Natural, fresh and ready

I've been eating out quite a lot since I arrived in Brussels, but I don't really have the time or inclination to post about all the restaurants and cafés I've tried out so far. The one I do want to mention, though, is one that I've actually only got take-away from so far, but which has already become one of my favourite Brussels places.

Exki is a Belgian chain of cafés/snack bars that sells good quality, healthy 'fast food' - not burgers and chips, but salads, soups, sandwiches... and delicious cakes and cheescakes, all sold by the slice to eat in or take away. One of their specialities is speculoos cheescake - a bargain at €3.45 for a big slice.

Its by-line is 'natural, fresh and ready' (in English, of course, because English is cool. Or something.), and it's only been around since 2001, but already has 16 branches in Brussels alone. I saw a report on TV that their turnover is down due to the economic situation, but it's always been fairly busy when I've gone or looked in so far, so I'm sure they're not in trouble.

They also do breakfast - fresh pastries, yoghurt, fruit salad, freshly squeezed orange juice... As there are two on my route to work, I can see myself succumbing to temptation rather more often than is good for the bank balance.

The exception that proves the rule

It is a well-known "fact" that all odd-numbered Star Trek films are pants. Until now. I just went to see the latest one, number 11, and it is awesome. The way the cast manage to be so recognisable as younger versions of the characters we know, without descending into outright impersonation, is very impressive indeed. Zachary Quinto is particularly good as Spock - he has the voice dead on, as is obvious when he's on screen with Leonard Nimoy (who is, of course, a legend) - but in my opinion they're all great.

Only Star Trek could get away with a prequel in which the essential premise is that the original series is now not going to happen as we saw it. The Spock/Uhura thing is particularly intriguing: I haven't seen enough of Star Trek:TOS to know whether there are any hints of this relationship, but I do know that it's actually Kirk who kisses Uhura in one episode.

Plus, it's funny, it's well-paced, the special effects are good, and the science is suitably silly.

Take note, George Lucas, this is how you do a prequel.

Welcome to Brussels/Bruxelles/Brussel

The capital of Belgium, (one of the) headquarters of the European Union, and home to over one million people. Including, as of Tuesday, me.

The whole point of starting this blog in the first place was to record my adventures in the city. I don't have a huge amount to say so far, except that the food is good, the beer is excellent, the TV is very multilingual and my French is gradually getting better - but watch this space!

Is it just me...

or was Norway's Eurovision song actually not that good? I mean, it wasn't bad (though I'm sure he was singing sharp for a lot of it), but 387 points seems a bit excessive.

Honourable mention for an Honourable Member

In the midst of the outrage over MPs' expenses, I'd just like to draw attention to the Honourable Member for Luton North, Kelvin Hopkins. I've always rather liked Mr Hopkins: I disagree with a lot of his politics, but he has always struck me as having integrity and principles, unlike a lot of his colleagues.

And it would seem, according to the revelations in the Telegraph, that his fellow MPs could learn something from him. He doesn't have a second home, and instead travels down from Luton every day, claiming occasionally for a hotel room - and not expensive hotel rooms, either, judging by the fact that he's claimed only £4513 over four years. All of which sounds entirely reasonable to me: thousands of people commute into London every day on this line; the trains aren't particularly pretty, but there are 4 of them an hour for most of the day, they run until gone 1 a.m., and they even still have first-class carriages, unlike some commuter lines.*

Compare and contrast his parliamentary neighbour in Luton South, Margaret Moran. She lives in the same street as Mr Hopkins, and yet felt it necessary to claim £74904 over the same period. Apparently, what a Luton MP really needs in order to do her job is a house in Southampton. Who knew?

*ETA: However, I'm told by someone who used to travel regularly on the same train as him that he puts his feet on the seats. Which is clearly appalling and scandalous and he should be deselected forthwith!

City living

Went out for drinks with a friend in the City the other night. He's worked in the area for a while now, and knows his way around, which was great, because we ended up in a couple of out of the way places that I would never have found by myself.

We started off in The Samuel Pepys, which was, inevitably, quite busy with people in suits, but we had no trouble finding seats, and it was quiet enough to talk comfortably. It's in a great location, but unfortunately the restaurant section, with views of the river, was all booked up.

Instead, we went to eat at a nearby Turkish restaurant. It's ever so cosy inside, with fancy wooden carvings on the ceiling, and the kitchen is open, so we could see them cooking - which seemed to involve an awful lot of flames, I suspect more for effect than culinary necessity. The food was very tasty: their main speciality is pide, a sort of Turkish pizza, but the dough seems to be a bit lighter. I had the kayisili, which was filled with apricots, peppers, cheese and mint - a pretty unusual combination, but it worked really well.

Mystery music

Brighton Festival. Over three weeks of art, theatre, music, dance, discussion... Marvellous.

Pretty much on a whim, I went with a friend to see the Takàcs Quartet at the Corn Exchange. Because it was just a random impulse, neither of us paid much attention to what the music was going to be, and we couldn't be bothered to buy a programme, so we spent most of the concert 'blind', as it were, with no idea what we were listening to. It was quite an interesting experience. One of the pieces was Bartok's 4th String Quartet, which was written in 1927, but we both thought it was much more modern than that. I hadn't heard the piece before, and I'm not usually a great Bartok fan, but I liked it a lot, especially the slower third movement, which was very atmospheric. The other works were Haydn's last quartet, and Schumann's A minor quartet, so a real mixture of periods. I thought it worked very well as a programme, and they played it all very well - some quartets very much specialise in a particular period, and you can tell when they're out of their comfort zone, but the Takàcs seemed perfectly at home in classical, romantic and modern.

The Corn Exchange was a good venue for a chamber concert. It's quite a big hall, but the acoustic is very good - resonant, but clear, so the sound never got lost. I did think the sound of the viola got slightly lost at times, but I suspect that might just be my bias as a viola player showing.

And afterwards, we went to Terraces, and sat on the terrace looking out over the sea drinking our first Pimms of the summer. What a lovely way to spend a bank holiday Sunday.

Alphabetical Order

The other night I went to see Michael Frayn's early (1975) play Alphabetical Order at the Hampstead Theatre. I'd never heard of it before, though I know and like some of Frayn's other stuff, so I didn't really know what to expect, and I enjoyed it very much.

It's based in the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper, which dates it straight away, because I would imagine such archives are kept digitally these days - and there are also a few political references that place it in the 1970s - but it didn't actually feel dated in terms of the theme, the characters and so on.

I thought the set was effective, particularly the transformation during the interval from chaotic mess to organised sterility. The acting was very good - Imogen Stubbs was the only one of the actors I already knew, and she was great, but I particularly liked Jonathan Guy Lewis as John (and it turns out that I have seen him before, because he was in Soldier, Soldier, which I used to watch religiously, but I don't remember him at all).

I guess the theme of the play is the tension between order and freedom. I got the impression that Frayn is rather coming down on the side of freedom - efficient, organising Lesley is the least sympathetic character, seeming to ride roughshod over the lives and feelings of the others - but he does show that it's not quite as simple as that. Lesley recognises that her organisation is 'compulsion', and the chaos of the first half is not entirely positive - they rather seem to be stuck in a rut. Maybe that's just my instinct for tidiness biasing me, though!

I'd never been to the Hampstead Theatre before, and I was impressed. The current theatre was only built in 2003, and it's very well designed, both in the theatre itself and in the other areas, with a lovely outside area at the back. It's a small space, and we felt very close to the action, but it didn't seem cramped at all. And the staff were very friendly when we arrived with precisely 1 minute to spare, having missed the train from Richmond.

Brighton up your day

Brighton really is a marvellous place for a day trip, isn't it? Especially when the sun is shining, as it was on Sunday. I was there to visit a friend, and we made the most of the glorious weather by going for a boat trip down the coast, from the marina to the remains of the West Pier and back again.

Once the sun had gone down, we had dinner in a vegetarian resaturant in The Lanes called Food For Friends, and I would highly recommend it! The food was really interesting and original, and very, very tasty, despite being terrifyingly healthy. I had tofu pockets to start, which were, according to the menu:

Sweet tofu cases, one filled with asian mushrooms, spring onions and avocado, miso roasted butternut squash, and an oriental mirin and tamari dressing served with a trio of pickled vegetables

followed by sweet potato and coconut curry:

Roasted sweet potato, butternut squash, cashew and coconut curry with herbed spinach brown basmati pilaf, cucumber riata and spicy vegetable crisps

You can almost see the vitamins!

(title shamelessly stolen from the friend I was visiting)

Cry God for Harry, England and...

Saint George, patron saint of England, Portugal, Palestine, Scouts and syphilitics, amongst others. It is, of course, his memorial day today, and also, appropriately enough, the date of death and allegedly birth of William Shakespeare.

There have been increasing calls over recent years for St George's Day to be celebrated on a larger scale, like SS Patrick, David and Andrew are in their respective countries of patronage. In principle, I absolutely agree, but what I've been wondering is: why George?

The thing is, St George has precisely no connection with England, not even a legendary one. He was born in Cappadocia (Turkey), to a Turkish father and a Palestinian mother; he did his dragon slaying in either Libya or Palestine, depending on which source you read; and he died in Palestine. So why him, and not, say, St Alban, St Cuthbert or St Augustine of Canterbury?

The answer would appear to be at least partly to do with precisely this lack of an English connection. Veneration of the various English saints seems to have had a primarily local focus, in the places specifically associated with them: St Cuthbert in Northumbria, St Edmund in Bury St Edmunds, St Alban in... well, I'll give you three guesses. This in effect meant that they were in competition with each other, which militated against one of them coming out 'on top', as it were.

St George, on the other hand, had been known in England since the 8th century, and venerated as patron saint of soldiers since the time of the Crusades, but he really came to prominence in England with the publication, in 1265, of the Legenda Aurea, which included the tale of George and the Dragon. The theory is that this legend took off particularly well in England because of its similarity to an older Anglo-Saxon one: after all, Christianity has a long history of 'piggy-backing' (and I mean that in a good way) on existing customs and traditions. And this, assisted by his popularity among military types (Very Important People in those days), led to him being acknowledged as the patron saint of England by the late 1300s.

There have been calls at various times for George to be replaced by St Alban or St Edmund, but in the meantime, happy St George's Day!

(Information mostly taken from Wikipedia, the Catholic Encylopaedia and here).

Shiny!

I have new toys! I also have significantly less money than I did a couple of weeks ago.

The main new toy is a rather shiny (both literally and à la Firefly) laptop. It's an Acer Aspire 6930G (*nods sagely*), with a 2GHz dual core processor, 4GB of RAM and 250GB hard drive (which seems slightly excessive given that my 6-year-old desktop's 40GB is still about a third full). Sadly, it is infected with Vista (*spit, spit*), but some things can't be helped. I've spent the best part of this week getting it all set up - and using up a fair chunk of my download limit putting Useful Things like Spotify and Firefox on it.

And this is a proper grown-up handbag - some of you will recognise the little dog on the tag (and those of you who don't almost certainly don't care). Isn't it pretty...

This is actually much more of an extravagance than the laptop, because nobody *really* needs to spend that much money on a bag, but I figured it's about time I stopped going around looking like a student, now that I'm 30 and have a proper job. Plus it holds loads of stuff.

Finally, I have a new cooker. No photo because, well, it's a cooker. It'll be nice to be able to bake cakes again, though.

Planet of the slightly disappointing

The Doctor! Lee Evans! Thingy off Eastenders! Finally, it's time for the first of this year's Doctor Who specials!

Things I liked:

• The desert planet (i.e. Dubai) was absolutely gorgeous.
• Lee Evans' mad scientist was actually kind of fun, which was unexpected.
  
• Flying bus = awesome.
• The swarm of metal cuttlefish looked cool.
  

Things I didn't like:

• Michelle Ryan can't act. And her character was really annoying.
  
• The whole 'I'm posh, therefore it's OK to steal' thing. Please.
• The fly aliens being killed off so casually.
• The psychic foreshadowing stuff is getting a bit old now.
  

Elsewhere on the net, I've seen people comment that Lady Christina, or whatever her name was, should have been able to understand the fly aliens' language, because she was with the Doctor. I don't think that's necessarily the case, because it's the Tardis that does the translation magic, and it was stuck back on Earth. That's not to say there weren't plenty of other plot holes, of course, but it's Doctor Who - and not only that, but an RTD episode - so what else can we expect.

In general, it wasn't great, but to be honest I've got a bit bored of Doctor Who over the last couple of series: it's not been that bad, but it just hasn't engaged me the way Torchwood (which, objectively speaking, is significantly more rubbish) has. I am, though, looking forward to the next full series, once Steven Moffat takes over, because he's the one responsible for most of the really outstanding episodes in DW: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink in particular.

In praise of the tea room

I spent this afternoon in a particularly fine example of a dying breed: the traditional tea room. I had proper tea (Lapsang Souchong), served in a proper teapot, and a proper freshly baked scone with jam and cream. The company wasn't bad either :-)

I love places like that. When I was a student in a certain northern cathedral city, I spent a good proportion of my time in Vennels, which doesn't appear to have a website but sells excellent tea, even better hot chocolate and the biggest slices of homemade cake you have ever seen. And then there was the place, the name of which I've forgotten, that did Maltesers cake. Mmmm...

So, given that the English are supposedly still a nation of tea drinkers, how come all you can find in most towns these days are the various chains of coffee shops? Coffee shops can't make tea (some of them can't make coffee either, but that's by the by). They insist on using hot water from the coffee machine, when, as everyone knows, tea has to be made with boiling water - and this isn't just pickiness; it doesn't brew properly if the water isn't hot enough. And then they usually serve it to you with both the milk and the tea bag in the mug, which is just wronger than a wrong thing that's mistaken.

Mind you, it'll be even worse when I move to Brussels. There, you get served with a glass of not particularly hot water, with a bag of Lipton Yellow Label (a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea) on the side. Hmm, it looks like I have two choices: coffee, or beer. I know which one I'll be going for...

ETA: On the plus side, I've recently discovered that there are no Starbucks in Belgium (well, technically there's one, but it's in Brussels airport so can safely be ignored).

Star Trekking

So, one of the trailers before Watchmen was for the new Star Trek film. I'd somehow managed to avoid knowing anything about it (yes, it really is that long since I went to the cinema), so I was intrigued. What's going on? Aren't they taking themselves a bit too seriously for Star Trek? Is that supposed to be a young Kirk? Ooh, isn't that Sylar?

A quick Google reveals that the answers to the last two questions (and apparently to the second as well) is yes. I remain dubious about a Star Trek film featuring an unfamiliar cast, but surely it can't be worse than Nemesis, or indeed the whole of Enterprise.

Can it?

On graphic novels and films thereof

Alan Moore famously hates all film adaptations of his graphic novels, and refuses to have his name in the credits. His argument is, in essence, that it's impossible to adapt them: they were specifically written to exploit the features of the comic-book medium, and therefore another medium cannot possibly do them justice.

To a certain extent, I can see where he's coming from: the film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for example, was a complete travesty. However, I think he's missing the point.

All film adaptations of other media involve compromises and 're-imaginings', as they say in Hollywood. Books, plays, computer games (I'm prepared to admit I quite enjoyed the first Resident Evil film), even television shows - they all inevitably have elements that simply don't translate onto the big screen. As a result, I think you really need to look at an adaptation, of any kind, on its own merits, rather than judging it by comparison with the source material. Admittedly, I can't think of a film that I've preferred over the book it was based on (with the possible exception of Brokeback Mountain - if you haven't read the Annie Proulx short story on which it's based, I'd highly recommend it, but the film had, for me, more emotional impact), but, equally, I've never read a 'book of the movie' that was anything other than utter drivel. V for Vendetta is a great comic and, pace Alan Moore, it's also a good movie - yes, the comic has more depth to it, but Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job acting with just his voice.

Which brings me to Watchmen. I was in two minds about whether to bother going to see it in the cinema (it didn't help that my main source of film information, Mark Kermode, was not impressed). But I was at a loose end and fancied getting out of the house, so off I went, and I have to say I wasn't very impressed either.

It's way too long, for a start - and apparently it's going to be even longer on the DVD version. And it's too violent - yes, yes, I know, it's supposed to be, but some bits really are quite deeply unpleasant (and I had to close my eyes at the bit with the axe in the head). The main problem, though (and I'm far from the first to say this) is that, perhaps ironically given Alan Moore's objections, it's actually far too faithful to the source material. I'm sure the fanboys are delighted at how much of the plot Snyder's managed to shoehorn in, but I'm no fanboy (well, obviously, but I'm not a fangirl either), and I found that his reverence towards the comic rather robbed it of life. There's too much going on, and far too often it felt more like 'and this is the frame on the top left of page 24' than anything else.

It's not all bad, though. It does better than V for Vendetta at capturing the depths and layers of the source material. Jackie Earl Haley does a great job as Rorschach. Some of the cinematography is fantastic - particularly certain shots that really echo the look of Dave Gibbons' illustrations. And the soundtrack, ranging from 99 Luftballons to Mozart's Requiem, is ace.

Overall? I quite enjoyed it, but I'm glad I went to the mid-afternoon showing - it wouldn't have been worth paying the full admission price. And, of course, it further confirmed the truth of the quote by JW Eagan (no, no idea who he is, or if he ever said anything else of interest): 'Never judge a book by its movie'.

Crucifying the Crucifixion

It's that time of year again, folks, when all the big choirs are singing a Bach Passion of one flavour or another, and all the choirs that can't quite cope with that are doing Stainer's Crucifixion. And this year, for the first time, I was in the choir stalls instead of the audience.

Actually, I should apologise for the post title, because we didn't crucify it at all: in fact, apart from a couple of slightly wobbly moments, it went very well. And that's the beauty of the Stainer: it was specifically written to be singable by an ordinary parish choir and accessible to an ordinary parish congregation, and it succeeds admirably in those aims. Yes, it's very much of its time, fairly dripping with syrup in places; yes, the libretto is, umm, not exactly the finest poetry the world has ever seen; and yes, it does drag terribly in places, at least at the speed Richard Hickox takes it in the HMV Classics recording. But God So Loved The World is an incomparably beautiful setting of a verse (John 3:16) that expresses the very essence of the Christian faith; the hymn tunes (particularly Cross of Jesus) have stood the test of time; and the all-male-voice setting of Jesus' final words is remarkably effective.

Tallis it ain't. But it does what it set out to do very well, and I for one am glad that it's still going strong.