Curry, wine: Edinburgh

WHAT a weekend. After a fairly legendary lunch with my boss on Friday afternoon (finalising the deliverables for the coming four weeks or so...), I kicked off the weekend by watching the brilliant Spaceballs with the Kiwi. I'd forgotten how shamelessly puerile that film is, possibly one of the last spoof films whose tone is 'gently mocking', rather than simply vicious or way over the top.

Saturday morning involved a train to Edinburgh, all six hours of it, and that evening we caught up for a curry with my brother and his wife. Both were on sterling form and blessed with a superb local Bangladeshi restaurant. One of the things that's been bothering me 'n' the Kiwi lately is that it seems to be impossible to get a decent Indian or Chinese meal in London unless you're in the market for a £60+ a head dinner. It's a real treat to be able to get back to good, local food again.

Excellent to see them both too - it's been years since I saw either of them, and it's the first time they've met the Kiwi. Good to knock back a few whiskies with my brother too, for the first time in waaaay too long.

The Oddbins wine fair on the Sunday was a whole lot of fun as always, smaller than in previous years (or perhaps I've just got bigger), but the old crew were still there as always. The range is looking a fair bit better than it did in April (at the London version), with some astounding French wines on the way for once, and the German range finally worth a look. It's fair to say though, that these last two are more indicative of trends within the countries in question, but Oddbins has been notably light in these areas for the past few years, so it's refreshing to see something interesting there.

We ended up buying a mixed case. Quite what's in it I've very little idea.

Elbow, Roundhouse, 11.10.08

I'm obviously a bit preoccupied at the moment - with all the stuff that's going on at the moment I'd totally forgotten to tell you about the brilliant Elbow gig on Saturday night. What a perfect (almost) evening.

I'm fast becoming a fan of the Roundhouse, generally the sound's great and it rarely feels that full, either through great capacity management or tardis-like architecture, I'm not sure. Weirdly, their normally dull beer selection was complemented by the addition of Sagres, which we'd just been drinking in Nandos down the road. Little things like this help, I find.

They were supported on the night by Jesca Hoop, who I suspect is really quite good, and judging by some of the streaming tracks on Last.FM, I think she probably is. Unfortunately her delicate voice combined with the relative lack of interest from the crowd meant she was more or less inaudible, and as she only played a handful of tracks (including a duet with Guy Garvey) I'm not sure she didn't wander off out of sheer annoyance. Poor lass, I thought she could've been great in the right circumstances.

The main event then. The Kiwi made a great point at the beginning about how good the sloping floor in Brixton Academy is, in that you're more likely to be able to see (especially for her, she's ickle), and this was one of my two criticisms of the venue. The opening track was spoilt slightly by us shuffling around trying to get somewhere we could stand next to each other and still see, which depended largely on a very specific configuration of people of certain heights going all the way forwards to the stage, so it's safe to say it didn't really happen.

The band, without exception, were tremendous. Opening with 'Starlings', complete with a trumpet wielded by each band member (whether mimed or not, I don't care), they had the audience grabbed from the word go (or in this case 'How'). By the second track, the bloke next to me singing at the top of a voice so flat it had canals was getting to be too much, so we moved to the middle back, and better sound.

On that note, what amazed me throughout was the quality of the sound, and the preciseness that they got in playing almost note-for-note versions of the tracks we were all so familiar. There's a time and a place for innovation and so on, but a band at Elbow's stage in their career and with their sort of fanbase, should know that they're not going to get away with Jazz Odyssey: we want to hear what we've got on our stereos, just louder and in real life.

And that they delivered. Unusually, one of my favourite tracks of the night was one which didn't really grab me on the record; "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver", which Guy really seemed to enjoy and absolutely took it by the scruff of its neck. It's great to hear a proper Manchester accent in song - a friend of mine once mentioned how much she loves hearing regional accents on singers, and I have to agree. Not only is it so... honest, but it gives the work a sense of place, and much like terroir in wine terms, embraces its origins. One other track stood out, but you'll have to come to our wedding to hear more about that one.

On a final note, whilst writing this, my iTouch has been in an unusually capricious mood. I've had it on a Genius playlist it's built around Elliott Smith's perkily scornful 'Somebody That I Used To Know', and it thought to include Ben Folds' slightly mawkish but still touching 'Late', his posthumous tribute to Smith. It's a bit like a Spielberg film, in that it's a bit cheesy and predictable, but in such a way that you can't fail to be moved by it. The 25th and last track is Fleet Foxes' gorgeous 'Ragged Wood', which reminds me that we're going to see them in November and it promises to be an amazing night.

Christmas, NYE, back to work

And we're back. Following a week and a half's mental haring around Manchester I'm back in the office to relative normality. It's a bit of a slow day here today as you can imagine - the alarums and hysterics I'm used to on the first day back are apparently unique to retail. It seems this doesn't filter down to (or percolate up to?) agency level for a couple of days yet.

Christmas was lovely. Following a cautiously enjoyable Christmas party with work on the Friday (taking it very easy on the beer, leaving in time for the last tube, don't think I offended anyone) we drove up to Manchester, taking a full 5 and a half hours to do so. We stayed in a reasonably smart apartment in Ancoats, just behind Piccadilly station, sort of, which is real inner-city Manchester, in the first throes of redevelopment and feeling a bit like Shoreditch did a few years back. It's still distinctly edgy, with some of the old rag trade offices still open for business and some of the old alleyways still ripe for lurking in, but the tell-tale bars and cafes are starting to creep in, along with the posh apartments and new businesses with shiny nameplates proudly displayed outside.

Bouncing between our apartment and friends and family all week was great, so good to see everyone again and spend time with them over the week - just as nice to be able to retreat to our own space when we needed to. The Thursday in particular was one of these times; the Kiwi went shopping whilst I settled into a pub with a bit of Orwell and some decent northern bitter. Brilliant. My wonderful Kiwi had managed to find me a Wii for Christmas too, which has shamelessly made me fall in love with her even more, whilst at the same time ensuring that I'll pay her marginally less attention in future. Funny paradox, that.

And so back to London on the Saturday, leaving at 0700 and taking about 2 hours 40 to make it back, in stark contrast to the outward journey. We spent the afternoon with the Hatter and his family out in darkest Hampshire; he's getting married in 08 and as I'm to be his best man (hooray!) we thought it about time we met the rest of the brood, and a very happy man he must be, with three ridiculously cute and (apparently) well-behaved kiddies and a rather idyllic part of the country to call home.

New Year followed, with a small group of mainly Kiwis round at ours, me drinking unusually heavily mainly in order to numb the pain of a minor mutilation which occurred whilst preparing bruschetta (middle-class credentials firmly intact there). New Year's Day was spent almost entirely on the sofa with both of us alternately freaking out about returning to work and (mostly me) worrying about January's finances which, in the context of 2008's plans, are some way off course.

There we are then. New Year's resolutions? I don't normally, but here we go: more exercise, more reading of books, more saving of money, more earning of money, more ruthless career progression (hahaha), more wearing of good shirts. Less drinking (not sure about that one), less eating of the bad food, less procrastination, less chopping of fingers. Oh, and possibly the purchase of something shiny before too long. And that's all I have to say about 'that'.

Cooking, Christmas Pounces

Blimey hasn't it been a while since my last post - although nothing much has changed in that time so nothing to report, folks. What has happened is that I've devised a plan to get what I want from this job and have submitted it to the relevant people, so we'll see what we'll see, I guess.

The current phase of this project is due to end this week, and we've actually been reasonably productive despite it having been a rather painful process. I suppose it'd have helped to know more about what we were building before starting to build it but unfortunately that's sort of the nature of this project; it's defining itself as it goes.

On a more positive note, a brilliant weekend just passed, beginning with the Kaiser Chiefs supported by We Are Scientists at Earl's Court on Friday night, followed by an early trip to Borough Market (introduced the Kiwi to Monmouth Coffee) for breakfast at Maria's followed by unrestrained and enthusiastic food shopping. Once we'd ensured we were well and truly skint, we headed back, laden with pork, scallops, preserved lemons, cheeses, truffle oil etc and (once I'd installed BT Vision, which is ace) promptly fell asleep.

We cooked a jalfrezi on the Saturday night, which was brilliant, all vibrant, fresh flavours and a decent belt of chilli too. Sunday involved cooking what we'd bought the previous day, scallops with sweetcorn puree and truffle cream followed by roast belly pork with sage and lemon potatoes, followed by white chocolate torte with dark chocolate sauce. Two other Kiwis came over for lunch - a sort of pre-Christmas thingy. Scallops sounded odd, but worked really well, despite a minor crisis involving quails eggs.

Later that afternoon we headed up to the Green Man near Great Portland St tube to meet the Kiwi's cousin and new husband (although they've been together for ages) which was ace - they moved out to Australia about two years ago and we've not seen them since so was great to catch up.

This morning, back to work. I felt like someone had squeezed an extra week into the year without me noticing, and then I realised that we're headed up north this weekend to see the family and that sort of made it alright.

A slightly grumpy post

My word, what a weekend. I'll try to give something of a snapshot in a short pre-work post:

 

Friday night, dinner at Satay in Brixton before Maximo Park, which was a brilliant affair although some cruel prankster had slipped some pieces of orange into an otherwise tasty grilled lamb dish (heathens). The Kiwi had the foresight (not to mention the contacts) to check the stage times beforehand, so unlike Kathryn we arrived at about 2145 with enough time to struggle to the bar, narrowly avoid a fight, purchase four pints (THIRTEEN QUID!!) and shuffle to my favoured Academy spot (three quarters of the way down, on the left-hand side) just as they launched into their set.

Now, although they were superb as always, there was something amiss. I'm going to come across as awfully snobby here, but I've consistently noticed that the more popular a band is, the less enjoyable their gigs are. Up to a point - massive stadium shows have their place. What I'm talking about is this. When the Kiwi and I went to see the Park at ULU in early 2005, before the album release, we paid about £9, got into a packed venue and generally got a bit excitable with the rest of the crowd. The Academy on Friday night was full of proper part-timers: drunk, lairy, pushy and aggressive. Barely paying any attention to what they'd paid £18 to see, acting more like they were in the local Wetherspoon's. Sort of takes the edge off the whole thing, if you catch my drift.

As for the band, predictably ace, with an almighty version of Limassol which built up into a massive, practically Jesus and Mary Chain-like frenzy of feedback and general noise. Graffiti and Our Velocity also stood out, note perfect. My one criticism, and again accuse me of being elitist or whatever, was that they lacked their earlier sense of desperation and mania - hate to use the word but I think 'edginess' is what they lacked here. Paul Smith always seemed on the verge of a complete breakdown whilst performing; on Friday there was more swagger, more comfortable self-assuredness, and that really didn't sit with the Park brand. Even Lukas Wooler's trademark jerky flailing seemed a touch contrived.

I guess it's unavoidable in some ways - if success removes you from the environment that formed part of your original formula, it'll be hard to reproduce with any credibility. Oasis are a case in point here. And maybe I'd been put in a sour mood by paying thirteen quid for four pints of watered down Carling.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend consisted of the two of us driving up to West Yorkshire in a lovely silver Peugeot convertible (much good that did us this weekend...), staying with an old friend who's just moved up there, watching the rugby (hooray!) and coming home again. It's so good to be reminded that there's more to this country than horrid old London, and the north really does have the best bits.