London Gin Festival

When a few months ago, my my brother asked if I wanted to go to the celebration of gin that is the London Gin Festival, there was only one obvious answer. I've somehow never made it to Ginstock, on World Gin Day, and the festival, which also visits several other UK cities sounded right up my street.

This year's London event was in the Camden Centre and the £10 entitled you to am official Gin Festival glass, badge and gin listing. There were dozens of gins available inside, many of which you could sample, but if you wanted a gin and tonic, you had to buy a gin card, which, for £20, would entitle you to four G&Ts of your choosing. Given that the festival sells t-shirts that proclaim, "Life's too short for single gins", it was a bit of a shame that only singles were served in the G&Ts, but £5 still isn't too bad for a craft G&T in central London.

We all wanted to try Pinkster gin in our first G&T: a dry gin with raspberries. It also happens to be pink, so of course I was keen. The bars are divided into our sections, so you have to consult the programme to find which bar will serve the gin of your dreams. The programme also lists the garnish that will be served with the drink — fresh mint and raspberry, in this case. I really liked Pinkster — it was fruity and a bit different, and the pink bottle would look great on my drinks table.

I really wanted to try as many new gins as possible, but I couldn't resist the Dorothy Parker gin on the list, which I tried in Gin Palace in New York. It's a bit more traditional — with a strong juniper taste and citrus notes. The bottle (second from the left on the top row of the photo below) is also cool.

At this point, we took a break to find some samples and go to some of the talks. It is not a coincidence that most of the talks were by people from the companies who were exhibiting (and I did think there would be more distillers showing their wares), and some of the talks were more interesting than others — focusing on the history of gin and the making of their gin, rather than just running through corporate press releases. One speaker refused to use the microphone so we couldn't even hear her from the second row.

Whitley Neill's African-inspired citrusy gin was great; it also helped that the presenter gave us all two 50 ml miniatures, rather than just a splash in a tiny cup. Brockmans, with its blueberry and blackberry flavours, was really tasty — you could really smell and taste the fruity notes — but I feel like their boring, un-gin-like black bottle will get lost on a lot of shelves. If you like a little spice in your life,  Opihr's smooth, coriander and cardamon notes might make it the gin — I've tried it before in 214's 'nice and spicy' tasting flight.

Then it was time for our final two G&Ts. For my third, I asked the bartender to surprise me and he picked the Sir Robin of Locksley gin, with its notes of elderflower, which came with a grapefruit garnish. It was quite tasty and refreshing, although the bartender seemed confused when I asked if it was named after Robin Hood. Hmm.

For my last drink, I tried St George's Terroir Gin, in honour of my recent trip to California. It's San Francisco and includes locally-foraged Douglas fir, among other botanicals. The gin has a fresh, clean taste and the rosemary garnish worked really well. This was probably my favourite of all the gins I tried, but I did enjoy sampling four really quite different G&Ts throughout the night.

There is a small 'off licence' selling some of the gins from the programme, but the prices weren't really any cheaper than you could find online. I was also hoping that the festival would be bigger and that there were would be a more varied programme of events — G&T masterclasses, mixology and the history of gin, for example. Maybe these festivals work better outside of London where it isn't so easy to find such interesting gins in bars and shops. Also, the website said that there would be food — veggie and non- — but all we found was a hot-dog stand. Still, if you love gin and like to taste numerous new gins in a short space of time, the Gin Festival could be the event for you.

My Picks for the 2015 Academy Awards

My taste in movies obviously matched that of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this year, because I have seen almost all of the films nominated in the eight categories I normally consider. I have linked below my reviews of the films I have written about on this blog.

Best Picture: Whiplash [8/8 watched]
Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood [5/5 watched]
Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything [5/5 watched]
Best Supporting Actor: J. K. Simmons, Whiplash [5/5 watched]
Best Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice [4/5 watched]
Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood [4/5 watched]
Best Original Screenplay: The Grand Budapest Hotel [5/5 watched]

Best Adapted Screenplay: Whiplash [5/5 watched]

Picking my favourite Best Picture nominee was particularly challenging because other than American Sniper, which didn't impress me much, I liked all of the nominated films and was only really able to narrow it down to a top four: Boyhood, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything and Whiplash. Although the biopics of Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking share certain similarities, both thematically and in subject matter, the other two are really quite different. Ultimately, though, I thought that the two biopics were well-made, compelling films and that Boyhood was an astonishing piece of work, Whiplash was the film that excited, captivated and entertained me the most. It was also the film for which I had almost no expectations when I entered the screening.

If I couldn't vote for Boyhood as Best Picture, I do think Richard Linklater truly deserves the Best Director award. Sure, there is some tough competition —Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel is a meticulously detailed, impeccably choreographed masterpiece and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman is bonkers but brilliant — but my vote is for Linklater, although I had hoped Christopher Nolan would get a nod for Interstellar, which I loved.

I think Best Actor will come down to Redmayne vs Keaton and I think the former's total transformation into Hawking should win him the award. Maybe Steve Carell will win best nose job for his performance in Foxcatcher; I think David Oyelowo deserved Carell's spot in the line-up for his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr in Selma. All of the Best Supporting Actor nominees were great, but I think J. K. Simmons clinches it (Mark Ruffalo was easily the best thing in Foxcatcher).

I haven't seen Two Days, One Night, but of the four films I've seen that appear in the Best Actress category, Julianne Moore's performance in Still Alice blows the others out of the water, great as Rosamund Pike was in Gone Girl and Felicity Jones was in The Theory of Everything. Of the Best Supporting Actress nominees, other than Meryl Streep (whose Into the Woods I haven't seen), Patricia Arquette should win for her role as the mother in Boyhood. I wouldn't feel too bad if Emma Stone clinched it for Birdman, however.

Finally, in the writing categories, I hope The Grand Budapest Hotel wins Best Original Screenplay, not least because I feel it ought to win one of the major categories. My vote goes to Whiplash in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, but major kudos should go to Paul Thomas Anderson for translating the oft-thought-unfilmable Thomas Pynchon to the big screen.

Finally, the awesome infographic that features the dress worn by every Best Actress Academy Award winner — evs — has been updated to include Cate Blanchett's 2014 dress. Very cool.

My reviews of the nominated films: American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, Foxcatcher, Gone Girl, The Imitation Game, Selma, Still Alice, The Theory of Everything and Whiplash.

"Mastering the Art of Losing"

I hadn't heard of Lisa Genova's 2007 novel Still Alice until awards season rolled around last year and Julianne Moore picked up a whole host of nominations for her performance as the titular Alice in Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's film adaptation. Genova is a neuroscientist-turned-writer and Still Alice tells the story of a brilliant 50-year-old psycholinguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

I wanted to read the novel before watching the movie, and I thought Genova's work was a powerful, moving and thoughtful depiction of what it really feels like to experience such a terrible disease. The film was good too and Moore's nominations are richly deserved — she will almost certainly win the Oscar this weekend — as her portrayal is by turns sensitive and multi-layered, inspiring and heartbreaking.

The movie opens with Alice celebrating her 50th birthday with her husband and fellow scientist John (Alec Baldwin), and two of their three grown children, Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Tom (Hunter Parrish — whom I still haven't forgiven for what he did to Will Gardner in The Good Wife) in a New York restaurant. It is a celebratory moment and Alice, at the top of her academic game and with a loving family, is very happy. Soon, though, she finds herself forgetting things. While giving a talk, she can't remember the word 'lexicon' — pretty crucial for a linguist — and before long, the 'thingies' become more common and when she gets lost in the middle of her university campus, she realises that she has to go to see a doctor.

After a barrage of tests, early-onset Alzheimer's is the diagnosis she is given and she is baffled and devastated. She tries to hide it from her family at first, but eventually, she lets John in on the news and, once it is confirmed that she has the familial version, they decide to tell their children. Anna and Tom — a sensible lawyer and doctor — want to get tested to see whether they have the implicated genetic mutation, but the youngest, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), the rebel of the family and an aspiring actress, decides not to.

The decline, then, manages to be both achingly slow and all too rapid. In the book, this time lapse is expressed more clearly — the film feels faster. And it's Moore with her heart-wrenching sobs who carries the whole film. "It feels like my brain is f*cking dying," she cries, becoming increasingly frustrated as ever simpler tasks become too challenging. "I wish I had cancer," she says on another occasion. People understand cancer, she explains, and aren't embarrassed by it. Later, in a slightly more accepting frame of mind, Alice quotes Elizabeth Bishop: "The art of losing isn't hard to master." And that is the key to the film, because it is damn hard to master the art of losing your faculties, losing your life and losing your self. It's a devastating thing.

If you think Mark Wahlberg makes an unconvincing English professor in The Gambler, wait until you see Alec Baldwin as the most implausible cancer cell biology PI you have ever seen. To be fair, the film keeps the science on the sidelines and Baldwin does play a convincing husband here. You can feel his pain, anger and frustration as he watches the wife he has loved for decades slip away from him slowly. Stewart, to my surprise, also performed well as the renegade daughter who comes home when it counts the most. The older children don't have a lot to do other than act sad and grumpy.

Overall, I still preferred the book, but the film is well done. There is a high probability that you will cry, although there are also more uplifting elements to it. There are a few changes in the transition to the big screen — the setting has moved from Harvard, Cambridge, to Columbia, New York, and the characters have ditched their BlackBerries in favour of iPhones, Skype and FaceTime for the film.

One of the things I found most fascinating about the story was that Alice is a linguistics professor — naturally, this is of interest to a former linguistics student, but for someone like Alice for whom language and communication is so utterly central, the prospect of losing even a tiny amount of ability must be a truly terrifying notion. For a good explanation of the genetics of Alzheimer's disease, the US National Institute on Aging has a good factsheet.

The DC Caffeine Chronicles

UPDATE: I visited Washington again in February 2016, updated my DC coffee map and wrote reviews of some new coffee spots, including The Coffee Bar, M.E. Swing's, Maketto and Tryst. Please check out my blog post.

I spent under four days in DC but I managed to pack in a fair amount of caffeine chronicling. I did some coffee-shop research before I left and was pleased to find that a lot of the coffee bars on my list were fairly close to my two hotels near Logan Circle and near the White House. At Dulles Airport, on my way to California, I picked up the Jan/Feb issue of Washington Flyer magazine, which had a feature on DC's burgeoning craft coffee scene. We had obviously done some similar delving because most of the coffee bars I visited were also on their list.

Six Hours in San Francisco

I would have liked to have spent a couple of days in San Francisco after my conference finished — long-term readers will know that I spent a fair amount of time in Fog City in the noughties but it's been over six years since my last visit. Sadly, though, I had to make do with six hours. However, it's hard to complain too much when it was such an unseasonably warm, sunny day and the city was as beautiful as I remembered.

The Best Coffee, Burgers and Tacos in San Jose

When I left Washington early on Wednesday morning it was really, really cold, yet when I stepped off the plane in San Francisco six hours later, it was at least 20 degrees warmer and gloriously sunny. Flying across the country really emphasised how huge the US is, and how varied: the aerial views of the Rockies and the frozen fields of Wisconsin were particularly striking.

DC Part IV: Work, WTF and a Mini Mexican Feast

Yesterday, I had to work and it was a pretty long day, starting with a briefer than usual jog along the Mall just before sunrise. As such, today's post is mainly about food and drink. Plus ça change, you say? On the way back to my hotel, I stopped for breakfast at Filter, a cheery orange-accented coffee shop on I Street in Foggy Bottom, for a rich, nutty Colombian pourover and a raspberry and peach muffin.

It's hard to complain too much about going to work, when you get to walk past a much more famous, ovoid-shaped office. Hello, Barack! Apparently Angela Merkel is in town this week as well; not to see me! I also got to visit NPR and the National Geographic Society, with its giant Spinosaurus sculpture, so it wasn't all bad.

For lunch, my colleagues took me to an excellent sandwich bar a few blocks from our office in the National Press Building called WTF (Woodward Takeout Food). Overwhelmed by the choice on their epic menu, I managed to miss their specialty sandwich, the Chick Chick (three layers of fried chicken with bacon, cranberry and lettuce), but it was hard to be too disappointed when the chicken bánh mi I ordered was roughly the size of my head and utterly delicious. I only managed about half, but took a triple-attack chocolate cookie back to my desk to aid me through some later website woes.

Although it was another cold day, by the time I arrived back at my hotel in the early evening, it looked like it was going to be a good sunset. Sadly, I had too much work to do, so I headed up to my windowless hotel room instead. As a reward, though, I went to Oyamel for dinner, a Mexican restaurant recommended to me by my friend who had been before. They prepare a huge bowl of fresh guacamole for you at your table, which is meant for 2-3 people to share, but I couldn't resist (and I did seriously demolish it).

I also had a couple of yummy tacos (one spicy pork and one brisket), and the benefit of sitting at the ceviche bar was that I got a free sample of some sea bass ceviche, which was so fresh and tasty. I ordered the margarita of the day, which involved grapefruit and ginger, and which slipped down nicely. Oyamel is a colourful, airy restaurant decorated with butterfly motifs. The staff are very friendly and the food is great and good value.

As this post goes live, I will already be on my way to California, where the weather will be 20 degrees warmer. I've really enjoyed my time in DC, though, and found that three-and-a-bit days was about the right amount of time to spend there in winter. With an extra day, I could have seen more, but I feel like I had a good taster and I hope I will be back again before another 20 years elapses. In the meantime, here is one last White House selfie!

DC Part III: Pandas, Presidents and Plan B

After Sunday's gorgeous weather, it was a bit of a shock to the system to wake up to cold, grey mist yesterday morning. My run along the Mall was somewhat less pretty, but I rewarded myself with a Balinese pourover from Compass, a fab coffee shop and roastery on 7th Street, just east of Logan Circle. I also treated myself to a sticky, sugary brioche-like pastry—most of the food they sell is from local producers or suppliers and the pastries are made by a woman who is a lawyer by day and a pastry chef by night. Impressive, or what?

For the past 18 months, every time I'm having a bad day at work, I've clicked over briefly to the Smithsonian National Zoo's panda cam and then all is right with the world again. I couldn't go to DC, then, without saying hello to baby Bao Bao and her mother Mei Xiang. When I arrived, Bao Bao was napping in her favourite tree, but after about 15 or 20 minutes, her mother wandered outside to see what was going on and Bao Bao decided to come down.

I then spent the next 45 minutes or so trying to leave the pandas, but it's really difficult when they are so darn cute! I got to see them cuddling, going for a wander and feeding, and I also got to see mission control for panda-cam (how much do I want that job?). The Smithsonian zoo is free and there are plenty of other animals to see but by that point, I was frozen and just had a quick stroll through the Asian and African sections before heading out.

I even made a brief panda-cam video of my own (one of many currently filling up the memory on my iPhone!).

I walked back down the hill through Adams Morgan—a funky neighbourhood, with plenty of interesting restaurants and bars—and then along U Street, where I stopped for lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl. I ordered one of their famous chili dogs and a lemonade and relaxed in one of the leather booths. Ben's has been around for over 50 years and has a number of famous fans, including President Obama. The chili is delicious so it's easy to see why.

The chili warmed me up a little but not enough to fend off the chilly weather, so I got the metro back downtown and paid a visit to the National Museum of American History. There is probably more culture than history inside, although there is a good section on war and I also enjoyed the exhibit on the country's presidents. I had hoped to visit the National Archives too but I ran out of time, so walked up to Chinatown instead and had a coffee at Chinatown Coffee Co. on H Street. I had an excellent Colombian Chemex, which was chocolatey and rich, but if you're in the mood for something more fun, they also serve beer and absinthe! It's a cool little place to hang out and I enjoyed the '90s and '00s indie rock on the sound system.

For dinner, I went to Plan B, although let's be clear: it was always my plan A! Plan B specialises in burgers, beer and bourbon—two out of three isn't bad, right? I sat down in a sleek red-leather booth and perused the huge, mainly burger-centric menu. Eventually, I decided on the bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel bun, which was a good choice. The burgers, like the bathrooms, are designated pink and no-pink, and mine was delicious: juicy and flavoursome. The soft pretzel bun, doused in wholegrain mustard, was a nice addition. I also had a Benjamin Button cocktail (Buffalo Trace, honey and lemon), a sort of cough-medicine, I suppose, although much tasty and not entirely inapt on such a cold day.

I walked back to my new hotel (today, sadly, I am working) and got my first full-frontal glimpse of the White House. It does look very impressive by night, even in the rain.

DC Part II: Monuments, Museums and Georgetown Shopping

I woke up early yesterday morning and headed straight out for a run down 17th Street to the Mall. The city was very quiet but I kept stopping anyway to take photographs: the Eisenhower Executive Office Building was particularly cool, with its slightly creepy, gothic aesthetic, and of course, there were plenty of pictures of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

As I circled the Monument about 10 minutes before the ticket kiosk opened, I decided to queue to pick up a ticket for later. I then had to race back to the hotel—via a delicious Ethiopian pourover from Peregrine Espresso—to shower, change and head back down to the Monument for 10.15. It's worth going up the Monument if it's a nice day: you get great views of the city from 550 feet up (it was the world's tallest building for five years until the Eiffel Tower made its debut) and the guides are friendly and informative. Also, it's free! You can book tickets online if you don't want to queue.

Afterwards, I walked east along the Mall to Newseum, which, as you might guess, is a museum dedicated to news and journalism. I am a press officer so of course I was interested and I felt that the $23 admission charge was justified. As well as more serious exhibits, including a wall of front pages from the world's newspapers after 9/11, there are some interactive voting features (about new media, for example) and you even get the chance to role-play being an anchor. Naturally, I couldn't resist. Even if you don't want to pay the admission charge, they put dozens of newspaper front pages out front each day, which is worth a look.

My plan was to go to Good Stuff Eatery, a Capitol Hill purveyor of premium burgers, for lunch and then to check out Eastern Market, but alas: the former isn't open on Sundays. I frog-marched myself through the market—an arts, crafts and food market that is particularly bustling at the weekends—buying a rose gold necklace, before hopping onto the Metro to Foggy Bottom (tee hee), where I could walk to Georgetown for lunch and retail therapy.

Most of Georgetown's shops line M Street and its cross streets. It was really tough not to go into J. Crew and Lululemon, but it was 2.30 and I really needed to eat something. Luckily, there is a branch of Good Stuff on M Street. Good Stuff is a bit like a smaller scale version of Five Guys. The Capitol Hill branch is even said to be a favourite of Barack Obama's, which explains why there is a burger named after him. As I don't like roquefort, I ordered the Smokehouse instead (bacon, Vermont cheddar, fried onion rings and chipotle BBQ sauce) and some hand-cut fries. Good Stuff even has a 'dip' bar where you can select interesting and sometimes odd condiments for your fries: I opted for more chipotle over, say, mango.

On this trip, I was worried about the different weather patterns in DC and California, but DC alone was variable enough yesterday. On my morning run, it was so cold my lungs hurt, but by the afternoon, I was exercising my right to bare arms. It was very pleasant to wander the red-brick streets of Georgetown, making a few cheeky purchases and enjoying the sights: 1) JF and Jackie K's former residence on N Street, 2) those famous steps from The Exorcist and 3) sunset over the Potomac.

After the sun had set, I made my way back east. Just outside the White House, however, cars and pedestrians were halted for about 15 minutes. Eventually a procession of siren-blaring motorbikes and cars came through. I assume Barack was late for his supper. And so was I! I had a delicious lobster roll and a quirky Cupp'a Jo Jo cocktail (gin, curacao, coffee liqueur, celery and orange) at Hank's Oyster Bar, a small DC chain that is well worth visiting if you have a hankering for seafood.

By this point, my feet were aching, but there was one last stop on my tour: Red Light, a cocktail and dessert bar whose name reflects the, er, edgy history of the neighbourhood. There are a couple of these establishments in London, including Basement Sate, and they are definitely to be encouraged. Better still, it was still happy hour at Red Light, so my cocktail was only $7 and my pudding (caramel panna cotta with chocolate sauce and bacon-peanut butter crisp) was $9. The waitress arrived with my cocktail (the Peep Show: gin, Pimm's, lemon and ginger beer) and a blow torch, which I assumed was for the pudding, but then, out of nowhere, she set fire to an unassuming sprig of rosemary in my drink. Good theatre as well as good flavours, and they were playing some quality choons while Charlie Chaplin played on the big TV screens. A fun way to finish the day.