1. A little early morning Christmas shopping on Friday when Oxford Street gets kicking at 7am. Three cheers for a last-ditch effort to breathe life into languishing retail profits. Hurrah! Failing economy: zero, obsessive shoppers: one. I will be hitting up Liberty for fabulous Christmas tree ornaments and Mamas & Papas for baby awesomeness for up-the-duff colleague.
2. Go see Blood Brothers for £12. You WILL. NOT. REGRET IT. Somehow manages to be both deliberately and accidentally hilarious. Highlights include intense overuse of 1980s synthesised drums, oddly hysterical reaction from one character to other character placing pair of shoes on the kitchen table, Marilyn Monroe-related lyrical motif running through the entire show that becomes laughably flimsy by the end of the second act, and the intrusive and over-dramatic (thus HI-LAR-IOUS) musical interludes sung by unnecessary Evita-style narrator. Haven’t laughed as hard as hard as we did coming out of the Phoenix Theatre in a VERY long time. And yet I have this weird fondness for the show, because actually parts of it were very good, and the woman in the lead role, Niki Evans, has a gorgeous tone to her voice (and apparently was on The X-Factor last year?). Do yourself a favour.
3. Get your Christmas Tree! A real live one, that will be a pain in the arse to lug home on the tube and a pain in the arse to dispose of in the new year, and will drop pine needles all through your carpet, and will probably fall over at least 37 times between now and Christmas Day! Check out where you can buy real Christmas trees in London, then get that baby home and decorate the hell right out of it!
Last year the P-Vizzle housemates and I went to excessive amounts of trouble to decorate our first ever living Christmas tree for our first ever London Christmas. We did a roast, eggnog, copious amounts of wine (well, we did copious amounts of wine for most things), got tangled in lights, got a little tipsy, made a VERY pretty tree. Then in January when it came time to dispose of the thing, GI Jono and I left it in the hallway on the floor below ours, right outside the door of the neighbours we really hated. But… frankly, that will teach them for being utter, utter bastards.
We did get a cranky letter from our landlord about it. Think it may have been the trail of pine needles from their front door to ours that tipped them off.
4. Go see No Man’s Land at the Duke of York’s Theatre. No, wait. That’s what I’ll be doing. Because I am crushing on David Walliams.
5. Try out the new Bob Bob Ricard all-day bar/brasserie in Soho. Opens at 7am, closes at 3am. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, drinks etc. I haven’t quite got there yet, but the promise of toasters on tables and an interior inspired by ‘first class rail travel in Edwardian times’ has me raising one eyebrow. Not like a sinister fictitious villain, but like someone who is intrigued by old trains and the thought of kitchen appliances being an active and aesthetic part of restaurant dining experiences.
Their website is a total non-event actually, so don’t bother with it, but the place itself is getting some decent reviews on Time Out. Thanks to LC for the red hot tip.
