Day two of our big London weekender, Saturday, the first full day. We got a bus into Covent Garden to see how christmassy that was. Nice decore in the covered market, and obvs very busy. The boys spent some of their christmas money in advance, one on a game and one on some pokemon cards. The game is going to last a bit longer, it's not been played yet but the pokemon cards have been opened and discarded already. Nto quite sure what he's after by opening these packs but he's not finding it. Is there a Willy Wonka golden ticket out there somewhere?
We went to an unchristmassy food market on the South Bank and then proper christmas market nearby, with traditional christmas fairground and things. Wait, that's not really traditional is it? It was all a bit much, but we did manage some mulled wine here. We saw the first of FOUR protests on Westminster Bridge, a huge number of cyclists were blocking it, right by Parliament Square. This was a short lived protest, they disbanded quite quickly, an unofficial one I think. Pubs very busy round here but we got lucky joining someone's table in The Clarence, Whitehall. We'd had enough walking now so sat and played cards for an hour or two. It's nice to see places busy but I kept feeling sorry for people coming into the pub hoping to find a table only to be turned away. We found and booked an Italian restaurant back near Kings Cross, so we had a plan for where to go next.
The restaurant was Nenno, a bit more cafe-ish than full on restaurant, but really nice, good food. We went in The Charles The First at some point, wasi t before or after dinner though? Just for a half, but a really good half. Aha, it was before dinner, as I see a picture I took. They had Burrow Hill cider on draft, this is the one from the Glastonbury cider bus, but I didn't see it until I'd ordered by beer. And then I didn't see until I looked at the picture later that it's "Half And Half", which is how I ordered it at Glastonbury. Half a pint of dry cider and half a pint of the medium. I wish I was back at Glastonbury again. It's cold here today.
We dropped the boys back at the hotel and tried to set them up to watch Stranger Things via wife's phone on the hotel TV, but in the end they just watched on the phone itself. Then we went to the gig, via another pub. The Queens Head calls itself the best pub in London and it might be right. Great real ale and cider in there, and a fire, and games, and a nice crowd. Several people here for the David Devant gig, including most of the band themselves. I went over to say hi, hope you remember me, and pleased that they did. It's probably been twenty years since I've spoken to them.
In to the gig itself and it was great. Someone's uploaded a setlist:
Rough Magic
Parallel Universe
This Is for Real
Contact
Social Comet
My Soul's Window
Ballroom
Sublime
One Track Mind
Cookie (Don't Cry for Me)
Pimlico
Ginger
Don't Tell Me
Miscellaneous
I'm Not Even Going to Try
I don't know all of those songs, but most of them. They gave me a shout out from the stage, dedicated a song to me, but what song was it? I was very pleased with this.
Back to the hotel, and the boys had luckily survived.
Next day we went to Camden, walked there up the canal. Camden market is not as good as I remember, even the boys were not impressed. They did find a place to play Mario Kart, but I did not find the christmas jumper I thought I would, and I couldn't be bothered to look at records. Everywhere a bit too crowded. We went in Megadog, that is fin, but we did not buy any rave wear. Everyone just thinking about food again now as we didn't have the big breakfast today, but everyone wanted different things. One had an expensive Nando's and one had an even more expensive Five Guys, and then we're back to about where I updated yesterday. Train home, eating a sandwich as we go, and then home to unpacking and washing and getting ready for work.
I took loads of pictures at the gig, I'll choose one to upload here later.
Paulʼs blog - I live near Folkestone, Kent. Wed + father to two, I'm a full stack web engineer, + I do js / node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubs, running, restaurants, home automation 🤖 + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, telly 📺, squirrels, pirates ☠️, lego, + time travel.
🏷 real ale 🏷 beer 🏷 glastonbury 🏷 festival 🏷 work 🏷 vinyl 🏷 david devant
Yep, deliberately unstyled.