reddragdiva | Leaving the house.

Saturday I had lunch and an afternoon with Danese Cooper from Wikimedia, who is the adult supervision to the technical team. We ate at Sketch near Oxford Circus, which looks like an old-fashioned cafe and restaurant until you notice the small dissonant notes. Apparently the chef is French and evidently thinks he is making music videos. Danese likes it for the free wifi and speaks of sitting in the tea section at the back for a whole afternoon having five meetings in a row. The food is pricey but edible and the coffee flows efficiently.

I ordered the Sketch Club Sandwich for eight quid and was presented with:

What the actual fuck.

Whoever is responsible for this must be killed.

The toilets are also of note. You go up a staircase (one to the left with blue lights, one to the right with pink lights) and enter one of several tall white eggs, from which music is playing. While you're in there, canned laughter plays. When you flush, there's cheering and applause.

Afterwards I guided her to knitting nerd shop Loop, which had on sale a notebook from France which katieastrophe appears to have modelled for:

"Notebook of crazy and weird ideas."

Loop did enlighten me as to how most girlfriends I've ever had felt about record shops.

I must carry my camera more. The above were taken on Danese's.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

themadcatlady

EIGHT QUID?! To pay such a price for that sandwich and those toilets.... *is shocked*

From: (Anonymous)

Sounds very interesting. I actually like going to places like that, if to only look around. Um, your lunch looks very strange. Did it at least have turkey, bacon and tomato in it?

reddragdiva

It appeared to have the requisite ingredients. The bread seemed to be a lighter variety of dwarf bread. And there was a big bowl of chips with it.

tyggerjai

If Loop is the one I'm thinking of, it does at least sell beer and have comfy chairs. And there was a hawt Goth chick balling yarn.

ludy

I'm thinking you mean I knit London cos that's the one with the alcohol license

Maybe. So many yarn shops, they're all a blur. Yeah, Loop had comfier chairs, I Knit had the beer and hot goth chick.

Beer? This was just serious wool addicts ... yarn, needles, books.

pndc

I've been dragged around I Knit London. One of the few perks is you can go over to their stocks of alpaca fleece and stroke it, and almost hear it purring. (Alpaca make very silly noises, check them out on Youtube. e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZVmscannpY or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zLIb7C6e50.)

When I become old and senile, I may skip having a hundred cats and go straight for the alpacas.

i love Loop - but it's a very dangerous place cos i end up spending far too much money whenever i go there

Yes, it's clearly a very highly refined form of crack. Danese was running a continuous calculation of books and yarn she wanted versus weight in her luggage. This is on her way to India to spend a month setting up Wikimedia stuff there.