Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

On Tuesday, Atheist Society headed down to Las Iguanas for some dinner as part of their weekly social. It’s a great place to eat and best of all, they do 2 for 1 cocktails before 7:30. So by the time we sat down at our table we had to get a tray to take all the drinks over that we had lined up.

Unfortunately the food didn’t entirely agree with me and I ended up losing half a night’s sleep with stomach problems. First bad experience I’ve had there, and I eat there quite a lot. I think I’ll steer clear of the chicken next time :S.

Despite there being very little of summer left here in the UK, the weather remained warm enough for us to sit outside at the September meeting of the Humanist Community of Leeds. This month both religion and politics were discussed – it’s a wonder how we all remain friends with such divisive topics! As ever of course though, the discussions remained good natured and very much enjoyable.

For some reason, James had accidentally scheduled the A-Soc weekly social at The Library pub again.

However, when we got there, it turns out they had closed the kitchen. I’m not sure whether this was a blessing or a curse, but we made everyone down their drinks and headed out to find some food. We made it to The Eldon – who had also closed their kitchen! In the end, we found ourselves at Nation of Shopkeepers. Bad times.

In August, Simon Wellings delivered a talk to Leeds Skeptics in the Pub entitled “All you wanted to know about the credit crunch (but were too afraid to ask)” looking at the problems with the economy and how money reform could help.

I hadn’t been able to make the last Humanist Society summer social because I was meeting the parent, but August provided a good opportunity to take in a few drinks at The Adelphi over some good conversation.

It turned out to be a really good night – almost half the people who turned up were new members, or at least hadn’t been in so long that I didn’t know them – one guy said he had first joined in 1984 – two years before I was born! It’s great to belong to a group which has such a long and rich history.

The food was quite nice if a little overpriced, but the drinks weren’t too bad – at least once the barman realised he had meant to say £7.10 rather than £17.10!

Despite many of our members being unable to attend because they were at Leeds Pride, the August meeting of Humanist Community was both well attended and a fascinating evening.

The topic of conversation covered social justice, balancing freedom of expression with protection of people’s safety, world languages, equality and whether the sausages Gijsbert had been given were actually vegetarian or not – turns out they weren’t, so it was a good job we had such a good discussion about it and checked before he started eating!

Recently, Bradford Atheists headed over to Leeds to join us at Nation of Shopkeepers.

Last week, Atheist Society hit the Cuthbert Brodrick for steak night. Having left in favour of Stick or Twist last year, it was great to spend some time in the always loved Cuthbert, especially given it was the Summer Cider Festival. I was a little disappointed by Addlestones Cloudy, but the Strawby Cider was fantastic.

Having had to make a last minute cancellation of my trip down to London to attend the BHA AGM, I decided to head down to Leeds City Museum to attend the HSoWY summer social. Given how many people are away over summer, especially for HSoWY, it was quite a respectable turn out, and the city museum is always worth a visit.

Last week, we headed over to Nation of Shopkeepers for the Tuesday night Atheist Society social.

In general, I was very disappointed. Given we’re in summer socials, the nights always involve dinner but we couldn’t find any suitable seating that had enough space for us all and still allowed us to conveniently eat.

The food was quite nice, but nothing special and there was distinct lack of drink choices. This was a huge disappointment as usually when you go somewhere trendy that at least have a very well stocked bar to compensate for the high pricing.

It wouldn’t be a bad call on a warm summer night when you could sit outside but for now it didn’t seem worth the trip. If I wanted to hang out in a pretentious bar I would just go downstairs to Call Lane lol.