Kerenza Evans

As well as being Mother’s Day, Sunday 30^th March saw the third instalment of Secret Forum’s imaginative and innovative ‘Sunday Papers Live’. A far better gift than the traditional gestures of flowers or chocolates, Sunday Papers Live allowed you to bestow the gift of knowledge and debate to your mum. And that’s far better than flowers. You don’t have to water knowledge. Or rather, you won’t forget to water knowledge leading to the horrifying realisation that you’ve let someone’s beloved gift dehydrate and die within 48 hours. Ahem.

Reading the papers on a Sunday is one of life’s great simple pleasures. While the busy working week is usually limited to the headlines of BBC News or a cursory glance at the Metro, Sunday provides the optimal chance to indulge in every news story available no matter how big or small; important or trivial. “Giant ghost-rat terrorising small Derbyshire town”? Sure I’ll read it! I’ve got the time!

Murder mystery and burlesque are not two facets of entertainment I would usually piece together. It strikes me that a burlesque routine during investigative proceeding might be rather distracting for the inspector, not to mention downright insulting to the victim. This, however, did not stop the two contrasts being riotously thrown together for an intriguing evening at Proud Cabaret City’s Friday performance: ‘The Silencing of Miss Scarlett’.

Opening the doors to cries of hypocrisy, I will readily confess that I consider myself both an animal-lover and an undeniable carnivore. On one occasion at a farm last summer, I spent a good hour fawning over a trio of piglets which I immediately named Snuffles, Truffles and Hogarth. Later that day, I would find myself lazing on a haybale and enjoying a hog roast: almost certainly a distant relative of my new porcine pals.

There are many thrills to be derived from the telling of ghost stories and the macabre; in high school, my friends and I used to spend our music lessons holding fake seances in the rehearsal rooms, in lieu of perfecting performances of Clair De Lune for the fiftieth god-forsaken week. While I'm fairly sure that if we had conjured up the spectre of choice, a lifetime of trauma would have ensued, I think we were always slightly disappointed when nothing happened, other than a teacherly lecture as to why we don't try and raise the dead on school time.

Be aware: when searching for The Zetter Townhouse, Google-Map is not your friend; it seems convinced that the emerging cocktail bar is located within a rather officious looking block of flats. Resisting clawing at someone's office door and calling for cocktails, we eventually uncovered that the bar is located in the charming unnamed building opposite.

I’ve been to a few cabaret and burlesque nights in recent weeks. The beauty of them is that even though the basic concept is the same, the way the sets are devised and performed always seems unique and never grows tired or stale. Kind of like the inverse of a Jodi Picoult novel. My latest venture took me to The Black Cat Cabaret at Café de Paris in Soho where a decadent interior expertly conjurs up the palatial atmosphere of French vaudeville. Imagine Moulin Rouge, but with more sex and the absence of an over-acting Nicole Kidman.

In a city of over 15,000 restaurants, it’s paradoxically sometimes quite hard to know where to eat in London. You want to branch out, but on the other hand you know that Joe’s Pizza Place on the corner is a reliable favourite. Sometimes Joe even gives you extra chorizo on your pizza and those are the days where you consider that you’ve won at life. However, tempting as it is to stick to that which is known, I urge you to explore the wealth of unique and niche dining and entertainment options offered by our bountiful capital.

There’s a scene in the award-winning US sitcom 30 Rock which features David Schwimmer dressed up as “Greenzo – America's first non-judgmental, business-friendly environmental advocate”. My favourite scene sees him chastise a colleague for leaving the refrigerator door open commenting ‘Here's a tip, Cerie. Decide what you want before you open the refrigerator. You just released enough hydroflorocarbons to kill a penguin... *produces a photo of a penguin*…This penguin!”

Watching American movies growing up, I was always intrigued by the thought of the Piano Bar. It seemed that guests would go along with the intention of having a Very Important Conversation; the music would soften right at the crux of their argument and then rapidly increase in volume to fill any poignant silence or pauses.