12 December 2006
Category: Railway
Blimey, this place looked forbidding from across the road. Even early on a gloomy, wet Sunday evening, when the nastiest, most hostile boozers give off a promising, golden glow, this place looked drab and unwelcoming. I wasn’t much looking forward to seeing inside, but we had a spare half an hour before we were supposed to arrive at the party and there wasn’t an obvious alternative. Besides, science dictated that I was going to have to come here sometime.
It’s not well-decorated, the Railway Tavern, with fairly standard issue pub nick-nacks around the rag-roll nicotine walls. The lady behind the bar looked distinctly unimpressed with us and grumpily served us our pints of Eagle. What you’ve read so far is the sum of all the criticisms I could find of the place. Everything else was just about right. The Eagle we drank was delicious, it was comfortable sitting down, but it seemed like it’d have been just as good to stand by the bar. The juker was playing old country hits, and I know this is a special area of interest for me but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to be singing along to “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. My fellow singers seemed tolerant to the point of friendly and we would very happily have spent a few hours stretching out and bending our elbows.
There’s often a good moment on a Sunday evening, which I think our visit hit precisely. The match on the telly has ended and most of the watchers have gone home, leaving a handful of stragglers and boozers, those intent on continuing to celebrate their victory, or those made too miserable by defeat to think about moving on just yet. It feels like the pub is yawning and dusting itself down, it’s a little calm before we all begin the slow descent to a Sunday evening skinful. The elephant named “Work Tomorrow” has wandered into the bar room, but hasn’t yet begun to trumpet. Take a deep breath, and enjoy it. It’s your turn to go to the bar.
Overall mark: 7/10
Tim in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment
31 October 2006
“It’s easy to win when there are folk in the government holding back your rivals.”
So says Silvio Berlusconi to Inter Milan fans, appparently. But how would a man who had simultaneously been Prime Minister of Italy and owner of the Italian Champions know about a thing like that?
Tim in FT / TMFD • 1 Comment
18 October 2006
Last night’s Ghost Whispererer conformed fairly closely to the formula I described yesterday, thankfully. If it hadn’t, I’d have looked like a proper Charlie.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been helping to tidy up some of the FT archives, and bringing some old FT essays into the current template. Exciting stuff, yes? I bring this up because one of the pieces I did yesterday was this classic piece of vintage Ewing, musing on fandom, pop, comics and continuity. And last night’s show was all about the backstory. more »
Tim in Do You See / FT • No Comments
17 October 2006
Ghost Whispererer and Haunted on the telly
So here’s how the television show The Ghost Whispererer goes:
1) Ooky spooky music box theme tune with “Sowing the Seeds of Love”-style “eerie” animation involving Jennifer Love Hewitt RIPPING HER OWN HEAD IN HALF more »
Tim in FT • 3 Comments
27 September 2006
Category: Railway
You may think having two Railway Taverns within fairly easy walking distance (like 15 minutes, including a stop-off in a Sydenham charity shop to buy a shady-looking late ’70s Glen Campbell LP with a great version of Jimmy Webb’s “Cristiaan, No” on it) would be confusing. I can see it might lead to some misunderstanding, or at least surprise. But that’s nothing. more »
Tim in FT • No Comments
15 September 2006
Category: Railway
The traditional English pub: a place where blokes go to drink. On their own, with their friends. That’s it, really. Sometimes you don’t want any more. Often, no more is offered. more »
Tim in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 2 Comments
12 September 2006
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.
more »
Tim in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments
4 September 2006
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. more »
Tim in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments
2 August 2006
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 more »
Tim in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments
12 December 2005
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.
Tim in Blog 7 • No Comments
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