Kerenza Evans

Colour me sheltered, but I believe Cinnamon Soho is the first restaurant I’ve ever been to that serves brains on the menu. Lamb brains to be specific and a winner of the ‘Best in Taste of London’ Award in 2012 for curious foodies. People, even carnivorous ones, can get rather precious about eating the actual cranium of a creature seemingly viewing it as somewhat more barbaric than consuming the rest of the animal.

I’ve unknowingly walked past Paramount many a time while on my way to bustling Oxford Street. Paramount sits in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road, atop ‘Centre Point’, a building whose imposing and distinguishing height has often made me wonder if inside dwells the lair of a Bond Villain. Such an illusion was continued as my guest and I entered the building to be escorted to the elevator by the receptionist, despite the fact it lay a mere 10 feet away.

Finding the entrance to Circus alone conjures images of illusion and mystique, making one feel they are attempting to enter a parallel world. Where I believed the venue to be, there were merely two ominous, black doors staring back at me. Did I tap on a brick to get the doors to open? Would a talking bullfrog appear and pose me a riddle which intimated one of the doors led to inevitable doom?

My first impression of London’s sweeping views was from watching the performance of ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ in Mary Poppins. I think it poignantly captured that enchantingly hazy quality that pervades through a London vista at sunset  if, albeit, giving a false representation of how easy it is to jump between the City’s buildings. I have experienced many options in the city which allow guests to soak up London’s panoramas and my latest venture was to Sky Lounge in Tower Hill.

One of the perennial favourite 'Ultimatum Questions' is being asked whether, could you only have one, you would choose 'Food or Sex'? Unfortunately, you always get one wise-ass who sees it necessary to  pedantically point out that, for  purely survivalist reasons, food is the only correct answer (as if they believe said ultimatum is an entirely plausible one and their response will contribute towards a referendum). For the rest of us, it is a tough question where a life without either seems like a bleak existence.

Firstly, I would like to highlight that my dining companion insisted that I use that headline. His insistence suggested that a failure to take advantage of the linguistic similarities between ‘Tuscanic’ and ‘Titanic’ would mean that I had failed as a journalist, friend and, indeed, human being. Some might say that images of a doomed ship might starkly contrast the enthusiastically positive review I am about to give, but let’s gloss over that in the name of wordplay.

The Chinese Artist Ai WeiWei has become a universal figure – both for his controversial, political art and for the shocking circumstances surrounding his arrest at the hands of the Chinese government. On April 3 2011, as he was boarding a flight to Taipei, WeiWei was arrested and escorted away by officials, with the sole justification that ‘his travel could damage state security’. His arrest lasted 81 days and upon release, he was simply told that his imprisonment had related to ‘tax evasion’; a convenient façade for a battle over artistic freedom.

When  presented with the concept of ‘Rebel Bingo’, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Semantically, the terminology seemed to suggest either a form of Bingo that rebelled against the traditional Bingo format or, alternatively, a game of regular bingo played solely by those deserving of the ‘Rebel’ attribute.