Two posts in one day!?!??!?!?

I have no idea how I have found myself back at the blog once again, especially since it is 2am... However, having spent most of the morning on the thing, I find myself needing to share the rest of my day in a whole new post, because it was just so damn fabulous.

So... after posting this morning I made a quick dash across London to East Ham to meet up with Payal and Lackshma (who I met in Scotland last weekend) for the promised authentic South Indian meal.

The East Ham main road is bustling in a way I will always think of as uniquely London, with a range of bizarre shop frontages in all sorts of languages, interspersed with peeling roller doors and a geometry of railings and meshing seeming to prop up the ancient brick buildings above.

Through this bustle we trudged to "Saravanaa Bhavan". Lackshma is Veda/Brahmin, and her food preference is called 'pure vegetarian' - no meat, no eggs, but she does eat milk and honey etc. Apparently, this restaurant is a fantastic exponent of this type of food.

Happy to be the new kid, I sat back and let everyone else order for me and I ended up with a kind of South Indian buffet. A pile of rice, poppadoms and bread puffs accompanied by nine or so tiny tin cups of dhals, soup, pickle, chilli, raita, curd, halva and fruit salad. The correct way to eat is to dump some rice down, plop something savoury down on it and eat it with scooped fingers. My way is to put too much wet with the dry and spend five minutes pushing each fingerful round in a circle whilst getting really hungry and trying not to draw attention to one's honky self.

My favourite dish was a tamarind and bean dhal, and I can proudly say I managed to finish three servings of mango and mustard chilli pickle before the heat got too much. I had to pass on the curd for the sake of my weird tummy, but everything else was delicious. For the sake of tradition I even accepted a coffee - not something I normally touch. I won't bore you with more food details, but it is a very frothy way to ingest caffeine.

After all that, I waddled back up the high street clutching bags of burfi (cocount ice) that had magically appeared in my hands and took the 'Pink Line' back home. From there I had a short time to drink some precious 'V' before heading out again to meet up with Caroline, her boss Brodie and his partner Dierdre for the Dave Dobbyn thing.

Navigating multiple transport dramas, I arrived in Shepherd's Bush (a strongly expat area of London) to find it wasn't an army function at all, but a proper Dave Dobbyn concert combining a new concept in intimate entertaining with a plug for an expat association. Penelope Barr (remember her?) did the intros, Chucky Shearer (remember him!?) MC'd and Dave did the singing thing.

Amazingly, Brodie, Diedre and Caroline were offered front row seats, and this tagger-on got to join them. Sitting five metres away as he sang some of the most beautiful love songs.... here is a photo from my camphone:

So, Dave would play a few songs, sit down for a chat (gritty stuff - his battle with drugs, Queen St riots, being born again...) and then get back on the guitar or piano. He is a much sweeter musician than I realised - a completely unexpected gem.

I would liked to have heard a piano arrangment of 'Bliss', but it was not to be. His boozy pub song days are clearly behind him, and the focus now is on his faith and spreading the love, which he didn't hesitate to mention.

After a resounding encore it ended all too soon... On the other hand, I got my last train with five minutes to spare, so am lucky to be home.

And now, to bed :-)