Dublin

Despite it being a hop, skip and a jump away, I'd never been to Dublin, so I was pleased to be going for my old friend Ade's stag do, which took place in Dublin the weekend just gone.

Dublin is something of a chiched destination for such an event to be sure but when I mooted Belfast, our source of inside info from the Emerald Isle itself said (and I quote) "I wouldn't consider going to get smashed in Dublin unless you actually want to get smashed up".

So we reverted to stereotype and went to Dublin.

We set off on Friday morning, a motley crew of advertising sales execs, web designers, Swedish web designers, jazz keyboardists and myself, and kicked off proceedings with a pint at Stanstead Airport at 11 am, which got the ball rolling nicely.

Other than that though, it was relatively tame. No drugs/stripping/prostitution/murder etc. though we did drink rather a lot. Oh, and no matching polo shirts with iron on transfers.

Dublin's a bit of an odd place, and I struggled to get a grasp of what it was really all about though. Nice enough to look at in the day – with an impressive portfolio of historical architecture – which my sources tell me has more overall continuity than, say, London, due large patches of it not being flattened by the Luftwaffe in the 2nd World war. But it did also look a bit like a large English town with a river and bridges (Shrewsbury anyone?) rather than a bustling metropolis. It also had green post boxes, which was a momentarily diverting novelty, and I can reveal that the pedestrian crossings emit a rapid-fire glockenspiel-esque sound which Orbital sampled for one of their tracks in the mid nineties.

It also had a slightly trashy resort feel in the evenings that weekend, what with all the vacationing inebriates staggering round, grunting at one another. I had sort of anticipated this though, and to be fair, we were at least part of the symptom, even if we hadn't chosen to wear outsized Guinness hats and puke in a fountain somewhere.

And be-jaysus it was expensive. I'd been warned about this but I think the 'penny dropped' when, shortly after we checked in, we went to get a bite to eat. Having opted for an restaurant selling traditional Irish 'fayre', I chose a 'Boxty' which is basically a filled pancake, which cost about sixteen quid. This was pretty much par for the course really, and while I can appreciate that people have got to make a living, the portions weren't hugely generous, and I couldn't quite kick the feeling that they'd seen us (the Brits) coming.

The boozers were pretty good mind – I really liked the John Kehoe on Saturday afternoon – and as for the Guiness (and Murphy's, and Beamish...) well, it tasted like another drink really – cool and ridiculously smooth.

Culturally, well, it wasn't that kind of holiday, though I did find a gallery/exhibition space round the corner from our hotel where they had a graphic art show on, consisting of posters responding to the brief of 'Flags and Anthems'. There was some excellent stuff and I bought a couple there and then.

We headed back Sunday, which was just in time. Sharing an apartment with six other guys smoking, sweating, drinking and farting has got a pretty limited sell by date really, and by that time I really wanted to go home and sleep properly. Easier said than done however, and the flight was delayed for about two hours, during which one of the people on our flight helpfully managed to spew all up and down the concourse. Which was nice.

Chilling out tonight. My housemates are out drinking at the Hermits Cave (sic) in the aftermath of the Camberwell Arts College degree show, and my housemate Jess didn't seem to be able to comprehend why I didn't want to go and booze in a pub stuffed to the gills with pissed up art students, but then, I did all that years ago.

Troy Bar, Trocadero, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

On Friday night I headed up to Shoreditch to meet an old(ish) friend, Sarah, who is over visiting from Spain, and who I hadn't seen in over three years. We met in the Troy bar near Hoxton square, where they have a jazz jam session on Fridays. It was good to catch up, though it did get really busy later on, and both her and my friend Al stepped to the stage to perform, him on keys, her singing at the very end. Altogether the music was fine, though some of the shifting lineups didn't really gel that much.

At closing time we parted ways, my friends to Wood Green, me to Camberwell. The weather was foul as I waited for the bus, a sparse rain, a keen bone cutting wind slapping reluctant pigeons into the air like grey litter. All around me the exiles from Shoreditch's clubbing Eden shuffling past: a girl in her mid-twenties pushing a chopper bike, lads in drainpipe jeans and hightops.

After about thirty minutes the bus rocked up, and for once didn't park up at the previous stop to thumb it's nose at everyone for ten minutes or so, though the downside of this was that it was already rammed with drunken revellers, especially upstairs, where from the sounds of it, someone had installed a mini German beer hall, replete with chanting and syncopated foot stomping.

I arrived home, drank a pint of water and slid into bed.

On Saturday it was a nice day and I fancied getting out and about so headed up to Portobello Road Market, where I bought my annual black beanie from
Maniyak's stall there, which I'll probably leave on a bus at some point in the next six months. They do incredible hats and scarves, and are one of those outfits who seem mostly to be 'big in Japan'. They don't seem to have most of the styles on their (wholesale only) website on their Portobello road stall though, annoyingly.

After that I headed into the centre of town to meet up with Sarah again, who I caught up with in the Trocadero centre of all places.

It's odd, though maybe not all that odd, that despite having worked mostly around Soho for the last three years, the square half mile or so around Leicester Square is a kind of geographical bindspot for me, marked "here be tourists" on my mental map. The Tracadero centre especially, though I do have vague memories of wandering in there with Will around seven or eight years ago. It's like a bit of blackpool, transplanted to central London – though more warren like – with a dizzying array of balconies, stairs, escalators and the like, all festooned with flashing lights and kiosks vending tat. It's sort of a modern consumerist rendition of one of Piranesi's imaginary prisons.

After I finally caught up with Sarah, we headed up to Denmark street where she got excited about guitars and I mostly stood about, before going for a fairly average meal in Chinatown, then a pint in The Angel, before parting ways.

At eight fifteen I met up with Will, Ade, Helen and Rachael at the Leicester Square Odeon, where we went to see 'Before The Devil Knows You're Dead', which I'd heard absolutely zero about, but was a really good film, though probably the bleakest thing I've seen since Requiem for a Dream. After that I got a lift back home.

Today's been Sunday-ish. Toast and coffee for breakfast, while reading the paper, then went for a walk up to East Dulwich, where I bought some wildly contrasting records (Silva Bullet's 'Bring Forth the Guillotine and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald's 'Porgy and Bess', since you ask) before heading to the Chinese Supermarket on Denmark Hill to get some tuna steak. The light at the minute is odd, and tinted with blue. Very melancholy and January.

Last weeks booking wound up, though I do have some work pencilled in (potentially) for the end of the month. This might be a week of re-jigging my CV and sending it out, along with tax stuff and more enjoyable personal projects.

Deptford, New Cross, Greenwich, Control

Yesterday I went to Greenwich to catch a film with Ed. We went via New Cross and Deptford. First stop was a Deptford high street, which gets full marks for its eccentric independent retailers, with quirky signage. Some points deducted for the high number of shut boozers, now masquerading as Halal butchers and the like.

From here we wandered over to St. Nicholas's church in whose graveyard Christopher Marlowe is buried. The gateposts are surmounted with carved skull and crossbones, which are reputed to be the inspiration behind the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger. The church itself is ancient, but appears a rather clumsy agglomeration of building styles – the result of indifferent repair work for gale and wartime damage last century.

We took the post-industrial approach to Greenwich, past gently rusting machinery, and new business parks behind anodised aluminium fencing. Further down the road we popped into a crumbling second hand bookshop on the outskirts of Greenwich, whose walls are shored up by wooden butresses. I really wanted to buy a Glenn Baxter original ink cartoon that was hanging on the wall, which was (unsurprisingly perhaps) not for sale. I'll probably go back as it seemed something of a treasure trove of secondhand books, and moreover, the owner is petiioning to keep it open as the developers move in, so its time might soon be up.

After arranging tickets for the film, we stopped for an ice cream, and wandered round the park, which was heaving with tourists taking pictures of the view of Canary Wharf from the hill beneath the observatory, before wandering back to catch the flick.

We saw Control, the new film about Joy Division, which I really enjoyed. I can't pretend I know all that much about the band, or indeed that part of Manchester's history, though a friend recently told me I should milk it for all its worth, so perhaps I should get brushing up. It's certainly cool; pretty beautiful, in a bleak black and white way. I also thought the acting was very good, though afterwards, Ed and Martin (who works at the Picturehouse) agreed that they thought the script pretty flimsy.

Working in Soho this week, and my social calendar seems pretty busy too. A potential last-minute reunion with some friends this evening, a 30th birthday tomorrow, and two club nights at the weekend, including the wrap party for the DLA Film Festival my housemate was involved in, and Allez Allez's night at the Amersham Arms in New Cross, which I passed yesterday, twice.

Beauty and The Beat

I went to one of the 'Beauty and the Beat' parties up in Dalston this weekend, which I've been meaning to catch for a while having checked out one of the DJs, Cedric Woo's mix online.

It was really good fun.. in a back of a pub on Kingsland Road. It was all fairly low rent, but that was part of the charm, and it actually reminded me slightly of the 'Herbal Tea Parties' in the mid 90s in Manchester, which took place in an Irish pub called The New Adri on the outskirts of Hulme. That night was always endearing because in spite of the dreadlocked ravers and slamming techno, it was recognisably 'a pub' complete with banquette seating. Also, the bar was generally staffed by big Irish ladies and the Guinness was very cheap.

Much the same here, and if anything more pared down, with the light show provided by Mathmos and an old school disco ball. Still, the music was really good, on an almost balearic tip, with lots of disco, and house with cool swishy sounds, and the 'Audiophile' sound system was very crisp. There was a really nice atmosphere too, with lots of dressed down raver types dancing away and smiling. Indeed, I didn't spot a single pair of drainpipe jeans or pointy shoes all night, and in fact, there was that rarest of sights (for London) at clubs.. slighly paunchy dudes dancing with their tops off! the last time I saw which was probably at a Megadog rave in 1995, and I was probably doing it myself.

It went on 'til five, but we cleared out four-ish. I'll probably go back at some point.. it was the most fun I've had clubbing for some time.

Today's been pretty damn laid back as a result, consisting in the main of food and films. I just watched House of Flying Daggers for the first time, which is visually arresting, though slightly bleaker than I anticipated.