Hiding In The Shadows.

Capodistria and I took a trip last night to Ipswich in darkest Suffolk. The purpose of this dangerous cross border raid from Essex was to see The Shadow Project at The Railway in the town. They are one of my new favourite bands and Capo was suffficiently taken with their debut album to come along too.

For those of you in the know Ipswich has a blackhole of a oneway system. Get lost and you may never see civilisation again!! The directions I printed off from a journey planning site were 'sketchy', so it took an hour at least once we had got into Ipswich to find the venue. Round and round we went. If you missed a turn off, which were not marked with the road number (which our directions were) it took ages to try and retrace your steps back to where you started to try and find teh right way. To bne fair to Ipswich town centre it wasn't its fault that the directions were total bollocks. The major road we had to find was a right turn at a set a traffic lights, a pretty major landmark I'll think you'll agree. Not good enough for shite website directions, oh no. There was no mention whatsoever of traffic lights, right turns or anything resembling a local landmark. We were led to believe that the road changed from the A1214 into the A137, which wasted about twenty minutes.

Anyway after quite a few examples of this we fianally arrived at a very weird looking venue. It had many posters outside for all kinds of 'tribute bands' (I use the term loosely as I reckon many of the true artists would be mortified by some of the shite that is being played in their name) and an awfully lot of Karaoke. We made our way in and I started to worry. There seemed to be no posters up saying 'Tonight all the way from just up the road The Shadow Project" There seemed to be nobody on the door taking any form of payment either (you can see where this is going can't you?) I went up to the bar and asked if the Shadow Project were indeed playing there tonight was met with confusion. It seemed that they hadn't been booked or indeed heard of. I had checked before leaving on their Myspace page and indeed when I got home I checked again. It was there in pixels and white "The Shadow Project - The Railway Ipswich". A 65 mile journey for nothing.

What to do next? We could have just driven home but neither of us hadn't had any tea (or supper if yoiu liove in Bracknell Towers) and we were a tad on the peckish side. We drove into the centre of town in search of an eatery and after dismissing an expensive Chinese and and even more expensive Indian we settled on 4 Street Fish and Chip Restaurant. It was very good indeed. I had King Prawn Tempura to start, whcih were probably the best I have ever tasted and followed it with Grilled Cod(the will grill or pan fry your fish as well as the traditional method) and Chips. Capo had Stilton Stuffed Mushrooms and Grilled Haddock. It was superb. The staff were friendly and atentive and the whole lot (with drinks) was £15 a head. Brilliant place and well worth a visit.
I had intended to write a gig review today but it has turned into a Restaurant review instead. That's a first.