Lazero

Is there a spare seat at the table? I'd like to join as well - it's been way too long since I went to curry club!

The thing is they aren't really competing with meat liquor or honest burger - they're giving people an option that will keep them drinking in the pub. I've been with friends before to watch sports/ hang out in the afternoon, and come dinner time we will sometimes go elsewhere. Burgers may be boring, but it's a safe option that people will happily eat. I love BBQ, but you have to be quite the specialist to do it well, and unfortunately it was never up to scratch at the Pig. Doing a few pub classics well may be good enough. Agree on creative bar snacks - a pub near my work does really nice "small plates" options like lasagne bites, scotch eggs, whitebait, and sharing platters of buffalo wings, mini sausages, mini bacon buns etc. Agree with earlier comments re. showing sports - have the volume up so we can hear it. The TV won't always be on, as there isn't good sport on all day long, and if it does really bother you then there are lots of alternatives. Generally I'm there for 5pm-ish football, and even though all the other people around me are there for the same thing, they don't always agree to put the volume up or even on. Good, varied selection of beer. And the expertise behind the bar to recommend something to you, like you get in Hops, Burns & Black.

I'll be there for a second helping of curry club.

Morimoto in the MGM Grand. He's one of the "Iron Chefs" (TV show), with an extremely busy restaurant in NYC. This one opened very recently, in October. Unlike New York it's actually possible to get a reservation at this one! It's primarily Japanese in focus, though incorporates part of other Asian cuisine. It is one of the best I've ever been to. I'd recommend the "duck duck goose" as well as any of the starters and also the melting chocolate dessert.

Good stuff - thanks for the update. My paperwork was received and processed in Durham on 1st August, so hopefully means mine is coming any day now...

Sorry - can't make this one. Need to be at a work thing. I will be back for a second curry club visit at some point soon.

I was only able to catch up yesterday. Also enjoyed Talking Dead's extended show and highlight reels. How young Steven Yeun looked in series 1! I'm very sad to see him go - great character, the heart of the group. But they have gone a long time without the death of a really central character (Beth, or all the way back to Hershel?), and Glenn does die in the comics. Excited to see where they go this season, it's certainly changed the group's world. Never read the comics so everything is a surprise.

Amazing - thanks for the advice. Pass there on the bus all the time, but it looked like a place that would only really want trade-sized orders. I'll go and pay them a visit.

Is there a DIY/ hardware/ other store you know of where I could get this done? I only need 2 small blocks cut, it doesn't seem like the sort of order that a specialist timber place would even consider. I need them to be the same dimensions, so finding random blocks is unlikely to work. Plus I don't have any of the equipment myself, not even a basic saw, so getting this done somewhere would be cheaper overall. Thanks

Last two home (Saturday) games the queue for the outside bar was very long - 15 minutes or so as you approach half time. On the positive side you can still watch most of the action until you actually get inside. I agree - knowing the options before you approach the front would help a lot. It was a recurring conversation for all those ahead of me. They also managed to run out of Gamma Ray just as I was approaching the front each time, so a sign of what's available (a smaller selection) and what's still in stock should move things along nicely.

Can I join in tonight - even at this late stage of proceedings?

It might be a reasonable assumption, but I don't think that's a definitive answer. It could (also) be people who don't live there. It's easily accessible to the public after all.

Hi James, pebs, The Southwark Spine is, I believe, something different from Quietways: http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/200123/cycling/447/cycle_improvements http://www.southwark.gov.uk/downloads/download/4240/southwark_spine This was circulated quite a long time ago. The routes already exist, but I think the point was to make improvements at key points along the route (e.g. segregating cyclists from traffic on commercial way, improve access to Burgess park, improve Lyndhurst way/ Peckham road junction for cyclists). Do you know if these improvements are still planned?

Do you know for sure that it's the tenants of Greenview who are doing the dumping? If I lived there I wouldn't dump rubbish so close to my own home. It could be anyone pulling up in the night and dumping, given that this area is just off a public road. Do you live in Altima? If not, I'll see if I can ask them to consider CCTV (not always sure whether First Port pay more attention to their leaseholders or whether the service is just uniformly terrible). I can't see many other ways of solving this now other than actually convicting people and having real deterrents. But it also depends on the cost of CCTV vs the cost of ad hoc clearances. I care about the area looking nice, but with my cold/ logical service charge paying hat on I don't want to spend a disproportionate amount of our budget on one issue like this.

Is it from a person you know in the States? If so have you considered one of the newer peer-to-peer exchange places? I've got no personal experience of them, but I remember hearing and reading a lot about them as they started to become more mainstream. Supposedly a better rate when sending money abroad, so I presume it is the same the other way around. The big players here seem to be MidPoint, Transferwise and CurrencyFair. I think they are mainly used for currency exchange but I'm sure I also read that you could actually send money to someone personally (i.e. getting around things like Western Union).