You’re going to have to up your dating game, Lovestruckers. Dinner and a movie is about as dull as a blunt spoon. Or a movie and no dinner.
SO WHERE SHOULD I TAKE THEM?
To the House of Illustration! Dates dig art. Fact.
WAIT, WHAT?
The House of Illustration is (almost certainly, even quite possibly) the first museum dedicated to the art of, you guessed it, illustration. It all began back in 2002 with illustrator extraordinaire Quentin Blake (the bloke who does all the spindly pen and ink Roald Dahl drawings) at the helm. But the House of Illustration has only just found a permanent home. The inaugural exhibition – Inside Stories – is a big celebration of Blake the artist. This seems only fair, because it was Quentin and not his arty namesakes Peter or William who in 2003 donated 4,000 original drawings and 250 illustrated books to the then homeless house.
WHERE IS IT?
2 Granary Square, Kings Cross. Pick a line, jump on it and you’ll probably end up stopping at Kings Cross St Pancras. If you fail to pay attention you’ll end up in Rayners Lane. Tube lines stopping where you want to be are the Victoria, Northern, Piccadilly, Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines. Or, if you prefer moving at a glacial pace, the relevant buses are: 10, 17, 30, 45, 46, 59, 73, 91, 205, 214, 259, 390 and 476.
HOW MUCH?
An adult ticket costs £7 (or £7.70 plus gift aid). We suggest opting for the gift aid option, because this will force your date to round up the cost of entry and they’ll end up owing you two drinks not one – give or take £1.50… Or, opt for gift aid because you’re a giving sort of a person.
WHAT ELSE IS NEARBY?
Once best known as the home of the train station, a couple of raddled old streetwalkers, a few kerb crawlers, maybe a pigeon or two and little else, Kings X is on the up (although where isn’t?) and is actually fashionable these days. Lining Granary Square are restaurants Caravan, Shrimpy’s and The Grain Store. A quick bluffing history of the dining options: Caravan came first (so is technically the coolest option) and was followed by Shrimpy’s which is tiny (yet somehow less busy than its now oversubscribed predecessor) and kitsch. The Grain Store arrived last and exists solely to soak up the crowds of people who are told they’ll have to wait 60+ mins for a table at Caravan. If you like sitting down to eat, denounce Caravan as passé and head next door.
MAXIMUM BLUFFING VALUE
No one likes a name-dropper, but the list of celebrities attached to the House of Illustration deserves a mention. And as long as you don’t claim to be intimately acquainted with any of them, this should be a safe topic of conversation. Especially if you are intimately acquainted with any of them.
Ambassadors (aka, people who are willing to wax lyrical about the House of Illustration in public) include: Peter Capaldi (the new Dr Who); Philip Pullman (the one what wrote The Northern Lights – renamed The Golden Compass by Hollywood); Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit’s creator) and Dame Paula Rego (an artist who bluffers should know for painting oddly proportioned people in various shades of blue).
If one of these cultural references doesn’t ignite a spark of conversation then you’d be best advised to head off for dinner and a movie.
DO SAY ‘I do a little illustrating actually. Nothing professional, just on the weekends, you know.’
DON’T ASK ‘So who is this Quentin Crisp guy? Wasn’t he the one in The Naked Civil Servant?’
