Nirvana UK and Pearl Scam at the Electric Ballroom

Much to my delight I managed to get not only Louis but also Luka and Anna along to this gig at the Electric Ballroom. For the second Friday running. Only last time Louis had a to dash off so I had a drink and a visit to McDonalds with Luka and Anna. This time was other way around, Luka and Anna wee meeting friends but Louis wasn't in too much of a rush so we had the dubious pleasure of a McDonalds burger, with the much greater pleasure of a chat with Louis. 

Starting point was a decent queue to get in. Nirvana UK are popular. Mostly with people too young to have been alive when Kurt Cobain was.

Took a photo of Louis to prove to his mother that I had safely met him!

And, after a considerable wait as doors opened early, on came the support. The delightfully named Pearl Scam; a Pearl Jam tribute act. Problem here for me, and the kids too, is none of us knew much of Pearl Jam's output. But this band were really good, and the lead singer quite a character. He bounced around despite being a self-confessed "fat cunt". When he jumped down to join the audience, he knew it would be a struggle to get back up. And it was. Took a few attempts😂

After a pretty long set from Pearl Scam, on came Nirvana UK. And the house just rocked. I had promised Luka a mosh pit, and he wan't disappointed. The youngsters disappeared into the crowd, Luka and Anna into the maelstrom, Louis more to the periphery, having sensibly left me his jacket. And Louis happily came back to me after a while. It was all quite vigorous in there!

One thing with tribute acts is you never have to worry if they will play your favourite hit. They always pay all their hits. And very much in the style of the original band, even to the extent of looking a bit like the originals if they had eaten too many pies. But they certainly sound like the real thing.

At the end all the youngsters seemed to have a good time, as did all the heavily perspiring crowd. This is a top act. And from my personal viewpoint, in my position right a the front I was only 2 or 3 metres away from the heat of the battle, but didn't as much as receive a light jostle. Perfect

 So, last gig before Lisbon! See you on the other side folks.

Windsor - Beaumont Estate

 Every year, our department has an away day. This year the venue was described as Windsor. Although we saw nothing of Windsor. We got train to Egham (my first ever visit to Egham...) and then taxi to our hotel, which was De Vere Beaumont Estate. And very nice it was too. The entrance to the old stately home bit is suitably grand.

After being a country seat it became a catholic boarding school, accounting for somewhat over the top war memorial. And now a very extensive hotel with very modern wings. And popular with families as Legoland and Thorpe Park are nearby. There were a lot of kids about.

We duly listened to our lectures on how to grow our work, which generally doesn't actually happen because everyone is too busy working to do all the extra stuff they talk about. We have our inspirational outside speaker who never inspires and in this case delivered the same lectures that some members of our team had heard him role out years ago.

And then we were freed to do a bit of a team bonding exercise, which sounded awful but was actually really good

After doing our various challenges around the grounds, we had drinks reception out front on the huge lawn.

Before dinner in the old chapel. Which was quite lovely. Very good night. Obviously after that there was the hotel bar. Not sure when I called it a night but between 2 and 3 am

So retired to my spacious room at the end of a new wig, which took a long time to reach. They supply maps of the complex. And they are needed. Only downside was that my bedside clock had unaccountably been set for the alarm to go off at 6am. That was not welcome. And I forgot my washbag which housekeeping claimed not to have recovered. Grr. 

But overall a very nice Friday night/ Saturday morning!

Margate

Clarissa had been wanting me to take her to Margate for ages, but we hadn't managed to find a date. And then suddenly one became available, and so we went down for a day trip. I had heard mixed reviews for the town. Yes the Turner Gallery plus some good restaurants, but it hadn't come up as far as some people made out. I think after our trip that is a very fair assessment.

Coming out of the station and heading into town the first thing you are confronted with is this massive slum block of flats. Even some nice planting in the foreground can't disguise it as an eyesore.

There is undoubtedly a nice, expansive beach.

We essentially arrived in time for lunch so we skirted the beach to come to a restaurant overlooking the Bay

We passed the very impressive tourist information office. Impressive from the outside. Inside there were lots of "welcome to..." leaflets for neighbouring towns. Nothing for Margate....

So, decent view from our bar/restaurant, Sargasso

Slightly unfortunate choice though. Firstly because the worst of the day's weather was while we sat outside here. Sunny when we arrived, but clouded over and got windy. But also the food was only ok, but at top quality prices. You may think there are two glasses of wine below. No one is my cider. Portions were on the minimal scale. I mean yes small plates, but some were very small.

While Clarissa liked most the aubergine dish a little further down, she is just wrong. Consummately the best was the chorizo. But if you are a restaurant its a little disappointing that the highlight is how you sliced a sausage. Full marks for sourcing ingredients, but not cooking them...

Then we had a little walk around. There are some nice enough old buildings, but where in similar tourist spots you might expect to find antique shops, here they are junk shops, complete with the musty smell of second hand clothes.

We had three tourist sites on our itinerary. The first was the shell grotto. This has a large shop (mostly selling sea shells) and tea room, before you descend into the underground grotto. The bloke selling us tickets started warning us to mind our heads but stopped himself when looking at our height. I feel his admonition on no running and jumping was slightly unnecessary. Do I look the sort of person who would go running and jumping?

This place was actually quite fascinating. I picked up the guidebook to find out more. It seems the grotto was found in the mid 19th century, but no one knows when or who actually built it. Tudor, 18th or 19th century, or Roman? Or even Phoenician traders who are known to have used the Thanet as a base. Normally you just send something off for carbon dating, but here the only materials are the shells and the mortar with which they are adhered to the walls. And rather like England's huge chalk hillside monuments, even if you can get a date for the material, the shells will have been replaced regularly over time, so unless you strip the lot you can't be sure of getting original material to test.

There are millions of shells, so this was no minor undertaking. It s difficult to imagine someone building this in secret, which does seem to point to it being of ancient origin rather than more recent historic times. Also while all but two shells are British, a lot are not local to Margate. The thousands of winkles should have come from the West Country, maybe Cornwall, which is where the Phoenicians went to trade for tin. So a lot of effort went into this. And we are not getting the best view of it all. The original shells would have been much more colourful.

A mystery.

The second site was Margate's cave system. Here we do know what they are. This was a limestone mine. They came and hollowed out the area, leaving just enough standing stone (in arches) to avoid the mine roof collapsing. Since its mining days it has been decorated with a series of naive paintings.

Finally, the only thing Margate is really famous for, the Turner Gallery for Contemporary Arts. Only one photo here. The exterior is industrial and quite unattractive and inside it was described as "partially closed" because a new exhibition was opening shortly. A better description would have been "almost entirely closed". Only the bookshop, tea room, this rather basic, simple stained glass window, clearly created by an artist of very limited skill, and a wall of art by local youngsters (think what you would expect to see in any comprehensive school corridor) were actually open. Clarissa spent longer using the toilet than looking at the gallery. By a long chalk.

So back along the beach before dinner

We resorted to a pub we had seen along our walk earlier. This was a genius move. Lovely big beer garden, excellent drink selection, plenty of atmosphere. We had intended to just sit and read, but we just sat and chatted. And had a second round of drinks.

And finally dinner at Dory's. Similar style to our lunch venue but just much better food and service (well excluding how long it took to get the bill at the end.) Whereas at Sargasso everything was fine and edible, here everything was delicious.

Stand out dish was this - basically charred cabbage . Hispi cabbage. Sweet and tender. One doesn't expect to rave about half a cabbage, but honestly, yum.

And couldn't resist the vanilla ice cream and the chocolate truffles.