The Oar House revisited: still fantastic

One of the good things about having relatives in Dublin is that I get to go back from time to time for visits. As my in-laws live there, this includes Christmas - approx. every other Christmas, as it happens. (Not through planning, as such, but it just seems to work out this way.)

Christmas away from home seems to feature even more tasty food and drink than Christmas at home. This year, we rounded things off with a lunchtime visit to The Oar House in Howth on the way to the airport. I've posted about The Oar House before, four years ago. It was one of my favourites then and it still is.

The only problem with The Oar House is choosing what to have, as everything is so good! Fortunately, they have a solution for this too: a delicious and versatile tapas menu that can be ordered as a starter, scaled up for a main course or, as we did, shared among a few of us.

In addition to the must-haves - smokies and prawns of some variety (we had Prawns Pil Pil) - we had the calamari and a trio of dishes from the specials menu. Two of these had a decidedly Mexican theme - grilled prawn nachos and salmon tostadas. Tasty! The third was something that I would not normally order but was very glad that we did: crab claws. These were the biggest and most delicious crab claws that I have ever tasted, in yummy garlicky goodness. Amazing stuff.

Perhaps most exciting of all, whilst visiting The Oar House website for images, I discovered that they have a recipes section. Yummy! Watch this space for more on that. (When I feel brave enough to cook fish.)

30% sale at Lulu - today only!

That means you can get The Cabbages of Doom for just £1. Bargain!

Santa's reached Germany!

Thanks to Google and NORAD teaming up, I have been tracking Santa's progress this year. He's reached Germany now, so time for bed soon, I think!

Update...



Of course, the actual NORAD Santa Tracker website was even better. You can even watch videos of Santa visiting various major cities and landmarks. Good to see some of the US defence budget being spent on stuff for the good of mankind.

Beyond Busted: Charlie Simpson and the fantastic Fightstar

My most recent big musical discovery is that of Fightstar Fightstar, a British rock band whose most famous member is probably Charlie Simpson, formerly of Busted.

I must confess that I don't really know a lot about Busted. My one real experience of them is hearing them sound-check, or possibly rehearse, Year 3000 prior to a gig in Dublin. What I heard was not pretty but this may have been more to do with me being outside the stadium (Lansdowne Road, as it was then,) and/or the fact that they hadn't got their sound set up than a reflection on their talent. Either way, the sound-bite combined with my natural distrust of teen "Pop punk", meant that I have avoided them ever since. This makes the discovery of the sublime Fightstar all the more surprising, as the lead member is none other than Charlie Simpson, formerly of Busted.

I can't really compare Fightstar to Busted but I suspect that the sound is very different, as Fightstar kick out proper rock tunes with heavy guitar and the occasional screeching rock scream, in addition to the more melodic singing that dominates. I find it hard to pigeon-hole bands into genres and so I am not really sure to what sub-category of rock Fightstar belong. (Wikipedia editors have opted for "alternative" or "Post-hardcore", whatever that means.) I would probably just say "Rock" or "Modern Rock", for this is no Bon Jovi either.

It was probably a short customer review on EMusic that made me take the step of having a listen. To paraphrase, it said something along the lines of:

if you like Rock music, you will like this.

I would have to agree 100%. I think that wherever you sit on the rock spectrum, Fightstar offer something. If, like me, you sit somewhere in the middle and enjoy music and influences in all directions from Pop/Rock to Metal, you will love them. The two albums that I have are the later One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours (2007) and Be Human (2009) and, if recommending just one, I would be hard-pushed to choose. (Probably "One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours", especially as you pick up a two-disc version for a bargain on Play.com!) They're both currently available from Emusic, if you want a bargain.

The other factor that made me try them, quite surprisingly, was listening to Young Pilgrim, the more recent solo album of Charlie Simpson. This is a very different beast, and is proper singer-songwriter acoustic pop rock along the lines of Jack Johnson. It's good stuff, though, and definitely marks Charlie Simpson out as an accomplished musician and singer. For me, this was important, as I find that I cannot look beyond bad singing, however good the music is. (The Wildhearts are the possible exception but their singing is not too bad and their tunes are very good!)

When snowmen go bad (Christmas graffiti)

Our walk to work takes us through Southampton Common, which features a pedestrian underpass that is a popular spot for the local graffiti artists - and many of these guys are artists, not just vandals who want to tag their turf. The fruits of their labours are not always to my taste but this one, snapped a couple of weeks ago but happily not yet sprayed over, is one of my favourites.

The Cabbages of Doom: Kindle Edition out now!

My fictional folly is complete (for now) and The Cabbages of Doom is now available in a Kindle Edition too.

I thought it was going to be priced at £1.49 for the UK market but there seems to have been a glitch somewhere. I did find it a bit odd that the cheapest UK price allowed was lower than the USD or EUR prices. Oh well. If the extra 22p puts you off, the PDF and ePub versions are still only £1.44.

Over Christmas, I shall hopefully blog the full e-publishing experience. It's been interesting and I am sure I could do it better next time! (Content aside, that is.)

BBC Planet Earth/Blue Planet - Deep ocean creatures

Thanks go to the Why Evolution is True website for highlighting this video. Amazing footage of some weird and wonderful critters. (Planet Earth and Blue Planet are separate series, for those (like Michael at WEIT) wondering.)