Those who admire the dramatic and cinematically lit art of the Italian painter Caravaggio can enjoy a current exhibition, Beyond Caravaggio running at the National Gallery, London until January 15 2017. Continue reading →

One of the truly riveting and under-rated political thrillers of the 70’s, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, deals with the reasons why the truth about American involvement in the war in Vietnam was kept from the American public. It features a fictional war hero and renegade USAF General (Burt Lancaster) who breaks out of prison with a small group of convicts to capture an ICBM missile silo he helped design, threatening to fire its nine Titan nuclear missiles at Russia and start WW3 unless the President (Charles Durning) tells the American public the truth, suppressed for years, about why so many had to die. Continue reading →

The current low value of sterling against the euro and the dollar has opened up some interesting business opportunities, for those who can take them.

It means that anyone buying in euros is finding UK goods and services more than 20% cheaper, and those with dollars to spend are finding our prices more than 30% cheaper. Continue reading →

Those whose train journeys are made worse by strike action, delays and cancellations can now claim back 25% of their single ticket price if their train is 15-29 minutes late.

This extends the Delay Repay scheme run by Govia Thameslink Railway – which includes the troubled Southern operator – and will be extended to the rest of the network. At present compensation of 50% of the single ticket price or 25% of the return ticket price is paid back for delays of 30 minutes to 59 minutes, with 100% of the single ticket price being paid back for delays of 1 hour or more, 50% of the return ticket price being paid back for delays of 60 minutes to 119 minutes and 100% of the return ticket price being paid back for delays of 120 minutes or more. Continue reading →

You’d think the restaurant at the 30-bedroom boutique Sanctum Soho Hotel, near Carnaby Street was a great choice for some private dining, given its positive review in Square Meal magazine, and its inclusion in the Square Meal list of the 30 Best Private Dining Rooms.

According to Square Meal the tasty offerings found at this “all about rock and roll” themed venue include pots of mussels with pints of beer, BBQ ribs, salt beef hash, shredded duck salad and home-made profiteroles with warm chocolate sauce. (yummy) Continue reading →

The Red Hot World Buffet restaurant in the Liverpool One shopping centre has closed after inspectors discovered live mice caught in sticky traps and mouse droppings in areas where food was prepared.

The company behind the popular restaurant, Passepartouts, admitted 10 breaches of Health and Safety regulations and were fined £14,000 and £7,816 costs at Liverpool Magistrates Court. The company has since gone into administration.

Meanwhile management at the highly-regarded Shajan Indian restaurant in Clayton-le-Dale, Lancashire are suing a diner who ate at the restaurant with a group of seven others, inserted a dead shrew into a vegetable curry served to him and then posted a complaint, with a photograph of the dead rodent, on Facebook, claiming it was a dead mouse.

Hygiene inspectors were called in and they confirmed that the dead shrew had been killed in a mousetrap been placed in the dish and had not been cooked with it. Inspectors also found no evidence of rodent activity at the restaurant.

It is not known yet whether the complainant or any of the group he was with has any familial or commercial links with competitors of Shajan, as is so often the case on social media.

Those organisers who believe in learning from others might want to take a look at the Event Professionals Handbook.

This is a collection of articles by practitioners from the conference and exhibition sectors detailing their thoughts, ideas and predictions, and can be obtained in digital format free.

Web eventprofessionalshandbook.com

There have been mixed reviews about director Billy Wilder’s bitter-sweet film about fading glamour in Hollywood, but those who enjoyed his Sunset Boulevard, also starring William Holden playing world-weary, will probably enjoy Fedora too.

This has Marthe Keller as the reclusive Fedora, a famous film beauty who lives in the Villa Calypso on an island off Corfu with a disabled Countess (Hildegard Knef), a doctor (Jose Ferrer), an overbearing PA (Frances Sternhagen) and a violent minder (Gottfried John). The big mystery is that the beautiful Fedora doesn’t seem to be aging as the years advance, along with the mystery of why she throws herself under a train at the start of the film and the fact that always wears long white gloves that she never takes off. Continue reading →