Bridegroom, but can’t be bothered to write a speech for your big day? Well, just download a Groom’s speech template from the internet! Some people might think that this, in itself, shows a lack of commitment to the day, but what do they know?
Guest, but not going to attend? Don’t let the people organising the wedding know too early – instead, do it the classy way, by waiting until a week or so before, and then sending a message over Facebook*! All the effectiveness of saying no, but with none of the messiness of having to actually communicate with human beings.
Oh, the fleshy humans, how we all loathe them.
*I don’t have a link for this one, but as you can probably guess, it’s just happened to me and my fiancee. Imagine how impressed we were.
This was the scene on Friday 8th August, when a number of protesters disrobed on Victoria Street in London and protested about climate change into front of the BERR (formerly the DTI) building.
I was passing by, and thought it was worth capturing for posterity, and sharing with you good people (it’s just taken me a few more days than I anticipated, as I couldn’t find the cable to connect my phone to the PC. Tch).
Anyway, two thoughts occurred to me about the protest:
Firstly, the BERR staff are predominantly civil servants, and given my experience of the way that civil service flexi arrangements work, on a Friday afternoon it’s quite likely that the protest might have gone unnoticed until the following Monday, for want of people actually being in the building.
And secondly, given that the BERR building is a short distance from New Scotland Yard, it did seem to take a surprisingly long time for the protesters to be removed. I can’t help but wonder if that would have been the case had it been an all-male protest…
Now, I don’t normally review bars and/or restaurants on the blog; I leave that sort of thing to Mr Factory and his fancy mediterranean lifestyle), but as this place only opened on Friday, and I was there on Saturday, I thought I might try to get in ahead of Anton Ego and his colleagues.
If you’ve not come across it before, the Buddha Bar is a small-ish chain of restaurant-bars at various locations around the world which, unsurprisingly, are themed around the orient and Buddha. The picture above shows the Paris venue, and the London branch is very much the same in layout – the whole place is dominated by a massive Buddha statue, and the restaurant and bar alike are more shadow than light (as I mentioned in point 5 of this post, that can mean you fall over things). But it’s certainly got an atmosphere about it, despite effectively being within a hollowed-out leg of Waterloo Bridge (well, they call it Victoria Embankment, but it’s inside the northmost stump of the bridge, so)…
Anyway, the London branch was due to open some months ago, and its opening date was pushed back by several weeks if not months, meaning that the laydee and I turned out, by chance not design, to be dining there on what was its second night of actually being open. In terms of the environment, this was fine – the place was clearly finished and ready for business – and in terms of service, it meant that we often had several members of staff looking after us at once, which was a pleasant change from most dining experiences (and only once did one of them bump into a piece of furniture, which is more than I’d be able to do in such a darkened workplace).
As for the food and drink, well, take a look at the menu, and you can see if it’s your sort of thing or not. The absence of a specific vegetarian main course option on the menu is something of an omission, because there is one – I had a very nice vegetarian curry served within a hollowed-out coconut, which was tasty but not heavy, and nicely presented. The desserts are very good too, and, again, not overly filling.
If you followed the link above to the menu, you’ll see that the prices are pretty high (though if you want to see really big numbers, take a look at the bottom right corner of page 2 of the wine list. Crazy). And I won’t argue with that – the Buddha Bar isn’t cheap, but I think it’s not just a place to eat but also an interesting atmosphere to be in; more a place to go to celebrate an anniversary, or someone’s birthday, or a date when you want to do something a bit different.
A lot of reviews of the other branches tend to focus on the prices or to suggest it’s a slightly pretentious place, and I can’t pretend there isn’t some validity to that kind of comment, but if you want a change from the usual sort of environment, and don’t take it too seriously, I’d say it’s worth a visit.
This cartoon appeared on Thursday (7th August) in ‘thelondonpaper’ (their rendition, not mine), a free paper which is dished out in London of an evening.
You might like to contrast the cartoon with the following dialogue from the film ‘Edward Scissorhands’, made in 1990:
EDWARD: Kevin, you want to play scissors-paper-stone?
KEVIN: No.
EDWARD: No, why?
KEVIN: It’s boring. I’m tired of always winning.
As with jokes during the 1990s about Daleks being unable to conquer the universe because they can’t climb stairs, it’s usually a good idea to actually check the source material first…
In this post, I mentioned the 10 Word Crime Story Competition that was being held as part of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, and priomised that, if I didn’t win, I’d share my entries with you lovely people.
Well, I didn’t win (though oddly I can’t seem to find the page with the winning entries, which is strange – I’ve seen it before), and so here are the 10 word crime stories which I submitted (you were allowed to enter as many times as you wanted):
– Corpse! Gun! Locked Room! How? Oh, hang on – a suicide.
– The corpse floated to the surface, ruining the swimming gala.
– Gone With The Wind Murder Mystery? Rhett Butler did it.
– Invite old lady detectives to dinner, and someone will die.
…I only realised after submitting the above that you were allowed/supposed to give each story a title, so I can only assume that was the reason I didn’t win, as opposed to any kind of deficiency with the entries themselves. Ahem.
Back in June, I promised that if I wasn’t a winner of the the Waterstones ‘What’s Your Story?’ competition, I’d post my entry here on’t blog.
Well, as you can gather from the fact there’s a picture above these words, I didn’t win, and so I’m sharing (if you click on the image, it’ll be more easily legible).
You can find out who did win by clicking here, and while you’re at it, why not order a copy of the book version?
All the profits go to charity, and as well as the winning entries it features not-published-anywhere-else material by writers like Neil Gaiman and Joanne ‘J.K.’ Rowling.
Go on, it’s only a fiver…
Don’t know if this has been more generally announced, but The Times is currently running a short story writing competition.
It doesn’t seem to have a specified name, but the feature it springs from is called ‘Brief Loves’, and the entry requirement is that you write a 300-word love story – examples of stories by established authors, and the invitation to submit your own story can be seen here.
They don’t give a closing date, and the prize seems to be publication in the Times, but it’s only 300 words and you can e-mail your submission, so it’s not exactly a lot of hassle to enter.
I think I’ll have a go – what about you? Do let me know…
Almost two years ago, in this post, I provided a link to a Youtube video which I thought was rather sweet and heart-warming.
Well, that link doesn’t seem to work any more (at least, it didn’t when I tried it the other day), but you can still find it here, and I think it’s just as charming.
Even better, you can find the latest video in Matt’s series here, and I heartily recommend you have a look – if anything, this one’s even better than the previous one, and as trite and cliché as it may sound, it’s a reminder that we’re all, y’know, people, and that when you get down to it, most folks just want to have a good time.
Or a bit of a dance, at least.
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