I'm ready to start a culinary revolution

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This evening I stayed extremely late at work. This is not because I was actually working. Granted I did have meetings until 7.30pm but then our charming receptionist had sorted me food, so I took it up to my desk and found that Rachel was still in the office. She was the only one there. I think we may have spent the next two hours ranting at length about the world (and that was before work started!) I did learn something great though. At the time I was totally failing to eat spiralized courgette (the difficulty being that each thread is a minimum of 10km long. It is therefore significantly less dainty to eat than spaghetti) Rachel commented that she uses scissors at home. Horay for office stationary! So I gave it a go, with a fork in one hand and scissors in the other I could cut tendrils short right before putting them in my mouth and this new method worked rather well. If anything I would class it as an 'extreme success' having made the whole process much more dignified, or so I thought, until I realised that this was not what Rachel had meant to recommend at all. She was surveying the (possibly barbaric) scene with an air of horrified politeness (imagine watching someone eat spaghetti with a pair of scissors!) All she'd meant to say was that it ought to be chopped before serving. Nevertheless, at this point I was so thrilled with my own efficiency that I carried on regardless (well, if she is going to be polite about it...) But it made me think - we should introduce scissors to the standard cutlery set! Just think how it would revolutionise noodles, stake and unwieldy burgers if people could eat them with scissors.

Surprised by my drunken self

I got an email at work today from a chap I don't know called Mark. Apparently I'd given him my company email address (not sure why!) on Saturday night while quite drunk and he also appeared to be under the impression I'd instructed him to use it in order to start a game of noughts and crosses. Better still, he clearly felt some need to tell me that his name wasn't Hector (I didn't like to ask why!) It's just not the sort of thing you expect to catch up with you at work on a Tuesday afternoon! I think maybe I put 'noughts and crosses' next to my name in his phone as a reminder of who I was as we had just played a game on a big toy set in a children's playground (which is where the (now not so literally located) house party had ended up). Looking back, the fact that I then asked to borrow his jeans in order to climb a large plastic palm tree, before magnanimously giving him my dress in exchange when he agreed, probably made me a little more memorable still. I hadn't thought of that. Remembering this, I put my cross in bottom left. It's the least I could do.

The most upsetting cinema trip

One of the things I enjoyed most today was going to the cinema with the girls to see Suffragette! Our age means we get in for £5 at the Barbican and so we basically couldn't go wrong from there. To my disappointment the film turned out not to be feel good comedy as I'd expected (like Made in Dagenham) but an emotional roller coaster that had us laughing and then crying to such an extent that I began to fear for the safety of my contact lenses. We all came out with very different opinions of it too. Rebecca and Tash felt a sense of righteous indignation and believed that it was a film everyone ought to see. However I had a number of issues with it. Firstly I felt that the main characters marriage wasn't very convincing. It fell apart so easily. Secondly I wondered why our heroine kept going to feminist meets when she didn't believe in the cause at first - that behaviour made her life very complicated! Third I wondered whether they glamorised violence a bit and overplayed the roe of media attention. After all, if violence really was all that effective then the IRA would be respectable by now and if press  coverage were that big a deal then fathers for justice would have justice by now. I kind of felt that there was more story that didn't get told. Yes a woman died in front of a racehorse but (aside from the question of whether the rider survived) it's not clear how this translated into votes then or my ability to buy a cinema ticket using my own money today. Tash says that's the point, the story isn't over yet. To be fair, that's one thing the film did really well. There was so much we wanted to talk about afterwards and I've been thinking about it all week. It's struck me that since the film industry is one of the most unequal industries today, this is an ironic meta study of inequality. In fact I've found the film so thought provoking that I've started recommending it to people. This in itself is a great reason to see it.

Casual Sunday fancy dress

I'm waiting for some friends at the station and I've got an excess of luggage. My bags have had to contain outfits for Paris on Thursday, day in the office Friday, windsurfing gear for Saturday, house party Saturday night and I also picked up a Roman centurion costume for a future occasion. There's no space in my bags and so I've had to carry my helmet on my head as I just can't fit it in any other way. I've got some very funny looks at London Waterloo - If only they understood where I'd been then it wouldn't seem so strange.

People watching on the bus

There's pandemonium on the buses. The bus is late running and the bus behind it has now caught up. The first bus that I am on is so full that the elderly are having to decide who is the most elderly and therefore worthy of a seat. The bus goes past the hospital which has only added to the confusion as people on crutches are having to decide of they need a seat more than the most elderly of elderly...Chaos!

Needoo Curry House

This evening after work we were supposed to go to the increasingly famous curry place Tayyabs. It's in the 'up and coming' backstreets of Whitechappel. They feel pretty rough but I suppose that this must be what brick lane was like before it 'up and came'. However, I spoiled all of our plans by not managing to leave work on time. It was 7pm before I got away and by the time I arrived, Tayyabs, which by now has a reputation for itself, was full, with queuers loitering between the tables. As such we went to the spin off restaurant around the corner. Needoo was apparently founded by a rogue waiter after an altercation at Tayyabs. From the outside it looked so seedy that we nearly didn't go in but it was by now so late that we were hungry enough to risk it. All in all I'm glad we did. There were no people queuing in awkward places, the service was exceptionally fast and there was giant cutlery mounted on the wall which amused me. If anything the food was actually too authentic as Sam and Joe struggled with the spice. All the dishes were said to be 'medium' so there was no way out for the faint hearted, unless you are preprepared order from the less authentic 'chicken tikka masala' section of the menu, which no one was. We speculated that even the mint sauce had a kick to it and had to call in emergency yoghurt. I personally quite liked it but must admit that the level of spice did stop me from comparing the 4 dishes we'd ordered as they all tasted of 'robust heat' to me. In a nice way. Sam disagreed, but then he had begun an affliction of wild heat-induced hiccups.

Posh kebabs?!

I was so tired by the time I left work this evening that I couldn't decide what to do about food. I even texted mum to tell her this, which is a reflection of the extent to which I totally wasn't functioning! (This also made me worry (briefly) about the content of the emails that I'd been sending before leaving the office!) Anyway, I ended up going to get a 'posh Kebab' at a shop called Chifafa. This is something I've been meaning to try for a while - There is everything intriguing about an oxymoronic concept like that. The problem is that I was then too worn out to develop a comprehensive opinion on the matter! The 'medium' level of spice was significantly more lively than it was mediocre and I'm not sure if I can ever feel indulged while eating meat wrapped in bread - it's not really that far removed from a glorified sandwich. On the other hand it was significantly better than the kebabs I was served in Istanbul at the weekend; the meat was properly BBQ-ed and it wasn't served out of a polystyrene tray but a foil wrap (like any self respecting burrito). No one could accuse it of being a greasy late night option for desperadoes (not least because the shop shuts at 9pm).  This synopsis seems to have covered everything but taste. The problem is that I like eating, most things taste good to me and this was no exception. Certainly it was good enough to go back another day. In my wretchedly tired state I then slipped into some sort of philosophical stupor. Can a kebab ever be up-market? Is it really enough to put good quality ingredients in or is it by nature a squalid supper. Then, even if it is posh, is it ever any good?! I never did answer these questions, I think they may be the basis of hardcore philosophy. The next time someone tries to draw me in on politics or God I'm going to ask them if they think a kebab can ever be posh. That'll stump them!

Hello Blog

I have decided that life is too funny not to be recorded in some way and so I'm going to start a blog (every laugh is better shared, right?) It'll be full of the doodles & diary entries that I scrawl on my commute to work. I've been writing a diary since I was about 14, but it's only recently that I've re-read them and found the content amusing (teenagers can take themselves very seriously!)