Spandau Ballet are to tour. In other news, Igloos have been spotted in Hell

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picture courtesy of sd1-3500 from flickr

According to the Guardian, Spandau Ballet are reforming for a ten dates tour of Britain and some European dates.

While I am as guilty as the next person who grew up in the eighties of indulging in the music of my youth (hell, I have 12 Matt Bianco albums, but at least they didn’t stop making music and had to ‘reform’ {btw, their newest album, ‘Hifi Bossanova’ [incidentally, I really like the title. very retro] is coming out soon}, and I’ll be seeing ABC with the BBC Symphony Orchestra next month) but Spandau Ballet?

These guys split acromoniously after running out of songwriting juice, sued each other into oblivion, fought a little tabloid war and now everything is forgotten? Maybe I am too cynical, but I think a little monetary incentive was probably more likely to be responsible for the sudden reconciliation than a night out of shoulder slapping in a pub.

Maybe I’m just too cynical.

Stepney Green School

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I walk past these murals every morning, and every morning they brighten up my commute. The river is made up of numerous tiles made by pupils of the school, and it’s such an uplifting thing to see in a sometimes drab urban environment that I had to share it with you.

Red Nose Day

Just watching Red Nose Day and I am asking myself: who is that woman with the terrible dress and the shape of a hungry Somalian orphan who mainly seems to be responsible for making high pitched noises,  standing next to Jonathon Ross?

The Fellow, Kings Cross

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Thanks to a hint from London Leben, the best girlfriend and I recently visited the wonderful London Canal Museum. After an hour of anoraky fun in this most splendid of museal institutions it was time for lunch, but this being Kings Cross, we weren’t very hopeful to find something suitable.  Surprisingly we came across a decent looking place on York Way. The Fellow looked like a decent boozer from the outside and the inside wasn’t bad: this must have been a traditional pub that received a bit of brown paint to tone it down a bit, but it still had character and cosy sofas. A good range of real ales and an appetising lunch menu promised a nice hour spent with The Guardian and some lunch beers. Even though my pie was tiny and I had to do some major expeditions into the sauce to find my beef the chips were world class, and the best girlfriend’s steak tartar was apparently spiffing. The music was good, the punters happy, so thumbs up for that. The only big let down was the staff. Even though the best girlfriend and I were smiling and making supportive noises, our waitresses refused to smile and utter more than monosyllabic responses. Same with the bar staff. Shame about that. Otherwise a promising place.

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