A final trip with Mum & Dad took us to the ultimate historical lads pad – Culzean Castle located on spectacular cliff tops in South Ayrshire

Khmer lunch in the campervan added an unusual flavour to proceedings, before we checked out the stunning setting, views to Arran and the beautiful grounds of the house. Mum was particularly taken with the collection of dahlias in the walled garden.

Even with a full day we still missed much of what the whole site has to offer, so we’ll be  back to check out the beaches and some more of the grounds.

It has been a bit of a posting desert round here for the last couple months, mainly due to work commitments and sheer laziness, but in recent times more to do with our new project.

We have bought a flat in the centre of Glasgow, but require quite a bit of work to get it up to scratch! – You can follow all the (mis)adventure on our flickr – I think it will be more up to date for the foreseeable future.

We are also back to Aus in April – drop me a line if you fancy catching up.

More fun with mum and dad, this time on a very damp and miserable day we took a drive up into the Trossachs for a trip on the Loch Katrine steamer.

It was a beautiful craft, and great scenery even if we were cooped up indoors for most of the trip.

We treated ourselves to a long lesiurely lunch at the delightful Inn at Kippen once we had finished. Where the food was generally fantastic and the atmosphere perfect for a rainy afternoon.

FORK Autumn Safari

Way back last autumn I had a fun day with the Friends of the River Kelvin (with whom I am now a fully paid up memeber), canoeing on Loch Lomond. I had originally signed up for a decent of the River Kelvin itself, unfortunately it was postponed – hopefully we will get a chance to complete it one day.

A full report on the day is on the FORK website here.

We are just back from checking out on of the newest editions to Glasgow’s dining scene – a pan African ‘cabaret’ number called Camflava, tucked discretely in the Pollockshaws area of the south side.

While they are still finding their feet a little, and there wasn’t any cabaret to be seen, the food was fantastic and the staff very enthusiastic.The place did suffer from the usual Glasgow bugbear of being far too large and I suspect unless it is packed to the gills it will always feel a little souless.

On to the food, with our household of 3+1 all in attendance we shared fried plantain, ribs and chicken wings for starters which were all delicious. The main courses that followed were equally as good. Pete’s Black Bean & Pumpkin stew was thankfully tasty as it was the only vegetarian main on the menu. The rest of us tucked into grilled fish, a great chicken casserole type dish and the intriguing Ndolé – a beef dish made using shrimp paste and bitter leaves that was certainly an acquired taste!

Glasgow seems to be experiencing a mini boom in African cuisine (about time) with an Abyssian restaurant called the Queen of Sheba soon to be opening next door to our favourite haunt Asia Style.

The Return of Ulysses

We managed to squeeze in quite a few trips to Edinburgh to catch the festival action this year. A lot of our interest centred on the visual arts, including a visit to the newly opened though somewhat underwhelming Jupiter Artland.

The highlight was a performance by the Royal Ballet of Flanders of Return of Ulysses which was mesmerizing, powerful yet stark. Scottish enfant terrible Michael Clark’s New Work – was suitably mad yet lack coherence and felt forced and overly stylised.

As per usual most fringe acts didn’t seem worth the entry price although Kristen Schaal of Flight of the Conchords fame was quite entertaining!

monotonix

A couple of comments on gigs we attended at stereo in August.

First up was a bit of a punt on Crystal Stilts with Veronica Falls in support. They were actually a bit crap, quite messy and not as good as their studio work – cool brooklyn kids who weren’t that interested.

A couple of days later, in a vindicated a spur of the moment decision we went to see Israeli punks Monotonix. They were totally mental and it was absolute madness madness with four hairy sweaty guys in speedos traipsing all over the venue, playing on the bar, getting audience members to support their drum kit and stool above their heads while they played! As well as (or perhaps in spite of) their great show they also happened to be good musicians.

monotonix at setreo

We dragged a bunch of our mates along to The Luckmiths farewell gig at Stereo. Chhay met up with them before the gig (they were pretty impressed with Stereo’s location right next to Central station and tasty selection of vegan food) before we headed down to catch the very twee supports.

Their set included all the classics and their typical high quality banter – they left our friends suitably impressed and a little sad that this was the only time that they would see them.

Chhay & I really appreciated the chance to see them before they disband, I think the Australian shows would have been amazing.  See if you can spot us in the photo below!

Way back in the dark ages we popped in to the twisted wheel to catch Brisbane pop rockers I Heart Hiroshima. We were incredibly tight  and played an entertaining set to a tiny audience. Their drummer was as incredible and hypnotic as ever.

On their tour blog they noted this show as the best of the tour – I hope they at least got a few more people to see them at the other venues!

We made the first of many jaunts across to Edinburgh over the festival season to sample some of the Edinburgh Internation Film Festival. Unfortunately most of the films we wanted to see were sold out, so we killed time playing hopscotch in front of the castle and trying the rather expensive (but pretty good) dumplings at Chop Chop

We did manage to catch the quite surreal but fairly entertaining low budget flick ‘Modern Love is Automatic’, late in the evening to justify our trip.