Katie Butcher

Last night Nigel and I went down to the Bradford Hilton to a Comedy Club event. We had a good time. We were a bit worried when we found out that we were seated on front row table, but at least we had a good view. Once the show started you got served drinks at your table, which I thought was good. There was an optional buffet before the show started and then a disco until 1am afterwards.

The compère was Nick Doody, and the two acts were Noel Britton and Brian Damage and Krysstal. We had expected that we’d leave straight after the show, but we ended up being the last to leave along with the Nick Doody who we’d been chatting to. We ended up drinking quite a lot over the evening and I had a bit of headache when I got up this morning; unfortunately I had an appointment at the hairdressers at 9:00am!

The event could have done with a few more people, but it was only the first one. They’ve booked 3 more events to see how it goes. I hope it takes off and is a success because Bradford could do with some live comedy events. Details and dates are here.

On Wednesday I went to Spice Quarter (again) but this time with Nigel and and a trainer at my work who’s been training in Leeds this week. It was great. There was so much to choose from, too much really. There was loads of food laid out for you to help yourself, but also you could pick vegetables and ask the chef to stir-fry them, there was another man making different naan breads to order, you could choose fresh pasta to be cooked and mixed with a sauce of your choice, or there was another counter where you could choose what you wanted to go on a pizza.

We were there for 3 and a half hours in the end. I had some salad and a selection of nibbles for starters. Then I had some rice and beef penang and some sort of vegetarian korma that seemed to have cheese in it. Then I had some stir fry with chicken and sweet and sour sauce. I rounded off with some biscuits dipped in the Belgian chocolate fountain that they have, and also some honey coated nuts. Unlike Nigel, I managed to not make myself feel ill.

You have to like spicy food if you eat here though. I scooped some innocent looking grated carrots into my salad and they must have been in a chilli dressing or something. Wow!… They were nice though.

The staff were really enthusiastic and friendly, even though they seemed perhaps a little inexperienced. Definitely better than the average Chinese Buffet, which I often find tend to have the atmosphere more like a cafeteria than a restaurant.

Certainly not good for the waistline!

Unfortunately I just couldn’t get into the memoir ‘Dead Men’s Wages’ by Lilian Pizzichini. I abandoned it after just a few chapters. I used to force myself to read books even if I wasn’t enjoying them, but more recently I’ve reached the conclusion that life it too short and there are too many books that I would enjoy more.

Lilian Pizzichini’s grandfather was a conman who worked with some of London’s most notorious gangsters, and the book is sort of a biography about him. It sounded quite interesting in the blurb on the back. I don’t think it was a bad book, it just didn’t hold my interest for more than a page at time.

Over the Easter Bank Holiday Weekend I read ‘Where or When’ by Anita Shreve. I had heard of Anita Shreve and so had high hopes for this book, but was disappointed. The main character was thoroughly irritating and the type of person that I would find really annoying if it were real life. It’s about a man in his mid-forties who comes across a photo in the newspaper of a lady he knew for one week during the summer when they were both aged 14. They had been in love that week (yeah right!) but were unable to see each other ever again for some reason or another. Unhappy in his marriage and job he gets in touch with her and they have an affair, madly in love and upset about missing out in the past 30 years. Bleurghh! This reminded me of one of those really awful low budget American TV films that are sometimes shown on daytime television. I was cringing every other page. Truly awful.

I’m so excited! We’ve just bought tickets to see Billy Joel in concert at the Manchester Evening News Arena in July. The ‘Piano Man’ himself will be touring the UK for the first time since 1994, playing dates in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. I had heard rumours at the end of last year that he wasn’t going to tour any more and planned to retire from the popular music scene (he’s not released a new album since 1993) but earlier this year he began a tour in the US and set a record by selling out 12 consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. Billy Joel is a six-times Grammy award winner and has sold more then 100 million albums world-wide, I have to take this opportunity to go and see him live.

Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok was a runner-up in the Richard and Judy ‘How to get Published’ competition and has been my favourite of all the top 5 ‘How to get Published’ novels. The story is set in rural South Africa and told by a girl called Faith. The first half of the story takes place in 1985 (the height of apartheid unrest), when Faith is aged 7 and lives with her mother and father on a drought-stricken farm. Faith’s father is a salesman and works away, but one day he doesn’t return. Faith’s mother suffers badly as a result and eventually has a breakdown. The second half of the story is set in 1990 and tells of Faith returning to the farm where she had spent the first seven years of her life.

This book is beautifully written. I particularly enjoyed the first half which described Faith’s life on the farm. You feel for Faith, an imaginative but lonely little girl, utterly confused by the disappearance of her father and the strange behaviour of her mother. Although the story is being told by a seven year old, the language isn’t that of a seven year old, but you have to really ignore that as I think the book wouldn’t have been good if it were written like a seven year old would write.

I didn’t think the second half of the book was as strong as the first and I was a little disappointed by the ending. Overall though, a very good book.

This morning my boss and one of our company associates were up in Leeds for a meeting with a client. I went down to the city centre to meet them for lunch. On my suggestion, we went to a new place called ‘Spice Quarter’, situated in the Electric Press building in Millennium Square. I had noticed it last week when I was going to the Carriageworks theatre every night for ‘Magic Flute’. It’s a ‘eat as much as you like’ buffet but has a selection of Italian, Chinese, Thai and Indian food. Lunch was £5.95, which I think was a bargain. There were about 10 different dishes plus bowls of vegetables and some desserts. I had a plate of mushroom tagliatelle with some green beans and potatoes on the side, then I had some lamb jalfrezi and rice. I finished off with some cheesecake and melon.

It’s more expensive in the evening. but I imagine they have more dishes available. It’s £11.95 Sunday – Thursday and £13.95 at the weekends (don’t hold me to that, it’s just what I recall seeing on board outside). In the bar they sell bottles of ‘Cobra’ and I noticed on the menu that they have a range of cocktails.

Spice Quarter, Electric Press, Millennium Square Leeds, open daily 12noon – 2.30pm for lunch and evenings 5.30pm – 11pm

Well cancelling wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The girls on the desk seemed a bit snooty when I said I wanted to cancel:

“You have to have been a member for 12 months. How long have you been a member?”
“Errrr….. 4 and a half years,” I reply.
“Oh. [Pause] Well you have to speak to ‘Sharon’ and she’s on the phone, her line is engaged.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Okay, [sweet smile] take a seat.”

Ten minutes later:
“She’s still on the phone, would you like to come back another time?”
“Errr… well no not really. I’m going to go into the gym for a run anyway so I can call by on my way out?”
“‘Sharon’ is going home soon.”
“Well could you possibly just go into the office and see what she’s doing?”
[Another sweet smile, trots off]

Re-enter snooty girl with ‘Sharon’.
“I hear you’d like to cancel?” [sweet smile]
“I’m afraid so.”
“Can I ask why?”
“To be honest, I think it’s getting too expensive.”
“Okay, sign here.”

And that was it. No customer retention act trying to convince me to stay with a special offer or free gifts. Just ‘okay’.

I did breathe a sigh of relief, I thought it was going to be worse than that.

Then almost as soon as I get home, the phone rings and it’s the girl from the other gym I looked around the previous day. I know she’s not going to leave me alone until I sign up at that gym. I told her I will join, but those salespeople aren’t happy until you’ve signed on the dotted line and given them your bank details. I think I’ll stop by tonight.

My gym membership has become far too expensive and I’ve decided that tonight I’m going to bite the bullet and cancel it. The price has gradually crept up since I joined at the beginning of 2002 and now it stands at a whopping £50 a month, not an amount I can afford to ignore. I didn’t mind paying when I went 5 or 6 times a week, but since we moved house and now live further away from the gym, I’ve not been going so much. When it’s a 15 minute drive away ‘an hour at the gym’ actually takes up an hour and a half, and you don’t need much of an excuse to put you off making the effort to go.

But I’m not going to completely free myself from the evils of the gym contract. Last night I went and had a look around another gym that’s a lot more convenient to where I live and it has all the features I would require. Most importantly, the membership is just shy of £30 a month, which I find more acceptable. My current gym is really nice and has a gorgeous pool, but the pool is what really hikes the price up, and I hate swimming so don’t use it anyway.

So.. we’ll see how difficult they try and make it when I tell them I want to cancel!

… a dead swan is found to have died from the ‘deadly H5N1’ flu strain and the end of the world is nigh. If anything needs culling, it’s the media…. and possibly the dimwits who are worrying about whether it’s safe to feed the ducks / think they’ll die if a bird poop lands on them / are panicking because they’ve found a dead sparrow in their garden etc. etc.

Get a grip!

My views on this issue haven’t change since my post on this in October.