Yum coffee

Dave — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:40:11 +0100

I am delighted to say that yesterday I found there is another really rather good coffee shop just down the road from me, making it much handier than my regular haunts of Offshore or Beanscene.

Not that there's anything wrong with those places, right enough... in fact, I was in Offshore on Saturday night. The guy even looked up the name of an artist who had a show on there a few weeks ago which I liked, which was very good of him; and I finally picked up a loyalty card (it only seems fair).

In fact, this place is even closer than my favourite cafe/bar that is Jellyhill, which is all the way up in Hyndland and serves rather nice (if expensive) wine as well as rather nice (and less expensive) coffees.

No, this one is called Oscar & Holly's, and is skulking down in Broomhill, right on Crow Road. It has the disadvantage of closing really early (6pm weeknights, 8pm weekends) but on the plus side it is practically next door to me (5mins walk tops), as well as making nice drinks. They seemed to have exceedingly good cakes (albeit not from Mr Kipling) too, although I was trying to be healthy and not eat them. That, plus the fact I was still ploughing my way through my free Galaxy bars I picked up as part of some ludicrous promotion at Buchanan Galleries on Saturday.

So yes, if you happen to find yourself that bit further out of the city, pop in to Oscar & Holly's and admire the bright colour scheme while trying to decide whether the baby in one of the three pictures they have on the wall is, in fact, crying his eyes out.

A brief musing on the state of our newspapers

Dave — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:40:07 +0100

I felt I should mention the state of the media industry in the UK today very briefly. Namely, those "mid-market" rags, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

The Mail, first off. Today, it reportedly features four pages of its coverage from when Princess Di, erm, died, 10 years ago in a coupla days' time. It's a tribute apparently, and meant to show the reaction at the time. Fair enough. But at the same time, and without a hint of irony, the same paper is running a poll on its website: "Are the tenth anniversary commemorations for Diana over the top?"

These papers tend not to understand irony so much.

The Express, meanwhile, is simply leading on Madeleine McCann. It has, in fact, led on this story every day since August 3 - weekdays and Sundays - despite there being basically nothing new to say. It does replace Diana (I believe that, according to the Express, there was something suspicious about her death) but is getting a tad ridiculous now. According to today's non-story, there is a "New setback over crucial DNA evidence". This is a slight improvement over the week when their lead heading was simply

MADELEINE

...but only a slight improvement.

Oh, and I'm glad to see that EVIL Camilla makes it on to its front page too.

It's worth checking out MailWatch for more of this kind of stuff.

I've moved second living room for a bit today. I need to be out of the flat almost all day owing to the mess of rewiring (incidentally, yesterday electrician discovered that a previous "rewiring" consisted of someone simply sticking six inches of new wire on the end of all the old ones and pretending it was done) so I'm in Offshore, having already been to Beanscene. It's a great place, very laid back and all of that - but their wireless net is flippin' slow. Still, it's also free so I shouldn't complain too vehemently.

In between, I wandered up to Wilton Street, which is apparently in Maryhill (heh, the estate agents aren't gonna like that... North Kelvinside has vanished) and where a tenement wall collapsed last night. I have some pics; I will post them later, I have no cable with me to allow me to do that.

dave's barely awake :: it's a way of life

Yum coffee

A brief musing on the state of our newspapers