Just happened across the below link to a reproduction of a customer complaint letter, which was published in the Daily Telegraph earlier…
Link to the Letter to Virgin boss Richard Branson
I have honestly not laughed so much in recent memory!!!!
Enjoy!
So, I’m very sure that the Slug and Lettuce / Bay Restaurants Group need no additional advertising from the likes of me, so I’ll try and keep this brief post opinionated and not too ’sell-y’ hehe! 
P
Greg and I went to our local Slug in Kingston on Wednesday evening for the free Autumn/Winter menu tasting that they were offering for the members of the general public whom had booked their place on it in advance.
I must say, I think that this is a cracking idea, when I used to work in pubs/restaurants, we didn’t tend to have these for the public, just for the staff. Opening this kind of event to the public really does help to create a healthy buzz about the new menu as well as make customers feel like they’ve had a part in the process too. Similarly, Slug’s new online table reservation system is also a fabulous idea – someone at Slug HQ must have their brain/common sense working overtime! D
My last experience at a Slug was the one in Albert Square in Manchester and was for Christmas dinner in 2006 – an experience I wouldn’t want to relive again. Being seated for Christmas dinner practically in the middle of a dance floor is never a good idea! Therefore, it was with a degree of trepidation that I went along to the Kingston restaurant this time.
Apart from the state of the gents loos, I found it to be a much better experience! The bar was nice, not too busy and had a nice restaurant area. Helpful staff serving us with the new menu items and seemed relatively knowledgeable and interested.
Greg and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and ended up leaving stuffed and unable to walk! We’d tasted that much, and all for free! The only ‘let-down’ (and I use the term lightly!) was that there were no free deserts on offer!
We both heartily recommend the new carbonara and the Steak and Mushroom pie – both ’simple’ dishes that I’d normally avoid when going out for food (after all, you go out for something fancy!); however I’d definitely make the exception for these dishes – simply delicious!!!!
I found it very odd however that the comment cards that they passed around were just the tiny bog-standard ones, I was expecting to be able to give a full opinion on each of the dishes, and I feel that they wasted the valuable opportunity to do so with customers feeling willing to provide feedback in return for a free meal!
I’d never really considered Slug as a viable place to eat before, however this exercise has demonstrated to me how wrong I was, and therefore I think that we give Slug consideration next time we’re hungry and in the vicinity! D
Just came across this article posted on BBC News and was pleased to see that they included a video clip of the exhibition too. (BBC NEWS article)
Little unsure of how Banksy would hold a major exhibition without being seen by anyone… but I guess that’s all part of the charm of his work and the artist himself.
Cracking exhibition which I really enjoyed watching the video for.
Below is the article from The Independant which goes into a bit more detail and explains a little more of the thought behind it – again, a really enjoyable read – and comes complete with pictures!
Artist’s 7th Avenue ’shop’ installation has customers and art world surprised
By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Friday, 10 October 2008
For days, New Yorkers had walked past workmen installing a pet shop. Spotting what appeared to be a leopard and monkey through the window on 7th Avenue, a few had even marched in to complain about the small space in which the wild animals were confined. But yesterday, The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill was revealed to be the latest work by the street artist Banksy, complete with convincingly real “animatronic” creatures that moved around the store to beguile onlookers.
The pet shop is open for business every day until midnight until 31 October and although people cannot buy its contents, they can walk in and view the “exhibition”, Banksy’s first in New York.
Artworks inside include two fish fingers floating in a fish bowl, robotic rabbits wearing pearl necklaces, a couple of chicken nuggets which appear to be sipping ketchup, hot dogs writhing underneath heat lamps and a CCTV camera nurturing its young. A middle-aged man in overalls, employed by Banksy, dragged an “Open for Business” sign on to the pavement yesterday to mark its opening.
The street artist from Bristol offered a written explanation for the installation. He said: “New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead.”
He added that there was a serious, philosophical aspect to the work, saying: “I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing.”
For fans of his work, the sudden emergence of the guerrilla artwork was a characteristic move. There was no opening party, no guest-list and no complimentary drinks. The shop had taken him four weeks to refit a store that had sold trinkets. Before it was outed as an artwork by The New York Times, it had attracted genuine customers last weekend, who were sent away by workmen who claimed the shop was not quite ready for business.
It is the latest in a string of cultural hijackings that have seen Banksy travel the world installing fake museum exhibits, and statues. What appeared to be most extraordinary for New Yorkers yesterday was that the pet shop appeared to be a fully functioning retail outlet that boasted a menagerie of lifelike models of exotic creatures and several endangered species of wild birds.
There had been hints that Banksy was in town, days before the pet shop appeared, with a series of giant rat paintings appearing across lower Manhattan during the past seven days.
Banksy defended the pet show exhibition even though it contained no graffiti by saying: “If it’s art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art.”
The exhibition is clearly visible day and night through the large shop frontage and has caused scenes of congestion and concern amongst local residents. Banksy said: “There have been complaints from people who are unhappy about being on their way to work and seeing two hot dogs performing a sex act. But it’s no more unnatural than the process behind making a sausage in the first place.”
… is what the check-out guy at Sainsbury’s said to me a few hours ago.
No story really, although hitting a note dead on seems to happen quite a lot with me in there (and no, it’s not due to me buying ingredients for any of Jamie’s meals for a Fiver!).
Fin x
On Thursday 12th June, Greg and I both found ourselves with a day off and so decided to head down to Portsmouth to while away the day and to have a poke around. Greg has been quite a few times before, however as a recent addition to the South of England, I am always very keen to explore other areas outside of London. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that I would like to get out of London on a regular basis as I find it to be fantastically beneficial.
So, we got up and headed down to Waterloo station, a little later than planned, but hey, it’s a day off, you’re supposed to lie in, yeah?! My gold travel card for TfL came in use today as I was able to purchase a National Railcard for him for only £1 instead of the usual £20! So now he gets a third off rail travel in the South East – Hurrah! D
We got on the 12 noon train out of Waterloo, and quickly discovered that over this coming weekend it is the Isle of Wight festival. That said, the train wasn’t that busy, and there was none of the rowdiness that one might expect from such an excited group of people. It’s roughly 70 miles to Portsmouth from London, and so I wasn’t too phased by the 90 minute journey time (though it was 150 minutes – 2hr30m on the return – argh!!!).
We arrived in Portsmouth for around 13:30 and headed over to Gunwharf Quays, which is kind of like a retail village, entertainment complex and eatery all crammed into one. It all looks lovely and modern and I must say I was VERY impressed with the public conveniences there (they even had moisturiser and mouthwash in them!).
The first store that we went into was HMV as Greg saw a few t-shirts that he liked (Cookie Monster and Family Guy) and was kind enough to purchase me two as a gift (bless him!!); thus I now own a Thundercats t-shirt (hurrah!!) and a Sesame Street t-shirt D
I also noticed a Molton Brown boutique and so I dragged Greg over to it post-haste as I am an avid fan of MB and so if you’re going to be taking me to a discount retail place… of course I’m going to want to go in hehe! Essentially, I got my usual Silver Birch shower product AND a body scrub thing for a fair bit less than I would normally pay for the shower product on it’s own (and yes, I do normally spend £16 on shower product!). In fact, if you add the price of both items together, it comes to around £35… and so paying £12.50 total for both is a huge bargain!
We had a good ol’ poke around most of the shops that were on the retail complex, which was very enjoyable. Greg also purchased some new trainers from the Puma shop.
After shopping ourselves out, we decided to head for a walk across the sea path to take in Portsmouth Harbour and it’s fantastic views across the Solent (isn’t that a lovely word?). We also got some nice pictures of The Spinnaker Tower.
In some of the pictures you can actually see the rain falling over Gosport, which is on the other side of the Solent. I didn’t realise that rain fell in diagonal sheets such as is illustrated in some of the pictures (the dark diagonal lines on the horizon) and that each sheet of rain is only about a mile wide etc. The wikipedia link provided on rain also made for interesting reading as I was writing this blog (geeky I know) – but edumactaional or what?! hehe.
The really weird thing about Portsmouth is that every now and then you’ll be walking along and suddenly a huge shadow will rear up behind you and you’ll find yourself stood next to a huge ferry! The buildings in Portsmouth Harbour aren’t particularly tall, and so these ferries can, at times, completely dominate the landscape.
We had a lovely veg out at the benched area of the sea walk before grabbing some food and deciding to call it a day, mainly as it was about 5pm by this point and the dark clouds were rolling in over Portsmouth.
The end picture is prob my fave of Greg thus far D
By the time we got back to London, it was 20:30 and so we ended up going to Ed’s Diner for some food. I must say, I really wasn’t impressed this time round. Think I’ll be leaving it a few months before going back as the service really wasn’t up to scratch when we went – grr.
So there you have it, our Portsmouth adventure – not bad considering it was just a random day off that we both had together. I think we really made something good of it D
The full set of pictures from this trip are available on my Facebook profile.
Thanks for reading! xx
Well are you? I am I’m afraid to confess. I am very touchy when it comes to food. Not in the whole ‘it has to be organic’ kind of way (which I think is purely hyperbole gone mad!) but in an ‘it’s got to be decent quality’ kind of way.
Lets face it, some supermarkets have a much nicer brand image than others. That’s pretty much a fact. Unfortunately it’s a little more difficult for a supermarket to climb a band in the image stakes than to drop a band. Tesco are the exception perhaps as, to my mind, they haven’t always been seen as a ‘professional’ supermarket and seemingly used to be classed as being ‘budget’. I’m sure that many of us of a specific age-range remember the childhood chant “lets all go to Tesco where Jonny buys his best clothes, ner nah nah nah!”; whereby Jonny was some poor little child whom everyone used to pick on slightly because maybe you once saw him eating a Tesco Value kitkat or something!
It’s strange that I should then come across the below article this afternoon, which I thought I’d share with you. At a party the other week, we were discussing a potential dinner party that I was interested in hosting and so I challenged my now boyfriend Greg to get me some ingredients from Morrisons, where he works, and we would see if they lived up to the ingredients which I could have purchased from Sainsburys (my cooking skills non-withstanding!). The dinner party is yet to happen although I for one am certainly looking forward to the opportunity to challenge my views and see if I really can enjoy food (and specifically meat) from a ‘budget’ supermarket.
The article below has been taken from MSN and I found it really interesting to read. Perhaps with prices rising and consumers starting to pull in their purse-strings, the budget supermarket may finally assimilate into ‘popular’ culture as it were and drop the stigmatism ingrained into us by our parents, our peers and by our own possibly snobbish pre-conceptions )
Supermarket snobs
June 05 2008Are we a nation of supermarket snobs? Have we fallen for the slick TV advertising campaign of Marks & Spencer? Or have we been seduced by the posh packaging at Waitrose?
The British certainly seem to be sniffy about some of the other supermarkets. We don’t like the shops that pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap, because they don’t make us feel special.
It’s also an image – maybe a class – thing. We dread being seen heaving 24 cans of baked beans into the back of the car at Aldi. We would rather be spotted at the organic meat counter at Waitrose or Sainsbury’s at a push.
But will we have to change our ways? Food prices have shot up alarmingly, which could force many of us to alter our shopping habits. The cost of the average supermarket food shop was 5.8% higher in May than at the beginning of the year, according to a study by retail analysts Verdict. The biggest increase is the price of fruit and vegetables, up 16% since January.
Consumers spend 13p in every pound on food, so a 5.8% increase in prices since the start of the year is painful. In fact, it has added about £800 to the average grocery bill.
The price of food is forecast to continue rising in 2009, which will make life even tougher for consumers who are struggling with the fallout from the global credit crunch.
There are already signs that consumers are taking steps to cut their grocery bills by shopping in some of the cheaper supermarkets.Aldi, for example, enjoyed year-on-year sales growth of nearly 19% in the 12 weeks to May 18, according to market researcher TNS Worldpanel. Its cut-price rival Lidl saw takings rise by just under 10%.
In a further sign of a shopping shift, Iceland posted double digit rises in sales during the period. Then there’s Morrison’s, which has just reported a strong start to the financial year, with sales up 7% on a like for like basis in the first quarter.
At the same time, heavyweights such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s have suffered dips in their share of the sector’s annual £120 billion market.
“Aldi is the clear winner in terms of sales growth during the period. The till roll rose 18.9% year-on-year to £577 million,” said Edward Garner, director of research at TNS.
“Its market share also improved to 2.8% from 2.5%. The growth is virtually solely fuelled by new shoppers visiting the stores rather than existing shoppers spending more.”
If you have never been to an Aldi store, let me explain. It’s a bit like a budget airline. There are no frills, fussy displays, bag packers, trolley collectors. No, it’s just a selection of everyday items.
You might not get a wealth of choice or a knockout service, but the store reckons it can cut your bills by 20%. Other discounts supermarkets of a similar ilk include Netto and Lidl.
Then we’ve got the likes of Asda, Morrison’s and Iceland, which tend to aim at your pocket rather than your poseur. They are unashamedly out to offer value for money.
In fact Asda recently made a direct appeal to cash-strapped consumers with its “2p sausage”. The supermarket cut the price of a pack of eight sausages in its budget Smartprice range from 54p to just 16p. If you add a 2.5 kilogram bag of Smartprice potatoes at 73p and a 1.5kg bag of carrots at 68p, you can feed a family of four for £1.57.
It’s cheap, but it’s a far cry from organic produce. What about Worcester Old Spots? Aren’t we supposed to be shunning cut-price supermarket produce for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s organic chickens that have felt the sun on their backs before the chop on their necks?Surely organic food is likely to be another victim of the credit crunch and higher food prices. Can we continue to pay high prices for a clear conscience? Take chicken, for example. In my local Waitrose today you could buy an organic free-range chicken at £6.19 a kilo, or you could opt for a standard chicken at £2.79 a kilo. If you’re on a budget it’s a no-brainer.
Organic campaigners nevertheless believe the market will withstand the national tightening of belts. Peter Melchett, of the Soil Association, said: “The main thing that is driving up the price of food is the price of oil because most food is produced from oil-based fertiliser. Organic food is produced through the sun’s energy so actually organic food is less prone to these price rises than non-organic food.”
But even the advocates expect a slowdown in sales growth as we all feel the financial pinch.
Of course, we can’t stop eating. But our shopping habits will undoubtedly change. We will perhaps buy our loo rolls and canned foods from the discount supermarket – under cover of darkness. We might then splash out at the local farmers’ market for our meat and seasonal fruit and vegetables. So the big supermarkets will perhaps feel the squeeze.
Will it topple Tesco? It’s unlikely, but we can all perhaps enjoy watching the supermarket giants suffer, even just a little bit.
Just realised that I’ve not done a ‘personal’ blog for a bit, so thought I’d add a few bullet points to keep folk up to date with what’s been going on in Gari-Land )
So there we have it, the personal side of my week in a nutshell!
Hope everyone’s OK and thanks for reading xx
So, last Saturday (19th April) was the long awaited trip back home to Manchester with Stu. How exciting!
We booked the train tickets weeks ago so as to get them for a decent price, although as engineering works occur on the West Coast Mainline every weekend, the journey took four hours each way instead of the usual two. That said, the journey wasn’t particularly arduous and didn’t feel too bad fortunately.
Saying that, 5am in the morning was when we had to get up to get ready to get to Euston and catch the train! So slightly arduous perhaps, but perhaps what upset me more was that my computer totally died when I fired it up and appeared to have totally wiped itself (fortunately over the past two days I’ve been able to restore most of it!).
Anyways, we got to Piccadilly Station, Manchester at 11:30 and quickly hopped onto the Metrolink to Salford Quays. Metrolink proved a really good way to show Stu most of the sights of Manchester city centre and was the most efficient way of getting down to the Quays.
… and yes, that is a picture of me being butch with Old Trafford in the background hehe!
We’d come down to the Quays so that we could go to the Lowry Centre (LS Lowry is my favourite artist) and also to the Imperial War Museum North.
First off, the Lowry Centre…
We fond the Lowry to be OK, but to me it seemed to be missing a good number of his works which was somewhat disappointing. Either way, we had to dash anyway so we wouldn’t really have had time for much more what with our schedule and all that.
Instead of walking over the bridge between the Lowry and Imperial War Museum North, I decided to float!
The Imperial War Museum North came next… it’s yet another a fab metal structure, though it also houses a tower too, which was awesome – some of the camera shots from the peak of it are posted below. I was so impressed with myself, I walked over a really high metal grill walkway that you could see right through without freaking out hehe!
As these were museums, they were also free (though they do ask for a small donation if you wish to give one). I would definitely say that both were worth the time and donation! The Imperial War Museum also had a cool audio-visual show which we caught in the main gallery – very captivating!
After this, we headed back to the city centre via the Metrolink and grabbed some lunch from Greggs (a fine northern institution!).
I needed to purchase some new shoes, so we hit the Arndale Centre and I managed to spend £70 on Converse shoes! Normally I’m only a “I’ll pay no more than £20 for shoes and never mind if they wear out soon” kinda guy, and so this was a huge deal for me hehe! I managed to get two pairs for that price…
Very chuft with them! I just need to figure out how to waterproof them and then they’ll be accompanying me out to places!
After that, we headed down to Canal Street as Stu’d never been to the Gay Village before. We had a quick wander up and I showed him all of the ’sights’ of the Manchester gay scene. And NO, not like that! Filth! P
I’d booked us into Velvet on Canal Street for dinner which was absolutely lovely and very reasonably priced! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! We had a good ol’ natter, some nice wine, lovely food and thus really enjoyed it!
There was just time for a quick nip into Clone Zone together before we had to dash off back to the train. On the way back, I took him past the new Piccadilly Basin development. We found these really cool blue things/water feature next to the new GMPTE HQ…
Some random kind lady offered to take a picture of Stu and I over at the blue feature, however London seems to have rubbed off on me and I politely declined her offer – though on reflection it would have been nice if we’d had a nice picture together next to the blue things… that said, I’m glad I still have my camera I guess!!
The train back was pretty dull and uneventful, and it was with big smiles and a sense of utter exhaustion that a very tired and weary Mr Gari and Mr Stu flopped into bed shortly after midnight having thoroughly enjoyed our Manchester adventure.
Thanks for reading xx
Rar, so I’m currently at home, bouncing around to various trance songs of yester-year (such as ‘Oh tell me why, do we build castles in the sky / from meat pies’; Meck – ‘Thunder in my Heart’ and Kelly Llorenna’s back-catalogue!)
One of my fave dance tracks *ever* is Gigi D’Agostino – L’amour Toujours (I’ll Fly With You).
In a bid to show my northern roots, I should also point out that I LOVE this Hard House track… it’s called ‘Till Tears Do Us Part and is by Heaven’s Cry (released on Tidy Trax) and took Ben and I years to source back when we all still lived in 2002 and thought yellow highlights were so so cool.
Anyways, enough of me being butch, and on to me ranting about toilets, bangers and mash and the local constabulary!
On Wednesday, Stu and I were very kindly invited over to Nikki and Carlos’ place for a group dinner. Given that they live over in Vauxhall I had thought it’d be a nightmare to get over there from the West End (yes, I know it’s not that far, but the transport to South London is normally abysmal!). As chance had it, I walked from Leicester Square to Waterloo, and planned to catch a train one stop down to Vauxhall from there.
Unfortunately, I’d been drinking quite a lot of water throughout the day, and so when it came to crossing the Thames at Waterloo Bridge, I realised that I needed the loo. It must have been the sight of all that dirty water! Thus, I stopped at a shop and paid over the odds for a bar of chocolate so that I had 20p in change to use the loos at Waterloo.
You can no doubt imagine my fury when I got there and encountered the below sign…
I mean seriously, 30p to have a wee?!?!?! The cheeky, greedy, conning swines! Are they taking the piss? Well, clearly not enough if they’re having to charge THAT much!
I was terribly riled at the thought of having to pay 30p given that the cost of my urine had seemingly gone up by 33% in a week! Terrible! They must be some of the most expensive public toilets in the country now!!! I know they have those cool Dyson Air-Blades in them, but seriously?!?! Don’t they know that inflation is only 2.5% at the moment… ! (it will be fun reading this back in 20 years, I’m sure hehe)
ARGH!!!!!!
Anyway, when I got downstairs, the turnstiles were out of action so I didn’t have to pay in the end and so you’ve just read my rantings for nothing hehe! P
Ended up in Vauxhall and whilst waiting for Stu and Nikki, I noticed just how many people seem to smoke in Vauxhall. I mean, it was disgusting! I was waiting outside the station for them, and the amount of people blowing smoke into my face was absolutely repulsive. I tried to move several times, but yet more people started lighting up – ugh!
Dinner at Nikki and Carlos’ was lots of fun, really pleased to have been invited. First proper dinner party that I’ve been to as well! I’ve hosted friends over at mine and Marc’s before, but never actually been to someone else’s for a proper dinner do. See, being single and getting out more really has done me a bit of good, and so at least I now have a good strong foundation to build on, with Stu’s help, to try and get me to be a lot less shy around our friends and to attend more of these kind of events! (provided we get invited, of course hehe) D
Dinner was bangers and mash and boy-oh-boy was it lovely, especially after we’d been let down by those awful sausages last week!! Hats off to Nikki to cooking for us, though I believe that he still has all of the washing up to do! hehe.
Once again, I felt that Stu fit in nicely with the social circle, even if he did struggle to get back into their apartment using the key-fob (due to lack of technical expertise), or start to tell stories perhaps not suitable for the dinner table hehe. More compliments about the quality of his company were received on the way home again and thus I am really enjoying being able to include Stu in my social plans as well as enjoying making our own plans together.
Between Stu and I, we managed to drink about 3 bottles of rosé wine I think… not best for the long ride home, but at least I didn’t have a headache in the morning!
On the way back I saw an increased police presence in Muswell Hill, which is terribly unusual, lots of bobbies on the beat. In fact, one slightly drunken looking old man asked the police for directions, and I saw the officer he was talking with call for back up, and all four of them picked him up and hussled him down a side-street to do God knows what to him! The guy wasn’t even that drunk and was just asking politely for directions! Still, needs as needs must I guess.
Off to Manchester with Stu tomorrow, so that should be lots of fun! No doubt I’ll update my blog over the weekend with all of the info that you could possible ever need!
Thanks for reading xx
DarkAeon’s Random Twitterings
|
Old MySpace Blog (please visit musicalmadgari on MySpace for full blog!) Last.Fm
