1119 days ago
This is the horror that awaited me as I returned to the Welsh Hovel from a 16 mile training walk for Woodlarks last Sunday. The Mrs had ordered that the window be pained Tollar Royal which is a blue with a purple tinge. Rather than order the paint requested, the painter went to a shop selling that paint and mixed his own which is, as you can see, not blue at all. And apparently when he asked the Mrs how it looked she just said okay, not daring to say, as I would have done, “fucking ghastly”. So now this listed building has the sort of window you’d see on a Shoreditch gay bar. Suffice to say, I was not best pleased as I explained the situation to the painter’s boss.
2495 days ago
I approached the Thunderbolt pub for my first punk gig in 26 years with some trepidation as, from the outside, it does look like one hell of a dive. That was unfair and shows what a narrow minded old fart I have become. It had a pleasant garden and is well fitted out for gigs and the folks who own it were really friendly. Arriving at 7.30 I was alone in the pub. That is odd as the Stingrays were advertised as being there from 7 to 11.30. I thought it sounded like a long set for a three piece band with a total age of c180.
2779 days ago
Twitter is run by liberal left fascists who apply a double standard to free speech. You can say what you want as long as you don't say anything which might upset your average Guardian reader, fuckwit millennial from hipster central in Brooklyn or Shoreditch or the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
3566 days ago
The first person to join me at the Greek Hovel arrives in two weeks and has already warned that our morning routine for the three weeks that follow will commence with a jog or was it a run. Either way I have rather tried to put this to the back of my mind but it struck me today that I have just two weeks without this ordeal left.
For the past two years the closest I have come to this form of masochism is shuffling quickly to the newsagents to get a pack of Marlboro Lights before the newsagent shuts. But I used to be able to do a decent run.
In my London Irish days I could do six miles in an hour on the treadmill (on a gradient) and used to run back from work in Shoreditch to Swiss Cottage. And then go to the gym. But that was a long time ago.
But what the hell.
3716 days ago
A friend of mine from my Shoreditch days says that he is heading off to a weekend of eating drinking and libertarianism on the 15th March and would I care to go. It looks great but then comes the libertarian dilemma.
If you are a pure thinking individual I would urge you to check out the Freedom Festival here
There are some entertaining speakers: Mark Littlewood, Norman Tebbit, Toby Young, Dan Hannan and I am sure that it will be great fun. However:
a) I am not convinced that this is ideologically pure enough for a true libertarian. I see there is a debate “is immigration a boon or a burden?” If you score straight A’s on the Ron Paul crystal pure test you would not need that debate, the answer is obvious. There is another debate “is the conservative family falling apart?” Heck, when did we join that family to start with?
b) Maybe I am a libertarian because I hate the idea of being organised. One of the joys of Shoreditch life right inside the triangle was that the residents were a pretty crazed bunch. On a day to day basis I had nothing in common with the Lebanese cookery writer for the FT, the fat American artist gay couple, the super geek IT guy from Morgan Stanley or the Australian architect with his French wife who’d been there since the sixties. I struggle to remember the other residents but occasionally we’d come together like a Wild West town
3980 days ago
The massively loss making Guardian Newspaper has now opened a (massively loss making) coffee shop in trendy Spitalfields cum Shoreditch. You can view webcontent there - The Guardian only natch. And sip away on fair trade coffee with your fellow members of the deluded lefty middle class. The mousemats have the Guardian logo as does the wallpaper.
At last I know that when I die where I will go. Dante's Inferno has nothing on this. I shall clearly spend eternity having to drink fair trade coffee with deluded folk tutting in sympathy as they read Polly Toynbee's latest outpourings. There would be nothing else to read forever...just the Guardian.
In this trendy neighbourhood the streets were buzzing. Everywhere was packed. Everywhere but....the Guardian coffee shop where I counted seven customers of whom one was less than one years old and so merely a victim of parental abuse. Natch I did not go inside to hand over any of my wicked capitalist dosh but stood outside to pay due respect.
3982 days ago
One of the joys of being involved with a good, if quirky, restaurant is the customers. And so last in on a busy Thursday at Real Man Pizza Company was colourful James, the local spaghetti vongole loving art entrepreneur.Time for a quick pizza? Of course. And a pint of Curious beer? Of course. James being James it was not one pint. His guest was an artist called Pauline Amos who has an exhibition running at the Tramshed in Shoreditch just down the road from Clerkenwell. I used to live in the 'Ditch and know the Tramshed well.
The exhibition is about how man has killed man over time. And so naturally at the opening Pauline had to take all her clothes off and allow visitors to paint her naked body. 'Natch. You don't believe me? The video is below. Given my interest in contemporary art, I shall be popping along at the weekend to see more.
