No Score Draw

A few of us went to Vaudeville's after work on Friday and the place is still as busy as ever and finding a seat for 5 people at 4.30pm was a small chore. I think it's still a great bar although I would attend to a few small things such as an overhaul the furniture towards the back where we ended up sitting such as the low metallic tables that deserve a place in Lavery's alongside the accompanying stools. Another small gripe is the limited video footage displayed on the video screens and after you've seen it looped twice it's annoying to catch again and again. Admittedly I should be focused on the conversation but when the music is too loud that I can barely hear someone 4 feet away it becomes frustrating. Nonetheless, once they turn the music off and a band begins to play, it's at a level I can talk over.

By 8.30pm or so we were in need of sustenance and visited a new Lebanese restaurant on Amelia Street. It was BYO and luckily there was an off-licence across the road although from experience they sell absolute rubbish Merlot and Cab Sauv so I played the Rioja card and ended up with something not too bad. Indeed the wine was better than the meal itself. I cannot recall the name of the dish - it was spiced kebab on a bed of rice with a coconut dip. However, the kebabs were tiny, the rice was dry and the coconut dip was more watery than creamy. The overall feel of the place is somewhere between take-away and restaurant and it's location opposite Little Italy will only position it as the former.

On Saturday morning my nose was running like a tap and I felt worn down and exhausted. I spent some time on the couch flicking through channels ingesting vitamin C tablets, echinacea and some cold & flu tablets Lou bought me as she acted like Mary Nightingale for me all weekend. Typically this hit me over the weekend and I'm back in work today feeling much better although peeved that things like this never occur around mid-week but torture me when I have downtime.

The good news over the weekend was Northern Ireland's scoreless draw with Denmark on Saturday evening putting us third in the table and facing off aganist Latvia on Wednesday of which we are more than capable of beating although we have a knack for getting beaten against weaker teams such like the style of the Republic vs Israel game which would be a terrible blow for qualifying for the next round.


On Sunday evening we watched The Girl In The Café starring the great Bill Nighy and Kelly McDonald. Nighy plays a lonely civil servant who works for the Chancellor of the Exchequer who meets McDonald, another lonely figure, in an awkward café meeting which turns around when the two spit out a conversation and Nighy plucks up the courage to ask her out. Nighy is quickly besotted with McDonald and invites her to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik. However, their relationship is tested by Lawrence's professional obligations and McDonalds behaviour towards other delegates during the conference.

I found the films plot regarding the G8 summit to be very far fetched although the relationship between the two was accessible and also wonderfully acted by Nighy and McDonald from their tenuous beginnings in awkward conversation to held-back passion. I feel that if their tenuous relationship was at the forefront of a more believable background that it would have garnered a more realistic and approachable reaction. Nevertheless, the political background brings an important issue to the widescreen and illustrates how world poverty tends to be a lot of empty gestures amongst world leaders over preference of economic stability and placing their own country first.

I would give the film 3 E.U. countries out of 5.

I hope you all had a great weekend. Thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow.