Posts Tagged ‘pub’

Last week, Viv had organised an evening at Nation of Shopkeepers, which, while far too hipster for my personal taste, does do some nice southern fried chicken. It was mouthwateringly good, but that isn’t what this post is about.

At one point in the evening, one of those attending began talking about how oppressed women are, describing going rape as an “occupational hazard” if they want to leave their house.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Two rhetorical questions that were asked were not met with the expected response. Firstly, who was most afraid of going out in Leeds on a Friday night (turns out the women weren’t, but I said I would be a bit nervous, because fights do happen, and normally to my gender) and secondly, what the distribution of personal attack alarms was (turns out there was both one male and one female present who had a personal attack alarm).

What was more interesting though, was how much offense the women present took to the suggestion that they were a beaten down minority that needed both liberating and protecting.

They certainly didn’t feel that way, and were extensively vocal about it.

It is interesting, because the same people who make such comments, and end up getting shouted down by women who object to them speaking in their behalf, are the same people who would object to me speaking on equality, because as a white male, I’m not considered entitled to have an opinion.

Hey, anyone else remember the Sun? You know, the big glowing thing in the sky.

It’s back and we’ve been cashing in. I spent Saturday with Norm, George, Oli and Raby on Millenium Square, soaking in the rays (and in everyone else’s case, soaking in equal amounts of beer). That has been followed up with a lunch in The Box’s beer garden and two lunches in The Oak’s beer garden this week. It’s a hard life.

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.

A few weeks ago, myself and Elina headed up to York for the York Brights monthly meetup.

It was much nicer than last time as we weren’t in the middle of a torrential downpour, so I could actually see the road in front of me. The meetup itself is held at a pub called Ye Olde Starre Inn, which those in York will no doubt be familiar with.

Having missed my mixed grill the day before (all you can eat steak is subtly different), I decided to go for the mixed grill. While it was very enjoyable it was certainly a little unconventional – it was basically a mixed grill, crossed with an all day breakfast with egg and beans. Crazy, buy never the less enjoyable.

Last week we headed up to The Library pub for some old fashioned good times.

Having had some dinner we remembered why we hadn’t been to The Library in a while lol, I also missed out on getting dessert because the kitchen closed early, but at least the staff were nice and friendly and we had plenty of space.

Plus, the important thing is, lots and lots of cider got drunk.

After the HSoWY meeting last Thursday, we headed towards The George for a few drinks. Unfortunately (or should I saw fortunately) The George was closed. So we headed on to Millenium Square, to hit the Cuthbert Brodrick.

While I will admit that it was a little nosier than I was expecting, we soon found a nice quite place to sit down outside. And the advantage of going to Cuthbert was the drinks were both cheap and varied.

Not to mention that when I ordered my ham, egg and chips, it cost £2.10. £2.10! You probably couldn’t make it that cheap just based on buying the raw ingredients, let alone the labour costs which could come to 20 times that once I had gone to the shops, cooked it and cleaned up.

There really is no justification for disliking ‘Spoons.

Last week, Atheist Society were taking it easy during the exam period, with a screening of the film Saved. It has an important moral message – that we need to book Michael into Mercy House. He didn’t seem to keen on the idea though.

Afterward, we headed down to Stick or Twist, where I enjoyed a free mixed grill after having filled out all the required stamps on my loyalty card 😀 .

At the end of March, we headed over to The Original Oak for Simon G’s leaving do.

Unfortunately, what we hadn’t factored in was the amount of end of term Otley Run’s which would be in there. Still, as time went on they moved on to later pubs and actually gave us chance to get somewhere near the bar.

It was disappointing to see Simon go as he had really come out of his shell since handing in his resignation and was actually a treasurer trove of interesting stories – not nearly as entertaining as those told by Disco Dave but then you get the sense that when Simon was telling a story, it was actually true (not that I’m saying Dave didn’t have a gunfight with a drug dealer in Nottingham…).

For so long we talked about Pub Week. The critics said we couldn’t do it. They told us we were crazy; that it was impossible. But thanks to the vision and dreams of two Dynamic Young Go-Getters, we made the dream a reality.

Pub Lunch Friday was struggling a bit when myself and Jason arrived at Buzz, but a bit of elbow grease and we had it firmly up and running again. Soon we introduced Box Mondays as well, given the food at The Box is excellent and with it being half priced on Mondays means it’s actually reasonably priced too. So all it took was a sly trip to the pub on a certain Wednesday when we realised we could probably just eliminate non-pub lunches altogether.

After an enjoyable start with Box Mondays, we decided to return to the pub the next day of Taps Tuesdays. On Wednesday where else would we go but West End House for West End House Wednesdays (in a West End House in a dead end world – Kirkstall, east end boys…) and finished off the week with Arcadia Thursdays (who had run out of pretty much everything on their menu – poor show) and Pub Lunch Fridays at The Skyrack as usual.

Good times.

I would also like to thank my fellow Buzz social committee chair Jason for making it a reality.

With Mr Foley’s looking like our home for the moment, we had a great Skeptics in the Pub meeting in July with a really strong turn out despite it being in the middle of summer. Perhaps due to the excellent quality of talk delivered by Jonni on “The Mind, Illusion and the Need for Science.”