Best vegetarian restaurants in London

LondonLite had a feature of vegetarian restaurants in London this week. Saf in particular, sounds very interesting, offering vegan and biological dishes (where food is cooked below 48 degrees C).

I haven't been to any of the restaurants featured, but I have tried Carnavale and The Place Below in the past. Root Master is next my list though, it's a vegan restaurant on an old London Route Master bus (geddit?), near Brick Lane.

Get walking!

walkit.com is a really useful and easy to use site, which will give you walking directions for many large UK cities. Working in London, I have found it useful many times, especially when meeting up with old friends for a drink at some back street boozer or another.

Not only does it tell you the distance, but it will also estimate walking time for fast, medium and slow, and estimated calorie burn and CO2 avoided. There is also an option to get a route that will 'avoid high levels of air pollution'.

Sorry Nic, they don't have Ceredigion on walkit.com yet, although I did notice that Google Maps will provide walking directions as well as driving directions now.

Christmas gift for the discerning Sabbath fan

On Metal Hammer there is news that Black Sabbath Converse Trainers will be on sale in time for Christmas. In the States.

The three different designed trainers are expected to be on shelves in time for Christmas in the States, though no details have been announced for a UK release.

Beautiful tomato

Since 'That's Life' with Esther Rantzen is no longer on TV, where I could have sent this vaguely amusing photo of one of our home grown tomatoes, I've put it on my Flickr page instead.

No promises, but…

I realise that I have been rambling on about Metallica a fair bit the past couple of months, but I think I am just about over the delirium of the new album and the gig at the O2 Arena now. I haven't even listened to Death Magnetic this week!

So, in the vain hope that my reader, will come back and visit again, and even leave a comment or two, I am going to try and write about some other stuff.

Just in case you missed it

This is especially for Nic, as he missed Metallica on 'Later… with Jools Holland' on BBC2 last night.

Interview with Lars:



Cyanide:



The Day That Never Comes:



Enter Sandman:

Death Magnetic launch party at London O2

Me and the missus were lucky enough to get tickets for last night's bash at the London O2 Arena, for Metallica's Death Magnetic launch party. Although our seats were way up in the upper tier, we had a pretty good view and contrary to what some have said the sound was pretty good.

They played a great set, including 5 songs from the new album, a few classics (For Whom The Bell Tolls, Seek and Destroy) and a cover (Stone Cold Crazy). James Hetfield introduced Frantic from the St Anger album, saying something about it being much loved - which raised the odd chuckle from the crowd. It is, as he also said, a great song (probably the best from that album IMHO). The full set list was as follows:

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
The Thing That Should Not Be
Of Wolf And Man
One
Broken, Beat And Scarred
Cyanide
Frantic
Until It Sleeps
Wherever I May Roam
For Whom The Bell Tolls
The Day That Never Comes
Master Of Puppets
Blackened
- - - - - - - -
Stone Cold Crazy
Jump In The Fire
Seek and Destroy

Just waiting for the download to become available now, a much better souvenir of the night than a 20GBP t-shirt.

Death Magnetic has also reached No. 1 in the UK album chart.