We went into Soho for a lunch to celebrate a birthday, at Xu, a Taiwanese restaurant. Quite nice, not great, though hobbled by one of our party being vegetarian on one hand, and the current London focus on meaty specialities on the other. The Gentleman Friend’s gammy knee gammed up rather badly (after nearly three years of being mostly fine in Malaysia) and he hobbled very badly as we then strolled through Soho and Covent Garden and then into Lincoln’s Inn Field for a coffee at the Espresso Room. This used to be the best coffee in London and was in a tiny hole in the wall on Great Ormond Street, just by our old Bloomsbury flat, but has now grown to occupy what was once the Fleet River Bakery. The coffee has diminished since then, or maybe my new preference for pour-over has tarnished it. Then on through Bloomsbury, past old haunts, through St George’s Square (once one of the best hidden little squares in London, still tucked away and lovely), and up to King’s Cross.
In the evening we watched The Big Sick, a romantic comedy about a Pakistani-American standup comedian, and I managed not to grumble about using Indian actors, accents and mannerisms, or incorrect Urdu dialogue, about ABCDs, or even about what I thought rather glossed over how male ABCDs usually manage the arranged marriage vs love marriage dilemma, and how it’s invariably much more shit for all the women involved than the men. It was very much told from an American perspective, which fair enough, but I thought it could have managed to humanise/ not-otherise the Pakistani family as much as it did the American. It was ok, reasonably pleasant, with one excellent joke, and got some things very right (excellent work by Anupam Kher) but was half an hour too long. As are most films.