StewBlog

After a spot of shopping in Soho, we had giant pizza's (the small is 14", the large is 18")in Lombardi's just East of Soho - they were fantastic! Tony and I almost finished a large meatball pizza - I think there was one slice left... They are presented to the table on pedestals so they sit high enough above the table to get glasses of beers underneath - Brilliant! I think we all had a night off the serious booze that night to recharge the batteries and went to bed earlyish - 1am...

Took a subway up to Cantral Park to meet Merle and Jason, who had got up early to go up the Empire State Building. Watched a bit of baseball and then walked up to the lake and Tony, Gav and I took out one of the rowing boats. Afterwards, we met Pete and Jason for a beer in the Boathouse bar right on the edge of the lake.

To see a bit more of New York at night, we went to the Marriott Hotel in Times Square, taking the express elevator to the 48th floor where they have a 360 degree revolving bar looking out over Manhatten. Nice to take in the view with a Hampton Iced Tea! We challenged Tony to see how long he could stand with one foot on the revolving bar and one on the solid part of the building - 1 minute and 38 seconds!

Later on, we chipped off to Smith and Wollensky's, purported to be the best steak house in Manhatten. The majority of the waiters have been working there for 20+ years, indicated by the number of stars on their jackets - each representing 5 years service - so they know their steaks, which is just as well as that's pretty much all they sell!

After dinner we dashed down to the Lower East Side to the much-hyped Rock 'n' Roll karaoke night at Arlene's Grocery, which lived up to it's reputation and more! There were around 100 of us packed into a smallish dark bar when the band arrived on stage with a man with red dreadlocks, who sounded a bit like Jack Black. The crowd parted down the centre of the room as he ushered forth from the rear, Sharaoke, an attractive lady in fishnets and the smallest leather hotpants I have ever seen, clutching a copy of the karaoke bible - A listing of all of the available songs and the words. A pre-recorded message then delivered the 10 rock 'n' roll karaoke commandments, of which I remember none... and then the show began! A rather cringe-worthy version of Sweet Child Of Mine was delivered by a creepy man who spent the rest of the evening sticking his digital SLR in people's faces! Moby happened to be in that night, so the band called him up to do a song. Other highlights included an excellent version of Take Another Little Piece of My Heart and Killing In The Name Of...

Merle got a recommendation for Rosie's bar after Arlene's Grocery so we headed there for more drinks. Pete and I moved on a little later but I lost down on 1st and 4th somewhere! I just about made it back to the hotel. Pete slept in Central Park under a bush...

We all met up at the Gramercy Cafe on the corner of Third Avenue and 17th Street for breakfast. The menu looked amazing but I wasn't up to eating having already consumed a 1/2 pound beefburger and fries the night before in the very same cafe. I had a lovely carrot, orange and apple juice instead. We all pottered around for a bit towards the Flat Iron Building (New York's first sky scraper, apparently) right up to Times Square, where we stopped off at a Jamba Juice to re-fuel. It was here that my week-affair with wheatgrass shots began...

We ended up in 1849 on Bleecker Street for a few beers and a game of pool in the early afternoon and were served by the most boistrous barmaid who told us in no uncertain terms that she wouldn't be putting shamrocks on the Guinness'! We went back to the hotel to freshen up and jumped in taxis down to Tribeca for dinner at Nobu. We reserved a table for nine and went for a few drinks in the Tribeca Tavern across the road first. When we got back to the restaurant we had a great round table right at the back and in the middle - I'm really fussy about where I sit in a restaurant, so I was pleased. The food was absolutely excellent! Kobe beef, black cod in miso, shitake tempura etc...

After the restaurant we moved on to Smiths/Morrisey night at Sway, just up the road. The music started off generally indie but as time went on it became back-to-back Morrisey, so a couple of the chaps took refuge in a bar across the road while I propped up Gav who was distinctly the worse for wear! Later on, we joined the chaps over the road where they had been schmoozing with a few people at the bar, including the barmaid. We had lost Tony and Jason at this point, but Mark, Merle, Gav, Pete and I took a taxi to Little Korea for a spot of karaoke until they finally kicked us out at 6am and we staggered home to bed...

So, after a boozy Friday night culminating in yet another trip to the Works I finally made it onto the 9:20am train (I was planning to get the 7:20am) to London after frantically packing my suitcase that morning. Thought I'd miss the flight, but everything ran pretty smoothly and I hopped off the Piccadilly line at Heathrow Terminal 4 with a bit of time to spare. Checked in on-line the night before so I went straight to bag-drop and through security to meet Tony and Jason. Received a text from Gav clutching a glass of champagne in upper class on his Virgin flight, the swine! The flight was all okay - I slept through almost all of it including take-off, only taking time out to eat chicken curry and rice. We took a taxi to Hotel 17 (on 17th Street) and headed straight out to meet Gav, Pete, Mark and Merle in Ryan's bar just around the corner on Second Avenue at about 6pm. They were sitting outside and were all rather merry after drinking throughout their flight at the on-board bar and getting stuck into Jager-bombs! We moved on to the Mars Bar at the bottom of Second Avenue, then on to a Morrocan-themed bar at the top of Orchard Street briefly before taking a look in Arlene's Grocery, where we met a New York resident Irish guy called Shane (who was very keen to show us his new iPhone) and his Girlfriend (Mollie?) who took us to a place called Motor City. We then moved onto The Annexe, where a band had just finished and a DJ began playing general indie stuff. We all shuffled back to the hotel pretty much seperately at various of the early hours to round off a long, hectic, boozy, yet satisfying first day...

I left work early and went to have my hair cut at my usual place, The Chair. I met everyone later on in Haha around 8pm and we all gathered round a couple of tables in there for a few hours. We moved on to Casey's later before heading off to the mighty(?) works once again for vodka red bulls and awful music... Just what I needed before an early flight to New York...

My first day back after my birthday celebrations was eased slightly with a midday trip to the Blue Pigeon's in Worth for Malcolm's leaving lunch. We sat out in the sunshine in their lovely garden with a few beers and traditional pub fayre... Below is a picture of Richard looking very 'cool' in front of the kids bouncy castle...?

After the weekend's antics I had rather a quiet day on my actual birthday. Annie was still in Canterbury so we made a great breakfast and pottered around in town taking a few pictures with my new camera phone. Later that day, we made a rather nice pizza and tore up loads of my basil leaves to chuck on it. My parents and brothers also came round armed with a picture cake and a bottle of champagne! Later in the evening, we went to the Three Tuns for a beer as it was quiet and we could put songs on the juke-box...

My mother, father, MJ, Matty, Annie and I went to Posillipo in town for my birthday meal even though my birthday isn't until 24th. the food was good as always but I think the service was slightly better when it was Tuo e Mio... Annie and I went for a beer afterwards in the Bell and Crown and popped some songs on the juke-box

After a bit of a clear-up operation in the house in the morning, Gav, Kyle, Annie, Lisa and I wandered down to The White Hart Beer garden for light refreshments and some lunch. I realised that my phone had stopped working since the foam party the night before so I had to ga and get it changed at the Orange Shop in Canterbury... The guys all headed off back home and Annie and had a lazy day around the house/garden and watched the movie Munich

The 'A' list, roughly in order of appearance:

Jimi Hendrix - Me
2D - Kyle
Craig David - Gav
Slash - Leon
Britney Spears - Yukari
Flava Flav - John
Amy Winehouse - Chie
Sgt Pepper - Gary
Geri Haliwell - Rachel
Madonna - Lisa
Ozzy Osborne - James
Tina Turner - Laura
Liam Gallagher - Dazza
Jamiroquai - Ian
Lily Allen - Emma
Blondie - Anna
Chris Martin - Scott
Marilyn Monroe - Nuala
Victoria Beckham - Jen
David Beckham - Phil
Madonna - Annie
Jimi Hendrix - Gus
Morrisey - Tim
Nelly Furtado - Mirage
? - Jenny
? - Ilir
? - Dion
? - Jon
? - Scott
? - Big Stew

After the party we all went to Casey's and then on to a foam party at Studio 41.

Gav has a pretty much complete set of photos on his Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinclark/sets/72157600955086117/

Gav and Kyle came down a day before my birthday barbeque to head over to the Kent Beer Festival. Leon, Yukari, Vicki, Gav, Kyle and I all convened at mine and we jumped in a taxi via Leon's house (because he forgot the tickets!) over to Merton Farm. It was my first visit to this annual event and I was pleasantly surprised! All the action takes place inside a huge cowshed! All of the barrels of beer are set up around the perimeter with a load of food stalls in the middle and a stage with a band at the near end. On arrival, you pay £10 and get a half pint or pint glass and £7.50 in beer tokens. My favorite beer was probably my last one, Nutcracker, which I recommended to Gavin's mother whom I met by sheer chance at the Pink Girlie Bar! We also met up with loads of people from work including, Mirage, Marc, Emma, Matt, Jane, Nuala and a load of others - It was like the work social club! Afterwards, we headed home on rather a rickety bus and were good and went to bed earlyish in preparation for the next days mayhem!

I placed an order with the butcher for stuff for my birthday barbecue on Saturday.

To be precise:

35 x quarter pounder beefburgers
4 x dinner plate sized coils of bratwurst sausage
4 x dinner plate sized coils of choqitos sausage
4 x whole chickens clevered into eights

Tonight, we played a match with a PGRD XI from the Wednesday night footie against the Fire Service. Thought we would struggle but we actually did pretty well. 3-1 to us. I got a goal in the first half after a neat cross ball courtesy of James from the left of the 18 yard box. They came back with one early in the second half while I took my turn in goal. John Hillier headed one in after getting on the end of a perfect in-swinging left to right cross from James to the back post and I got the last about 5 minutes from the end, just chipped over and to the left of the goalkeepers. I reckon man of the match would have to be Graham Gandy. They want a re-match some time in September now! I also had a chat with Christine after substituting myself off for a few minutes about the antics at Koko where we watched Ash play recently.

It was my middle brother, Matty's, birthday today and he is now the same age as me for one week, until I turn 30 next Tuesday... He's in Cyprus with some footie/Asda chaps so I'll have to catch up with him when he's back. He says it's really hot out there on the e-mail I had from him... Looking forward to finding out what he's been up to...

Didn't manage to leave work until 3 but managed to do a few things in the house before loading some beers into a bag to take to Jen's. Got a bit lost on the way there as I'm not used to that part of town - Not that I've lived here most of my life or anything! Anyway, when I arrived Kim was there with her boyfriend, Bladon, and Vicki so we sat in the garden with beers and had a chat in the surprisingly nice weather. As the evening progressed more and more people turned up and we fired up the barbeque and started cooking stuff. Andy, Nuala and Jonny all arrived a little later and at around 9:30 we shuffled off into town for a beer in Casey's and to meet up with Tim, Ian, Emma, Scott and Dazza. Inevitably, although I'm not sure why I say this, we went on to Chicago's for more drinks... The music, as usual, was terrible - I've given up requesting songs now! As far as I can remember Jonny and I pretty much propped up the bar all night putting various things to rights... I eventually went home around 2:30 after being one of the last to leave Chicago's - and met a very nice hot dog with ketchup and mayonnaise on the way - as the others went on to Dazza's for more beers...

I went to meet Stephen, James, Anil, Tim and Ibs in the Bishop's Finger for a beer and we shuffled off to Apeksha shortly after. The waiter made a bad start and knocked a 660ml bottle of Cobra off the table which went everywhere - there was beer on the ceiling! Anyway, our curry was average 6/10 I'd say. We discussed wind-ups, including the time James convinced Dan C that the IRA were after him, Facebook, including the rudiments of poking and super-poking and a bit of stuff about jobs and recent redundancies.
After dinner we went to the Cherry Tree for a quick drink and then onto Casey's afterwhich only James, Tim and I made it into the Cuban... James and I decided to head to Alberry's but we got there after 1pm so they wouldn't let us in. However, a little scuffle broke out which drew the bouncer's attention so we snuck in amid the confusion... and promptly got kicked out and barred for 3 months... so that's Alberry's out for a while...

I needed to christen my new Singstar Rocks disc so I invited Nuala, Jonny and Andy round to give it a go. They arrived around 7:30ish and we were all starving so I put an order in to Lanna Thai and I went to collect it on my bike to make it extra quick! As usual, it was very nice! The beers seemed to be going down well so it wasn't long before we were feeling brave enough to sing. The following hours are a bit o a blur but I managed to get one photo of Andy and Jonny midway through a version of Livin' La Vida Loca before my neighbour rapped on the door to complain about the noise approaching 1am. What I hadn't appreciated was that as we had more beer we were singing louder so we were turning the backing track up to compensate until we were properly shouting. Anyway, I apologised to the neighbours (who are very cool, incidentally) and we called it a night. Very amusing, as always...

Two rather murky pics: One of Gav after several Jager bombs and one of Tim Wheeler...

Ash were brilliant at Koko on Friday night! I really love the venue as well - I believe it used to be the Electric Ballroom.
Anyway, I jumped on the train and met Gav at Camden Tube Station at 6:30 and we went for a bite to eat at the Bento Cafe just over the road - I had a pretty good Katsu Don with rice washed down with one of the finest beers known to man - Kirin Ichiban! We breezed into Koko at about 7:30 and hit the beers (although Gav had already had 5 for his lunch - nice!) Ash played a first set of stuff mostly from their new album kicking off with their new single. They played a lot of older songs in their second set at which point we became heavily involved in moshing and pogoing at the front... Afterwards, we stayed on for Club NME and met up with Darren, Graham and Christine - Things become a bit blurry when we decided to drink numerous jager bombs - jagermeister with red bull - in quick succession...

We Kyle and his flatmate afterwards and crashed at their place nearby...

Okay, I'm not really into cycling or anything, but I feel slightly annoyed with myself that the entire Tour de France cavalcade and all of the cyclists passed-by only 100 metres from my front door - and onto the first stage finish line in Canterbury yesterday - and I missed the whole thing! I was busy mucking around in the garden and kinda forgot what the time was until I saw numerous helicopters passing overheard following the cyclists... Shucks!

Went round to Leon and Yukari's in the afternoon to play Risk! My pink army was destroyed first after a very bad start so I went off to the pub!

Cool! Just picked up a ticket to see Ash tomorrow night at Koko in Camden...

Matty and MJ came round to the house last night after I got back from football. We ordered some takeway from the ever-excellent Lanna Thai restaurant which is literally two minutes from the house. We had thai fish cakes, chicken satay and mini spring rolls - all with the most fabulous dips - to start snacking on followed by oodles of coconut rice and pad thai noodles with red and green curry - it was lovely!

We had a go at Singstar for an hour or so after that and mucked around on the internet for a bit...

It all started off at 6am when I had to haul myself out of my very comfy bed to make a last-minute seat cushion cover for the sofa that I sold on eBay a few weeks ago. The delivery guys were coming to collect it at 8am so I was frantically cutting, ironing and stitching fabric this morning! I got it finished about 10 minutes before they arrived. Phew!

I also received paypal confirmation of payment for the old telephone that I sold, also on eBay, so I had to wrap all that up for posting.

I've been catching up with blogs and e-mails all morning as well and now it's lunchtime already, so I'm off to the post office and the bakery in Sandwich... and the sun's just come out - Hallelujah!