Cabbages and Condoms

... is the name of a Thai restaurant with branches in Bangkok and Bicester (of all places). The local free newspaper has the headline "New Bicester Restaurant Promotes Safe Sex" in its edition of 8th November.

I took a photograph in the lobby (handheld, poor lighting, flash impossible, I'm afraid) that explains the origin of the curious name.

Cabbages and Condoms operates as a "Business for Social Progress" and its profits support the Population & Community Development Association (PDA), one of Thailand's largest NGOs with programmes in primary health, education, HIV/AIDS, environment and water etc.

What a nice building this restaurant has found for its Oxfordshire operations! It's the Old Congregational Chapel - converted to a snooker club late in the 20th C, then a restaurant and then in 2008/9 more internal changes to another restaurant - it was built in 1728, altered and extended in c.1840 and 1873. The building is listed Grade II, and here you can read the specifications of it (in its incarnation as a snooker club).

In fact, Bicester has a surprising number of interesting buildings, so this small town/large village should not be tarred entirely by its association with the (horrible, in my opinion) Bicester Shopping Village.