Any Colour You Like

I went to an espresso cup museum yesterday. Yes that is correct. Illy are a brand of espresso bean accredited with introducing the italian espresso concept to the rest of Europe in the early thirties and since then they have been making a very distinctive shape of espresso cup that is used in countless cafes around the world. Every year they send a box of these cups to an artist and see what they get back – it is usually something pretty wacky. These creations are then put on sale in strictly limited editions for sale to the public. I have the 2002 year cups in pride of place back home. Here are two of the coolest out of the hundreds we saw yesterday:

This is the School of Divinity adjacent to the Bodleian Library. Does anyone recognise what it is from the HP movies?

It was great to see a load of my family congregate in Oxford yesterday. We really do live far closer to each other than we remember and should definitely put more effort into visits. We had a very interesting ‘exclusive’ guided tour of the Bod and got to wander through all of the tunnels and see the huge underground darkly lit and pretty eerie archives with their miles of shelving. Being the engineer that I am, I was far less impressed by the fact that they had a complete collection since the 1700s of every edition of the Belfast Telegraph (amongst many other very random newspapers), and far more impressed by the victorian network of iron shelving supported by a corrugated ceiling of I-beams.

Eeek, I have been neglecting this blog majorly again. Only excuse – too much work. Anyway, I took some time out this weekend to go and see Elley and Avenue Q in London and it was hysterical. Go see it, especially people with a dave like sense of humour!

It was super great to get nearly everyone in one place round Orsi’s on Saturday. I still can’t believe someone fished out photos from the ball, Barcelona, Prague and all the other weird stuff we have been upto throughout the years. Looking at those, I definately need to get my hair cut soon! Thanks everyone, it wasn’t so hard to sort out so we should so it again.

Went up to Nottingham this weekend although the original plan of actually seeing the place completely didn’t happen. But we did go and see the new pixar movie ‘up’. It was very cute and in polarised 3d which is sooo much cooler than red and green 3d. Go see it for the heart warming entertainment you have come to expect from pixar.
Saturday went to Lord Byrons ansestoral home Newston Abbey. It has great gardens and a tea shop, but the best bit is spotting the peacocks up the top of the treas =)

Orsolya and dave are acting very grown up with their proper shiny new house. It is in a nice residential area and even has a turret on the corner. Unfortunately the most imaginative thing the builders decided to put up there was the boiler. But it was great catching up with orsi, hearing about ina’s placement in Cali, being inspired by ina’s mom’s sailing escapades and being jealous of cecilia’s travels in Honduras. And the best part was that all of this involved about five cafe visits per day!

Much cheese – the tastiest was a wensleydale with ginger and mango (not very tradtional I know)
A little cider – we are in the west country after all
Tasty tapas – god I love stuffed vine leaves
Passing port – sweet, rich and scrumptious in sample sizes
Many wines – the wine tasting lesson focused on a pinot noir from NZ which was beautifully acidic with little tannin. It left a tingle on the side of the mouth.

Good times =)

Went to the Banksy museam yesterday with Dave. It turns out that 9:30 is a pretty good time to turn up in order to minimise queuing; not long after the line was massive and when we got out the line stretched as far as MVB. Pretty incredible considering we are several months into the exhibition and this was a standard boring monday.

Most of the stuff on show was awesome, satirical and witty. Dave and I agree that the hardhat tortoise was one of the best. Some of it was less good, but it was entertaining wandering around the rest of the museum looking for Banksy pieces. Anyone in Brizzle or planing to visit should definitely definitely go. And it is free!

I went to the Globe with Claire to see Romeo and Juliet on thursday. Apart from having to stand up due to my strictly limited budget it was absolutely amazing. At the best of times you can’t go wrong with R+J, it has the classic heart wrenching story and some superb lines – but in the right setting and performed in the traditional way it was captivating. Oh, and the sword play was sooo cool, don’t know how they didn’t end up killing each other in rehearsals.

We also had pizza at the rumoured best pizzaria in London – Rossopomodoro in covent garden if you were wondering. Not sure it was quite as amazing as everyone made out, but it was very tasty indeed and highly recommended if you don’t mind some rather ‘abrupt’ service from the italian staff.

I know it is very sneaky going to London without seeing all the people I am supposed to see but I will be back to make up for it soon =)

As far as logic goes this wasn’t very. Ina flew back from Rome to Heathrow Wednesday morning at about 3am and took the national express back to Brizzle. By 3pm we were on the train to Paddington at a cost of about £11 each. We then when to a sushi bar near bond street for some  dinner – it was very good by the way. Next it was the tube to the Brixton Windmill which is a very strange pub/live music venue. There was a complete cross section of people there, from 60yr old motorcyclists to punk rockers to tourists to swish middle aged people… and us of course.

We were there to see the Veils start their tour in support of their upcoming third album. And what an amazing concert it was! We knew it was going to be, but there you go. The audience never got a breather from the intensity, regardless of whether the band were playing emotion-dripping ballads or raging torrents of sound. The new material is going to be classic but definitely a bit weird. It was all quite random really, and the singer even came in his wellington boots.

Finn Andrews of the Veils

And then we had to rush away at the end of the set to get the last National Express home (£16). This involved a somewhat exciting £15 taxi journey though the snowy London back streets and over the speed bumps. When we got close to Bristol we realised it was massively snowing (obviously we were also massively delayed). So we got to trudge through the swirling snow making virgin tracks through the whole of the centre. Outside Lounge people were starting to emerge from their student night and indulging in a massive snowball fight in the middle of Park Street.

Ina's street

Ironically, Ina had bought the tickets for Tuesday nights show which turned out to be canceled due to the weather. She originally hadn’t realised she would still be in Italy so we bought a second set of tickets for Wednesday. All in all the adventure cost about £60 for what was essentially a £5 concert. And I would have paid twice that it was so good!!