Wagamama-the @14thefrog review.

Me and Sarah went to the very first Wagamama a few times. It was in the West End (I can't be arsed to Google the street) and not far from a pub we were running at the time (The One Tun in Goodge St). It was downstairs in a basement and you had to queue to get in. The waiting staff would come down the line with hand held thingies and take your order while you waited, the idea being that when you got in your food was already good to go (seemed amazing at the time). When you got in, even sitting on long benches was out there and funky, while the waiters advice that food "all comes at different times" was just off the wall on the grooveometer. The food was good too. Even allowing for all the pretensious "Wagamama believes in cleansing the mind" nonsense on the menu, the experience was always great and we went back lots.

Over the years we've been to various other outlets around the world from time to time as well. Yes it got taken over by a big company, yes you felt a bit like a kid describing a pop band who'd "sold out" when you hankered back for the good old days, but it was always more than decent nontheless. Recently our kids have started badgering us (good word that, must use it more often) to take them to our local version. It seems in their school that all the in crowd go to Wagamama with their parents on practically a daily basis. No more mini dough-balls in Pizza Express or Macdonalds happy meals, Wagamama is THE place to be seen if you're nine years old these days.

So anyway given they finished yesterday at 2.30pm (who'd be a teacher?) we decided to treat 'em to a slap up bit of Yaki Soba, obviously as long as they tidied their rooms. No sooner had all the toys been kicked under the bed than we were in, no queueing on this occasion. Before you could say "Ramen" the kids were armed with pencils and stuff to colour in, while our lovely little Australian waitress gave us the low down.

Once we'd ordered, these were our observations. The coke zero was good, the edemame beans were nice and the little dumplingy things were OK. The rest?

I had a Yaki Soba thing which had waaaaay too much ginger. I experimented with loads of chilli oil and soy sauce to see if I could get the ginger flavour in a headlock, but it was way too strong for me and I had to give up and tap out. Naturally I ate it anyway (I'm like that) but it weren't great that's for sure. Sarah went for this chicken rice dish. What came out was a formed mound of rice, sitting in a pool of chickeny stock stuff, with some overcooked grilled chicken on top. Not good. The kids had grilled chicken with noodles. the chicken was obviously from the same batch as Sarahs, while the noodles had been pre-cooked but not refreshed and were all sticking together. If you have lobbed them at the ceiling in exasperation, they'd have stuck there like stringy limpets and would have been a bugger to get down. Bless em they made a fist of getting through it, mostly because of the obligatory "well if you don't eat up you won't get any dessert" line, but it was grim.

For dessert we had some ice cream which was fine. Our waitress was lovely, there was no service charge and those were the best bits of the whole experience. From now on, I don't care what all the cool 9 year olds are doing, it'll be a while before I'm back.

A book review-"Glue" by Irvine Welsh.

I don't read loads of books. I'm not a "booky" type, but just occasionally I go on a little spurt and read three or four in a month. I don't do books which are difficult to get into, or ones which you need a degree in phsycology/talking bollocks to understand. I don't read sci-fi either, I detest it, rather stick wasps up my arse to tell the truth. I do like a bit of Irvine Welsh though I must admit. If you've never read "Trainspotting" for instance, then your life is incomplete.

"Glue" isn't really part of the "Trainspotting" series (there's also "Porno"), but it's set in the same areas of Edinburgh and one or two of the Trainspotting characters make walk on appearances. It's written in Welsh's familiar fenetic style (at least I think that's what you call it) whereby much of it is in a broad Scottish accent. This takes a bit of getting used to (if you're Australian for instance I'd just forget it), and also he switches first person all the time so different sections are spoken through the eyes of different characters. Once you've got your head around all that though, he's a fantastic writer.

In this book, he talks of four blokes growing up in Leith, their families, their backgrounds and what ties them together. I suppose loosely this is the "Glue" of the title. As we watch them grow up, and grow with them, we get to know the characters really well as they experience football violence, their first shag, drink, drugs and all manner of life changing experiences. All the way through the book is funny, really funny, as well as being dark and moving to the point where it gets a bit heavy on occasions. At the end the whole thing comes together in a beautiful conclusion, and although it takes ages to read as it's so thick, this is a book which is well worth the effort.

I'm probably biased because I really like this author, but I'd give this book a 10/10. I bought my copy from the second hand shop for a quid. You can look in your second hand shop for it, or look on Amazon or something. If you're really stuck, you can bob down the Alex and have my copy. It's a fantastic read and I know you'll enjoy it, unless you're Australian.