Depot Winter Social

It’s dark, grim and persistently hammering down – it must be winter which means it must be time for the Depot’s Winter Social.

In dire need of cheering up we popped down there on Saturday evening to see what the £2 entry fee (free before 7:30pm) would get us

The place was pleasantly busy – enough to create an atmosphere but not so many that the food and drink queues were enormous. There was a great mix of people of all ages too.

The best thing about it was the chance to catch up with the Ffwrnes pizza boys

They drive their little pizza oven all over Wales in the back of Smokey-Pete the van delivering their superb wood-fired beauties to us undeserving rabble

Their pizzas are all made fresh with the best quality toppings on a sourdough base

These are my favorite pizzas bar none and at seven quid a pop they are excellent value too

Just look at those bad boys.

To finish off we decided to try the desserts from the folk at Science Cream

Their ice cream is made fresh to order and is quick frozen with liquid nitrogen giving an amazingly smooth and creamy texture

So good they even have the boy-wonder serving them.. Kapow Robin!

Our ice cream came sat on top of a creme-brulee.
My mouth is watering just remembering it. Delish.

All this accompanied by real ales and a real DJ playing a fab mix of retro and modern music.

If you’re stuck for something to do this weekend or you just have the winter-blues – get yourself down to the Depot Winter Social – I think you’ll love it

Day of the Depot

After seeing Spectre last week and being very taken with the opening Mexico City set “Day of the Dead” scene we decided to make an effort to get out to a Halloween party. A quick scan of what was on in Cardiff and we decided to give The Depot’s “Day of the Depot” a bash:

As it was a last minute call we had nothing in the way of Halloween cozzies to wear so there followed a mad dash into town on Saturday morning and a tour around every charity shop the ‘diff had to offer, trying to find something suitable to make Spectre-themed outfits.

We were aiming for this:

And I have to admit a certain chuffed-ness that with just a few hours to do it and by rummaging in charity shops and pound shops we got quite close:

Now the tickets for the “Day of the Depot” event included big screen coverage of the Rugby World Cup Final but we wimped out of that as a whole afternoon and a whole night on the alcho-pops is beyond me these days – although the Mrs could probably manage it.

We got there at around 8 pm by which time things had morphed into a full-blown Halloween party:

We arrived stone-cold sober and in our own gang of two to find that the party was slowly getting started again after the rugby and the Depot, being a big, pretty cavernous space, was just beginning to fill up with the evening crowd looking for a bit of spooky fun. So we were a little trepidatious to be honest. It looked like it could easily be a luke warm affair (Luke Warmaffair? wasn’t he in Star Wars?) and we could be set for an early night after all.

We needn’t have worried as, far from being the only fancy-dressers in the village, fancy dress was the norm for the night (the night norm? the evening standard?) and from the first zombie attack (actually a very nice squaddie who spotted our awkwardness and started chatting to us to break the ice) everything rattled along at a great clip. My theory is that fancy-dress makes people feel incognito and strips them somewhat of their inhibitions. That and alcohol. Alcohol definitely helps.

The place was abuzz with people having a great time. There were zombie congas and table-top dancing. The DJ was hitting just the right groove of floor-filling music and everyone was in a party mood.
So we chatted and chatted with loads of dead celebs and off-kilter movie characters. We met the teams from Dodgeball:

We had a hug from a bunch of zombie
Tele-tubbies:

We met Lilo and Stitch with Daenerys Targaryen and her leetle dragons :

The gang from “The Wizard of Oz” were there (poor Dorothy has let herself go):

There were cuddly werewolves:

And Daphne and the rest of Scooby-Doo’s pesky gang turned up:

We even meet Johnny Rotten and Vivienne Westwood (although maybe that’s just what I wanted them to be – I’m not sure it’s what they came as):

You might have noticed that at some point in the evening Her Wifeness ditched the mask and went for a full face-paint job:

which was done (totally gratis!) by the lovely ladies at Shelly Drew-it-on who had been on the go all day and were pretty knackered by the time we to them.

But they still managed to do a fab job:

It kind of lost the Spectre look but it did mean wifee had a fabulous full-on Mexican-stylee day-of-the-dead look going on which was appreciated by the passing Mariachi:

There was food on offer from various vendors including the lush Meat the Greek, A Lot of Waffle, Goodfillas and fabulous wood-fired pizza from Doughboys. We went for the latter and loved both their Margarita and their hot (I mean Hot!) Chilli Americano:

And then to top it all they had a live band who also played a great bunch of floor-fillers:

After that it was on to town for a night-cap of the living dead. St Mary street looked full of zombies:

But then we realised that was just the usual Saturday night crowd!

All in all a fantastic night’s fun and another great night out in the ‘diff.

It’s a big well done from me to The Depot for getting Halloween spot on.