Hollywood Bowl - Canada Water in pictures

So we had a nice corporate night out the other night (all expenses) to the Hollywood Bowl in Canada Water (ooo!) -

- now, never been out to that bit of the docklands before, and my goodness is it a contrast to the hustle and bustle of Canary Wharf - almost deserted in fact...architecturally it feels almost like the periphery of Crawley, low industrial units (like the Metro newspaper printing plant), the odd large shopping centre, 3 or 4 storey apartment blocks, and vast swathes of (very clean) empty space...in the time it took us to get to the entrance to the bowling -

- we only passed about 5 other people, a fairly nice and quiet (but actually rather lonely) place, flying in the face of the tag line to "Field of Dreams", "if you build it, they will come"...Anyway, when we arrived the bowling alley was similarly echoing -

- we got a few drinks at the almost deserted bar -

- and relaxed, waiting for everyone else to turn up...and then, without any warning at - all *hell* broke loose...unbeknownst to us, this night was the grand bowlerama for the whole of Canary wharf's bankers "Champion of champions" competition, they even had their own (rather sad) bank-branded bowling outfits (like we were in the USA!), I think the Meryl Lynch ones were the best, but I'm afraid it became almost too crowded to take a picture, let alone get anywhere near the bar again - one of my colleagues spent about twenty minutes waiting (at the front) to get served, and got so frustrated he ended up just walking away (well, crushing through the pressing crowd looking rather red-faced, anyway), so we largely gave up, went and put on special bowling shoes -

- and got down to business -



- luckily the table service started up shortly afterwards, so we didn't take any chances, buying by the jug -

- had a nice bite to eat (actually very reasonable, like £3 for a passable chicken and bacon burger with fries) -


- and then I took the opportunity to wander around playing with macro -



- getting home again was a bit of a pain though, tube was alright -

- but had to wait for half an hour at a very cold London Bridge for an absolutely packed 4-coach Thameslink train (thought I had seen the back of those idiots...bah) -

- then fluked the last bus (by running like crazy from the station) and just got back to the house for about half past midnight (despite leaving at 2230hrs)!

Anyway, a jolly good night... ;)