Mahinda’s Little World

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My ears are ringing. I went to a gig last night - The Cooper Temple Clause, in fact. It had been ages since I’d last gone to a gig, so I’m pleased it was a good one.

I didn’t actually know any of their songs, save for vaguely recognising their last encore number - Pete had dragged me along, with the promise of lending me an album or two a bit beforehand. I’d forgotten to chase this up.

The best way to describe them is sort of rocky guitar-based indie stuff with a hint of 80s Gary Numan style synth. It works, strangely enough, and featured a proper Rock Bassist. You know, the type who’s got the charisma of a frontman as opposed to skulking in a corner doing the bassist head-nod thing. You know what I mean.

That actually rounded off a pretty cultural few days…

Whores

That’ll get my blog some in-ter-esting hits

Thursday was Whorehouse day. I went to see the SMAOS production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, in the studio at the RNCM - the same venue as for Rock Trial, i.e. a 100-cap studio space rather than a proper auditorium.

It was good, and worked pretty well. I can see why some people I know don’t regard it as the best musical ever, but it was definitely fun. SMAOS’s plethora of pretty ladies definitely helped!

Who else was there with us? Linden, Sam, Pete, Jon H, Gill, Kate, Ads, Jon D, Liz and Gesine were with us…and Steph came along as well. In an amusing turn of events, Ads asked me a few days later how long Steph and I had been going out - Jon D had somehow picked that one out of nowhere.

But I digress. The MUGSS bunch were rehearsing in the RNCM that evening too, so everyone got together in the bar afterwards for a few drinks…which spilled into Font bar and then SubSpace. All in all, a pretty fun night out!

Snow

Informer…or maybe not.

Fuelled by a very strong recommendation indeed from a workmate, Linden and I headed to the Lowry on Friday night, for Slava’s Snow Show.

It was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I grabbed one of the last 20 or so tickets. It was billed as "Cirque du Soleil but with snow and clowns"…so not built up at all, then.

Now, the girl on the end of the ticket line was very helpful indeed - it seemed that she’d already been in to see it, and she sold me on some "restricted view" seats that she reckoned would actually be far better than the leftover ones on the back row. Cheaper, too

We got there, and the seats were pretty good. Next to a follow-spot…and therein lay the problem. Shortly, an usherette (or whatever the PC term is!) came up to us, checking that we were in the correct seats. We were. She went off to check stuff.

The usherette returned, saying that she’d have to move us. She left again to consult the house manager.

The show started. A clown* shuffled on, attached to a big rope. He looked very much like Howell, who was supposedly in Canada. Hmmmm.

* This was presumably Slava, the Russian clown who wrote the whole thing.

The usherette returned, and asked us to follow her. We were taken to the house manager (a bald and humourless chap), who told us that we’d be moved into the stalls. We had to wait a few minutes before we could go in, and never found out to what the other end of the rope was attached

Eventually then, we were given seats about 15 rows back, right in the middle of the stalls - BONZER!

The rest of the show was pretty good, but nowhere near as good as it had been made out to be. Quite slow-paced, and pretty stunning visually, but just not all that great. Maybe it was the Friday night audience - too much random clapping at everything from a minor sound effect upwards, and the clowns played up to this. Hmmmmm.

At the end, giant balls (maybe 3m in diameter, and lots of smaller ones too) were thrown around in the audience…which was fun, with everyone in the stalls standing up and having to watch out! I got bopped on the head from behind a few times…I suppose I’m just not used to having balls come at me from behind. Linden was fine, however…

It’s only the people in the stalls who get to bounce the balls - lots of riff-raff from the cheap seats tried, but were turned away by the bald and humourless house manager. We left after 10 minutes or so…apparently the bouncing goes on for up to half an hour or so after the rest of the show has finished

As a first date (which, thankfully, it wasn’t), it would have been a disaster. Linden was hungry, we couldn’t find decent food during the interval, she talked about weeing alot, and ended up with seriously cheesy onion breath. Nice.

We joined the SMAOS bunch in the RNCM bar afterwards, and ended up going for a curry.

Punjab

The aforementioned curry was in Punjab, which seemed to be under new management. I was VERY disappointed. The food was nice enough, but Punjab was one of the few places left which stood out as being a bit different - their dishes had a different character from the generic Rusholme pap, and they did fantastic dosas as starters, which no-one else on the Curry Mile does.

Or at least, they did. They’ve gone generic. ‘Twas a sad sad day. Next time, it’s back to King Cobra.

I’m off to see Maria this weekend, and she drinks neat vodka, so I thought I’d get her a bottle of something nice - Zubrowka sprung to mind, of course, so I popped into Oddbin’s to check out their price. £17.99 for a litre, as it happens. However, I then saw this new stuff, Reyka, on offer - it was from Iceland, and I’d never had Icelandic vodka before:

Reyka is Iceland’s first ever [legally produced!] vodka.

The word derives form the Icelandic word for steam; it is geothermal steam that powers the distillery. They also use perhaps the purest water yet used in the production of vodka - drawn from a 4,000 year old lava field, it is so pure that it requires no treatment or demineralization, which most other distillers have to do.

Apparently the water used for Reyka is so pure that Volvic has a content of dissolved solids that’s five times higher than Reyka’s - Evian’s level is nearly 15 times higher.

Intrigued, I asked if I might have a closer look at the bottle.

"Of course" replied the chap behind the counter, and passed it over. His mate then pointed out that there was a freshly-opened bottle for tasting purposes. It seems that they have quite a large stock of spirits for that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was then handed the bottle and a wine glass (!) and told to help myself. I kept to probably just less than a shot (although it’s hard to judge), and gave it a swirl. The aroma was lovely, and the taste was even better - one of the fullest-bodied vodkas I’ve ever had, and definitely the smoothest I’ve ever had. I’m not a straight vodka drinker in general, even when it’s chilled, and this was at room temperature.

Oddbin’s bloke hadn’t sampled it either, so he had some too. We agreed that it was great. Very tasty and UNBELIEVABLY smooth.

Needless to say, I bought a bottle. £13.99 well spent.

I might visit that particular establishment more often!