Yeah, OK, so it sounds strange… but our local landlord got in the New York Times! We’re not quite sure how he achieved this (we’ll ask him for you)… but it’s got something to do with his dodgy Satellite telly with it’s Arabic Subtitles…

Check out what the Big Man had to say here at NYTimes.com - just click the ’skip this ad’ in the top right to get to the main article.

This weekend… friend of the LowerFlat Alex is 21… and we’re going to do the only thing we could think of… go to his native Cornwall and get completely and utterly sloshed. Expect some kind of hungover report sometime early next week.

(The picture, by the way, is a somewhat artistic Cornish flag…)

Well, it was all a little more civil than that. Last week we all decided (scratch that, Rich and Lucy decided) to book us in for an evening at the restaurant Kitsch n D’or (Kitchen Door, geddit?). But this was to be no normal evening, not only was it Mark’s 22nd Birthday, we were going travelling…

The evening was infact a ‘tour’ of Southern Europe and Northern Africa’s food and wines, and at 22.50 for 5 courses and 5 wines we certainly weren’t moaning. After starting off with our Mezze platter and a Minestrone soup, we were treated to Red Mullet in spiced orange glaze, Chicken ‘resting’ on 2 pepper sauces… and finally, Profiteroles. Yum! The really good bit however were the 2 whites, 1 Rose, Red and the Desert wine that were included, and on top of all that we even got an educational talk in how to taste wines properly - which much to Jim’s distaste doesn’t involve necking it from a pint glass.

How else do you round off a rather nice evening?… In the local!

There’s more snaps from our ‘Pirates of the Pennines’ adventure floating around the internet… Courtsy’s photos are available by clicking here

… and the observant ones among you may notice that there’s some new funky graphics at the top of the site, a lot of them are using Courtsy’s rather wicked photos