Last Saturday evening Darren, Tom and I headed over to Crystal Palace to visit the fair. It was a bitter cold night so naturally only the hardiest of hoodlums and chavs were skulking around with their pitbull dogs. The rides were looking damn fine on this dark and cold night, especially the waltzer. David Irvins waltzer is a work of art but not in the 'traditional fairground art' sense. His modern machine is a swirling mass of dry ice, matt gold paint, blinding white strobe lights and ear-bleed-volume techno and drum 'n' bass. I thought my chest was going to cave in when we got up to full speed and I laughed so hard a little bit of wee came out. Take a look at my pics of the lovely machine.
We rounded off the night with a meal at a MuMu which is a lovely Asian fusion place. Splendid sweet curries and a bottle of rioja and great views over London on the walk back to the car.

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I never expected The Strokes to be that good but they excelled and were awesome. Really really good, actually. They played tight for two hours and had an effective yet simple lighting set-up which complimented their catchy art rock. They played most of their catalogue (not hard when you've only got three short albums) and the only track missing was Razorblade (from the new album) but, as that is the one with the Barry Manilow 'Mandy' rip-off, I wondered if it was due to copyright issues. Most of the crowd were word perfect on the shouty choruses and more than a few of the boys in the audience had gone for that skinny-leg-jeans and crap-long-hair that the band were wearing two years ago (you could see them looking at each other with a worried look as the band walked out in smart Hedi Slimane style suits). I'd like to see them capture that 'look' using their pocket money.