Happy Waitangi Day at the Bison and Bird

Ok, so Waitangi Day was actually on 6th February and I just didn't get round to blogging about it. TNT Magazine were offering everyone who downloaded a voucher a free drink to celebrate Waitangi Day the Bison and Bird in Clapham.

You can see from the size of the glass that it was not a small free drink. It was a Feijoa based cocktail and I'll be honest, it tasted a bit odd. But you never know until you try these things.

I liked the bar itself, especially this strange antler chandelier. There was also some live music, not sure if the singers were from New Zealand or not though.

Melodifestivalen 2013

Edgware Road is mainly known for its Arabic shops, cafes and restaurants that are open late into the night.  But the area also contains a cluster of Swedish locations.

I've been to the Swedish Christmas market before at the Swedish church on Harcourt Street but I'd never noticed that the rather unprepossessing pub across the road is actually a Swedish hangout.

The pub serves Swedish food and drinks and shows Swedish sporting events.  Most exciting of all, for me at least, is that they also host live screenings of Melodifestivalen!

The Swedes take their Eurovision song selection very seriously, as well they should, since they not only managed to win last year's competition in Baku by a landslide, but then went on to dominate almost every chart in Europe with their winning song.

Both Mark and his friend Will who attended this event with me speak a little bit of Swedish but we didn't look up the rules of the competition in advance.  Which meant that the evening passed in a pleasant haze of glitter, cheesy key changes and general confusion as to what was happening on screen.  A bit like the Eurovision itself.  Is it too early to be excited?