6 August 2004
The Smoking Gone
First let me say this: I’m not really the sort of fellow who believes that we can or should look to The Market to do solve our social problems.
It looks like a smoking ban will be imposed in UK pubs before very long. Big Tony and his mates are keen and the pressure seems to be fairly constant.
I’m quite conflicted about smoking bans. In theory, I’m against them: I don’t see that there’s any need for government to get involved with people’s lives at this level of detail. In practice, in NYC, I rather liked the bars being smoke free and the more or less sociable little gasper gatherings on the sidewalks.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that, since we’re often told that vast percentages of the pubgoing public want smoke-free houses, it seems to me that the market should quite happily be able to accommodate smoky and smokeless pubs, solving everyone’s problems.
So why hasn’t it? Maybe World of Pub is so conservative that it requires the sledgehammer of regulation to shift it, or the Campaign for Real Air is not as widespread as we’re led to believe. All the same, I’m rather pleased to see the pub industry making an effort. Latest example: the Crown and Cushion, new addition to Sam Smith’s London holdings. It’s just off Fleet Street and occupies a space which was once half of The Punch Tavern (the history of these premises is another long story).
It’s a pleasant little place, regular Sam Smith’s range. Ironically, it has little in the way of comfortable soft furnishings, those havens for ashy smells. It all feels a little bloodless at the moment, but whether that’s because it’s all mirrors and no smoke, or whether it’s just new and settling into itself, time will tell.
Tim in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Want-away midfielder offered contract
Patrick who? For anyone who’s interested, it looks as though the Dwayne Lee transfer mini-saga we mentioned a while back is reaching its conclusion. Do I sense an unseemly note of glee in the Exeter Express and Echo’s coverage?
“A deal at Barnet would take Lee back to London – but it is hardly what he, or his agent, have been hoping for.
“When Lee was engineering his City exit, Finnegan told Echo Sport: “With no disrespect I am not interested in the Conference – that is the last option. My job is to get him into professional football and he has got the talent to play at a higher level.”"
More spice for this year’s FT Conference derby, then. That’s the main thing.
Tim in TMFD • No Comments
Don’t fear the cheese
Tom’s right: London doesn’t have a dead centre preserved in amber and only useful for tourists. I think this is a good thing: that London’s ‘attractions’ are spread out and exist inside and alongside the regular working / living parts of town. That our ‘old town’ is dominated by security-guarded doors and blank windows pushes visitors and time-wasters alike out into a broader London.
There’s no doubt that some of the things laid on to attract the attention of tourists (and Londoners) are dreadful. You’d have to pay me a lot to endure being herded through the London Dungeon, designed to appeal only to a pre-adolescent taste for the gruesome.
But then, reading Ned’s post below, I am reminded of my regular advice to Londoner and non-Londoner alike: don’t be afraid to do the cheesy, touristy things. There’s a lot of good stuff hiding right there in plain view. Very often, the reason lots of people want to do something is because it’s interesting or fun…
One of the highlights of the FT Wedding of the Year, in NYC, was the open-top bus tour of Manhattan. My companion for the day, himself a qualified NYC Tour Guide, turned from cynical seen-it-all-before to joyful wow-this-looks-so-great within minutes.
Like everyone else (it seems) I’m an admirer of Luka Heronbone’s takes on London’s ripped backsides, all abandoned poetics and over-the-barbed-wire prose. The London of museums, monuments and edifices, like the London of plastic policeman’s helmets and Downing Street signs, is as real and true a London as the London of some grimy local or greasy spoon, and it can all be infinitely interesting if you bother to look.
Tim in Blog 7 • No Comments
Extrusion cooking: technologies and applications
Here you are Dave! Order your copy today of this key reference to the methods of extruded snacks. That is if you want to go into the spiral chip (aka curly fry) business. Edited by a well-known authority on extrusion cooking. Chapter 8: Snack foods. One of my supervisors at college was working on the chemistry and mechanics of extruded corn – I wonder if this is where she ended up.
Alan in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
The Best Spiral Chip in the World Ever!
It had it all – a perfect curl, even, tight, long. More spring made from potato than chip.
This chip prompted a pub debate about how on earth spiral chips get made? Do they liquify spuds then squeeze them through a mould? Answers and links in comments box plz.
Dave Boyle in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
The Problem With Tourist London
(This was an ‘insight’ I had last night in the pub, and we know all about those. I am not convinced of it but I throw it open to discussion.)
Most major and middling European cities from Bilbao to Tallinn have their complement of castles, palaces, museums and landmarks to snare the tourists. London of course has more than its share of these. But other cities also tend to have an ‘old town’ – a city heart that visitors are encouraged to wander in, with the promise (however false) of vibrancy and the authentic. I don’t believe London has one. The oldest parts of the city have turned into The City and tourists are not especially encouraged to stray from its specific landmarks. Old towns in other cities provide a place where the city-as-destination and the city-as-home can mix and find an accord: in London, though, the tourist draws feel unrelated to the rest of the city, a glitzy overlay of heritage.
Tom in Blog 7 • No Comments
GAY GO UP AND GAY GO DOWN
Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements
You owe me five farthings say the bells of St Martins
When will you pay me say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be say the bells of Step Knee (STEP KNEE)
I’m sure I don’t know, says the great bell of Bow
GET IN THERE!! I spent what must have been HOURS trying to remember the words to that song last night. We sat outside on the steps at the Prospect of Whitby watching the Thames at high tide. It went down fast and we wondered who owns the tiny boats that bob about in the middle of the surging river, and gazed at the promised mythical paradise of Spice Island. Spice Island is a LOONY pub, like something that’s been shipped over from Texas and dumped on the south bank of SE16. From across the river it looks like people are swarming over the entire facade. What’s it doing there?
I’m sure I don’t know, says the Great Bell of Bow…
More on Oranges and Lemons from the BBC.
Sarah in Blog 7 • No Comments
Thank you, Wales
One of the only, in fact, now I come to think of it, the ONLY good thing about our local Safeways transition to a Morrisons is that they have started stocking laver bread. So that’s what I had yesterday. On toast. With cockles and cheese. Thank you, Wales. Thank you very much.
Matt in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
I HATE MUSIC LYRIC WATCH 18
NEIL DIAMOND – I Am, I Said
This song is Diamond N’s version of Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum. In Descartes version he proves that even if he doubts all of the world, there is still something which is doing the doubting, the unshakable belief that he is a thinking thing. From this he (ropily) derives the existence of the Universe, a benevolent god and an evil genius probably played by Alan Rickman if it is a good movie or Sting if it is a bad one.
Neil’s method is a little bit trickier. He manages to prove that chairs cannot hear early on inthis stanza:
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
From this standpoint he then moves on to the delusional aspect of the workings of someone who may want to trick us. He uses a complex example, but unlike Descartes, he then identifies with the example and suggests that this is the actual case:
Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king
And then became one
Well, except for the names and a few other changes
If you talk about me, the story’s the same one
The flaw in this is that the changes Neil is remarking upon here are actually quite significant ones. Despite his lousy croaking voice, he was never ACTUALLLY a frog and now he is not ACTUALLY a king. However what Neil does do in this song is prove definitively that there is no single self deluding person. Because if there were, why on earth would they invent someone as ridiculous as him, writing songs quite this silly?
You Are – you said. You just did not say what you are. I think I can help on that front.
Tanya Headon in I Hate Music • No Comments
The problem is not that there is no magic in King Arthur. It is that there is no King. By all means do your spurious archeology nonsense and to the wilds of the borders, though the Scottish scenes seem to be taking place in the Alps. No, King Arthur’s problem is there is no sense that he ever really becomes a King at the end of the whole deal. Getting married at Stonehenge-By-Sea is different to a coronation.
Nice to see the mass use of Night Arrows again, though if they were being historically accurate they would note that they were not invented until 2003 and the ropey film Timeline. And as for the Great Hadrian’s Wall Of China… Have Jerry Bruckheimer and Antoine Fuqua ever seen Hadrian’s Wall? Even in its hey day it wasn’t twenty foot high with a long walkway across it. The historical accuracy of this tale is as apparent as (insert Keira Knightly breast joke here).
The strange thing is that these recent trend in big epic battle movies seem in part to have been inspired by the success of the Lord Of The Rings films. And yet both Troy and King Arthur are at pains to remove any inch of the supernatural from their respective stories. Had they not noticed that the Lord Of The Rings was packed to the gills with magic? Movie making is no easy task, but sometimes you wonder what these producers have in their head. Which is why it is surprising Bruckheimer dropped the ball here. True we have not had a decent King Arthur movie in years. And unfortunately it seems as if that has been continued with this story: Clive Owen is NotKing Arturious. Not as snappy on the posters I guess.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
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