Friday night at The Miller.

Anyway. Having also read about the Euston Tap on East London Drinker, I decided to try the peach lambic Alan mentioned in his post (although I managed to miss seeing the man himself). I don't usually like peach-flavoured things (though I like peaches), and it had a very perfumey smell, but it was tasty, reminding me a bit of pear cider. Just as well it was pear, because regular cider made from apples makes me feel ill.

The bar is on the small side, even with the seating upstairs (which you have to reach by a narrow wrought iron spiral staircase), and as I half-expected from a beer-focused pub, it doesn't feel especially female-friendly, being mostly full of men in groups and not many women — which is ironic, given the venue's former life as a lesbian club. (I should point out, not all beer-focused pubs feel like that: the Southampton Arms is one which doesn't.)

The decor and general ambiance is very reminiscent of some American bars I've been in, right down to the fact that, even though they don't do food themselves, you can order pizza from a local delivery joint. I've often found myself wishing that this was something that happened more often in British drinking establishments that don't serve food — one of the things I loved about drinking in American bars was often having the choice to order in whatever you wanted, so there's no arguing if one of you wants sushi, one wants pizza, and one wants a hot dog with all the trimmings. In this case, you can only order pizza but there are some tasty-looking ones to choose from. We ordered a 26″ margarita pizza, which is ENORMOUS, needing three people to hold the box! But it was pretty tasty.

So it's not a bad little joint, although its tiny size means it's horrible when it's crowded, so probably best to avoid on Saturdays or when it's full of businessmen grabbing a drink before their commuter trains out to the suburbs. A good place for a swift half — and all the better for being the kind of place where no one bats an eyelid if a half is all you want.

2. It's mating season for the herons in Regent's Park.
And presumably elsewhere too, but last week there was an RSPB trailer there with telescopes and binoculars to watch them closer. Annoyingly, they closed at 4:00pm so most of us didn't get a chance to watch the birds closer. I did get a couple of photos of one bird who was stalking the people with bread and seed at the edge of the lake. I also managed to get a neat vintage effect to my picture when I was messing around in Photoshop, which I am pleased with.

3. There are no decent sunglasses in the shops at the moment.
I must have tried on at least twelve pairs in several different shops and nothing suited me at all. Maybe I'm just being too fussy, but I don't suit really boxy square frames or completely round ones, either, and I need to have frames that dip a bit over the nose-bridge, as sunglasses with frames that go in a straight line right across the top just look bloody awful on me. I like quite big lenses, as my face is too round for small ones, but not ginormous ones that make me look like an insect. The only trouble is that all the ones with decent-shaped frames are ruined by tacky bling on the sides. I don't want fake gold trimmings and diamante on my shades. I just want a simple, classy pair that doesn't cost a bomb (£10 or less) — I always buy cheap ones because they end up broken or lost all too easily. Suggestions gratefully received, leave 'em in the comments…

4. Sometimes whining on Twitter leads to being invited to fun evenings drinking with lovely people in lovely pubs.

5. There is a cash machine near Borough tube, if you turn left.
(hat tip to the real gent for letting me know)

6. That thing about policemen getting younger is true.
I passed two coming out of Southwark police station on Thursday evening and they both looked about twelve years old.

5. Easter eggs come from Chocodiles.
But we still don't know why it's a rabbit that delivers them.

6. The Lord Clyde is a lovely pub with lovely staff.
It's a proper old-fashioned boozer with a nice range of beers and a back room that we could take over. (Southwark seems to have so many great well-preserved pubs tucked into the most unpromising corners; it's one of the things I miss most about living in Waterloo.)

7. As far as American-style dining experiences in London go, The Diner is preferable to Bodeans.
It's more relaxed and although the prices aren't way cheaper they do seem a bit more reasonable. Plus the cocktails are really good.

8. There is no sci-fi or action movie which cannot be improved by the presence of nuns.

9. In The Loop is very very funny and very very sweary.
First film I've seen in ages where the audience regularly broke out into spontaneous applause at their favourite bits. Peter Capaldi is brilliant — his character is an intensely unpleasant person but gets all the best lines so you can't help but cheer him on, even when he's being relentlessly nasty for no reason. There's a great bit near the end when the camera lingers on him in a beat of quietude that brilliantly demonstrates the hidden depths of his character and the stresses he finds himself under. I was a bit disappointed by James Gandolfini, who seemed a bit half-arsed and never quite filled his character with enough convincing life to escape the fact that he was being played by James Gandolfini. I did have a great time playing "spot the location" though — there are lots of times when parts of the Royal Festival Hall double up for departmental toilets and meeting rooms in Washington, or the United Nations building in New York. The distinctive carpets (designed by Peter Moro) are a dead giveaway.

10. The website for In The Loop is rather good, too.
Although be warned because it has audio which may cause colleagues to look at you funny. Though if you've a sense of humour you'll be laughing so loud they'll already be looking at you funny.

A couple of days ago, a group of us from the LFMU group pottered out of London to visit Bletchley Park for the day, which was loads of fun. I'd been wanting to go there for a couple of years, after seeing Rooney's photos, and hearing him talk about how great the computer museum was. Not that I am really all that obsessive about computers, vintage or otherwise, but it seemed like the sort of quirky independent museum that would just tickle my fancy. Saturday's trip proved that to a much greater extent, as I discovered just how much there really is to see at Bletchley Park. Answer: lots and lots and lots.

Bletchley Park is mostly famous for being the home of code-breaking during the second world war, and there is of course a museum dedicated to that subject; full of strange machines with weird dials and alphabet cogs, and lots of information about what all the machines do, which was quite a lot to take in. Then, of course, there's the National Museum of Computing, which houses all kinds of vintage computers and adding machines, dating all the way back to Victorian "computing scales" made of paper and card, and probably even further back than that. Both of these museums have enough information and objects to look at to take a decent chunk out of your afternoon. What I didn't realise was just how much else there is to see at Bletchley Park. You really get a lot of value out of your £10 entry ticket (which is valid for the whole year so you can go back).

Bletchley Park is largely run by volunteers who have fortunately embraced social media in all its forms, having multiple accounts on Flickr, Twitter etc. When they found out we were planning to visit, we were very generously offered a personal tour of the place, and they gave us quite a lot of extra attention. We were able to see a preview of the bombe register in full working order as a special favour to our group, because the volunteer who runs it doesn't usually come in on Saturdays, so that was pretty cool — especially as it doesn't officially open until tomorrow. Having an official guide with us also meant that sometimes we were allowed to sneak behind the barriers and cordons, and take photos of things that the general public don't usually get to see at a casual glance. The volunteers seemed extremely knowledgeable and were always willing to answer questions and share their enthusiasm, and seemed particularly pleased to open cabinets and turn switches for us, which was also nice.

The downside to this enthusiasm was that our guide, @panavision was so keen to ensure that we managed to see every single museum contained therein that we were fairly whizzed around the place at great speed, which meant that we didn't always have as much time as I would have liked to browse things, and some of us were a bit exhausted at the end of it! Of course, that's a minor complaint, as I really did appreciate having all the bits shown to me, not to mention all the extra attention we got.

On our guided tour, we were whipped through the two museums mentioned above, and also the ones listed below:

In fact, even though my battery ran out before I'd finished going around all the museums, I still had a great day's shooting and took loads of pictures. Better than just taking them all, I was pleased to discover that I actually liked a large chunk of them (which doesn't happen as often as I'd like). Now I just have the task of choosing which ones to put online. I've started uploading some of them, which you can see in the set here, and I'll be adding more to the set over the next week or so. You should also be able to see everyone else's photos here, as long as they've tagged them properly.

After looking at so many rooms stuffed full of so much information, we started to feel pretty stuffed full of information ourselves, and decided to pop into the cafe for a reviving cuppa. Unfortunately, everything is supposed to shut at 4:00pm and the cafe seemed to be the first place to close (as in so many places, why do they do this? It's so nice having a half hour tea break after a museum has thrown you out at closing time!) There aren't any places to eat or drink in the immediate vicinity of the estate, but thanks to waving their hands around a lot, the iPhone geeks were able to get online and look up some pubs.

We wandered around a few corners to the nearest hostelry that had had a decent review on Beer In The Evening, The Eight Belles. Unfortunately, they weren't doing food until 6:00pm, but thanks again to the wonder of iPhones, we were able to find another pub a little further afield. As it happens, The Swan was a nicer pub, anyway; shabbily comfortable with a friendlier atmosphere. Food portions were generous, prices reasonable, and the fish part of my fish-and-chips was very fresh and the batter tasted homemade. Om nom nom!

After dinner, we went back to Bletchley Park, to watch Matthew Applegate, aka Pixelh8, performing his new piece Obsolete? This is a series of tunes (which Applegate endearingly called "songs" even though they have no vocals and no one sings them) made entirely from noise samples taken from the computers in the National Museum of Computing, and was quite entertaining. (I thought timscience would particularly have enjoyed it.)

The entire performance of the piece was quite short, only 25 minutes, but afterwards Applegate went through the pieces again, explaining where the samples had come from, and in some cases the entertaining methods of recording them (like the day he wrapped the machine and himself entirely in bubble-wrap in order to muffle all the external noise). I preferred the second part of the show, as he was far more animated in explaining how he'd come up with the pieces than when he was crouching behind a laptop checking the program in the first bit, so it was more interesting. There's a bit of it on video here, which Martin just sent me the link to. Unfortunately, the video's not working on this computer, but he says I'm onscreen, "presuming you're the ball of hair next to Paul" so see if you can find me.

After the performance, there was a tour around the computer museum to demonstrate the machines that had been used in making the music, but a few of us decided to catch the train, as the next train was an hour after that, and by then we were just too tired to hang around that long. Some of the others stayed behind for the tour, though.

All in all, a really fun, interesting day with lots to see and lots to appeal to different people all in one place. Technology fans will love the code-breaking machines and computery stuff; design fans will love the printed ephemera; history buffs will love learning about the people who worked there; movie fans will love the cinema stuff; photographers will love the fact that nothing has restrictions; and Bletchley Park will love you for showing an interest in such an important part of British Heritage.

On New Year's Day, I went to see Aime Maeght & His Artists at the Royal Academy, which I would be recommending to you all if it hadn't closed on January 2nd. It was pretty good, though, with rooms organised by complementary artist pairs: Bonnard and Matisse; Miró and Calder; Braque and Giacometti. My favourite was the Miró and Calder room, which was full of exuberant colours and shapes, designed with humour and playfulness. It was a very uplifting thing to see on such a grey, cold day, and the two artists complemented each other very well.

There was also some film footage of the artists at work, and I was fascinated to see how considered and meticulous Giacometti was. His drawings look so effortlessly spontaneous and almost slapdash, but in fact he took his time working out exactly where each line would go. Discovering that was quite a revelation, and a new way to think about working. It's actually quite hard to take a long time to make something look effortless and still good.

In contrast to that, the following day I went to the Osbert Lancaster exhibition, which I really enjoyed, despite the fact that it was badly hung and the picture captions were really confusing, and recommend it if you're in the Bond Street area in the next week (it finishes on January 11th). I'm not sure how many others will appreciate the dated digs at moneyed establishment (which Lancaster was himself a member of), but fortunately there's more to the show than that. I particularly liked his elegant book jacket designs, which show off his skilled draughtsmanship, and wonderful use of colour and composition; and his witty illustrations of architectural design throughout the ages should be seen by anyone who has an interest in the urban environment (and his description of "Stockbrokers Tudor" is so much better than "mock Tudor"). There are also some brilliantly funny pastiches of portrait styles throughout the ages (his take on Cranach had me giggling particularly loudly), and some charming paintings of Egypt and Europe. It was fascinating to see the clever way he used the texture of the paper to create textures of buildings, which is something you never properly see in reproduction.

I was quite surprised that the exhibition was at the Wallace Collection (somewhere I'd been meaning to visit for years), as it seemed to be more suitable for somewhere like the Cartoon Museum, but in fact it was perfectly at home. Most of the people looking at the pictures looked as though they could have stepped off the page, and if Paul hadn't been so hungry, we would have loved to have stopped for a cream tea in the delightfully pink and posh tea room, and had a proper look around the rest of the House afterwards. Something to save for a rainy day, I guess.

We had quick, filling nosh-up at Bodean's, which is an okay but not brilliant American-style BBQ sandwich place, that massively overcharged me £2.50 (TWO! POUNDS! FIFTY!) for one regular can of non-imported ginger beer. And sadly I have to knock them off my list of potential places that do proper hash browns because they don't (they don't even serve the frozen potato cakes that people usually serve in place of proper hash browns). Nowhere does proper hash browns in London, so far as I can tell. Getting hushpuppies in London is even harder, but I started craving them in Bodean's and now I must find them!

We also took a look at the new Photographers' Gallery, the ground floor, anyway. The current Soho Nights exhibition is tiny but really interesting, and with some fantastic photos. It was fascinating to see Slim Hewitt's photos of people dancing to jazz in the 50s, because the women's clothes and hairstyles could have come from last year. The only thing that really dated the pictures was the men's hairstyles, in particular that floppy-fringed one that I always associate with Ian Carmichael in the film of Lucky Jim (see pic). There are also some brilliant candid photos by Ken Russell, which capture people in unintentionally hilarious poses, as they try to dance in a tiny club so crowded they can only hand-jive. (There's a good post about this over at History is made at night).

The other thing that interested me was a series of pictures which accompanied an article about Soho's Little France, which mainly congregated around one pub, called the York Minster, now more famously known as The French House (which has some nice photos on its website). Anyway, it's a fascinating little exhibition which really demonstrates that it's a subject which deserves to be in a bigger space, with a more in-depth overview. Maybe someone will curate one, one day.

After that, on to the original Amato in Old Compton Street (not the johnny-come-lately branch in Charlotte Street), because I've had a crazy craving for some of their insanely rich and almost hazelnutty hot chocolate, but their machine is still out of order, and will be for about a month, according to the waitress. Oh noes! Where do I go to satisfy that craving now?¹ But chocolate disappointment was smoothed away by the unexpected pleasure of bumping into Gaetan and his lovely fiancee (who is also called Anna). We were soon joined by Billy and had a very nice chat about Turbine Hall installations, pizza toppings, wedding cakes, wine tours and other cultural things, before they went off to the theatre and the three who were left went to The Red Lion in Duke of York Street, which one of my favourite central London pubs. It's tiny, but fabulous; full of Victorian mirrors, great real ale and St James' toffs. Real character.

¹ I did try the Old Compton Street branch of French chain Paul a few days ago, but it's bloody expensive and it certainly wasn't hot — it was lukewarm in fact, and if I hadn't bought it as a takeaway en route to somewhere else I would have complained, but I couldn't, so I complain here. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

I went to see Neil Gaiman read from The Graveyard Book at LSE, thanks to a spare ticket from Ade. It was pretty good, and I've decided I want my own pocket Gaiman that I could carry around so he could read me stories when I'm feeling bored or depressed. Not just his own stories, either; I have a feeling that he would be a great story-teller reading work by other people, too. Actually, I think that everyone would feel better with pocket Gaiman to carry around and tell them stories. Maybe we should clone him.

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I decided not to go to Thought Bubble up in Leeds next weekend, since it clashes with some other things I want to do in London. Instead, I'm spending Friday evening bidding farewell to Adam and Beth before they move to Tennessee, and going to see Dave McKean being interviewed by fellow artist Andrzej Klimowski at Comica on Sunday. I'm also thinking of going to see some silent movies and artists' films accompanied by live music at the Barbican on Saturday; either the Millennial Territory Orchestra meets Laurel & Hardy, or Bill Frisell scoring Jim Woodring and Buster Keaton. Or both. If anyone else wants to come? I am sad to be missing everyone going to Thought Bubble, though. Hope it's a good weekend!

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I stumbled upon Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Frequency and Volume at the Barbican, which was good fun, but would probably have been more effective with more people there.

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I went to the Polaroid retrospective at the AOP gallery with Paul. It was both interesting and disappointing. I was interested to see how much of the work on display looked nothing like yer basic humble medium format everyone-could-afford-one Polaroid photos that most people would be familiar with — but that was also the first disappointment. There were a lot of very interesting techniques used, but, frustratingly, absolutely no information about what those techniques were, or what type of Polaroid camera was used. Since most of these techniques are going to be lost once Polaroid film becomes completely obsolete, and since this was ostensibly a celebration of what Polaroid had to offer in its heyday, it seems such a shame not to have documented the processes to an audience that would obviously be interested. But it's a nice little gallery, and it was good to have the opportunity to visit it in the evening, so I'll be looking out for other shows there.

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I went to Tuttle Club a couple of times, and I signed up to Amp08, but I'll write about that some more in its own post.

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I went to the launch of Street or Studio: A Photobook at Tate Britain. The book is pretty good (see the pictures here), but the party was a bit odd. We weren't allowed to take drinks into the section where the book table and the projections were, and there was a room full of old masters that had been done out like a disco, with pumping music and flashing lights. It wasn't part of the Flickr party, just a regular part of the Late at Tate event, but it was somewhat surreal and, frankly seemed pointless since no one was dancing and it was too loud and too dark to actually look at the pictures! I'm not sure who they were trying to appeal to, except that it was so full of business suits that I thought it was some kind of private corporate party. Only it wasn't. Very weird. So we escaped to the Morpeth Arms just in time for them to have stopped serving food. It's had a refit, with all the normal height tables and chairs replaced by those stupid high tables and towering bar stools that make you look like an undignified idiot when you try to climb onto them, and are a liability if you're drunk. Fortunately, the furniture upstairs is at normal proportions, and the Tribute ale was tasty.

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I popped into Handmade & Bound at the awesomely kitsch and untouched St Aloysius Social Club, a place I've been past many times but never gone inside. I didn't buy much from the fantastically packed stalls, though there was a lot of beautiful stuff to be had, including one woman who makes the most gorgeous pop-up books. Unfortunately, once again, most people didn't have any kind of business card for me to to take so I could remember who they were afterwards. It was nice to see Xtina, Marc, Mark and Gav, anyway. Next time I'll try and buy more stuff!

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I went to Tarek's leaving drinks at The Couch, where they have no couches, and they serve disgusting Gordon's gin when you ask for a G&T, rather than the better-tasting Bombay Sapphire that's become the more standard basic gin of choice in most pubs and bars. But the company was great and we ended up in the New Evaristo (No.3 in Gentry Style's top five London bars); one of those after-hours basement drinking dens that is ostensibly a members' only place but, according to the lass who signed us all in, it seems that to become a member, all you have to do is get on well with the doorman so that he remembers you next time. Great end to a great night, anyway. (Good luck in Qatar, dude!)

Broadstairs has always had a nicer reputation than Margate, but it's still not overly gentrified, and has its fair share of tacky kiosks and shopfronts. It has an old-fashioned ambience, reminding me of the summer days of my childhood, with a nice dog-free sandy beach for swimming from, and another dog-friendly one full of rockpools to explore. There's a charming promenade along the cliff top, with some pretty gardens to stroll through, and which seems almost exclusively populated by Italian eateries. Most of these are independent, and a couple of them have been there for so long that they're local institutions, serving homemade ice cream in nice old-fashioned surroundings. We didn't actually have any ice cream, but we did get some deliciously fresh fish and chips (from a place with a bizarre mural above it and a bizarre pizza place next door to it), and ate them down on the beach watching the sea, with young seagulls eyeing us with interest. However, the seagulls didn't seem to be as aggressively predatory as they are in other seaside towns, and we were able to eat in peace.

After that, we wandered up to look at Bleak House, but, from the outside at least, it isn't nearly as bleak as the new-build apartment blocks on the cliff at the other end of the beach, which look completely out of place with their surroundings. Then we took advantage of a useful leaflet I'd found at the Shell Grotto (see previous post), which was published by CAMRA and listed local real ale pubs to be found on the Loop bus route. We went to one near the train station, The Prince Albert, which has a nice bit of art nouveau building decoration dating back to 1911 (see picture below). Unfortunately, I was disappointed to discover that, although they served real ale, there was nothing from a local brewery on tap, which was sort of the point of seeking out a CAMRA-supported pub in the first place. They did, however, have a mild on tap, which is not something that is all that easy to find, especially in London pubs, so we had a pint of that before realising how late it was, and rushing off to catch the last train home to London.

The Prince Albert pub

All in all, a really lovely day which served to remind me that I really should have made the most of living no more than two hours away from the seaside this summer, and should have visited the coast more often. It's not too late, though, especially as I hold hopes of having an Indian summer. Anyone fancy a trip to the seaside with me?