Last night I dreamt of the valleys

Late Night Music:

I’m still not sure it wasn’t a lucid dream.... A little awash with HPA and stepping out into the silence of a Welsh town. Not quiet like the hush in New Cross as I write, where there’s still the rattle of trains and the wail of sirens but the silence of no cars, no distant shouts, not even a robin defending its patch, the sort of silence that makes you tap your ears to check they are still working.

Then I wander along the empty high street and still nothing breaks the spell, it’s almost unnerving, won’t someone make some noise. Nearing my bed I’m glad to turn into my street and then it happens, a wisp of sound the aural equivalent of brushing past a lavender bush or a seeing a fleeting face in a crowd. A few more steps and it gets stronger until I can make out the tune, of all things “Hymns and arias”. As I get up close I find an entire male voice choir packed tightly into the low slung bar of my B&B. Packed as tightly as their matching blazers, faces shiny and flushed as they sing. Inside the hallway, staff and guests peer round the door listening to the men sing.

Joining them I am soon ushered into the bar to have a drink and then spend the following 30-40 minutes surrounded in the most wonderful of sound. Not a proper concert (that had been earlier across town) but a social post gig sing.

After each song finishes the talking and joking springs up, rounds are ordered and toilets found, then unbidden someone will start another verse or blow a tuning harmonica to set the key and it starts again, songs old and new, religious and profane.

The biggest joy is just standing in this tiny low space and being enveloped by the sound, a rare thing even for a live music fan. And then their coach arrives and slowly pints are sunk, bladders emptied, goodbyes said, and one last cheeky round bought and then they are gone singing their “so longs” as they leave. The beaming faces of the young bar staff testament to the power of the music.
It is the sort of event tourist boards would love to promote but like most of the perfect moments in life it came up out of the silence unsort, unplanned, unexpected and doubly welcome for being so.

métro-boulot-dodo

Transports of Delight?

Interesting article in the paper today about communting , talking about it in a postitive light , yeah, yeah I know but have a read first and see what you think. It's by Joe Moran.

You may want to listen to this while you read it, it's a nice version of the best song about commuting ?

Train not always in Vain

I been travelling on the east coast line for it seems like forever barring a few years after college when I found out what paying full fare meant and spent hours in purgatory on the National Express. I know the songs great but the reality was rubbish.
9 hours from London to Leeds next to a mad drunk, or some obsessive chubby gothish morrissey fan who kept stopping my tape walkman and forcing me to listen to her tapes, she seemed a little tightly wrapped so I let her until she wanted to share the gum I was already chewing…..

Or another time falling a sleep on the motorway and waking up an hour and half later in the same place. The worst time was coming down to London to live for the first time in my twenties suffering from I found later measles. It was high summer I was sweating more than the cheese sarnies and could hardly walk from the bus to Victoria train station so never again.
Now the train can be bad if like on Tuesday it’s late you’ve read the paper already, left your head phones at home but staring out the window proved enjoyable. The view changes with the years, in times past in mid summer England was clouded in stubble fires, last winter a haw frost turned it black and white; today it was primary colours in Yorkshire the woods on reclaimed mucks stacks were bright green like the freshest lettuce, blue bells blazed in the understory.
On the lowlands every other field was bright yellow with rape seed flowers. Other fields with charcoal black fresh from ploughing. Fields so large they could contain all of Deptford except not a soul was in sight. This does make the choice of a negative film a little perverse but I thought it looked good.
The music is by July Skies who are great an off shoot of the more folky epic 45 check them out you won’t regret it.

The train was mostly pleasant except for the incredibly posh girl across from me, she alternated reading the Mail in dramatic flicky way, with head tossing, ringing her boyfriend Simon or playing with her Jackie O sun glasses. She was most striking the scary symmetry of her face marred only by a large mole/spot on the end of her up swept nose; which probably plagued her more than it should. It would have been good to make a film of her but it would have been super super creepy, so I starred out the window. In the end we all got off the train at Kings Cross not quit like Whitsun Brides not even like Stephen Patrick but thankfully not like Bowie. No I got of the National Express train (oh the irony!) wandered down to the tube recharged my oyster and headed south.

Friday Lunch time stuff

Tomorrow mornings TV:

With the roll out of BBC Iplay (sky plus for the masses) should we stop having reviews of TV headed "last night's tv"? Surely "stuff your going to watch next week when it's wall to wall property shows" would be better!

I am robot:
This computer thing is getting out of hand; reading the "meatworld" version of the paper at my desk (the one made out of trees and ink). I absent mindedly reached for my mouse and spun my mouse wheel to turn the page! It took several seconds to realise what I'd done. I wondered why waste bin at home hasn't emptied, I keep right clicking and everthing.

Trains , planes, planes, planes and more planes.

The papers got a review of the new terminal at Heathrow today. The media is obsessed with air travel, over Christmas every news report was full of stories about strikes etc, the other day the Today programme had a non story about Ryan air charging their passengers for breathing or something (apparently if you don't want to wear a face mask you have to pay £9.50 to pressurize the cabin)
.
I've just looked up the stats for air travel and basically 228 million people passed through UK airports in 2005. Now I would need to check but lets assume that most return that means 114 million fly each year of which 38 (a third) million (I'm being generous) are from overseas that means the average Britain makes at best one flight a year.

Not leaving on a jet plane
So why if it's not daily (or even monthly) occurrence is it in the news everyday?
Why is there no coverage of rammed commuter trains?

Or the one bus an hour service to my dads village?

Or The fact that the East London line has been closed for 3 years the same month they put the fairs up by £52 a year went un-noticed?

Oh I see it's because the only people jetting off round the world more than once a year are members of media/politicians etc who don't give stuff about the lives of most people?

Where NOT to eat in the midlands!

Peninsular Cantonese Restaurant
1, Coleshill St, Fazeley, Tamworth, Staffordshire B78 3RB

(I normally try to say positive stuff but on this occasion I just thought to show how strange food was in small towns would be interesting)

Much as I said about garden design last time Britain’s culinary revolution is patchy, if you got to borough market , eat sushi, have a good local Vietnamese and Turkish restaurants you can be lulled into thinking these sort of things are common everywhere but you’d be wrong.

On our 3 men in boat odyssey to Burton on Trent last week we stopped on Sunday evening at Fazeley Junction near Tamworth. We moor up and struck out for some food, hoping to get blokey “things with chips” you know “a high scampi count”, a roast or who knows maybe even some gammon!

Al Pacino ate here?
But as usual in the first pub we went into they look at us funny “you want to eat on Sunday evening?”
So we strolled further into town. Of course the chippy was shut, so we where left to a selection of ethnic restaurants. Sadly the most promising was a Bangladeshi canteen place but they only did take away, the other “India” restaurant had swapped flock wall paper and chintz for “nowtro” modern which just made it look like a motorway service station. The other 2 places where “interesting”, one was a brightly lit place called “squiggle KUDOS”. On closer inspection the squiggle was “signature”. This was a very strange place looking like a cross between an 80’s wine bar and Middlesborough barbers.
Inside along the walls were mirrors and large Athena prints (mainly famous Italian Americans, the god father, Sinatra , Rocky etc), a mirrored bar had bored looking patrons sat along it on zebra skin covered poufs!
It turned out it was a French/Italian/Indian fusion restaurant, RUN FOR your LIVES! I imagine it’s for couples who can’t decide where to eat so can have a margarita pizza and a tandoori at the same place, please god don’t let them serve coq au tikka, vongole y dhal or Bombay duck Lasagne!

Deep fried Salt
The last option which at the time looked the least terrible was a large Chinese place, complete with the usual fountain, sculptures, pictures of willow trees and temples you know a Chinese restaurant. Unfortunately we didn’t look at the menu well enough.
As a crummy slightly down at heel “town” not far from Tamworth had restaurant that had prices to out stripping Central London. The usual Chinese dishes where averaging around £9 each. To add to this they did the slimy trick of charging almost £2 for rice. So at £11-12 quid for a main course we could eat at the Ivy. Of course if the food was good it wouldn’t matter but the food is rubbish.

The starters
Deep fried something in an iceberg lettuce “bowl”
3 boiled frozen prawns in salty gravy with random side salad
Oh and my spare ribs which came 20 minutes late.
Out of the three the ribs were ok

The main courses
Mr G made the beginners mistake of having any Chinese dish named after a place. This usually means a random collection of meat and veg covered in a salty over sweet jam like sauce. And so it was Duck “Shanghai” came with “MSG laden apricot” jam with acrid hot bits of chilli in it.



BLBW had a “sea food hot pot” which could have been good if we where in a Japanese or Korean restaurant. But came from that form of cooking where the container is more important than the food (see also most Baltis, happy meals and of course cuppa soups!). So instead of delicate sea food in a light broth it was rubbery seafood in salty thick sauce in a mini brass spittoon!

I thought I’d been canny and ordered beef with garlic and ginger, simple not much could go wrong. Sad deluded fool am I, it came on one of those “sizzling skillets” so I got stewing steak in salty over thick snotty gravy boiling at the edge, lukewarm in the middle.

So, on the whole pretty grim, we ate really badly for the thick end of £50 quid.

Also the owner didn’t help as he stood near by complaining to a regular loudly about how excessive environmental health standards stopped him doing business!

So if you break down, get lost etc don’t whatever do not eat at the Peninsular it sells overpriced rubbish.


WHERE to DRINK in FAZELEY ?
We did find a good pub the “3 tuns” round the corner selling excellent Bass on draught so the night was entirely spoiled.

You will see as usual we never got eat any local food in Staffordshire/Warwickshire no faggots or oat cakes, any cheese we had we bought ourselves. I’m all for food from anywhere but local stuff as well please.

37 reviews of Cuppa soup anybody?

Am I being harse what's the worst place you've eaten out at recently?

The horror the horror

Never get off the boat!

Well, where was I, oh, yes, NEVER GO TO BRITAIN’S HEART OF DARKNESS (the MIDcockingLANDS). I went there for 5 days came home and have been sick ever since :( !

It was all Britain’s leading beer writers fault, he’s writing a new book about Indian pale ale (sorry for sending you to a beer blog they are really strange people aren’t they and so very intense but at least you now know what’s happing underneath all that hair!) and to avoid spending too long in the British library BLBW had the idea to take a barrel (don’t you mean actually a PIN say the hoards of hairy leather flagon wielding beerspods….)of the stuff from Burton on Trent to India by surface (sea) travel to recreate the original 18cth trip. Which is a very long winded reason for why I spent 4 days in a barge going slowly northwards from rugby.
(Sorry for the lack of original pics a pile up between a camera phone and a dodgy lap top etc.)

Messing about in Boats…
On the whole barge trips are good, once you are use to the slow pace. It’s all quiet calming. The countryside from Rugby to Burton is a pleasant mix of fields, woods and edgeland (the limits of suburbia, Brownfield sites. slag heaps etc).
The country was turning to autumn, literally one morning the leaves started to fall. Every bush was covered in blackberries, apples or sloes all very mellow and fruitful.
So we had a jolly time.
I do have few gripes/observations: you don’t really want to hear long boring lists of the cheese and beer we consumed or long evocations of the “in jokes” I re-heated over and over with some of my oldest and best friends, do you really.

Observations & Gripes
Narrow boaters are the provisional wing of the camping and caravanning club.
On the face of it full time Bargees are a friendly and jolly bunch. Except they never give an inch, I don’t know if its their old shoulders that doesn’t let stir out of the way but they will happily mow you into a hedge rather than give an inch of water.
Also they all seem to exist in a strangely Daily Mailesque mini world; Victoria Wood once said that caravanning is for “people who can’t bear to more than 10ft from their own dish cloth” but living in narrow boat is this to the very max, plus everything is painted with flowers or is on a doily.
One other strange thing was that almost every other boat we passed had a half life sized knitted Rosie and Jim dolls in the window. Now having watch r& J with my nephews I can’t see what the fuss is about yes it set on narrow boat but it’s a rubbish kid’s show, certainly not anything adults should celebrate. Except and perhaps here’s a thought, that much like pampas grass in 70’s use to signify the homes of “swingers” maybe, just maybe these dolls are code for something…..

Julian Cope tribute gardens
One of the enjoyable and fascinating things about railways and canals is that they are the backdoors of the UK. When they were built we turned our backs on them and in doing so revealed our most private quarters. We all enjoy staring out train windows at the backside of Britain but on the canals you get a longer look due to the slow speed. One of the most interesting things is that contrary to what the colour supplements etc say Britain isn’t garden design mad. If fact out of the several 100 back gardens we glided past, very few looked like they had any over all thought to them at all. Middle England seems to like random borders, scratty grass, plastic patio furniture, broken shoddy concrete steps, horrible blue slate mulch and concrete cocking garden ornaments. The latter I’ve seen in garden centres but wasn’t aware how many people like them. There are more comedy herons, owls and frogs than people in Britain. Also did I turn over two pages at once again and miss the memo about mooning or worse flashing gnomes being funny?
The other thing that was strange was that most of the gardens didn’t seem to refer to the canal at all a few had seats etc next to the water but not many seemed to want to show the canal boaters their best side unlike one imagines their front gardens.
One last thing in about 1-3 to about 1-8 gardens all along our 60 mile journey were afflicted by a strange blue plague; we noticed it first in Tamworth. This contagion comes in the form of garden trampolines; virtually every house with kids had one. This may be old news but it was astonishing how prevalent they are. On slight thing that occurred to me as we passed through Tamworth was that the only thing I know about the place other than something about pigs is that it’s the birth place of Julian Cope who had a hit with a song called …………”trampoline!” May be to celebrate the Arch Drood these are a modern form of earthwork which observed from a projected astral eyed spells “fried” in giant bright blue plastic letters.

Next time: were not to eat in the Midlands and what a 140 year pint tastes like…!