This week has been a very good week, especially the latter half.
On Wednesday the weather was pretty good so I decided to make the most of it and have a slightly early birthday day out. Em was out in the morning, needing to meet up with someone at Queen’s Park at 9.30am, so we decided to meet up in the city centre after she finished. I got into the city just before 11am and decided to go and have a wander and a window shop in the new Sostrene Grene store that is at the top of Buchanan Street.
After about half an hour or so I checked my phone and Em had arrived in the city centre. She arrived on a bus that stopped off in Merchant City around near Candleriggs. I made my way down to meet her, and then we went to Mono and had a coffee. After the coffee, we had a look around the record shop attached to the cafe – Monorail – and I had a look through the second-hand sections. I was looking through the CDs, and I noticed there were three Roxy Music CDs in there. I haven’t really got any Roxy Music in an actual hard format. I decided to get these three CDs because they were only £2.99 each, and it was a way of being able to treat myself without spending too much. I got copies of Stranded, Country Life and Siren. So, I was very happy with that. As much as I’d love to get Bryan Ferry’s Retrospective box set – I don’t have £120 to spend on a CD box set, you know!
We went on to have lunch at the Merchant Chippie, but on the way down, we were looking at other eateries. There was a place that we stopped at, looked at the menu outside of a place called Bar Soba, and I thought – ooh, there might be something on the menu that (in my dreams!) Em might like. I just thought, at least look at the menu. There was some really great stuff in there. There were vegetarian options, there was katsu and bao buns. Just sounded really fantastic. But of course, Em doesn’t really like Asian food. I was like…Ah, goddamn, I wish you loved Asian food! Lol. So we just walked on. We then stopped at the little Italian place directly across the road from Bar Soba, and we looked at the menu board outside theirs because we’d been there before – I think, God, that must be probably about 18 months ago now, at least over a year ago. We decided not to go in there either, but I think we’ll go back there soon, because they do have a good lunchtime deal – two courses for £13.95 – which is pretty good.
We headed onwards for the Merchant Chippie. I’d been hankering for these battered prawns that they do for MONTHS. I’d had them when we’ve been before and they do them ssssoooo nice. I don’t know of any other chippie in Glasgow that offers battered prawns? When we arrived, it was quite busy. They don’t have many tables inside, and all the tables really were taken up. But we only had to wait around 5-10 minutes before two people vacated a table. So we went in and ordered and the lady serving us asked if we wanted any sauces. I said no thanks. We took a seat to wait for the food. I sat there thinking, actually – if I ordered a curry sauce, I could kind of have my own Asian twist on a traditional fish supper, because then I can cover the battered prawns with curry sauce and that could be really delicious, potentially. If the Merchant chippie made really good curry sauce. I got up, went back to the counter and added a curry sauce to my order. I had the prawns and my chips slathered all over with the curry sauce. I had this whole tub of curry sauce to myself – Em wasn’t going to have any. There was no point wasting it. It was bloody delicious! Def. having the prawns that way again when we have a Merchant Chippie supper. Afterwards, we went back to the Sostrene Grene just to get a few of the things that I’d seen while I was perusing around earlier on. I didn’t want to grab stuff and carry things away and carry them around with me for the rest of the day. I just grabbed a few things, just little things, a bit of stationery that was good value, and a couple of bags of sweets.
On my actual birthday – on Thursday, it was just a lazy day. I was so exhausted by the day before and all that wandering about and perusing and going down to Merchant City and back again. I did a lot of walking without really realising it the previous day. I was knackered and very tired. I slept in on my birthday, and just took it easy and didn’t really do much. Well, it was my birthday after all – I can treat myself to just having a day off. Em went into the city and got some Tantrum Doughnuts. So it was a bit of a nothing day, the actual birthday itself. Nice and cool and relaxing. I just stayed at home and didn’t do much.
Michelle had contacted me a few days before, but I was preoccupied with getting my studying done. I hadn’t wanted to take any time out until I knew that I could reply properly. I finally replied to her on my birthday apologising that I hadn’t replied earlier. We arranged to have lunch the next day. I told her about Em and I passing Bar Soba and if she’d want to go there for lunch. So that’s where we went. I had a salted caramel Espresso Martini, which was gorgeous. It was delicious. Weirdly – in its list of ingredients it said it had soy sauce in it! If it did, I couldn’t taste it. It was AMAZING!
For the actual lunch itself, I had some vegetable gyosa, some panko prawns, and I also had (I know! It’s very bad of me) a pulled pork bao bun served with some seasoned fries. It was all really yummy. I had a dessert as well. I had mochi balls, which… you know what I’m like with my mochi. Well, if you know me, and you know my penchant for Asian cuisine and Asian sweets – Japanese sweets in particular. Anything with red bean paste and the times I’ve been to London in the past and I’ve gone to Minamoto Kitchoan. Yeah, I love me a mochi ball. I wasn’t expecting these ones to be filled with ice cream! I know you can get those little moons – those ones that are ice cream filled that you can buy in the supermarket. I’ve never had those. And so it was quite the surprise. I felt one of them because I was just going to pick them up in my fingers and eat them the way I would do at home. So I picked one up, and I thought oh, it’s really cold. And I just didn’t really think anything else of it, even though it felt very cold to touch. And then I bit into it, and I was like, Oh my! It really shocked me, and it made my teeth ache because of the cold. If I bite down on very cold or frozen things, if I bite down with my front teeth I get that sensitivity thing. So I wasn’t quite prepared for that. I was like – Oh, God, shit there’s ice cream in it! I’ve never had those kinds of mochi balls before. I’ve only ever had the mochi balls filled with a paste that are either just chilled in the fridge or are on the regular shelf just at room temperature. I’ve never had any with frozen ice cream in them. I liked them, but I wasn’t really in the mood for ice cream, and I wish I’d gone with the other choice. They had a creme brulee. And had I known that those mochi balls were filled with frozen ice cream, I would have gone for the creme brulee. All of it was lovely though. The restaurant is quite chill. There weren’t many patrons there for a Friday afternoon. The music playing was good and it wasn’t loud. Michelle and I had a great chinwag.
Afterwards, we headed to Buchanan Street. I got an email from Hotel Chocolat giving me a £5 money off voucher to spend in the store. The minimum spend was £5.50. I could see online looking at their store that they have little packs of chocs for £5.95 and I thought – well, if I get one of those, then I will only have to pay 95p to give myself a pack of chocs! That’s brilliant. So, that’s what I did. I went in and I chose a pack of chocs for £5.95 and with the £5 off, I only had to spend 95p. Brilliant!
And that’s been this week! Birthday aside – I was on top of where I was with my studies at the beginning of the week. I started with reading The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton – the next book we’re studying…well, the current book. But from doing all the birthday stuff, I’ve now slightly fallen behind because I hadn’t done any more reading of the book during those days. I need to finish reading the book before I can continue on with the rest of the coursework. I read about 62 pages of it yesterday and if I can keep on at that kind of level of at least 60 pages a day, I should only take a few days to read it. So yeah, study’s gone a bit…it’s been a bit waylaid this week. I haven’t done anything with the book since last week, so that’s gonna have to wait a little while until I catch up with my studies.
Oh, the presents! I got lovely presents from Michelle, which you can see below. The card pictured is one I got in the mail from Sue. Instantly I heard the lines from ‘Wonderful In Young Life’ – ‘Memorise / A crowded swallow skies.’ Such a lovely image. Oh, that man could write beautiful lines back then…and he was so bloody blase about it. The bastard! Lol. ‘They’re just words. They don’t mean anything, really.’ Hmmm, okay Kerr!
So, that’s this week.
On Tuesday of this week I’ll be seeing Lo Moon at St Luke’s. They have Zoe Graham as their support. She was the support for Echo and the Bunnymen at Kelvingrove Bandstand. Really liked the sound of her. She was the best thing on the night to be honest – so looking forward to seeing her again on Tuesday night.