Haven't You Been There Before?

So Egypt.  That's one of the biggies, right?  With its sphinxes and pyramids and deserts and camels. I guess it's understandable that everyone assumes I've been there - it's Africa 1.0: the bit that everyone knows about; the bit with the resorts and the Wonders of the World.

But I've not been before. Time to pack some Immodium, get a typhoid booster, check the FCO website and see what all the fuss is about.

To Cairo...

The Oyster is Your World

So in the last week I've finally got round to doing some of the things that people have been raving about for ages but I've either not got round to doing or been blissfully unaware of.  Here are three of them:

Mersea Island Oysters
Essex strives to be derivative.  We really don't have anything which is truly ours - one of the things that we do have is oysters and the best place to go to eat them are the oyster shacks on Mersea Island. They had common-or-garden rock oysters there, as well as the Blackwater oyster - which is the proper local delicacy.  I Pepsi challenged them - I preferred the rock oyster - presumably because I'm a pleb.

David Thorne
Not certain what I've been doing thats meant I've been oblivious to David Thorne until now. His 27b/6 website is proper funny.  At least two of his emails made me lol my face open way harder than that Book of Mormon thing did.

The Fault in Our Stars
I've been meaning to read this for a while.  Crikey it's hardcore, it made Looking for Alaska seem as emotionally charged as a knock knock joke. Had one slight downside, more to its juxtaposition with me watching Breaking Bad (something else which really should be mentioned on this page, but I can't help but think that writing any commentary at all on Breaking Bad is a waste of your eyeball juice), namely any slight niggle I've had this weekend I've assumed is cancer.  It's clearly not - all evidence points to an old running injury, a stitch and a 24 hour sickness bug, but turns out I can be somewhat suggestible.

Tired of Sal Tlay Ka Siti? Tired of Life...

Just had the sort of weekend (well 27 hour window) that you can only have in London - absolutely jam packed.  Let's do this chronologically:

Peter and Alice: Dame Judy Dench and Pingu from nathanbarley in a play about the real Peter Pan meeting the real Alice in Wonderland. Sounds bloomin' ace.  Hadn't really looked into it (much like when I went to see Bingo last year and was expecting a comedy about a clown); let's just say it was gloomier than I expected and move on.

Kangaroo burgers at Borough Market.

Old Operating Theatre: I'd never been before - I'd seen it in lists of quirky things you should do, but never bothered to find out where it was.  Happened across it and there was little chance I was walking past.  Just bobbed in for a cheeky amputation, as one does on a Saturday afternoon.

Rose theatre: Now the ignorance is pouring out.  I didn't realise that the Rose Theatre was an actual thing.  I knew it used to be a thing, but was blissfully unaware of its continued (sort of) thingness.

Maslenitsa. Nothing like celebrating the Russian Sun Festival on a grey and drizzly day.

Book of Mormon: I don't really need to say much about this as it's been hyped right up already.  The hype is entirely justified.  It is a lot of fun.

The Curious Incident of the Trains in the Night Time

I went to see that show about the dead dog.  Dead good it was.  The show, not the dog.  The dog was dead, so was a little bit past ethics.

What was less good, and therefore far more fun to talk about was the journey home.  The trains were an absolute joke.  An hour standing on the concourse at Liv St, followed by a scramble for the train on Platform 12, a half hour wait then a dash to platform ten.  It was two hours before we'd left the station - well pumpkin.

Something else that was rubbish was the Essex Book Festival event that I went to.  All publicity is good publicity (I say that as someone who's pretty stoked about the prospect of ballooning over Valley of the Kings - didn't even know that was a thing until 2 weeks ago...), so I'm not naming names, suffice to say your man wasn't a raconteur.  Or someone who knew about the book that he had allegedly written. So, Essex Book Festival, you had a chance.  You blew it.

Game over.

Confetti.

If the band are divided

Support your local live music venue.

I heartily applaud Evoke's attempts to become a credible venue for live music. Since the demise of the Army and Navy, and Club Y, and The Cave, and the Basement, and Barhouse, and hooga we could do with an actual venue in Chelmsford City and so far they've managed some pretty good names.

Now Sham69, they're a name.  Don't know a great deal about them - the words to If The Kids..., the chorus to Hurry Up Harry, and that's about it - now I know a tiny bit more.  It seems that there are two different Sham69s touring.  One which has most of the members of the 77-79 version and one which has none.  It turned out that the one that played in Chelmsford was basically a Sham69 tribute band. Feeling a little bit cheated...

City of Sausage

"Excuse me do you serve food?"

"I'm sorry, we only have sausages."

It's exchanges like this that means Frankfurt should be a dream destination, somewhere that only serves beer and sausages? It's even named after a type of sausage.  By anyone's reckoning that's a porky paradise. But, they didn't sell sausages, they sold wurst; I'm not 100% sure what the difference is but it's definitely there.  I think it's something to do with needing a run up with your fork to get through the skin.  But it could be to do with the day-glo colour. Either way it means that you can only eat a finite amount. Boo. By second dinner we'd had to leave the world of sausage and head for something with a more defined pork content, I feel like I'd let myself down.

And that's before we get on to currywurst. Adding bbq sauce and curry powder to a chopped-up, pre-cooked sausage isn't a 'thing', it's a way to use up leftovers before your student loan comes in.

As for the less-sausaged elements of the city, it was nice enough but a little bit soulless.  Sort of like if you go to the Square Mile  at the weekend.  Only with rubbish sausages.

An Honourable Man

Things that Chelmsford has now:
A pretty good museum.  There's always been a museum up in Oaklands Park (I say "always" I don't mean always "always" obviously), it never used to be all that - I remember the last time I went giggling at the coin exhibits as some were just rubbings.  Now it's been redone and it's proper good - I realise that I'm about a year out of time to write about that.

An African restaurant. It's called Lekki's and it's a pretty good alternative to going for a curry. Now I'm not averse to eating weird food, but word of caution, I'd advise against the cow tendons, just a little bit too knuckle-y for my delicate palate.

In the wider world (what, there are things beyond Chelmsford City limits?), I went to the Donmar to see the all-female Julius Caesar.  All the adverts had made it look Pussy Riot-inspired.  It wasn't.  Boo. Still it was pretty good, for the most part, if not quite the dizzy heights of last year's RSC version.