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... ;)

Bowlarama at the Trocadero

Last night was the office "Bowlarama!", we all met up for a quick drink in the Lincoln Lounge (it of the naughty artwork) then managed to split up into about 10 different groups in the crush and confusion on the tube -

- arriving staggered over the space of about 20 minutes at the Strada in Panton Street (near Leicester Square) -

- as a result we were cutting it pretty fine for the alloted slot for the bowling alleys -

- thus it was straight to main courses, I went for the "Pizze rosse" (sic) which was spicy sausage, caramelised red onion, red peppers, tomato and cheese (and jolly good too, once I had added freshly ground black pepper and a generous amount of peri peri oil, which was thoughtfully left on the table) -

- then it was on to the Trocadero, which is much less exciting for the death of SEGA World (the owners just put a coke machine in front of the escalator that used to lead up there), "The Aliens Experience" and the IMAX cinema, the majority of the machines that comprised the former are now scattered around pretty much everywhere, so it looks like FunLand bought them all up and just expanded over the whole place...

...there is, at least, one cinema still in there, lending a small illusion to the contrary...the shops, of course, survive in various reinventions of themselves, and a slightly seedy undertone is lent to the place by the addition of a number of market stall affairs touting cheap jewellery and mobile phone accessories (this is not the Trocadero of old)...

The crew descended on the dodgems, with a similar enthusiasm to that witnessed at the climax of "Carry on at your Convenience" -

- and then onto the main event of the evening, amazingly they had bowling shoes in my size(!), and the finger didn't get in the way of an almost respectable performance from me (once I had warmed up)...but I was no-where near the league of the heavy hitters who seemed to manage to effortlessly get strike after strike (a mis-spent youth, obviously) ;)

Then, equally amazingly, "B" and I had a relatively stress free journey home, my train (from Victoria) dropped me right at Earlswood, so I had a lovely spooky walk through the (full moon lit) fog across the fields, back to the house, and bed...