Thursday

Hola.

I'm having a post drink rollup, and listening to Steve's latest mix off Allez Allez.

On Sunday I went on a date at a French cinema in Kensington, with a girl off t'internet. Meeting up in person with people off the internet is weird.. in general they never quite balance out with the picture you envisage in your head. The girl in question was nice, but there was no real chemistry. The date seemed misconceived too. We went and saw a pretty heavy film called 'Salvador' which told the story of a freedom fighter who became the last person to be executed under Franco's crooked regime in Spain.

It was good, though not first date material at all. It lasted the best part of three hours, and culminated in the agonising execution of the central character by garotte, whereby a bolt was screwed into his neck through a plank of wood, until his spine snapped. The cinema was a converted theatre, and the screen was pretty low, the angle of the seating relatively flat. I was sat directly behind quite a tall person, and had to resort to dodging left to right to read each line of dialogue on either side of his head. Once the film had finished there was a QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION, which I might have forgone for a drink, though my date wanted to stick around.

It was kind of interesting hearing what the director had to say, though much like politics, the people who elected to ask questions weren't necessarily the ones I'd want to hear. At least half of them just congratulated the director on the film, and offered up their opinion on, say, Spain. One Spaniard criticised the director for focussing on this story and not dealing with another execution that took place simultaneously. All in all it wasn't very enlightening at all. We stumbled out of the theatre, three and a half hours later and went our separate ways.

On Monday night I watched the new series of Nigella Lawson.. which was fucking weird, but simultaneously hilarious. Advertising's first lady was on top form, rolling doe eyes coyly at camera, expertly gyrating her hips round a granite topped kitchen island, and caressing ingredients like the unmet flesh of pay-per-view voyeurs.

I'd already read that they'd recreated her and Chazza Saatchi's posho West London kitchen in some Beeb studio somewhere.. And the sense of farce this created was only highlighted by soft-focus footage of her sashaying into a variety of overtly stagey 'food' scenarios (West London back garden cook-out; Yum/mum/Ladies-who-lunch lunch). Only, now the seeds of doubt had been planted, I couldn't quite fathom whether her 'friends' represented some genuine elite coterie of the media rich, or were in fact a rag tag dirty dozen or so of BBC extras. Probably the former but who knows?

Last night trooped off to West Hampstead after lunch, to connect with Will and Sam, and Glenn, who was visiting from Australia (and whom I'd met when I went over for their wedding). We got a curry takeaway, before me and Will headed down to the Czech bar near the tube station.

The Czech bar is one of those places I've been going to almost as long as I've been visiting London, and it remains a satisfying constant. A bar where, when it's busy, they constantly fill foamy steins of beer to dispense to an eager congregation, inscrutable televison whitters in the corner, and the menu seems to consist in the main of dishes structured around pork belly. We got there just in time for last orders, after which I caught the last tube home.

Last night was chilled out, and tonight I met up with Ade and Rach for a drink at The Hermits. I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. Possibly going clubbing on Saturday.. we'll see.