Drisk's Weekly Thing's To Do in London (Working Title) 26th July

So lots of other places publish a list of great things to do each week. A lot of these lists seem to almost be the catwalk list, I mean it all looks like great and really fucking cool but you'd never wear it out of the house. - I got a little lost in the analogy there I just mean I'm tired of these lists of ultra-cool things to do in London. I'm clearly not that cool so have decided to do my own ready-to-wear collection of things to do each week.

This list will be made up of events/shows/activities that I will either be attending or, in the case of one of today's entries, would go to if I wasn't already going to something else.

1. Liliane Lijn: Power Game @ The ICA - Tuesday 28th at 7pm

Okay an obscureish event at an art gallery possibly wasn't a great way to start my prêt-à-porter colelction of activities but I always find the ICA a completely unpretensious place to go whether you're there for an exhibition, movie or gig there always seems to be a nice variety of people and they have a great bar/cafe area.

This piece was originally staged in 1974 at theRoyal College of Art as part of the Festival for Chilean Resistance. This performance is an unrehearsed piece where 20 guests are invited to bet real money on their perception of the power of certain words. Members of the public are also invited to join but will need to put down a minimum of a fiver to play, alternatively you can watch all the action from the bar (this would be my preferred option).

The game is played with a deck of cards; on each card a word is printed and players are asked to place these words in a hierarchy of power. - This is about as much as I know about how the whole thing works and as I am otherwise preoccupied on this night it may be all I ever know about it. (My parents will be in attendance though so I will hopefully be able to give you some form of feedback)

Liliane Lijn, Power Game, 2009

2. Hide & Seek Festival @ Royal Festival Hall - 31st July - 2nd August

Hide&Seek ran their first event in 2007, in 2007 this was London's first pervasive gaming festival.

Quick explanation of pervasive gaming - it should be noted that while I am very interested in the area I am still pretty new to it and it's still a developing field, so apologies for any mistakes I make. Pervasive gaming is [very] basically a game that is interwoven with our everyday lives and use modern communication technology to achieve an interface between the virtual and the physical. It must be said that Hide&Seek don't seem to adhere to a strict definition of pervasive gaming and are mroe interested in the social aspect. ANNNNYYYYWAYYYYY...

Hide&Seek runs all weekend with a programme (click for programme) of events for each day. Games include:
- Secret Agent: a game where players are given an ear peiece and must follow orders received through the ear piece in order to win a game (although first they need to discover how the game is won)
- Papparazzi - participants use their stalking skills to snap photos of 'celbrities' indulgin in scandalous activities to earn points. (I recently heard some good reviews from a similar game run in New York's pervasive gaming festival)

Sunday is family day, it's almost enough to make me wish I had kids.

http://hideandseekfest.co.uk/

Here's a video from hide and seek advertising the 2007 game, you'll notice his definition of pervasive gaming is different to mine



3. Field Day Festival @ Victoria Park - 1st August at 11.30am

I was starting to think this week would never come but finally it is the week of Field Day.

Other than having one of the best line ups of any festival this year (my highlights being Malcolm Middleton, Final Fantasy and Santigold), it also seems like the kind of thing I would go to if there was no music at all. Field Day have gone out of their way to create a unique festival experience which has a more rural village fete feel than any other festival despite being in Hackney. I'm even quite excited by the food they're going to have there with Sourced Market coming down along with representatives from Borough and Broadway Markets.

Full Line up at http://www.fielddayfestivals.com/lineup/

Sorry I got a little carried away on this one but I'll keep them more concise next time.

DoodleBar

It is becoming increasingly hard to find cool things to do in West London, yeah we have Book Slam but that only happens once a month and yeah there's Notting Hill arts club and all those other things we all went to in our teens but I'm sorry to say I'm a little past all that. So it's always nice when somewhere new opens up.

Doodle Bar opened at the beginning of last month in what I can only really describe as a car park in the middle of Battersea. The premise is simple; cheap beer, music and white washed walls and pens where you can draw whatever and wherever you like (yes this includes on the staff) - This doesn't result in as much cock drawing as you would expect.

Doodle bar [I think] runs general chill out and doodle nights on Thursdays and Fridays, Yoga on Mondays, Life Drawing on Tuesdays (maybe?), and ping pong some other evening - check out their events calendar at www.thedoodlebar.com

SW Coast Path

It took 2 swollen ankles, and a soleful of blisters for me to realise that there was probably a reason I was born in the city and perhaps 100 miles of coastal hiking isn't for me.

I'm currently reading Murakami's (Haruki not Takeshi, I do love them both though) "What I Talk About When I Talk about Running" and there's a section in the book which says:

"... as an action than deviates from the ordinary yet doesn't violate basic values, you'd expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view on life, its colors and shape, should be transformed"

This is exactly how I felt as I was drenched with sweat and my ankles were giving way and the above kind of thinking became my mantra... "This is a life changing experience, This is a life changing experience, this is a life chang..." - in this section of his book Murakami goes on to say the Sixty-two mile run that he had done achieved the kind of transformation he talks about. I, however, did not experience such a transformation just a huge amount of discomfort. It occurs to me that maybe you just need to push yourself a lot harder to achieve that kind of transformation but then it also occurs to me that I'm pretty happy with my current outlook so I might save it for a year or two.

Though I whinge and complain I am happy I did it, a slightly more relaxed timescale would have made the week far more enjoyable. We had so much distance to cover each day that it was very difficult to justify standing around to take decent photos but here's a few of the not-so-blurry ones. (some more can be found over on my Flickr)

Cafe Crawl - London 2009

I had promised myself I would do a non eaterie post as my next post but I am a slight sucker for chronology and feel that although I could write about last week's hiking trip that I should write about Cafe Crawl 2009 first.

Despite the cool, official sounding title Cafe Crawl 2009 actually just involved Hannah and I going to a number of cafes that we fancied and ranking them using a rather rudimentary scale. (as I seem to have misplaced my moleskine right now I will come back to the scorings another time).

We oringinally planned to go to three cafes and eat at all of them... ordinarily this wouldn't seem such a feat as my appetite is usually more than adequate for such a task but on this day it just didn't quite happen. This does not, however, mean that we went to fewer cafes (2 cafes would not have made much of a crawl after all) it means we added a fourth. - This does make sense but Drisk logic is sketchy at the best of times so considering it's gone midnight on a school night I won't bore you trying to convince you.

The cafes:

The Tea Box: this is a really lovely little tea shop in Richmond. The cafe delivers what you would expect of the name, it has a huge menu of different teas, including an earl grey infused hot chocloate (which was surprisingly good). The decor was pretty much what you would expect from a tea shop in richmond - reserved but in a slightly antiquey stylish way. The whole concept has been well thought out from the tea timers to let you know when your pot of tea will be at a certain strength to the spoons with little tea pots carved into the end. The food menu was also really great it gave me an opportunity to feed my month long craving for eggs benedict, the menu also included lots of interesting dishes including earl grey boiled egg. All prices were really reasonable and eveything was of a very high standard.



Beas of Bloomsbury: This is regarded as one of the best bakeries for cupcakes in all of the LDN. These guys didn't let us down particuarly with an £8 option that gets you tea, a cupcake, a few brownies, a scone and a couple of meringue type sweets. When we did actually score i think we gave this place a 9 for food taste, the food was really great (I quote: "the most amazing scone i've had" - Hannah Chung). The decor certainly wasn't as nice as The Tea Box and it didn't really seem to have all that much of an atmosphere. This place would be perfect to pick up some stuff and then go down to the nearby park to stuff your faces with one (or two) of their wide variety of flavoured cupcakes.

Betty Blythe: This is the point at which we realised we hadn't adequately prepared ourselves for Cafe Crawl 2009 (we have taken it into account and will train for the next effort) and couldn't eat any more. Hannah was also on a bit of a tea high even so I think we drank some bottled iced tea. We also sat inside and didn't take any pictures so I think it's actually a little unfair of me to talk about this place. But it didn't look as good as I had been led to believe from their website.

Daylesford: We have actually been to Daylesford already and it is our (I think I can speak for Hannah on this point) favourite cafe in London (so far). I have already blogged about this so check out that post.

Next Cafe Crawl will be held in the 2nd week of August and will be coming straight from Stockholm!