Chili Crab Tiger Beer Singapore Festival Brick Lane
Ealing Literary Festival Acton Green Common.

So two events took my fancy this weekend - the Singapore festival in Brick Lane, promising amazing South East Asian cuisine, Kung Fu Demonstrations and music; and the Ealing Literary Festival which was just down the road from our house and would have been rude to miss out on - particularly since Nicholas Parsons was on!

So I went down to the common on Saturday and was a little underwhelmed by what was there - but then it is a small patch of land and they probably couldn't have fitted a lot else on there...

Anyway - they had a workshop tent, a couple of food stalls and a bar as well as the "Main Stage" tent which was where I spent most of my time. First on when I got there was Nirpal Singh Dhaliwhal talking about his debut novel Tourism. He seemed a nice bloke, interested in exploring themes and creating something that would really speak to the reader. I was interested in the Q & A to hear his thoughts on how easy it is to get published and that he didn't start writing properly until he was about 28 - which isn't too far different to me - I just need to get my arse in gear now I guess!

Following on from that - and in an entirely different direction was Nicholas Parsons talking about the nonsense writing of Edward Lear.

"How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!"
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough."

He recited several works from memory, starting off with The Owl and the Pussycat and then introducing me to many other characters like the Jumblies and the Pobble who has no toes. I was impressed with the easy manner that he addressed the audience - I've heard Parsons in interviews and thought he was losing it a little bit - live however, and in difficult circumstances, he was very impressive as a raconteur and really showed why he is one of Britain's treasured figures...
I mention difficult circumstances because he seemed to find it very odd that he was performing in a tent, and told us how he had struggled to even find the park to arrive in time.
One amusing moment was when the sun came out and he thought the lights in the tent had suddenly been turned on!
I was impressed though and he made me want to explore the works of Edward Lear - it sounds like the sort of thing to recant to your kids...

The last thing I stayed for was Adam Zamoyski, a historian who was talking about "The Mad, The Bad and the Unexpected in the Making of History"
An interesting premise - that history is continually affected by the foibles of some of the main characters rather than any grand plan by leaders who take everything into account. I would be interested in reading his book actually although the talk he gave was a little stilted. It felt more like a history lecture - and I guess it was - difficult to follow a professional such as Parsons I suppose - but I lost things part of the way through.

On Sunday we headed over to Brick Lane for the Singapore Chili Crab festival which was extremely disappointing. First of all - What the Hell have they done to Spitalfields Market?
They seem to have taken a historic market and turned it into a shopping centre (or at least are in the process of it..) such a shame really but it seems to be the way of all the London markets.

Anyway - once we got to Brick Lane we were confronted by an enormous queue outside the Vibe Bar for food provided by the Kiasu restaurant - now this was the main reason we had gone down there - I love spicy south east Asian food and I was very disappointed to see that we would have to wait for over an hour to get fed. We walked a little further on to see the Boiler Room at the Truman Brewery where the main festival was taking place - while we were waiting for this we were told that there was another food queue once inside which would also take about 40 minutes. We went for a curry.

We did go back to check out the festival later though and to be honest there was nothing much there. A couple of stalls selling cooking sauces, instant noodles, soy drinks and Tiger Beer memorabilia and a stage where some Singaporean music was starting up. We saw the very end of Terry Tan doing a cooking demonstration - which I would have been interested in seeing actually.
And the Kung Fu display wasn't going to be on for another hour or so.

So we went to 93 Feet East and spent the rest of the afternoon playing Jenga and chilling to the rather cool music they were playing down there. I don't know who the guys organising it were but the girl who got up and played Jolene on the Acoustic guitar was very good and they put us all to shame with their Hula Hoop skills!