Booze and Culture

Met up with Simon on Monday night, and we went off for a bite to eat at the Soho Thai Restaurant in St. Anne’s Court (just off Dean Street). Despite the fact that I’d actually had a meal about two hours earlier, I thought it would be rude to sit and watch Si eat, so had a Thai duck salad. Delicious. I’ll definintely be eating there again. After that, we popped round the corner to the Toucan, and stayed downstairs there until closing time. We then did a little tour of Soho looking for a nice venue to continue our late-night binge drinking. After more beers, we decided a coffee was in order, so headed along to Bar Italia for a while. Couldn’t resist the savoury display there… mmmm, pannini… lovely. Si and I tried to get a night bus back here at about 3am, but after waiting for an aeon, gave up and got a cab.

As Simon and I both felt a bit grim the next morning (above), we decided to head up to the Tate Modern to take in a bit of culture. First stop was the restaurant on the top floor for some much-needed food. Of course we ended up having a bottle of wine with it (below).

Inspired by the photos I took last week, Si spent some time perfecting his impression of Rob (below).

After our wine, we spent a moment trying to focus on the stunning views…

…before spending a couple of hours admiring the art on display. Although the Tate’s latest piece, Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas, was still being finished off (it opens today), we could still get a pretty good view of it. Big. Very big. 155 metres long and 10-storeys high big. I hope that people will be able to whisper into one end of it, and have their voice amplified at the other end. If not, then I’m not quite sure I see the point. If it was only a metre long, no one would take much notice of it; therefore its scale is what ‘makes’ it — and is the sheer size of a work enough to make it ‘good’ art? Not entirely convinced. Still, it’s well worth seeing, if purely to appreciate the feat of engineering.

After soaking up a couple of hours of culture, we decided to go soak up more booze, and wandered along the Thames to Gabriel’s Wharf, where we supped a few light ales and went over Si’s speech for his forthcoming best man role.

Finally, I should also point out that a made a bit of a Dumbass Dave typo the other day when mentioning the gSmart Mini camera — I quoted a price of thirty pounds, but that was a very rough figure, and in fact the true cost is about £45 when you take VAT and P&P into consideration. Still dirt cheap, all things considered.

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