Theatre/Food 2011 – Playboy of the Western World, Baltic, London…

Saturday, 21st August 2011 -Old Vic Theatre, Baltic, London I NEVER win anything. Never. That said, after 51 years where the only thing I ever won was a set of spoons (don’t ask) this last 12 months I’ve been having far more success. £100 there, a Waitrose Christmas cake here, tickets for the Ideal Home…

Travel 2011 – Macau, Hong Kong, Days 10 and 11

Monday 21st November Considering the lateness of the night before, I was surprised to wake up around 08:00, and even more surprised that I actually felt well enough to have breakfast. Lynne refused to move so I went alone, wondering if the rest of the party would make it or not. They did and we…

Travel 2011 – Macau, Day 8

Sunday November 20th Sunday morning was not funny. The alarm went off far too early and I dragged my somewhat reluctant self to Melco, arriving there just after 07:00 only to find that the 07:15 start was actually an 07:30 start and that actually by the time the track was clear, it was really an…

Travel 2011 – Macau, Day 6

Friday 18th November Again the day was mostly taken up with the motor racing, which won’t of course come as the slightest surprise to anyone who knows me. This time we were out at Sao Francisco at the”green house”2, a house that was bought by the government to stop development there. In its time it’s…

Travel 2011 – Macau, Day 5

Thursday 17th November Thursday wasn’t too early a start for anybody – unless theoretically the 45th Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix was any concern of yours. I say theoretically because it was very quickly obvious that whatever practice and qualifying sessions were going to happen, the bikes would not be among them. The sheer amount of…

Travel 2011 – Macau, Day 2

Monday November 14th Monday morning wasn’t anywhere near as painful as it could have been for some odd reason and when the alarm went off at 9 am we both got up cheerfully enough and wandered down to breakfast. The IFT breakfast’s are not the biggest spread you’ll ever find but – and this is…

Travel 2011 – Hong Kong, Macau, Day 1

Time to blog (or even ramble I think) about the 2011 Macau trip (and time for my audience to run away screaming perhaps). Anyway… Saturday November 12th/Sunday November 13th We set off late on Saturday evening, flying out at 21:05 with those very fine folk from Air New Zealand. Now long haul flying is never…

Travel 2011 – Nurburg, Adenau, Jezus-Eik, Germany, Belgium

Thursday, 30th June/Monday, 4th July 2011 – Nurburg, Adenau, Jezus-Eik, Germany, Belgium It occurred to me that I never did finish talking about Monza, and it’s too far away now. So instead I’ll go into detail about the last two trips, knowing that we have another two over the next three weeks. We started July…

Food 2011 – Artisan, Hessle

Sunday, 22nd May 2011 – Artisan, Hessle It wasn’t the easiest of weekends. We spent the early part of Friday morning failing to solve Elaine’s bathroom dilemma by proposing more questions than solutions before finally heading to Hull to see what’s been happening with the house since January when the work started to put it…

Food 2011 – La Mirabelle, Harrogate

Thursday, 19th May 2011 – La Mirabelle, Harrogate Thursday I ended up working anyway in the morning, and in the afternoon we drove up to North Yorkshire to visit friends and go out for dinner at La Mirabelle in Harrogate. This was something we’d planned from sometime back in January when we heard they were…