A good customer recommended a new venture Bia Bistrot up by holy corner, run by a husband and wife. The menu looks great, the chef has worked in Ramsay’s in New York and I want to try them, love their food and give them some encouragement. Whether they know this or not they have opened in a desperately difficult site, a black hole where restaurants disappear never to be seen again. Many a good operator, some established elsewhere have tried and failed at this site and of course there was The Beef Encounter, a steakhouse that by name alone was destined to fail. Only the most idiotic of men would consider taking a first date or celebrating that special anniversary to a place named so. They may as well have called the place The Fanny Fart Café.

I have suffered this week from a recurring dream involving the application of a hair restoring mouse which works perfectly, enriching my middle aged hair and filling out those thinning bits. One morning I actually made it all the way to the bathroom mirror, started applying gel and sculpting the newly restored hair into the wonderful quiff I was so proud of back in New Orleans some 20 years past. Then I woke up still in bed. The dreams were of course a direct result of my immanent 49^th birthday.