Drink, Food and Games Update

These last two weekends I've continued my investigation of your human concept of "free time".

B. and I spent the last weekend of September in Guildford for a friend's birthday, which allowed for a visit to a rather nice pub where we drank a very decent range of Fuller's beers; a brief gawp at the gloriously ugly cathedral used for young Damien's abortive baptism scene in The Omen (thanks to Simon for bringing that connection to my attention); and a couple of rounds of Lupus in Tabula, a game requiring large numbers of players (and which could very easily be played without cards), which basically involves werewolves murdering innocent villagers and villagers lynching suspected werewolves in retaliation, thus demonstrating pack mentality very effectively.

Friday evening we celebrated B.'s passing of her Ph.D. viva with a trip to Glasnost, another of our favourite restaurants, which was recently bought up by its own chefs (and whose own website seems at the moment sadly defunct). When we first visited Glasnost five years or so ago, we were most impressed by the equitable balance between meat and vegetarian dishes. Slightly annoyingly this shortly changed to a three-way split between meat, vegetarian and fish, which means that the choice for proper vegetarians isn't nearly as wide as it used to be... but the food itself remains outstanding, as do the drinks, service, atmosphere and so on. What's more, the restaurant is within feasible walking-distance (if slightly challenging post-meal).

I had the camembert fondant for a starter, followed by a roasted red pepper lasagne and a blue poppyseed, lemon and lime cake. Lasagne is, of course, pretty much the most predictable thing a restaurant can offer a vegetarian, but this one was gorgeous. Glasnost also specialises in flavoured vodkas, so B. and I sampled the iced mint (delicious), the vanilla cream (creamy) and the pear drop (vile, as I should have remembered from last time. Oops.)

Then the weekend saw a reprise of our trip to the nice local pub with the Hopback beers and the cheeseboard, and a rematch at Risk Godstorm with R. and M. Some of the game's flaws mentioned in this review become more apparent on a second playing: namely, the Underworld isn't nearly as cool a game element as it thinks it is, and the gods themselves don't have sufficient incentive to get involved in fights with one another. We may need to tweak the rules accordingly on future occasions. Still remarkably good fun, though.

Tonight it's Serenity, which I'm looking forward to enormously, and then we're off to Oxford for the weekend to help consecrate the union of awrc and brightybot. I'm sure drink and food will flow plentifully, although perhaps there won't be quite so many games. (Mind you, we do need to give them a wedding present...)