I had a christmas present yesterday, tickets to see Stewart Lee's new show Much A-Stew About Nothing at the Leicester Square Theatre and it was pretty much my dream day out, thank you the wife!
We dropped the boys off early with Granny and Grandpa - number two son was staying there for the night, Number one son was going to stay with Elliott at Dean's house. Slow train to Waterloo East, just finding time to get a Network Card on the way and we're London bound...
It didn't look that promising at this point - first Clare dragged me into Fat Face as she had a voucher to spend, and then we found the South Bank food market was gone. Maybe just for the winter? Where do we get our chutneys from now..?
Next it picked up, we had a quick lunch in Eat, then headed in to Gordon's Wine Bar which is quite ace, surprised that Clare had not been before. I have only been a few times, but it's a great place. Just a door from street level, that is shut, so the place looks closed, but go down some side steps and you're in a dank and mouldy cellar. Doesn't it sound great? I think they specialise more in port and sherry but they have quite a good wine range, much better than your average pub. They have an excellent range of cheese too if that is your thing.
Next stop Cyber Candy in the hope of finding some sweets for the boys that also matched the criteria of "something cone shaped" which we needed for Number one son's homework. We got a cornetto and some other bits and pieces for the boys, plus some very dodgy sounding Tabasco chocolate, which I will take into work.
We were still too early for the comedy, because we had such a quick lunch, so we had time for one in The Harp, which is an amazing pub for real ale and cider. I had a brace of halves, one of which was poured out of a scrumpy jug with a hand written label on it, quality stuff.
Stewart Lee was excellent as always. The format of this show was three half hour sets, each one being the material from an episode of his forthcoming series. I assume it is Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle again. We loved the gig, very funny, but it seemed that he himself did not think it was going so well. Hard to tell if he really thought this or if this was part of his routine, I suspect mosly the latter, as I'm sure he's done this before. I spoke to him briefly after the show (he was doing merchandise, I didn't groupie around the stage door or anything) and he said again it was an odd sort of show. I got a copy of Fist of Fun series two at last, I hope it is as good as I remember...
After the show we found somewhere AMAZING for dinner - Tibit's1 on Heddon Street. All vegetarian, mostly vegan and organised in such a way that you help yourself to the huge range of food and pay for the weight of your plate. So we got to try a bit of everything, and it was all ace, and it was very good value too. We put together an assiete of puddings too. We are definitely heading here next time we are in London. Hmm I didn't know Veganuary was a thing. As you serve yourself it's quite efficient too, only as much hanging around as you want. So we had time to head back to The Harp for one more before heading home.
We left London early enough to be home in time to watch The Bridge when we got in. And as I fell asleep on the train, the journey just flew by too. Result!
My best day out for ages, thank you again the wife.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town, Kent. Married and father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do javascript / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.