Last Night, Late Night, Shopping in Truro

Myself and the "others" went out last night for the first night of Christmas shopping in the city.

The last time I went late night shopping in Truro I seem to remember being about 15 and spending the entire time in Games Workshop looking at new "orc friends".

What can I say, even though it's not even December the energy and festivity was pretty thick on the ground. The lights looked fab. People seemed happy. There were real reindeer. Even Father Christmas looked real.

So there we go. Wednesday nights up until Christmas, Truro City Zone One. Bring on the minces! (I might not be so enthusiastic in 2 weeks when, yet again, it dawns on me, about the 17th, that Christmas has been hijacked/subsumed by the corporate whores of the vast hegemony with the soul aim to feed us, the consumers, stuff that we can spend on, so that the big wheel of eternal economic growth keeps turning and we, the serfs of TK Max, with our proud medals of Boots Points and M&S Vouchers, gladly suck on the big yuletide log until Santa unloads his sack down our chimnies once more. Vive La Apathy!)

Truro Festival Of Lights, 2007

I have just got back from the festival of lights, a procession of marching sambesque bands. Think Notting Hill with many fewer black people, less police and more drizzle. It was my first Festival of Lights, I wasn't expecting much to be honest. Cold, moribund children with fading torches...



.... but how wrong I was.

It was quite a spectacle musically, visually and just as a happening. The effort that people from as far a field as Probus put in was just... well, everyone should be proud (apart from Idles who were VERY conspicuous in their unilluminating absence)


Put your hands up for this city.

Review: Andrew Bate, Singing at the Kazbah, Truro

Yon city 'pon the three rivers has renown for many things. The mighty cathedral. Chi-Chi "Little Brighton" and laying on three rivers- even though it only looks like one.

However, it isn't famed for its live music....

Thus, it was with some surprise that when we entered into the hostelry known as the Kazbah last eve' - with nary a Moor in sight - we did meet a vocal song-smith who goes by the name of Andrew Bate. A song-smith not only vocal, but local - in the sense he is from Par.

And his singing was certainly above par, quite far above, in fact. As was much of the singing far above the normal octavian range. For truth be told, oft times his harmonies could have emanated from the silken chords of a Venetian eunuch.

The young man not only wove an audible magic but he did so with a presence and elan that could have sustained the finest halls er faces did smile. But the notion of smile....well....therein... my dear reader... lays the nub of the dub.


Life and love are so very rare, in this universe of ours. And youth so short and old so sick. And all those lives that never had the chance to live, and all those cut so quick. And then those who live long and lonely and lost and loosing...


....that when I see a handsome singer/songwriter/catamite (Mum, I'm not gay!), who looks in good health, clearly has talent, I assume good prospect.... and he seems to have the attentions of an attractive female human...

... I ponder... as I listen... to this melody and it's moribund majesty... why oh why... don't you smile... why do you cry when you sing, but instead of tears you cry words... why... oh why... so glum?





I spoke to him after the gig and he wasn't glum, in fact he seemed quite a happy chappy.



Note to self - the performance is not always the actuality.

Review: Thursday's Dinner at Manning's, Truro

Thursday nights are normally "watch Tuesday's Dragon's Den on 'video and deploy the tadpole belly creme just before my Domestic Assistant comes in from Yoga" night.


But not tonight.

Tonight we were going for dinner with my domestic assistant's sewing instructor, Norma. Having sampled pretty much all of the City's eateries we deiced to go, on recommendation, to Manning's.

I am not the pleasant %^$£&^

My restaurant rule number seven, as readers of this blog will know, is always eat pheasant if its on the menu unless monkfish is also. Well... Mannings threw me a bit of a curveball, because it had partridge, which is a member of the pheasant family, but, is not actually a pheasant.

What was I to do?

I bent and then followed the rule and ordered the partridge. Other people I was with ordered other stuff which was invariably described as abso-yummilicious. The eldest member the party, who was 63 and had thus eaten many meals proclaimed, and I quote, "One of the nicest meals I have ever had."



All in all... a resounding success.... but what about my partridge?

Partridge?

Look at this for a tasty partridgey meal:






Oh no, not that...


...thats me...

...just showing off

............ trying to trick you for a moment into thinking that was my partridge... it wasn't... no way...it was just part of my partridge.

... this was my partridge:




Now that's what I call a slow roasted partridge served with a rustic sausage and bean cassoulet! Hum-dinger. But as well as be fully sated as we all were, the evening at Mannings also taught me that there really is a "space of taste" between quail and pheasant. Bravo!

Mannings

Currently the Best Restaurant in Truro

Lemon Street, Truro
01872242453

Pizza Express is no longer legally compatible with midcorwall.com

I should at this very moment be working on the copy for work's new website. I should have just got back from a meal at Pizza Express with some people I know quite well. But instead I am writing this post.

We went for a meal at Pizza Express in Truro. We arrived just before six, as some of the business consultants I was with were less than 5 years old. We stood for about two minutes, maybe a bit more. Standing like lemons (all be it sexy lemons, apart from the under 5's) we decided we would take a seat at the nearest available table. We sat, nobody came. Tick, tock, went the clock.

I suggested, after about seven minutes, that we should leave, but my social engagement advisor recommended against that "again". After fifteen minutes my "lets bail this pile and get some service" barometer was just about to flip into action when one of the staff came over to us...

You know that look when you break into someone's home, do a full scale multi-bedroom Bobby Sands, then abuse every pet they own and then sit doggy-style-naked in their lounge covered head to toe in THEIR mayonnaise waiting until they come home... well... we got that look here. That exact look. It gave me a fricking flash back to '02, thats for sure. So anyways... the look turned into a question... "Have you reserved this table?"

"Ummm... No... but equally we have been here for fifteen minutes with not a jot of our ontological status being acknowledged..."

"You can't sit here... this table is reserved." (nod to the door).

And then he walked away. Now, I'm paraphrasing the encounter a bit... but that's pretty much how it was. The rest of my party were soon out the door... slightly hungry but dignity still very much intact (apart from the youngest member of the business meeting who was constantly muttering on about everything she could apprehend being "thsthoopid").

I decided to hang back and confront Caesar herself. The manageress had a pleasant smile and manner, not dissimilar to those in charge of other restaurants in the City.... but she had a hollowness to her convictions. I felt I was speaking into the rancid, cavernous heart of the hegemony... and the only echo... was a whimper of the manageress clinging on to what remained of her establishment's consumer integrity.

It's funny, because last year we went there, and were served by the same person who was so rude to us tonight. All was good... and it's fair to say that meal played a bit part in one of the days that tipped us to agree, "let's move to Truro."

I've just done some quick research on the Pizza Express chain. Last year, it was part of essentially a family business running since the '60s.... but this year... to quote Wikipedia, Pizza Express was "taken private by private equity group Cinven in 2007." I see a pattern.

We are part of a vast and interconnected system of people with human rights and businesses with people's rights (corporations). I am not a lefty-let's-all-live-in-a-Tipi-Village-in-Wales kind of a guy. I'm not even anti-globalism; in order to satisfy our billions we need efficient global business systems and a free market.

But I do appreciate that there is a tension between what's best for us as individuals and what's best for us as consumers in this deep sea of consumption. The crux of the thin-crust is that we always... always... have the right not to consume. And so....

This blog is published under the Creative Commons Share Alike license, which basically means you can do what you want with it so long as you don't claim it to be your own work. But I am, as of this moment adding a new clause:

• By reading this work I will not eat at Pizza Express.

Note that this is not a moral clause, it's legal. I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Pizza Express, I'm saying legally, if you read this blog you are partaking in the agreement of a license that forbids it.

I digress... we needed another venue for our meeting and headed to that delightful pillar of the
Truro restaurant scene, the One Eyed Cat. What can I say; the food was fantastic as always, as was the service. Interestingly for the evening there was a "moot point" on the bill which the restaurant resolved impeccably.

A final note to fans of Pizza Express, thanks for reading midcornwall.com over the last three decades, enjoy your lives.

I have just been to the Truro City Firework display and I wrote a poem my phone.

The display starts Napleolataen
Mint blooms.
Chinese gallows inline hangs.
A dozen red against the dark.
Cylons scream in spirals.
Sky striping. Bursts High altitude
But not that high in amplitude
Or fortitude or attitude.
Or bulk.
Rapid incandescence.
Aerial Catherin wheels, fantastic!
Purple rain and purple haze.
Flames twist the sky.
Rat a tat tat trajectories.
Nebulous embers and then the sound...
Acoustic like Aphex
Crackling flame fountains
Spiders.
Ghostly smoking sea flowed with increasing entropy.
Glitter glitter... a pause mocks until Cylons return
Firing squad... Pyrotechnic pointalism.
Projectile Pixels haphazardous placed.
And I think of the futility...
In fireworks there is no utility.
The cost in time.
The man in the mine.
To process. The refine.
I saw many Picassos not a week go.
There is none of that here.
This is not an aesthetic aesthetic.
This is all of the gut
and of the eyes
and in my ears.
Pure experience without the raw feel.
Irrational and REAL. HUMAN.
20 mins and done. What fun.

Last Night We Went To Pippas because...

it was a party for my domestic assistant's birthday.

The meal was good... well the meal would have been good... apart from the fact th the fajitas had way way too much rosemary. This isn't winging, there was more herbs on those babies than in a Bob Marly '74. A herbaceous onslaught, that, were it not for the fact that there is no fajitas in "Wine Women and Song", would have ruined the night, and perhaps the next year.

After the savory sacrilege we left the restaurant and ascended to the D>I>S>C>O where, with not a whippersnapper in sight, we danced. Luckily for the ladies present, I stumbled upon a dance floor lay line that increased my funk by 17%.


After Pippas we scored some prime class A's from a 16 year old on a stolen bike. Then we went to a squat party in Carn Brea with some polish strippers, warm Vodka Orange mix (with extra washback) in a plastic bottle and ended up in a shared K hole of some considerable beauty. The bitter taste of Rosemary a thread of disappointment. (Note, this paragraph might not have happened)