Spiderman, Goya and Leaves of Glass

It has been a busy few weeks since my last post. Sadly my trusty Mazda 323 badly failed its MOT and had to be scrapped. It was a good old workhorse, so it's a bit sad. Still, everything dies in the end, so we should not mourn!

Over the Bank Holiday weekend we went to Dizzy's birthday party. It was nice to catch-up with people again, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. There were lots of familiar faces, and it's always nice to meet new unfamiliar ones. Photos on Flickr, as usual.

Last week we went to see Spider-Man 3. It was... ok. Much too long, and not nearly as good as the last two. In retrospect I'm not sure it's worth seeing, although it did have its moments.

Last weekend I was in London to visit Dave, and we managed to fit quite a lot in despite the Circle and District lines rather irritatingly taking the weekend off. On Saturday afternoon we caught 28 Weeks Later at the Odeon on Tottenham Court Road. It was pretty good, although not as great as the first one. We had a few pints in random Soho pubs, then met-up with Helen for dinner at an 'smokehouse' place called Bodean's on Poland Street, Soho. They do some great barbecue-style food, including 'pulled pork', which is a bit like how you get duck when you order duck and pancakes at the Chinese. It's really good, and the prices are pretty good too. After that we went to see Leaves of Glass at the Soho Theatre. Not really an uplifting play, but it was well done. To cheer ourselves up we headed off to Sloane Square for Gerry's sister's 21st, which was good fun - lots of drinking and dancing, and everyone had a great time.

On Sunday the rain was appalling, so we sat it out and had a leisurely start watching DVDs and recovering from hangovers. After that we headed to the Science Museum, and we actually got to see quite a lot of it! In fact I don't think I've managed to see quite so much of the place in one day before - I usually get there only to find it's about to close! We met Frances for some cake in the cafe and then wandered around looking at science-y things. When we'd had enough of that we walked back through Hyde Park and grabbed a bit of food at Gourmet Burger in Bayswater before I headed home on the train. A rather busy weekend, all in!

On Monday I was hosting a CouchSurfer called Chris from California. We met in the pub after work and went for some food at The Salamander before heading back to mine for some geeky gaming on the PS3. On Tuesday I was hosting again, this time a student from Indiana called Emma. She 'enjoyed' a rather random evening of helping to push-start cars and going on a random trip to the cinema to see Goya's Ghosts, which was pretty good. The cinema was almost empty, but then it was a late showing and a bit of an 'arthouse' film. It was well done, but don't expect a happy story!

Billie is a Treat

Last Thursday we went to the theatre to see Christopher Hampton’s Treats, starring the lovely Billie Piper, that guy from 'My Family' and the BT adverts (Kris Marshall), and Laurence Fox. It was an odd play really - you know the film 'Closer' with Clive Owen? Well, it was a bit like that in that you didn't really feel for any of the characters. It was well acted and produced, but at the end there was a general feeling of 'ah right, so is that it?' in the theatre. Some random bloke said "Well that was a load of old rubbish wasn't it?" to me on the way out, which I've never had before! I didn't think it was rubbish, but then it wasn't brilliant either. After the performance there was a brief (and well attended) Q&A session with the actors. They all seemed quite nice and their answers were pretty interesting, but I can't remember any of them well enough to repeat here.

We were a bit peckish when we left the theatre so we nipped into the Garrick's Head for a bite to eat. I had the excellent Devilled Kidneys, but everyone else's food looked great too, plus the beer was good. A top end to the evening!