Pub Science Experiment #1 Pub 8: The Railway Telegraph, Stanstead Road, London SE23

Category: Nearly-Railway
They had been long, dry months, but after a lengthy break from Railwaying, it was time to kick off the project once again. Keeping it local seemed the right way to start, and The Railway Telegraph is the nearest Railway to home, though not so near that I’d visited before.

… read on …

The Second Annual Liz Daplyn Food Science Day: an introduction

First of all, bless Liz for co-authoring the idea of Food Science Day. It remains an ongoing sadness that she’s not here to enjoy these events, or to add her amazing talents and imagination to the proceedings. I’m happy that Food Science Day stands as a small way of us remembering her.

There was only one moment when I thought seriously about regretting being the host for the Second Annual Food Science Day. … read on …

Pub Science Experiment #1 Pub 7: The Railway Engineer, Sanders Lane, Mill Hill NW7

Category: Nearly-Railway

(This is the continuation of a project which has been dormant, largely as a result of a lengthy period of foul sobriety. New readers, or forgetful ones, might like to catch up with what this is all about. This review is of the Railway I visited some months ago and never wrote up, so it’s from slightly splintered memory. Please forgive inaccuracies or embellishments.)

I was in a bad mood … read on …

Boiling your last sausage

It was in the appropriately theatrical Harlequin the other night that our attention was drawn to the marvellously luvvie valedictory address given by Joseph Grimaldi the clown on the occasion of his retirement.

Here it is (copied from A History of Pantomime, by R. J. Broadbent)

“Ladies and Gentlemen:–In putting off the Clown’s garment, allow me to drop also the Clown’s taciturnity, and address you in a few parting sentences. I entered early on this course of life, and leave it prematurely. Eight-and-forty years only have passed over my head–but I am going as fast down the hill of life as that older Joe–John Anderson. Like vaulting ambition, I have overleaped myself, and pay the penalty in an advanced old age. If I have now any aptitude for tumbling it is through bodily infirmity, for I am worse on my feet than I used to be on my head. It is four years since I jumped my last jump–filched my last oyster–boiled my last sausage–and set in for retirement. Not quite so well provided for, I must acknowledge, as in the days of my Clownship, for then, I dare say, some of you remember, I used to have a fowl in one pocket and sauce for it in the other.

“To-night has seen me assume the motley for a short time–it clung to my skin as I took it off, and the old cap and bells rang mournfully as I quitted them for ever.

“With the same respectful feelings as ever do I find myself in your presence–in the presence of my last audience–this kindly assemblage so happily contradicting the adage that a favourite has no friends. For the benvolence that brought you hither–accept, ladies and gentlemen, my warmest and most grateful thanks, and believe, that of one and all, Joseph Grimaldi takes a double leave, with a farewell on his lips, and a tear in his eyes.

“Farewell! That you and yours may ever enjoy that greatest earthly good–health, is the sincere wish of your faithful and obliged servant. God bless you all!”

He lived for 14 more years, and according to this site “his last years were spent beside the fireplace of ‘The Marquis of Cornwallis’ tavern, in Pentonville, where each night he would be carried home on the back of the landlord, George Cook.” Another ending, then. No-one gets carried home on the landlord’s back in uncaring, binge-drink Britain. For shame.

The Safest Hands in Soccer

During a recent brief trip to Spain, I was happy to take the chance to see that Riquelme chap and his Villareal mates visit Deportivo La Coruna. (I can recommend La Coruna for a weekend away, by the way, it’s gloriously situated, has enough to do and is very friendly. What’s more the football ground is right by the beach on one of Coruna’s dramatically sweeping bays. It’s great. Anyway…)

I was interested to see the referee wave away appeals from the Depor fans and players alike after what looked for all the world like a Villareal back pass. A Villareal player under not-much pressure kicked the ball and it rolled tamely back to the goalie, who picked it up. That’s a back pass, right? Well, not if it was a mis-kick, if the player didn’t mean to, if they didn’t know what they were doing.

Now, someone who shall remain unnamed (on account of I’ve forgotten who it was) was talking me through the Catholic Church’s attitude to suicide recently. Suicide is a mortal sin and, by the letter of the law, suicides may not be buried on consecrated ground. However, if the person is insane, they are let off because they don’t know what they are doing. Apparently, in most cases of suicide these days, the Church considers that the deceased must have been insane to carry out the act, and so their relatives are allowed to bury them as Catholics, and are not in a position of having to assume their loved ones are facing an automatic eternity in hell. This seems a perfectly sensible and humane thing to me, though I’ve no idea how true it is.

And it seems to me that the refereeing community have made a similar shuffle. No player would have deliberately passed back in that situation, so it’s only reasonable to assume that any apparent back pass was an accident. No foul. On you go. Sporting laws that require an assessment of intent: a bad thing, on the whole, right? We don’t want to ask our referees to see into our souls before deciding between fair and not fair. And don’t get me started on the matter of interfering with play.

This priest-ref parallel is probably worth thinking about some more, but this morning I am failing to get past the mental image of an irate Keano in an intricately carved confessional, bulgy-veined and screaming about some small penance.

Only a fawn in the game

FC United of Manchester. The very best of luck to them, I’m sure we all hope they do well. A well-respected TMFD writer can be heard talking in his cups about how AFC Wimbledon are the John The Baptist to FCUM’s Jesus, though neither has a programme, other than democracy and existence.

I hope they succeed in their stated aims. Actually, I think they’ve gone a long way to achieving those aims already, in so far as they have a club and they seem to be enjoying themselves. Well done to them.

Not well done to the Guardian, though, who consider this to be breaking news. Hold the back page: FCUM have some songs. Any club with more than a thousand regular attendees could write the an equivalent article. It’s the kind of thing which fills up a quarter page in a local rag on a slow day. This is just fawning.

Down in Rangers, surely?

This is a surprising and enjoyable take on the relationship between a fan and a club, although it betrays a rather fuddled mind, I fear:

“Ties are stronger than they could ever be with a woman. If she goes and sleeps with your best mate, it’s over. If the Rs’ boss, Ian Holloway, slept with my best mate, QPR would still be my team.”

Who would say such a thing? (This line aside, the piece is sadly little more than a checklist of plankishness, but I guess we get our kicks where we can these days, eh?)

An Opportunity Missed

The Head of Steam is a strange old place. Part of the concrete Euston complex built controversially in the 60s (John Betjeman famously campaigned against the demolition of the previous, Victorian, Euston station, and particularly its large Doric arch). It’s concretey on the outside, but the inside manages to maintain a whiff of the Smegthorpe Railwaymans Club, despite the fact that very few railwaypersons seem to drink there. I imagine they have an actual club of their own. I like Euston to look at, but it does so often seem a bit glum.

Anyway the Head of Steam has generally managed to achieve an excellent friendly-but-not-too-friendly local atmosphere, even in the face of the fact that it’s a station pub and obviously lacks many actual locals. It’s true that the range of ales attracts fatbelly beer bores, but we’re a relatively harmless bunch as long as you can put up with the conversations about - and the faint smell of - yeast. It’s one of the very few places in London where you can get a decent pint of cider. (NB The Publog cannot recommend such foolishness for the untrained).

The other obvious feature is The Code. Ask behind the bar for The Code and make sure you remember it, because you require The Code to get you through the locked doors to the downstairs toilets. It seems there exists a certain constituency who crave access to these facilities without purchasing goods from the bar, which offends natural justice, and it may be that these people are intent on other unnamed mischief. Anyway, they are apparently repelled by The Code, so all is well.

So what, you ask? Well, the Head of Steam has been sold. Its new Fullers overlords intend to maintain its current character, which is probably a good thing and will be even better if they give the food a sympathetic, cheap and cheerful brush-up. They’re changing its name, though: it’s to be called The Doric Arch. It’s a shame Fullers haven’t cottoned on to the recent fashion for concrete buildings. Instead of commemorating the neo-classical pile which the current building rather gleelessly stomped all over, they might have done better to celebrate what’s there now. The Block of Concrete seems a good name, or The Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, to commemorate Betjeman’s architectural enemy. Or maybe The Brutalist’s Arms. That’d be nice.

Open House At Their House

So it’s that time of year again, Open House Weekend is upon us, time to dust off the A-Z and look inside buildings you never knew were there in the first place.

Here are my top five tips for Open House:

1. Think of it as an excuse to see a bit of London you don’t already know, as well as to see the insides of buildings you do. I’m always surprised how many unexpected things crop up near home (last year I was surprised and delighted by the Pioneer Centre, Peckham).

2. Plan a route without using the tube: if you are trying to see bits of London then the inside of the sucky hole train doesn’t seem to best choice (NB getting a bus into town from Romford, as I did last year, is likely to require a big chunk of your day.

3. Take the indie choice: last year people sacrificed their whole day to see inside that gherkin. It can’t have been that interesting. Rushing for the big, famous, headline places is all very well but you’ve only a limited time and the obscure bits can be good too. If you don’t have any inspiration, pick one at random and then go to the three nearest sites. Or choose a theme: this year I’m going to do a few town halls.

4. FOLLOW THE CONCRETE.

5. Try to go to at least one church. I recommend the glorious Christ Church Streatham and that elliptical Ukrainian Holy Family In Exile one off Oxford Street.

I know the above is all very London-centric and I’m sorry so if you don’t live in London and you’re sore about all this nonsense, here’s a special Open House day tip for you: don’t be. If you don’t live here, that’s probably for reasons of your own.

Last year, I cut short my tour of decadent Civic deco in East London to go and help some friends move into their flash new flat. This year their flash new flat complex is part of Open House! Except that you don’t get access to the apartments!

FT 1 RIBA 0.

Better start swimming or…

Difficult times for English football. As television revenues decline, players’ wages don’t. These same players, pampered and arrogant, inhabit the gossip pages of the newspapers more often than the sports pages. The public, irked by the players’ behaviour and stung by ever-spiralling prices, are swithcing off. And the England team can’t even win against the Northern Irish.

Meanwhile, from nowhere, a team of real heroes, unbloated, untabloided and not a sarong in sight, take on the best in the world with hunger and humility and genuine verve. The Great British public are responding like never before. In media as diverse as The Guardian and The Today Programme, you can see people waking up to what they really want, and it’s not football any more. In English sport, the changes are being rung.

Just like they were with the rugby, whenever that was.