago our pubquiz team retired and we invested our meagre winnings into Settlers of Catan, since then we've geeked out somewhat - only it turns out we were actually being cool. In an effort to make myself less cool, I figured I should write about the boardgames - sorry TTGs - that we've been dabbling in.
Settlers of Catan / Ticket to Ride / Carcassonne
These are the big three gateway games, the ones that get you hooked. Plenty of People have written plenty of words about them. You've probably played them already. All three are ace, now let's move on.
Pandemic
So this game you don't play against other people, you play with other people against the game. You know, like in Knightmare, or the Crystal Maze. Only on a table top. It is frustratingly tough.
Tikal
The first time I played Tikal it was super fun. I would talk concept but the make believe / role play aspect makes my skin crawl a little bit; let's say it's like Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones was a centimetre high wooden cylinder and leave it at that. The next time I played it just seemed really slow - whilst most of the other games here are turn based, you will still be doing things on other people's turns, here you can nap.
Machi Koro
However you describe it, it is going to sound like Monopoly. It isn't like Monopoly. Monopoly is long, slow and rubbish; this is short, fast and great.
Puerto Rico
So this is like a next level game. I felt like I should have taken A-Level economics before playing this. Or maybe instead of playing this. It's gone back on the shelf until I've sunk further into the tabletop mire.
So what next, any recommendations gratefully received.
Sunday, 30 August 2015
Faggots and Peas
It seems that every time I go to Cardiff I walk away from any obvious signs of life to go to a beard-achingly-hip pop-up in an industrial premises. Last time it was Pyramid Scheme, a literary event in a print studio. This time it was Brewfest, the trendiest beer festival that I've ever been to.
In my head beer festivals are about barrels. You find a space - be it a marquee, a corner of a pub, a church or a school hall - and you fill it with barrels. Loads of them. In massive horizontal piles. Then you get served beer by a guy in a Camra poloshirt. This wasn't like that. This made a warehouse into a career fair for microbreweries, only with way more decor.
I'm staying in Pontypridd which was absolutely buzzing as the Lido has reopened. Had lunch in Ponty Market - the café advertised itself as "The Place for Faggots and Peas" which I kinda wanted to take a picture of but worried that that would make me look like a class tourist so figured that I would blog about it instead. I'm an idiot.
Wednesday, 12 August 2015
You Can't Go Wrong With a Footwear Song
I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe again. This time I saw this:
Messrs Brimson and Wilson - Shamefully I really quite enjoyed this. Two quasi-music-hall, lowest-common-denominator comedians telling averagely funny jokes before going "weird fringe" and doing a song about inflatable shoes.
Sofie Hagen - Warm and funny. The best thing I saw on Day 1.
Joel Dommett - thoroughly enjoyable, however the structure of the show was so similar to Sophie Hagen's that you couldn't help but compare the two.
Simon Slack - He reminded me of someone I went to school with so my highlight of the set was imagining that someone who once had a very promising future was now dancing in their pants in the back room of a club for coppers. Turns out it's not him. Sadtimes.
Full Scottish at Ryan's Bar - not strictly speaking an act, but worth sharing.
The Walking Dead - more a lecture about the impending zombie apocalypse than a comedy show.
Kane and Abel - not been to a magic show in years.
Ben Clover - Ben's a mate so obviously this was great.
Russell Hicks - This guy managed to do a funny hour's set with essentially no material. Day 2's highlight.
Simon Munnery's fylmshow - he's one of those comedian's comedians that I've been meaning to see for years. Not certain that I wholly got him. He had two guests (whose names I missed), the first one may have been Njambi McGrath. It might not but she was really good.
Alternative Comedy Memorial Service - I found this mighty enjoyable. However I got the impression that I was missing out on a whole heap of injokes.
Mickey Scharma - We were aiming finishing with Liam Williams, but didn't realise there was a queue. Ended up here instead. Not quite the big big bang finale that we had planned.
Monday, 3 August 2015
"Like You, but Good"
Sunday, 26 July 2015
Caistor St Edmund
Norwich is a bit of a weird one. I went quite a lot as a kid but I had never explored the city as a grown up. I'd always discounted it as just a slightly bigger version of Chelmsford. Which is somewhat false. The city was dripping with both history (with its Norman castle and enormous cathedral - Chelmsford cathedral could probably do a three-point turn inside Norwich cathedral) and culture (there seemed to be cinemas everywhere).
There just seemed to be a buzz in the town, at least when comparing it to the last similarly sized British city that I went to (which was Coventry a couple of weeks ago. Now this is unfair, I'm comparing Norwich on Pride Saturday to Coventry on a Thursday afternoon. However Coventry didn't shower itself in glory when I asked at the tourist information what I should see if I only had a couple of hours - "it's after three, everything's shut now." Anyway, back to Norwich). I wandered out to the edge of town to get to the Sainsbury Centre. This suburban, provincial art gallery was stuffed full of famous names. I know that this was a special exhibition and not the regular collection but three Michelangelos and a Titian? Really? That's just showing off.
Wednesday, 15 July 2015
Birthday Thoughts
"I'm just bobbing to the shop. Do you want anything?"
"Nah, you're alright, cheers."
"Catch you in a bit."
Nick returned home five days later - lucky I din't need milk.
Today would have been Nick's 40th birthday. It would have been a hell of a party.
The phrase "Rest in Peace" doesn't seem appropriate - it pretty much misses the point of Nick - but you get what I mean.
Sunday, 21 June 2015
The Old Three Country Weekend
It started in the morning with Parcours, a cheeky offshoot of the main ArtBasel project which put some of that there bonafide concept art in and around Munsterplatz, the historic core of the city.This was ace as it forced me into crannies and nooks into which I otherwise wouldn't have ventured. Had what I'm fairly sure is my first edible art experience chewing on art flavoured ice cream, which was, erm, flavoured.
Had an afternoon break from ArtBasel in order to see some art galleries, the pick of which was the Museum Tinguely with it's ubertrendy architecture and mechanised bobbins.
Evening was ArtBasel proper. Thought I'd smashed it in an hour and a half - you're not so big, biggest artfair in the world - only to find I was less than a third of the way through and had only seen those bits that were too big for the main hall.
Have you flown into Basel before? Turns out the airport's in France and is known as the Three Countries Euroairport. When I couldn't find accommodation in Switzerland I snuck across the border into Germany and slept in Lorrach. From the map it looked like it was just a Basel suburb but turns out it was a fairly substantial place in its own right - famous for Milka chocolate, apparently.
In more UK based news, I saw Jenny Collier do some comedy. It was ace.
In even more local news I see that Elan Lounge is changing its name again. It'll be Backtrack from next week, never did get to go to Indigo, oh well, fairly sure it wasn't all that different from at least one of its five previous incarnations.
Monday, 1 June 2015
Dick Turpin and Other Essex Boys
Did a treasure hunt the other day it took in three Essex villages, which (unimpressively, as a local someone who likes an explore) I knew barely anything about.
It started in Thaxted, a village that I know mainly from driving through. Didn't know Holst lived there though. I feel like that's something I should know. Even more than that, I definitely should have known that Dick Turpin came from Hempstead - that made me Wikipedia (is that a verb? It is now) - turns out he used to run with The Essex Gang. Guessing that they didn't have to worry too much about originality of gang names in those days - it's no Baseball Furies.
The adventure finished in Finchingfield. You've probably heard how pretty Finchingfield is. That's all anyone knows about it. Turns out the rumours are true. It oozes prettiness.
The treasure hunt itself is a bit of a weird one - doing it has made me approximately forty per cent more observant - but a mate had bought it off the internet. Now don't get me wrong, I am not belittling the treasure hunt itself - I had a thoroughly pleasant day - it's just that someone managed to get paid for doing something that was probably kinda fun. Wandering round making up clues is the kind of thing I'd do in my spare time, just because (or at least it would be if I wasn't so lazy). I tell you what Internet, if I'm feeling frivolous I might do you a treasure hunt. I won't even charge you.
Just been to the Barbican to see Sun Kil Moon. Not the kind of gig I normally frequent but that Kozelek fellow has a voice on him.
On a complete tangent, it was pointed out to me at the weekend that us Brits put in unnecessary Rs all over the show. And it turna out they were right. I say drawring rather than drawing. I've been trying out draw-wing in my head and it sounds all kinds of wrong. My reality feels a bit brittle.
Thursday, 28 May 2015
Wrestling Elephants
Aah, theatre that I understand. Either I've got clevererer or I've dumbed down my theatre choice. I figure it's the latter.
First up a little wrestling and drag based comedy. Everyone loves wrestling. Everyone loves drag. Everyone loves comedy. What's not to love? This one was called As You Like It. Which, off the top of my head means I've now seen every Shakespeare play that I know a quote from. Is that something to be proud of? I am a bit, regardless.
Just seen Bradley Cooper in The Elephant Man: a play about a freakshow, with a pretty boy doing a pretty good job of being ugly. Not exactly high brow. Enjoyed it, mind.
I seem to be stuck in a confused-media rut. That was a play that seemed like a film. I've just read the new Nick Hornby novel (his best thing since About a Boy since you ask), which seemed like a play, and am currently watching The 100, a long form TV show which seems like a YA novel. So whilst I am understanding things in themselves now that it is summet, I don't seem to be able to distinguish between things. Which is a bit worrying.
Monday, 18 May 2015
Gadding Again
I didn't understand Carmen Disturbed at all. I got the impression that there were a load of references that went over my head. Maybe it was because I've not seen Carmen, or maybe it's just that I'm not clever enough. This not understanding malarkey does seem to be happening a lot lately. When out of the last four plays you've seen the only one you actually understood was the Shakespeare, I reckon it might be time to watch less pretentious theatre.
I'm not wholly sure that I understood the Essex Young Farmers' Show either. Don't get me wrong, it was a great day out but it was ultimately a field full of people looking at wellies and getting sunburnt.
I did understand Literary Death Match. Comedians judging writers in a pop-up dance hall, culminating in a classic-literature based quiz - what's not to get?
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Keep the Masses from Majority
Of course not. You've got to love a band that fills the middle of its set with five of the slower tracks from a deleted-for-fifteen-years Welsh language album. Fair to say the thirty-something Brixton crowd didn't seem to know what to make of most of the set.
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
Somewhat Side-swiped
So normally I write about the inside of my cosseted middle-class bubble, chatting about plays or travels and generally being dismissive of things other people rate. As a rule I find that I rarely write about things that matter. Is this because of my stiff upper lip Britishness? Is it because sneering at things is far more fun to right about? Probably a mixture of the two. I am gonna have to take a step away from my British stereotypicality for a bit, so if you want one of my standard posts you may want to jump to the last paragraph, otherwise you may find yourself knee deep in a mawkish quagmire.
You see, I've had a couple of lumps on my neck. My doctor didn't know what they were so referred me to ENT, who also didn't know what they were. They appeared; they were big enough to be noticeable; big enough to be worrying, but didn't seem to change or grow.
This week I got unlumped (I believe that that is the technical term for it, or maybe it's delumped). Which meant I spent most of Tuesday slowly dehydrating at the NHS's convenience.
Some observations:
1. All you can think about is the fact that you're not allowed to eat or drink. You try reading but you find yourself skipping to descriptions of food. You try listening to music, all you hear is running water. I'm not sure how people manage to work during Ramadan. They must have about 80% more will power than me. Or maybe the average Muslim is just a whole heap less gluttonous than I am.
2. Anaesthetists seem a lot more human than surgeons. Fairly sure this has been said before (Quite Ugly One Morning maybe?), I'm guessing that this is because anaesthetists are keeping you alive and out of pain whilst everyone else is Rubik's cubing your innards.
3. I've hit mawkishness in this post, may as well do politics too. I struggle to see how anyone who has had an operation is against immigration. An uninformed, still-hazy-after-a-general-anaesthetic guess reckons that about 40% of the people who prodded me on Tuesday fell into the bracket that UKIP would want rid of. I can't think of an end to this paragraph that isn't wildly patronising, so I'm going to let you finish it yourself.
So yeah, the unlumping went alright. I now have a knifefight scar (which is kinda cool) but even less coordination in my left arm, especially when raised (less cool) and have to turn my whole body rather than just my head (also inconvenient). I didn't get to keep the lumps, apparently they need to test them to find out if it's something more nefarious than common-or-garden lumpiness, which I guess means that this may not be the only dull / cloying post. Here's hoping it is.
Whilst we are being uncharacteristically sentimental let's do it properly. All things being equal, whilst not the most fun week I've had, I do fully appreciate that things could be a whole heap worse: I've not lost everything I own and my family aren't missing. Syangbo, Debendra, Greg: here's hoping your weeks get much better really quickly.
And fade the sentimentality out.
I didn't get American Buffalo, even with the very shiny cast (John Goodman! I didn't even realise he was still alive). Nothing happens. I'm not sure what I make of plays where nothing happens.
Sunday, 19 April 2015
And on the Sixth Day...
Three years. Sorry I didn't see you for so long. I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened I was doing my thing and you were doing yours and, well, three years went past.
Three years. And nothing has really changed, yet so many things are just slightly different. There are more hipster burger bars in the Northern Quarter and The Cedar Tree has gone - the gentrification has just about hit Ancoats. There didn't seem to be any Fingland buses on the Oxford Road. Cornerhouse is closed. Urbis is now a football-museum-cum-man-creche. All the restaurants on the Curry Mile have changed their names. A fair chunk of my friends there have had babies. And there's a too zany by half announcement in the Pendolino toilet. There's a time and a place for zany announcements; a train toilet is pretty far from it.
I appear to be trampling mawkish nostalgia into the carpet. I'll try not to leave it so long next time.
Monday, 6 April 2015
Scrambled Aix
I was going to call this entry Aix and Panes, given that I walked myself into an achey wreck and have seen a lot of stained glass windows, but everyone appears to pronounce Aix like eggs, rather than aches. Addes to that my main memory of Aix-en-Provence is being too tired to function and spending my time bouncing from bench to bench.
Yesterday I spent the day in Marseille and walked my socks off. Benefit of hindsight, I should have got the bus. I'm an idiot. I'm comfortable with that.
I spent the morning walking around the Frioul islands, made famous by Chateau d'If - where that Edmond Dante escaped from. I was promised 100 species of bird. I got a lot of seagulls. I spent the afternoon getting to / on the beach. Fairly average.
Aix-en-Provence is suitably Provencey. All herb shops, lilac covers and wooden window shutters. It managed to tick all the French clichés: onions, baguettes, berets. Good to know some things are based on fact.
So stained glass windows. I've seen a fair few over the weekend, and the bulk of them have been mighty impressive. One little criticism, they are all kind of similar. Just about all of them are four grumpy looking middle aged men staring into the mid distance. Surely there must be more to stained glass art than this?
Saturday, 4 April 2015
Allons Enfants de la Patrie
Marseille is one of those places that I've been meaning to get to for absolutely ages. I didn't know all that much about it, other than it's the second city of our nearest neighbour and it begins with M, which is always a good sign for a city; I thought I would kinda like it but I really wasn't expecting this. It's all on hills and it's all made out of pink marble. I thought it was going to be flat, modern and industrial like Hamburg or Rotterdam. I didn't think that stepping out of Gare St Charles would give me a Wow moment with its marble staircase and view of Notre Dame. I wasn't expecting this 2600 years of history that keeps getting dangled in front of my face. Marseille gets a massive thumbs up.
Another city that I've been meaning to go to for ages is Carcassonne. Turns out how I imagined Carcassonne was impossibly romantic. I thought I actually knew things about the city. In retrospect everything I know is either based on Labyrinth (Mosse not Bowie, no Bog of Eternal Stench, although I will leave that open for you to insert your own stereotype joke) - which was mainly set 800-odd years ago (I've made that number up fact fans) so is possibly not the most reliable tourist guide - or the board game (and I didn't knowingly meet a robber, a monk, a farmer or a knight, although there was an awful lot of knight-based tat). I was expecting a medieval walled city pretty much on its own, operating as an actual working town. That's not what it was like. First off it was pretty far from a working town. It was faux-medieval and nose to armpit packed with people buying cassoulet and wooden swords. Not quite as romantic as I'd envisaged. It wasn't even a solo settlement - and I should have picked this up from the boardgame - there's a second walled city within about 400m. T'uh. Carcassonne was approximately as disappointing as Marseille exceeded expectations, so far I'm rocking an expectation neutral weekend.
The only thing that I did know about Marseille is that I needed to eat a bouillabaisse. How is bouillabaisse a thing? It was a murky, brown puddle of sand and shrimp legs. It was like eating a rockpool only didn't taste as fresh.
Monday, 23 March 2015
Fjord Escort
Friday, 20 March 2015
Stop, Hammerfest
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Fjord Fjocus
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
The Arctic Capital
Sunday, 15 March 2015
Reflections of Dead Maidens
Friday, 13 March 2015
Fjord Fjiesta
Monday, 23 February 2015
Ich Bin Ein Hamburger


I double-billed Hamburg with Bremen. Now Bremen is a place with a very pretty town square. It's also a place that loves a donkey, so it can't be too bad.
Didn't manage to eat pork knuckle, which was one of the main reasons I went to Germany. Did manage to eat a hamburger hamburger, so I ticked that box. Also ate Labskaus, which is a glow-in-the-dark corned-beef hash served with fried eggs and herring. Tastes just as you expect it to.
Sunday, 8 February 2015
Hmmm, What Tasty Words?
What is somewhat galling is that the catalyst for this volte face has been the catalyst for a previous subversion of my strongly held belief. Namely that farces are all rubbish.
I saw that NT production of One Man Two Guvnors, barely even raised a smile. I saw Noises Off at the Old Vic - that's as clever as a farce gets, right? I thought it was alright. So I'd sampled what was supposed to be the best fair around, and found it somewhat mediocre. Farces - m'eh. And then I stumbled into a tiny theatre in industrial north London and saw the Mischief Theatre Company do their thing and I was a convert. So much so I saw their other farce and, most surprisingly of all given my base level cynicism, wasn't disappointed.
Which brings us to the point that I was originally making, just over a month ago I went to see some improv comedy - that Paul Merton fellow and his Improv Chums, who are apparently relatively good at the improvised comedy thing and to quote someone misquoting me, it was like watching other people have a really fun time with their mates. Improv m'eh. Yesterday I stumbled into a spin-off show and saw the Mischief Theatre Company do their thing and I laughed my proverbial socks right off. Most I laughed since the last time I saw the Mischief Theatre Company. So yeah. I'm going again next month. Hashtag converted.
In other news I have visited the White Cube to see the new Christian Marclay installation. Somehow The Clock ("A masterpiece of our times", apparently) completely passed me by, almost like I was living in a desert when it was big news here. I made sure that didn't happen with the follow up, hell yeah.
Friday, 23 January 2015
Yangon: A Second
Wednesday, 21 January 2015
Burmese Daze
Monday, 19 January 2015
Dangling Marrows
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Can't Believe It's Not Buddah
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Beware the Temple Dogs
Monday, 12 January 2015
Squirrel-catching Gloves
Saturday, 10 January 2015
Yangon
Friday, 9 January 2015
A-travellin' Again
They've spruced Doha airport up a fair bit since the last time I was here. There's all kinds of bells and whistles now - TV booths, children's play areas, enormous teddybear/desklamp art installation - which is kinda nice as my flight has just been delayed.
Not too worried about the delay, I was due to arrive in Yangon at 5, which is a pretty antisocial arrival time, so a couple more hours makes the whole caboodle somewhat more civilised.
I quite enjoy time at an abroad airport; hearing flight announcements for Islamabad and Beirut just sound a bit more exotic than the departures you get from Stansted.
Anyway, the adventure has begun...