Quiet, Because Busy
Posted: Sat 13 August, 2016 Filed under: BurgerCrawl, D4D™, Day Trips, Do More, Domestic, Films, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Getting Organised, London, Single Life, Solo Dining, Travel Leave a comment »It’s been a quiet week chez D4D™, although that’s primarily been because life has been idiotically busy instead. In fact, all of August and September are ridiculous, with very little in the way of spare time. Weekday evenings are (generally, kinda/sorta) available, but weekends and so on are completely blocked out.
Last weekend was spent in London on the Saturday (including food at Benares, which was excellent) and then meeting friends on the Sunday. During the week I was then at the cinema one evening, back in London on another, and handling all the standard domestic tat in the meantime – as well as work, which wasn’t an easy week, with lots of rewrites and rethinks of stuff that had been written a while back.
This weekend, today was spent (again) in London, visiting Blues Kitchen and MeatMarket, and then seeing Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick Theatre. Tomorrow is likely to be a daytrip somewhere, and walking round or whatever.
From here, there’s another meal (this time at Hibiscus) and then a concert, a birthday event, and the Threepenny Opera at the National.
September is even dafter, including : Meatopia, watching The The’s “Infected” film, and seeing The Alchemist and Doctor Faustus – both at the Barbican, so I’m there three weeks on the trot, as I’ll use their parking for Meatopia as well. Finally, at the end of September, I actually have a week away, down in Cornwall. Much-needed currently, it has to be said.
I’ll be writing more stuff here to be going on with, but that’s why it’s been quiet round these parts over the last week or so.
Descriptions vs. Reality
Posted: Wed 3 August, 2016 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Solo Dining Leave a comment »I’ve written several times about some of the restaurant stuff I’ve been doing this year – and I now have my bookings sorted through to October – but there’s been one thing that’s bugging me, which I addressed a bit yesterday.
Some of the restaurants use OpenTable for their booking system – which is understandable, it must make life a lot easier to have all that side handled by someone else.
OpenTable offer a “points” system, so that after a certain number of meals booked through themselves, one can get a discount card/voucher etc. They specify it as “points with every booking made through Open Table”…
They say the same in two different places on the site
Only that’s not actually how it works. I’ve made several bookings – and honoured them by going to the restaurants and having the meals – and earned a grand total of sod-all from them.
So yesterday – having made yet another zero points booking – I got in touch with them, asking how they justified saying “Every booking gets points” when it was so blatantly untrue.
Initially they came back saying “Oh, that’s only for bookings directly through OpenTable, not for when you’ve come through from another site”. So I tried another booking for the same restaurant, but direct through the site. Lo and behold, still zero points. So I got back in touch, and basically said “Bullshit“, with added screenshots and history to show the progress.
I’ve now had a further reply that can be summed up as “Oh shit. Yeah, there’s been a problem. We’re looking into it“.
It’ll be interesting to see if things do get fixed. For now, my account has been credited with the missing points, and we’ll see what happens with the upcoming bookings as well (the next one is happening this weekend) but at least they’re now aware of the problem.
Varied
Posted: Mon 18 July, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Food, Getting Organised, Milton Keynes, Solo Dining, Travel Leave a comment »It’s fair to say, the weekend just gone was pretty varied. Busy too, but definitely varied.
Friday evening was spent with friends seeing a small gig by Professor Elemental – very silly all round, but also very late, as he didn’t go on stage ’til 22:30 in the end. It meant I didn’t get home ’til nearly 2am…
Saturday morning was spent at the cinema, seeing the new Ghostbusters film. (Small review : Enjoyed it a lot, far more than I expected to, and it’s just entertaining silliness) Then in the evening I was over in Cambridge, going for a thoroughly enjoyable and fantastic meal at Midsummer House.
Then on Sunday I was awake by 6am, and generally too warm. So one “oh sod it” moment later, I was on the way down to Whitstable and Tankerton, and spent the day by the beach, roasting quietly. Happily and fortuitously, it turned out that Whitstable Castle was having a food fair, so that was lunch sorted. And then mid-afternoon driving home, looking at all the queues on the other side of the road and thanking God I wasn’t involved in it all, considering how hot it still was.
Finishing off with a quiet evening catching up on recorded TV etc., it was a very pleasant weekend – but definitely surrounded by all the random…
Another Culture Weekend
Posted: Mon 13 June, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Food, London, People, Single Life, Solo Dining, Theatre, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »The weekend just gone turned out to be another of my more “Culture”-based ones, and was thoroughly enjoyable.
Saturday involved a drive down to Bray in Berkshire, for a meal at the Waterside Inn. Having been quite disappointed earlier in the year by the three-Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse restaurant at the Dorchester in London, I’d decided I should try another one for comparison purposes, and opted for the Waterside, as it’s had those three stars for thirty years now.
Safe to say, I’m very glad I did – I had a fab time (including getting to meet and have a quick chat with Michel Roux) and really enjoyed the entire meal. Sadly – although understandably – they don’t allow phones/cameras or photos in the dining room, so I couldn’t do my usual of taking a pic of each course, so you’ve been spared that ordeal, but it was definitely still brilliant.
Then on Sunday I went down to London, and saw Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe – and thoroughly enjoyed that, too. I’m still very much a newcomer to Shakespeare in general, so can’t comment on how it’s been done this time in comparison to other staging etc., all I can do is say that I found it great, and a brilliant production. The weather wasn’t the best, so I was glad to be in the galleries rather than the standing area – although the seats were still bloody uncomfortable due to other people spreading themselves wide, and I ended up standing instead for the second half.
I’d done some other food/burger-based bits either side of the main play, so ended up walking about 17km during the day, but that’s just me and my own idiocies and preferences.
All told though, a decent weekend – and quite quiet/easy by my standards, with less driving and so on. An all-round win, in my opinion. 🙂
Weekend Travel – Sunday
Posted: Thu 5 May, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, London, Single Life, Solo Dining, Travel Leave a comment »Having done Manchester on Saturday, I then went down to London on Sunday – I’d made plans and reservations for the early evening, but went down early because, frankly, I’m a bad, bad man.
The main objective was the next Michelin-starred place on my list-of-sorts, the two-starred Hélène Darroze at the Connaught Hotel. That had been booked for a while, and I’ve been looking forward to it for ages.
But then another of my favourite places, Blues Kitchen, announced their latest burger special, the Piskey Whickle, which was introduced on Sunday.
So that just had to be done…
It ended up that I went in earlier than expected, then walked to Blues Kitchen (3 miles, from Euston) for the special, and then across London (another 4 miles) to vegetate around Berkeley Square for a while until it was time for the evening meal. Frankly, it was the only way I could justify doing both on the same day, but as I had the time and the inclination, why not?
The meal at Darroze was spectacular – I would say it’s now the best place I’ve been to on this project, and I massively enjoyed the entire experience. The only exception was my first instance of being a messy sod in a Michelin-starred place – a piece of food fell off my fork, straight into a sauce that can only be described as “hyper-green” – splat. Jackson Pollock all over the pristine white tablecloth. ‘If you’re going to do it, do it with style‘, that’s my motto.
Because of the time, I wussed out of walking back to Euston, so got the tube from Green Park back to Euston, and then a train home – again, all remarkably smooth, and a contented end to a fantastic weekend…
Crawling
Posted: Sat 26 March, 2016 Filed under: BurgerCrawl, Day Trips, Domestic, Food, Single Life, Travel Leave a comment »Today I’m off down to London with a couple of friends, doing another Burger Crawl.
It’s been organised by one of the others, so I’ve no idea what the full plan/route is yet, but it should be fun.
Blistered
Posted: Fri 12 February, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Health, Single Life, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This week, I went to a restaurant that insisted on a certain level of dress-code. Nothing too epic, thankfully, but it turned out my standard footwear (Cat boots) wouldn’t have been allowed in, so I needed to buy some new dress shoes, or at least thin-soled ‘smart’ shoes.
It was semi-short notice, so I didn’t have the chance to wear them in properly – and I knew it would cause issues.
I managed to plan most of it so I didn’t have to walk as far as I normally would’ve done (had I been allowed to wear my normal, comfortable shoes) and I’m glad I did, because I still ended up with a sod-load of blisters along the way.
Weirdly, both my little toes ended up blistered, and I’m really not sure how that happened. The worst one is on one heel, about the size of a 50p piece. On that one, thank God for Compeed – their blister plasters are creepy as chuff, but bloody hell, do they work.
I know they’ll all heal up this week – it’s just a massive pain in the tits while they’re around. Such is life.
(And no, the meal wasn’t really worth the hassle of new shoes and blistered feet. Sad, but true – it was good, but not brilliant, which is galling when it’s a place that’s so highly rated all round)