 Highlight of the Day - Siro A! Slightly (that word is there for effect really, it was more than slightly) surreal, a tad crazy, but very entertaining, the Japanese version of the Blue Man Group is currently in London. Siro A (meaning white A, but I can speak Japanese and really you'll probably pronounce it better if you think of it as SHiro A) were on in Leicester Square Theatre. I had a lot of fun, laughed a lot, and learnt that I fancy Japanese guys to such an extent, that even their faces being painted white doesn't detract from the attraction.
Second highlight was veggie cafe, Vitao Organic on Wardour Street. I always look at it there, but have never been in, because it looks a bit too hippy and I like MEAT damnit. Risked it today, and it was really, really tasty. I had a lovely passion fruit and raspberry mocktail thing and a huge plate of salad and bean curries from a buffet. It was really reasonable and very tasty and the hippiness/vegetarianness, wasn't intimidating at all.
Lowlight of the Day - I don't want to go into this in too much detail, because if I let myself begin a rant, it could go on for pages and you might start to think I'm a raving loony, but let's just say that my phone's broken and that all the technical expertise, intelligence and customer service (or lack thereof) of Samsung, EE, T Mobile and Carphone Warehouse has left me with a phone that's still broken, a contract that's been cancelled (I cut off my nose to spite my face, by just cancelling with T Mobile because I was so angry with their incompetence and rudeness) and no new contract yet as the girl in Carphone Warehouse made a ridiculous mistake in my address when doing my credit check which has led me to be rejected and has caused an awful lot of confusion on their part and stress on my part. All phone companies are muddled, stupid arsehole-y type companies and I hate them all. End of. People met along the way (the way to being even worse off that when I started, because I am now without phone and contract and possibly with a damaged credit rating).
Nice-but-dim Carphone Warehouse girl who can't read the letter B correctly.
Impossible-to-communicate with Samsung man who told me, whilst in his Samsung uniform in the Samsung shop that I should "contact Samsung about it."
Miss I'm-not-actually-listening-to-what-you're-saying-I'm-just-going-to-say "Maybe if you upgraded to EE"-all-the-time
And then a couple of classic know-it-all phone shop wankers who don't ask you what you want, but tell you what you want. One particularly annoying one talked to me as if I was insane when I asked if they had a spare phone in the shop I could just put my simcard in for 2 minutes to check my texts with, in spite of the fact that the other EE shop down the road did it straight away. Another classic was the one who told me what I needed. I disagreed completely, and then he replied with "That's what I'm saying." That wasn't what you were saying. You were saying the opposite.
Rant over. Sorry.
 Highlight of the Day - Getting up early, without a hangover, and being super-productive. I felt like I could've seen Heather Small interrogating me with a warbling "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" and answered very successfully even at 11am. I went into Oxford Street, which is uncharacteristically bearable and sparse before 11 and got my refund in River Island (open open open this time) and then scurried around M+S, House of Fraser and John Lewis looking for the biggest plain white plate I could find. It was for work (I had to drop it off at work before 2). My work's a bit confidential, so I can't really divulge what it was for, but it had to be huge, flat, round and plain white. I also couldn't tell any of the very confused sales assistants what it was for and I imagine they were talking about crazy plate boy all day. John Lewis was the winner. Pizza plate - 35cm diameter, in case you ever need a ginormous plate. Embarrassing Moment of the Day - Apart from forcing people to measure plates, it was my unexpected item in the bagging area at Sainsbury's. I mean, pray tell self-checkout lady, how unexpected can a bag of carrots in Sainsbury's really be??
So, after my proud productivity, I did some work at home and then went out in the evening with friends. We first went to Yauatcha, that beautiful glass restaurant cum aquarium on Broadwick Street with all the macaroons in the window. It was very posh (lovely sinks in the loos). It was the sort of place where they place the napkins on your laps for you, which I hate. I prefer to keep my lap to myself, thank you very much, stranger. We had dim sum, which was delicious and it wasn't actually as expensive as I'd imagined. The service, however, was really slow. The waiter asked us if we had any allergies. My friend said prawns and he wrote down and read out "Seat one, prawn allergy" in a slightly awkward, proud way (Heather wouldn't have been impressed). He asked if we had any celebrations. We were sort of halfway between two of our birthdays, so we said it was both of our birthdays. At the end, they brought us one macaroon to share between two. I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but ONE macaroon? It was covered in hundreds and thousands and was bubblegum flavour and frankly quite disgusting. I'm 26, not 6. The rest of the desserts looked INCREDIBLE though and I will have to go back to try one (or some).
After that we went to what was my real highlight of the day, which was a play by the theatre group Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican. Me and my friends all speak French (not EVERY friend of course, but the ones on this evening), so when we saw that a French play, Ubu Roi, was playing, we thought we'd go and check it out. It was quite astounding. At time hilarious, at times terrifying and certainly quite surreal throughout. It's sort of theatre of the absurd style, in that a lot of it doesn't make a lot of sense with several nonsensical words (not just because I didn't understand the French!!) and fairly unconnected references. He was constantly talking about his Chandelle Verte (Green Candle). It reminded me a lot of Ionesco's, La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Primadonna), which I adore. The acting was incredibl (much of it was really physically challenging) and it really kept you on the edge of your seat for the whole 2 hours. It also had English subtitles, so you could go if you don't speak French. I recommend it highly.
The only negative would be that the Barbican can be a fairly stressful place. I love the stuff they do there, and it's really reasonably priced, but there are so many buildings with so many entrances and it said on the ticket (in pretty big letters) "Latecomers will not be admitted." We arrived with 10 minutes to spare, one friend went for a cigarette, the other two to the toilet, I strolled up to the ticket lady to check we were at the right door and she said "Oh no, that's a different theatre." Cue panic. Then there was announcement saying performances begin in 5 minutes and all of sudden there were lots of people running around. Two friends came back, they went to find the actual theatre and I was waiting for the other friend, who was on the wrong floor. We ran to the theatre where a ticket lady was calling my name. She'd been waiting for me (it must have been 7.31) as they were closing the doors and my friends had left my tickets with her. It was all quite stressful. Apart from that and the odd bubblegum macaroon
 Highlight of the day - Cafe Gourmand - a lovely little cafe and bistrot on Lexington Street in Soho. It feels very French inside (I used to live in Paris, so I know innit) and it's a lovely, peaceful space in which to escape from the hustle and bustle of Soho. The staff were really friendly (possibly the only bit that didn't remind me of Paris) and the prices were very reasonable. I only had a coffee, but was very tempted by all the cakes. I will definitely be going back for some mini gourmands (little cakes, just a mouthful) or their posh meat pies - I don't think I've ever seen a pie look so delicate! I'm also quite tempted by their green cookie tea. I was kicking myself for having eaten elsewhere beforehand! Embarrassing moment of the day - I call it the 'tube lean.' You know, when you think you're perfectly steady and don't need to hold on and then it jolts off and you rather embarrassingly lean on the person next to you. That's really embarrassing, right? However, you normally steady yourself and are off of them within a milisecond, mumble sorry, and go back to avoiding eye contact. I went for a bit of a spectacular one yesterday - it was a 2-second full-frontal lean. Quite a masterpiece. Why I was facing this guy, I don't know. How the tube was going at such a thrust that it lasted 2 seconds, I also don't know. He was also a really attractive guy, which just made the whole ordeal (allbeit 2 seconds, but let's face it, 2 seconds of British awkwardness feels like a lifetime!). I felt like the whole carriage were staring at me for the rest of my journey. They obviously weren't. Or were they?? So, why was yesterday so spontaneous? I had planned on doing nothing this weekend, but have been talking to friends recently about how my life revolves around lists. I want more spontaneity damnit! Then, I saw tickets on lastminute.com a few days ago for My Big Italian Gay Wedding at the Greenwich Theatre. It's come from New York and the tickets were a good price, so me and a friend went on the spur of the moment. It was really fun - loud, proud, camp and, in places, hilarious. It was about an Italian New Yorker getting married to his boyfriend and all the hoo-ha that surrounded it. It had a lot of visual humour, funny characters and farsical storyline. There was a great atmosphere, with people from the crowd joining in on jokes and interacting with the actors. Some singing, some dancing and a whole lot of camping. A few of the jokes were very America-centric and went a bit over my head - I was hoping they might have localised it a little bit at least, just by picking things that were still American, but more relevant/famous here. I'd be really interested to know if laughs came at different places in the UK and the US actually. Me and my friend then went to the gay pub in Greenwich called the Prince. I then ran down the road like a big poofta about to miss the last DLR. I caught it. Earlier in the day, I spontaneously met my friend to go the Southbank Food Market and had a lovely Beijing-style pork pancake from Mei Mei street food. It did remind me of what I'd eaten when I actually went to Beijing, except that she'd added meat, which made it even better in my book. I may have also sampled about 15 other stalls' foods! It was such a lovely day to mooch around London. We then went over to Trafalgar Square and watched the outdoor pillow fight (see photo above). We didn't join - we're not that spontaneous yet, one step at a time. Then we went to Cafe Gourmand, then I splurged £50 in the River Island sale (all in the name of spontaneity of course). Spontaneous is fun, but it's also expensive, and it also left me running (literally at time) late for everything I did. Still, a great day all round! Maybe the start of spring? Dare I hope?
 Highlight of the day - having some friends over for dinner, one of them bringing their beautiful, well-behaved, intelligent, friendly and generally perfect in every way 6-year-old with them. I have NO kids in my life at the moment (in spite of constantly telling all of my friends and relatives in long-term relationships (and otherwise) that I am MORE THAN ready for them to have kids, whether they are or not), so it was so lovely to spend some time with a child in the room for a change. I am still grinning from ear to ear today.
Embarrassing moment of the day - I was in a tiny tiny toilet (not the actual apparatus, the room) and was at the urinal closest to the real WC cubicle door. I was standing weeing, even closer to the man in the urinal next to me than I would be normally - it's awkward enough at the best of times - when the man in the cubicle came out and said to me "it's very pokey in here isn't it?" - Very much an accurate statement, but why did he consider a time at which my penis was unclothed and I was urinating almost cheek-to-cheek with a urinating man on the other side and everyone being able to see everyone else's business, a time suitable for polite chit-chat? So akward! I didn't reply.
This post is about Saturday, as I'm catching up. Is it Easter Saturday or is it not special enough to have a name? Today, I went to eat in the Princess Louise pub, which is a beautiful pub in Holborn with a maze-like interior and lots of little sections which reminds me of a posh Victorian train (not that I've ever been in one). I went with the intention of eating there, but when asked if they were serving food, we were told 'not today' with no further explanation, so I'll try again for that another time. We ate in a little Italian called Cafe Mode I think which was very reasonable.
Anyway, after that we went to see Judas Kiss with Rupert Everett at the Duke of York's Theatre. I wanted to go to Music and Notes Coffee Shop which is opposite on St Martin's Lane, but we ran out of time. Duke of York theatre is truly tiny (hence aforementioned half-naked pokey toilet chit-chat). The play was good. It's about Oscar Wilde's life. It didn't cover quite as much of his life as I was expecting. It was more like four scenes which covered four snapshots of his life. There was a LOT of nudity and quite a lot of rude jokes. The average age of the audience was about 60 so I'm not really sure if it was what everyone was expecting. My friend fancied the naked guy in the first half (blonde-hair-blue-eyed) and I fancied the naked guy in the second half (Italian stallion). Attractive naked guys (and I don't mean half-naked) are really quite distracting in a play, so between us we managed to piece together what happened as we both watched one half each! Quite appropriate watching Judas Kiss over Easter. I'm not sure Jesus would approve of the content though!
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