Every summer London Zoo kindly opens its doors on Friday evenings, allowing adults to enjoy the menagerie of animals on display. No children, no prams, no school parties and the only queues are those for alcohol and (for the cheaters) food stalls.

It’s an excellent idea and with a few friends a wholly wonderous and fun night was had by all! Highlights included baby tigers! A baby sloth! Countless glasses of wine! Seahorses! A Toucan! Cider! Penguins! Face painting! and unique magical moments that you wouldn’t have expected.

But the best part of the day was housed in the first enclosure that we visited, Gorilla Kingdom!

Meet Kumbuka…

… Lord of his house, majesty to his hareem of females… And the most miserable of all the animals at London Zoo! I’m pretty sure he hates all the other gorillas, I’ve visited him twice in the last year and both times he’s pretty much sat on his own as far away from his ‘family’ as possible.

They say that when you look in to the eyes of a primate, you can see the emotion and soul of a person and not just some mindless animal. This was something I agreed with. Staring in to Kumbuka’s eyes, I could almost feel his emotions, he was communicating with a human-like… apathy, a look of… ‘I can’t stand that cow out there! If she tells me to clean up my nest one more time..! What was I doing offering her my last Rolo all those years ago??’

And then he, as most of the men in the world would do, he sat down and started checking his baby making equipment, this guy was one of us… until… he started picking his nose with the exact same hand. The crowd groaned in unison and Kumbuka was not impressed. The high pitched squeal of my friend sent him over the edge and he quickly jumped up and smashed is hulk-like fists against the window before storming off. ‘SOD YOU ALL!’

Thank God for the plated glass, protecting us from this giant whom my friend had clearly pissed off. And zero thanks to the keeper who in timely fashion mentioned that earlier in the week, Kumbuka had cracked one of the other windows when he threw a stick at it… We left promptly afterwards!

A wonderful evening that will rank highly in my list of places to must dos. It would’ve been perfect if the malagasy giant jumping rat was up for entertaining too! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHE1RkY3L6Q

Well it’s been almost a year since I last posted anything on the blog and I’m pretty sure 2013 was missing 40 days or so, it’s just flown by!

So what’s been happening? Well there’s still been the odd restaurant visits, I’ll try and write something about them but there was really not much to say about them. The baking is back on track too and now that I’ve got my latest Christmas present, a much needed food processor, I now have the means to prepare some wet doughs for cakes, Danish pastries and brioches!! Exciting times ahead!

So I promise to be much more blog-active this year and post some more reviews, random observations and those single sentence movie reviews on Twitter.

So stay tuned and have a fantastic 2014!

I’ve been watching and thinking about how people walk and the mechanics of walking. And I’ve noticed, it’s all in the arms. More precisely, the arm swing and it’s correlation with your gait. Just watch and you’ll see. The right arm will swing forward in time with the left leg stepping forward and the same for the left arm and right leg. Everyone does it!

Try this. Try walking and swinging each arm in sync with it’s nearest leg (right arm with right leg, left arm, left leg). It’s not natural! You just end up doing a Bigfoot from that film shot in the 1960’s. Weird.

It’s been a while since I had a thought random enough to post, but this one keeps coming back to me…

Do animals have regional accents? Do cows in the north moo in a different way to cows in the south? Obviously the accents won’t be the same as ours, you wouldn’t get a northern cow say ‘How Dooooooo’ or an east end cow say ‘Mew’, but surely the principle is the same? Do German Shepherds have an ever so slight German twang to their bark?

Also, left and right handed animals anyone?

Why does my hair grow so quickly??! It must grow at an inch a month, at least! And why is there so much of it?!

I’m sure that every time I get my haircut my contribution to the floor’s ‘hair bedding’ is about 30% more than everyone elses, it’s just everywhere!!

I do like my local hairdressers though, they give me free drinks, a back massage during my hair wash and a lovely selection of… interior decoration magazines???… I did see a nice looking induction hob though!

It’s winter and my head is cold now.

Something I’ve noticed today during lunch… Why do people use forks to eat rice dishes???

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten rice with a fork, it’s always been a spoon for me. What’s the point? I can’t see a scenario where someone is going to find something large enough in their rice that would make them think, “That deserves to be stabbed and picked up with my pronged utensil”.

It makes even less sense on a plate! The humble spoon will allow one to scoop up a mini-mound of rice, whilst the poor fork user will be left with a less than suitable serving and potential throat stabbing accident on their hands.

Maybe it’s an East vs West thing? Western culture maybe so used to the knife ‘n’ fork scenario that they simply can’t force their fork-tuned hands to pick up a spoon for a savoury meal?

Nevertheless, I hold my spoon with pride.