The London Apprentice...

On Sunday Andy, Kev, Andy, Tim, Andrew, Michael, Stu and I went out for Sunday lunch to The Dragon Bar on Shoreditch High Street for Sunday lunch. Afterwards we took a look around Andy refurbished loft apartment before head for a beer at our old haunt The London Apprentice.

Darren had joined us by that point and all of us were reliving our dodgy pasts. Oh the fun we had there! It's still dark, still dank and smelling of danger and sexual possibilities. It hasn't been resurrected really, just open as a pub. Still dingy but full of memories.

Anti-anti-same-sex Marriage Rally...

On Sunday afternoon French protesters alongside various English religious groups organised an anti-same-sex marriage rally in Trafalgar Square. Anglican Mainstream were urging Christians to turn up to protest "the sterile adult-centred nature of same sex marriage". What they didn't want to admit was their thinly veiled anti-gay agenda. This wasn't about marriage it was pure and simply anti-gay.

Naturally I (and a hundred or so other like/right-minded people) felt the need to attend and venture an alternative point of view. And shout their homophobia down. So we had our own anti-anti-same-sex marriage rally. The way you do.

So at 2:30pm I was standing in the freezing cold along with Dilwyn and Johan listening to Gallic homophobia ranting. First the speaker would rant in French and then we heard a slightly calmer English translation. Initially it was fairly good natured. They would have their say something daft and then we would chant "Shame on you!"

But when a speaker said, "I've got no problem with people BUT..." we shouted out "Everything before the 'but' is bullshit!" Not particularly catchy however I think he got our point.

It turned a bit nastier when they realised we wouldn't be silenced. I had to remind a few people shouting in my face that it was a free country. Gosh there are some awful homophobes there.

Something that amused us was that despite being a French protest they seemed oblivious that it was Gallic-crushing Nelson who was looking down on them from his atop his column - with what I like to think of as a sneer on his stony face.

If there had been a few cuter people at our counter-demo I might have suggested a kiss-in. I might be a woolly minded political activist but I'm not an complete idiot.

Apocalypse How?...

Last Sunday Oliver, Toby, Stu and I spent six hours combing the streets and building east London looking for a series of fiendish clues which required every drop of ingenuity and observation we possessed to solve. It was a treasure hunt murder mystery run by those lovely people at A Door In A Wall called Apocalypse How?

We loved it. Clever, funny, intriguing and frankly exhausting. What a great way to spend a Sunday. 

The pre-amble goes like this:- 20 years ago, Arthur Geddon crawled half-dead from the jungle; a miraculous survivor of a lost expedition. He clutched in his hands a series of stone tablets that he claimed described the end of the world. Now, with the day of reckoning fast approaching, Arthur is found dead. You, his faithful disciples in the Church of the Golden Pyramid, must discover who among your brothers and sisters has killed the beloved leader! Choose your path to victory and leave no stone unturned as you spend a day searching London for clues and characters that will allow you to avenge this sacrifice and, maybe, avert doomsday. Prepare for another all-new murder mystery treasure hunt from A Door In A Wall: Apocalypse How?

More pix here.