Edinburgh Trip
Posted: Tue 14 April, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »All told, the Edinburgh trip was fantastic. Thoroughly enjoyed all of it, even though I’m knackered by the end of it.
The travel itself was exceptionally smooth – and all on-time, which made it even better. Coasting past jammed traffic on the M1 (which I would’ve been using otherwise) was a particular high point.
The hotel was great (with the minor exception of a 2am fire alarm on the Saturday night, but these things happen) and everything generally went well.
Over the weekend I walked about 25km around Edinburgh – including being too lazy to wait for taxis and buses, and walking from Leith to the City Centre (and back) – as well as visiting two galleries, which was the kind of thing I wanted to do with the weekend.
Finally, the restaurant was absolutely brilliant. I really enjoyed the entire thing, and really want to go back (as well as going to other similar places) for a different menu and different choices. It also helped that the first person I saw as I went in was Tom Kitchin himself, which I figure is a pretty auspicious start.
So yes – a great weekend, and a great break. More will follow.
Bath DayTrip
Posted: Tue 23 December, 2014 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Food, Photography, Solo Dining, Travel Leave a comment »Continuing on from the last couple of day trips, this weekend I decided to go cross-country, and head to Bath. Still a two-hour drive (although the trip from Park&Ride to city centre was another twenty or so) but no coast. I lived in Bath for a period back before D4D™, but haven’t been back there since, so it was interesting to see what’d changed and so on.
I’d also decided, as part of the Solo Dining project I wrote about yesterday, to go and visit Grillstock in Bath and have one of the burgers that I’ve been interested in, but not got round to trying (because they’re only in Bath and Bristol) So that was part of the plan, but really it was more about visiting Bath in general.
The drive was pretty rotten – it started with fine weather, but got progressively wetter as I went on, but that wasn’t going to stop me.
I got there early – indeed, the first bus in from the Park and Ride – and wandered around most of the city centre, which turned out to be really pleasant.
Due to the time of year, it got pretty busy, but I spent most of my time avoiding the majority of people – I wasn’t interested in shopping, so didn’t have to hit those bits too hard, thankfully.
Even better, I got to wander around bits of the city I hadn’t seen before – in my previous time there, I’d more been focussed on getting from train station to home, and didn’t really get to explore the place that much. It wasn’t a great time in life, but there we go, I could’ve done more.
And as for that burger from Grillstock, oh hell yes, it was worth it…
The Lockjaw burger from Grillstock
Cutting Down (Again)
Posted: Mon 6 October, 2014 Filed under: Diet Coke, Domestic, Food, Health, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »While I’m off and job-hunting, one of my little side-projects is to (yet again) cut down on my intake of Diet Coke. It seems it’s a regular(ish) cycle with me, although I have cut it down significantly anyway from where it all was a few years ago.
As it is, I’m down to one 500ml bottle a day. It’ll vary again over time, but I’m quite happy with where it stands.
Chef
Posted: Fri 4 July, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Films, Food, Media, Reviews(ish), Seeing Films, Writing Leave a comment »Last night, I went to see Chef at the cinema. It’s brilliant – if you get the chance, go and see it.
Lots of films (or their reviews/pimps) bang on about being “the feel-good movie of the season/year/decade” – Chef doesn’t, but bloody well should. It’s ace.
The basic premise is simple – talented chef gets bored by humdrum menu/restaurant, has a meltdown at a restaurant reviewer, loses his job, goes off and launches a food van doing what he loves. But the acting, the script – and the food – all raise it up a level. I’ve never been in a film where you hear the audience groan with lust/envy at the presentation of food in the film. They did in Chef. Sure, it’s – kind of – a film for foodies, but it’s not just that. It’s one of those films where you can see that they had fun doing it, that it was an enjoyable thing to work on.
It’s funny, it’s sweet (without being mawkish, cloying, or any of the normal American emotional guff) and it’s just good.
Go and see it. It’s worth it.
Slow Progress
Posted: Sun 20 April, 2014 Filed under: 2013/14, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Health, Project 42, Weigh Less 4 Comments »This year, as I’ve said before (and on many occasions) I’ve been working at getting more exercise, with an aim of losing some weight, improving health, and all that standard crap. At the same time I’ve been keeping track of food intake and so on, which has been interesting rather than overly useful.
I’ve been doing fairly well for a start- I’m tending to average walking about 3-4 miles a day, including at least a mile round the village every day. I started off just making sure I did it even on days when I wasn’t in the mood, or when the weather was vile (and lord knows we’ve had plenty of those so far this year) so that I could establish it as routine, and thus have even less excuse when the weather was good.
It’s slow-going though – which I’m not happy about. I’m eating less than the ‘recommended’ calorie count, and I’m doing more exercise. But weight has stayed fairly stable. As it is, I’ve lost half a stone this year – which is better than it could be, but it’s still hard to monitor when it takes so sodding long.
This week has been different, because of stuffing my back last weekend (which is improving, but still insanely sore in the morning) I made the decision to lay off the walking etc. as much. It’s about halved from the usual, and I’ll actually be glad to get back to it.
Anyway, there’s been progress, it’s just been ridiculously slow. Next step, once I’m back to not hurting (pardon the pun) will be to get back on my bike again and do more work on that score as well. Maybe that’ll help things progress. We’ll see.