venta

Years and years ago I remember to chatting to timeplease here (I've never met him in person), and him recommending I visit the Pembury Tavern in Hackney (which I believe he ran/runs/owns/invented). It's very much the wrong side of London, and I never have, until last weekend when we were braving the perils of the East End to go to the Oddbox Weekender in Dalston.

Having failed to really consider what time pubs might open, we arrived at the Pembury just as its shutters were going up. I can now report it has a large array of handpumps selling excellent beer (and some cider, quality untested by me), serves good food from an interesting menu, has lovely graffiti on the walls and has a bar billiards table in quite unusually excellent nick. We drank, ate, and played bar billiards before scampering off to see bands. The posters on the wall advertise that it has a chess club, and zenithed tells me it's also board game-friendly. If anyone is in touch with TimePlease, tell him he was right, and it's a bloomin' excellent pub.

The Shacklewell Arms is slightly less excellent, but does have a moderately sized, muralled and only faintly damp "Dance Hall" at the back. And in it, we saw a number of bands which I will memorialise with mild brevity...

( Here )

I'm going to post about Whitby before I post about holidaying in Northumberland, because there's a greater danger I'll forget who the bands were. Also, this LJ is chronically non-chronological these days. I mean, the dairy-free custard tarts were weeks ago now and I still haven't written about them...

( So, to Whitby! )

A quick - and perhaps not very good - game for a Friday afternoon. This is a challenge that (for no very good reason) I set myself last night:

Can you think of a band-name which consists of five or more words?

Rules:

- You can't count a leading 'the'.
- Names of the form 'N and the Ms' don't count; names containing 'and' are disallowed if it is used to link two concepts together. Four Poofs And A Piano (disappointingly) don't count.
- It must be a real band, with "proper" evidence of its existence. Ken Dodd's Dad's Dog's Dead is a bloody marvellous band-name, but I'm not yet 100% convinced that they ever really existed for any purpose other than having a great name.
- Must be the band's usual name. The more bizarre flights of fancy occasionally used by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band probably don't count.
- Preferably not a descriptive name (eg Royal College of Music Baroque Orchestra). I can't come up with a good rule to cover this, it's... just a bit dull as an answer.
- Probably other constraints which I will make up capriciously on the spur of the moment.

I was surprised to find I could only think of three (though I have come up with a fourth while writing this, although I know nowt about them beyond d_floorlandmine liking them...)

So, on Saturday night I put on my best spotty dress and went out...

( Rock 'n' Bowl @ Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes )

Been to Whitby for the goth weekend again...

( Bands )

( Cake )

( People )