Hello again! Because my 41st Birthday Favourites included the first half of September to cover the Paralympics, I had considered combining the rest of the month with October for a joint Favourites post later on. However, there are enough bits and pieces from the latter half of September that I can make a little post and video from, including another tasty free meal, a nice bit of comedy and some great factual entertainment.
So let’s get straight into it, as this won’t take long. As ever, nothing is sponsored to appear here and all opinions are my own, and I hope you enjoy!
Contents
The Cardinal Bar & Kitchen
Apart from leisurely walks and getting my hair cut, my most noteworthy outing in the last couple of weeks has been for a free lunch, courtesy of my journalist friend and colleague Emily, who kindly invited me along for another of her PR reviews.
This time we were at The Cardinal Bar & Kitchen, a new all-day dining establishment in Aldgate. It’s on the ground floor of Hotel Saint, just around the corner from Aldgate station, and just a 5-minute walk from Aldgate East, so it’s very easy to get to. The place has a really nice vibe to it, and the staff were lovely, happily making friends with Emily’s guide dog Rosie as well.
As we were there on a press visit, we said they were welcome to select the food items for us, if there was anything they particularly wanted us to try. So the chef prepared some plates for us to share.
We started by having bread and burrata with cherry tomatoes, plus a salad dish that included avocados. I’ve never had burrata cheese before, but it was fresh and had a nice texture and flavour to it, and it went well with the bread.
Mains consisted of a plump piece of roast chicken with spinach, truffle dashi sauce and green oil, plus pan-fried salmon with artichoke puree and sauce vierge, all accompanied by a side of asparagus fingers with guindilla gribiche sauce. It was all nice, but I’m much more into meat than seafood, so the chicken was easily my favourite.
Then for dessert we were presented with sticky toffee pudding with Armagnac ice cream and a big slice of Earl Grey infused cheesecake. Emily preferred to have the sticky toffee pudding, so I let her have that while I had the cheesecake, which was very nice.
We also had a couple of cocktails each, and the two I tried were both nice and refreshing without being too strong. During the meal I had the Pineapple Picante, which consisted of Cantinero Blanco tequila, lime, agave, pineapple, habanero and ancho chilis. Then after our food I had the Dark ‘n’ Stormzy, which came in a surprisingly tall glass that contained Goslings’ black seal rum, homemade spicy ginger syrup, lime juice, Angostura bitters and ginger beer.
So all in all it was a lovely lunch in a comfortable atmosphere, and you can read Emily’s review if you want more information.
Comedy
There are a few comedians I want to mention this month, along with the return of a classic TV show.
Chris Ramsey
Firstly, Chris Ramsey: Live From London is a very funny new stand-up show on Sky Comedy that Chris filmed at the Royal Court Theatre, lasting for an hour (with ads). After a great opening routine about him falling out with his Amazon Alexa machine, he proceeds to tell us in detail about the three most embarrassing incidents in his life to date, involving his log burner and Les Misérables, his eldest son in the changing stalls at a swimming pool, and going on Strictly Come Dancing, all for reasons that you don’t expect. He tells the stories very well, with lots of related observations mixed in, and it’s very entertaining.
Chris McCausland
And talking of Strictly, it’s well worth highlighting that Chris McCausland is the first blind contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. I don’t watch Strictly (nor have I been watching his ITV chat show either), but I’ve watched a few clips of Chris’ routines and his social media clips with dance partner Dianne Buswell, and they do make a fantastic partnership which has gone down a storm on social media. I’ve seen Chris doing stand-up comedy live, so I’m not surprised his sense of humour has been helping with this, and I’m delighted he’s doing well on the show and with his career in general. So I hope he stays in the series for a while and enjoys the whole experience.
Ross Noble
And then the other comedian to mention is Ross Noble. After I had a great time seeing him live in March, I went on to write a couple of extensive posts about his fabulous feature-filled DVDs in May and June. And now I’ve completed the trilogy by writing a final post about his online stand-up shows, comedy horror productions, documentaries and radio series. And I’ve marked the completion of that little project with a Youtube playlist of clips I’ve been putting together as well. So feel free to check all of that out if you like him.
Taskmaster
As ever, I’m very happy that Taskmaster is back on TV at the moment, for what is now its 18th series. The contestants I know best and have most interest in are Jack Dee and Rosie Jones, their appearances in this are long overdue. Of course, the cowardly ableists online who have nothing better to do are being predictably abusive about Rosie, but she’s been one of the most creative contestants this series. And pairing her up with Jack for the team tasks was a great move, because they have such different personalities and styles of comedy, and they hit it off really well with each other.
Andy Zaltzman and Babatunde Aléshé I was vaguely aware of, but apart from Babatunde making a guest appearance that I don’t remember in a Doctor Who episode, I’ve never been interested in watching or listening to anything they’ve had a major role in. They are good here though. And Emma Sidi is someone I had never heard of before, but I took an instant liking to her, she’s good fun. So, as always, it’s the variety in the casting that makes it work so well, it’s another enjoyable series.
Factual
This month I enjoyed a couple of nice documentaries that my friend Claire recommended on BBC iPlayer, and listened to a great audiobook that she had bought me for my birthday. Plus there’s an aniridia-related thing I want to mention too.
National Trust
Hidden Treasures Of The National Trust is a lovely look behind the scenes at this fine organisation, taking us to many of their stunning properties over the 12 episodes. There’s a lot of meticulous and intricate work that goes into cleaning, maintaining, transporting, researching, restoring and rebuilding their many paintings, sculptures, furnishings, artefacts, gardens, and so on. And there’s a lot of interesting history attached to it all, including famous names like Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli. My favourite episode, however, was the one featuring the childhood home of Paul McCartney, where they recreated some iconic wallpaper, restored his parents’ bedroom and even tried to uncover some graffiti in the toilet! So it’s a very interesting series, well worth a look if you like history, museums and beautiful locations.
Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower: Building The Impossible is all about Gustave Eiffel’s mission to build the iconic French landmark, the tallest building in the world at the time. As well as actual photos and footage of the tower, there are computer animations throughout to illustrate the story, and thankfully the audio description reads the English translations of French speakers. So it’s very interesting to learn about the design and construction process, the problems that were faced along the way, how it was saved from destruction, and how it has evolved over the years since then, as well as some of the other impressive structures around the world by Gustave Eiffel, and how he got caught up the Panama Canal scandal.
People Hacker
People Hacker (also available in other formats) is a fascinating audiobook that was kindly gifted to me by Claire for my birthday. It’s written and narrated by Jenny Radcliffe from Liverpool, a social engineer and “ethical con artist”. She uses her skills to educate organisations and individuals about the flaws in their security measures – or, more specifically, the flaws in human behaviour that allow even the toughest security measures to be defeated. Because for all the passwords, firewalls, virus checkers, ID cards, alarms, CCTV and other technical security measures you might have, there’s always one major weakness – the people.
Humans are far from perfect. We’re creatures of habit, we make mistakes, we form snap judgements, we can be negligent, we forget things, we get tired, we can be too trusting of people who look ‘normal’ or ‘official’, we reveal too much about ourselves online, and so on.
Jenny is a world-renowned expert who takes advantage of these vulnerabilities, using natural human behaviours and characteristics to her advantage. After extensive planning with online research and in-person surveillance, Jenny can figure out who best to approach and how to psychologically manipulate them, and determine how to break into premises and systems without being caught or challenged or causing any criminal damage. And she doesn’t need to do any computer hacking whatsoever. She’s incredibly clever, and also very courageous in dangerous circumstances.
The results are often a big shock for the clients who have hired her, having previously felt confident that their systems and buildings were impenetrable. It’s a massive wake-up call when she reveals in-depth information that was meant to be confidential or believed to be secret. After all, if she can do it, so can the criminals.
So in this book Jenny gives an eye-opening and entertaining insight into her life and her job. The first half is mainly about events as a child and a young adult that helped to influence her choice of career, including being kidnapped, as well as sneaking into people’s houses, a zoo, a funeral parlour and the Glastonbury Festival.
Then the rest is about some of the memorable jobs she’s been asked to do as an actual ‘burglar for hire’, during which she’s captured by security guards in her first infiltration, meets mysterious strangers who seem to know who she is, gets trapped face down in a pile of dirt, unleashes a ‘plague’ of locusts, rescues a nervous cat, nearly dies when falling off a roof, gets into a highly secure bank and a critical infrastructure control centre, and plays a small yet dangerous part in helping to bring down a major criminal.
It’s all very interesting, often dramatic and sometimes humorous, plus it reminds and educates you about some of the tricks that criminals use, and Jenny narrates it really well. So I can definitely recommend it, and thank you to Claire for the birthday present!
As an aside, talking of books and before anyone asks, I am aware of Richard Osman’s new crime fiction novel called We Solve Murders, available as an audiobook and in other formats, which starts a new crime series for him. And I will get around to it eventually, but I’m behind with his Thursday Murder Club series as it is. They are great books, but I don’t listen to audiobooks much and I’ve been rather absorbed in other things, so they’ve just fallen by the wayside unfortunately. There is another Thursday Murder Club story on the way though, and the movie for the first book is currently in production, so maybe when the film comes out I’ll restart the series and give it a proper review, which I would like to do. But we’ll see what happens.
Aniridia Network
Just a quick mention for the Aniridia Network to finish with. I’ve recently been editing and transcribing the videos from their online conference that took place earlier this year, which include interesting talks about research projects, support services and personal experiences as usual.
These are about to be published on the Aniridia Network’s Youtube channel over the coming weeks, so if you’re interested in things to do with aniridia, do be sure to subscribe and look out for them. There will be transcripts published on the Aniridia Network blog as well. Plus you can check out the videos from older conferences of course, including the playlist for last year’s event.
There are also plans for another Aniridia Meetup after Sight Village in Kensington on the evening of Tuesday, November 5. These meetups are a great way for people with aniridia and their families to meet others with the condition for a friendly get-together. While nothing’s been confirmed yet, do keep an eye on the Aniridia Network blog, Facebook and Twitter/X pages for details in the weeks ahead.
Conclusion
So that’s it for this relatively brief update, I hope you enjoyed that. I don’t yet know what October has in store, though I have one or two things in mind that I might do, and there are a few bits and pieces I want to watch, so it should be a nice month. I hope you have fun too, whatever you have planned or end up doing, and I’ll see you for my next post very soon!
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