Board games in the pub, and a dash of culture

Since the New Year we’ve been busy bees. Our search for a house stepped up a notch and we’re now faced with a big deci­sion, not sure what to do, but I’m sure every­thing will turn out for the best. We’ve also been plan­ning a mam­moth back­pack­ing trip to Japan – which takes up much more time than I imag­ined, I think I’ve read the entire Lonely Planet book now. On top of this I’ve changed jobs, leav­ing my UX team at TSL Edu­ca­tion to start work at Last.fm and Sam has been study­ing hard in Guildford.

We’ve only been able to see each other at the week­end, or an occa­sional mid­week stopover. But that hasn’t stopped our the­atre, cin­ema and gam­ing adventures!

Birth­day

This year felt like a dou­ble birth­day. On Tues­day, the day before, Sam treated me to a home­made birth­day meal and we watched The Social Net­work on my lit­tle lap­top screen. Then, come the big day, a fried break­fast in Guild­ford, fresh crois­sants in the office, lunch at Asadal (a Korean restau­rant), and an evening meal at Blenio’s in Brighton. Scrump­tious scrump­tious pear and gruyère salad. Some­where in all that was a singing Cliff Richard card, almost cer­tainly the highlight!

Come Thurs­day it was my last day at TSL, and with it came cake, presents and a pub send off! Fri­day was lost to a hang­over, and all those good inten­tions for a day off between jobs fell into oblivion.

Out and about

Despite all this busy-ness, we’ve caught a cou­ple of fan­tas­tic things at the cin­ema, and a not so great thing at the opera.

Using our under 30s dis­count tick­ets we snapped up some seats for Lucrezia Bor­gia, a mere £10 each. I guess you get what you pay for; the Eng­lish opera lacked sub­stance and was dull to say the least. Videos between scenes were weird and verged on being soft porn. Still a new­bie to opera, I’d prob­a­bly strug­gle with a good one, but the reviews in the paper con­firmed my sus­pi­cions, it did in fact suck.

At the cin­ema I delighted in see­ing “Bring­ing up Baby” at the BFI South­bank as part of their Howard Hawks sea­son. Carey Grant in his oh-so per­fect help­less hap­less character.

Then at the Dukes we were dev­as­tated and ter­ri­fied by the astound­ing Black Swan movie. Another Aronof­sky mas­ter­piece, we left the cin­ema dumb­founded, and it plagued our thoughts for days. Incredible!

The King’s Speech was very good, but Black Swan took film-making to a whole new level. I can only hope that the swan lake ren­di­tion trumps the stut­ter­ing royal at the Oscars, but with the scar of Bill Murray’s best actor snub for Lost in Trans­la­tion, my hope lies thin.

We’d been hop­ing to see Keira Knight­ley in “Children’s Hour”, but evening and week­end tick­ets cost a small for­tune. Aha! Such a tri­fle mat­ter never thwarts Sam, and she took a troupe of trainee clin­i­cal bio­chemists to see a student-discounted Wednes­day mat­inée. It was stel­lar, and my envy of them is only matched by my lethargy to book a sin­gle ticket for myself.

Board games in the pub

Any­one that knows us well will know of our unhealthy board game obses­sion. A blue wardrobe in the bed­room is filled with a trea­sure trove of games. From Car­ca­sonne and its expan­sions to an orig­i­nal ‘30s monop­oly, we’ve been slowly build­ing our col­lec­tion with each birth­day and Christmas.

And now we’re no longer con­fined to our liv­ing room. Friends at TSL spawned a fan­tas­tic idea; let’s play games in the pub! So we’ve begun tak­ing Set­tlers of Catan out with us, to Lon­don. With a pint of Land­lord in hand, we build our set­tle­ments, fight over sheep and roll dice hop­ing to avoid a seven. There’s noth­ing quite like shout­ing across a pub, “have you got wood?”.

The Crown Tav­ern, near Far­ring­don sta­tion, is per­fectly suited. The upstairs room dons large tables, is qui­eter, and even has an open fire. The food’s not bad either. So far we’ve only played Set­tlers, but I’m sure other games will feature.

A Thai feast

We’ve been mean­ing for Sam’s friends from Leices­ter to come down to Brighton for a while now, but the logis­tics never quite worked. At last we man­aged to get every­one together for a week­end of, dare I say, ‘authen­tic’, Thai cuisine.

Serv­ing seven, we cre­ated our tasti­est pork red curry, chicken green curry and pad thai yet. With ingre­di­ents sourced from the ever reli­able Taj, our cur­ries had per­fect lit­tle egg plants and chill­ies. A spoon­ful of maple syrup in the green curry made all the dif­fer­ence, as did the freshly pruned basil we’re grow­ing on the win­dow sill (did I men­tion it’s been flow­er­ing? It must be happy). The chicken pad thai, throw in wok and siz­zle (my spe­cial­ity), was just right, though one batch lacked bean-sprouts, vari­ety always helps.

For dessert Han­nah brought us some per­fectly crispy, per­fectly gooey home­made meringues, with a delight­ful lemon curd to boot. Yummy!

Post whisky, cof­fee and wine, as sci­en­tists and musi­cians, con­ver­sa­tions ranged from the obscure (ben­e­fits of dif­fer­ent mass spec­trom­e­ters, typog­ra­phy), to any ran­domly picked topic from the world of Ency­clopae­dia Britannica.

Come morn­ing and the good food didn’t stop; yummy pan­cakes, fresh bacon sand­wiches and good cof­fee. Nom nom. Just the right thing for kick­ing us out onto a walk­ing tour of Brighton, down to the beach with its peb­bles, crash­ing waves and dead starfish, to the North Laine and its graffiti.