CSI Chiswick

Boum! Boum!
Well High Noon met the Shootout at the OK Corral on Saturday night, as a gun fight exploded at the end of Silver Crescent, sending passers by diving for cover, and my Indian takeaway driver unable to get to my door.

It was all quite strange as we heard what appeared to be a series of hammering sounds on the door, then the takeaway man rang to say he could not get down the street. I wandered casually up the road to be confronted by an armed response team and police vehicles everywhere. 'Mind how you go' was all they said as I recovered my evening meal and sauntered back home.

Apparently two men had leaped from a car and chased a third man past the Moran Hotel, shooting him as they went. He then hid in Silver Crescent until they left, before fleeing to Charing Cross Hospital where he was treated for wounds to the arm. There was a fair amount of claret splashed on the pavement so he must have been in some pain.

The two attackers drove off up the North Circular Road, and as yet they remain at large.

All this should see house prices plummet in the area, and just when I thought there might be some positive developments with mine. I had accepted an offer from people in Dubai but their finances seem to have gone pear shaped suddenly, and a couple who saw the place for the third time at the weekend are disagreeing about putting in an offer. She loves it, he is not so keen.....anyway, I will give it to August and if nobody comes in for it, I will take it of the market. There is certainly a shortage of good two bedroomed flats in the area so why move into a hovel for the sake of moving eh?......

Monopoly bored

I have just visited the new mega casino at the old Empire in Leicester Square. the last time I went, it was a night club, and Van Halen were the cabaret. We took a bunch of American rugger players from Old White RFC in Atlanta, Georgia. two double decker buses were arrange to get the chaps home safe, although i seem to remember alot of the local ladies took it upon themselves to ensure the Yankee boys were looked after well into the night!

The casino has been billed as London's answer to Vegas. Hmmm, I suspect, therefore, that nobody from the publicists has every been there. It is just a casino, albeit quite a large one, but is in no way comparable with the style of casino seen in Vegas or Atlantic City. If the battle for the first mega casino in Britain is going to provide the winning city with the Vegas experience it will need to try much harder than the Empire.

There are, however, some nice touches in the Empire. There is a Texas hold'em room for the popular poker game which seems to be taking University campus by storm, two good looking restaurants and a chill room presumably for you to go sob into the soft furnishings when you have lost all your stash. There are weekly cabaret nights, and show girls at weekends. but like all casino's, the big plus is reasonably priced drinks late into the night, in a mixed age environment which is hassle free.

There were lots of Chinese punters around, but not a huge Arab presence as there is in their Rendezvous outlet in Mayfair. I nearly traded my wife and youngest daughter in there once, for eight camels and an Abra.