Pintxo Point

San Sebastian is one of those places that has you gazing longingly into the windows of estate agents within hours of arriving. It's such a beguiling mixture of climate, beauty, people and food. Blimey, the food. There's such a load of cobblers written about San Sebastian - despite what the sunday broadsheets say, every bar does not deserve a Michelin Star - but the overall standard of nosh is exceptionally high. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on tapas - or pintxos, as the Basques call them. I couldn't even tell you what most of them were called, but drifting from bar to bar in the Old Town scoffing whatever is on offer, is one of life's finest things. It's not cheap, but then it shouldn't be either - apart from the ever-present jamon, the pintxos are mainly seafood with an emphasis on cod, sardine, anchovy and tuna. The fruits of the sea are a matter of fierce pride for the famously outward-looking and seafaring Basques. EU quotas seemed to have decimated the number of fishing vessels in the harbour since our last visit, but it still buzzed with maritime activity and is still a focal point for the locals. Cod and tuna in particular are becoming a rarer and much more difficult and dangerous catch. To paraphrase Walter Scott, it's wasn't fish we we're eating, it was men's lives, so we made sure we finished every morsel, as we would in Whitby or Newlyn. Every bar we visited was pretty good, but the real standouts were the tiny Bar Tamboril (warning: annoying, overdesigned website) on Calle Pescaderia, Bar Aralar at 10 Calle Puerto which was so boistrous and friendly that we kept returning, and the place next door where I had anguillas, a pinxto of tiny eels so spectacularly gorgeous I'm still thinking about it.



Funny how beer you'd tip down your sink at home tastes just brilliant when you're on holiday - even something from Cruzcampo called (I think) 'Polar', a sort of Iberian Fosters Ice. Cruzcampo, along with their owners Heineken rule the roost here, with Amstel and the ubiquitous Mahou. Personally, I've always found Mahou a pretty decent drink home or away, but it was good to find the odd bar with a Pilsner Urquell tap.

Along with Asturias and Galicia, the Basque Country is one of Spain's cider regions. We'd missed the season for visiting San Sebastian's out-of-town cider houses, but we tracked some sidra down at anchovy-specialist Bar Txepetxa (picture in the post below) at 5 Calle Pescaderia. As in Asturias, It was poured from shoulder level by the barman to 'aereate' the liquid. I'm not sure this bit of theatre has any effect on the taste, but I'm not complaining. It was astringent, sour and made you want to suck your cheeks inside out - and utterly delicious. The perfect palate cleanser for more pintxos and more cerveza and more tinto.


We ended up spending a day longer than we planned in San Seb. The doughnut at the hire car agency in Lille forgot to give Our Lad his licence back, so the next leg of our journey was spent not in a Parador near Gijon, but rattling across country in a RENFE train that stopped at every lamppost and farm. Should you find yourself in a similar predicament, be assured that an extra 24 hours in this lovely city is definately no hardship.

Her Britannic Majesty Requests And Requires

There are two people that I am certain to meet on every holiday. One is the Over Friendly But Essentially Well Meaning Drunk. On this trip he popped up at the Highlander Bar in Albert, repeating several times the - to be fair very interesting - story of how as boys he and his mates would dig up rusty helmets to flog to tourists. Actually, the OFBEWMD can be a a highlight. I once spent an hour locked in conversation with one at a seedy railway bar in Segovia, talking about The Simpsons and my resemblance to Homer. This was despite the fact I speak barely any Spanish and my drinking chum had no English at all.

The other is the British Man Wearing A Straw Hat Who Shouts At Foreigners.

On this occasion we'd just settled into our couchette on the 23.14 Corail Lunea from Paris Gare D'Austerlitz to Irun. Our lad and me were on the top bunks, and an elderly, whispering Spanish couple were on the ones below. Suddenly, a red-faced man with a tricky little moustache barged in. He bellowed at the signor "WHERE. IS. THIS?" jabbing at a number on his ticket with a fat finger an inch from the Spaniard's face. He repeated the question to the señora. No "excusez moi", "perdóneme" or enquiry that any of us might speak English. Our shocked co-bunkers certainly didn't. The man then looked at me and and I looked back at him. He looked at my brother, who looked back at him. Then he looked back at me again, and I looked back at him again. We knew the answer, and he knew that we knew the answer. But there was no way we were helping this man. With a sweaty frown he left, barking the same question through each door along our carriage, with similar results. Along with the straw hat he was wearing sandals with grey argyll socks. For a brief moment it was like being in a Monty Python sketch.



(This incident is hard to illustrate, so here's a glass of sidra encountered the next day at Bar Txepetxa, San Sebastian. More later. I bet you can hardly wait can you?)

An Unfortunate Region

Our visit to that field in Picardy was part of a trip we cobbled together after the work stuff mentioned below was postponed. Better still, the roof was sorted quicker than I expected, and the computer seems to have fixed itself. Nothing else for it but to get away for a bit. It turned out to be quite a journey, but as there's nothing duller that reading about other peoples' holidays I'll spare you the details. Well, most of them. For our visit to the Somme battlefields we were holed up at Hotel Basilique in Albert, an old fashioned place where the staff always seemed to be having lunch. Considering the town was all but erased from the map during World War One, and rebuilt from scratch it's not a bad looking place, and a perfect base for exploring the region.



In the area there are two things that can be seen from almost anywhere. One is the Golden Madonna on the spire of Albert Basilica, famously knocked horizontal (and later knocked off) by German artillery. The other is the brooding Thiepval Memorial. Wherever you are, the arch of this massive structure seems to watch you like an unblinking eye. It's also surprisingly hard to get to. Despite being well signposted, it jumps around the landscape, always in the middle distance until - suddenly - there it is right in front of you. It's a moving and desperately melancholic place. There are more than 72,000 names carved here - all men without a known grave. Here and there, a name has been removed after the remains of a long lost brother, son, uncle or father have been discovered and carefully exhumed from their hurried battlefield grave, identified, and given a proper burial.

Modern agricultural methods have turned the Somme area into miles of luminous prairie, broken up by the glowing Portland stones of the immaculate Commonwealth cemetries - 188 in this area alone - but there are some patches where the war is still very evident. There are woods with no trees more than 90 years old. Near the site of the former Kiel trench is a paddock with three horses living among a series of trenches and craters. Farmers around here are still using British and German iron pickets for their original purpose - to hold up barbed wire and the amount of ordnance still brought up by the plough means a regional bomb disposal squad is on permanent standby. In the first week of the Battle Of The Somme nearly two million shells were fired by the British alone. A third of these were duds, and a lot of them are still out there.

The scale of loss and sacrifice is at the same time humbling and overwhelming. Each day we were glad to get back to Albert for a glass of Loburg and a steak haché, and after three days we were relieved to move on. Driving up the arrow-straight road from Albert to Bapaume on our way to Lille we followed the direction of the British advance - which cost 3 lives for every foot of land captured.

The Old Front Line

My brother and I are walking up a country lane just to the South West of Grandcourt, a tiny hamlet in Picardy. It's all nodding, golden corn and drowsy hedges now, but the gravel under our feet is full of rusty shards of iron, just this morning washed out of the fields by heavy rain. On the 23rd of august 1918 the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, The East Yorkshire Regiment and the 15th Battalion Durham Light Infantry crossed this point in their attempt to retake the nearby village of Miraumont, then held by the German army in their desperate scrabble to landgrab in the final acts of the Great War. We're here because among the Durhams was our grandad's eldest brother, Joe. Somewhere around here Joe copped what is described in bald military terms on his service record as 'Gunshot Wound - Neck (Mild)'. He was a rifle bomber - firing grenades from his Lee-Enfield - and had been in the army only since March. Despite the appraisal of his injury, the 'mild' wound was enough to keep Joe out of the front line for the remainder of the war. Or so we think. Joe died about 20 years ago, and in common with most returning veterans never breathed a word about his experiences. It's only due to luck that we know these meagre facts. Joe's military records were among the few saved when Somerset House was bombed in World War 2, and I discovered the singed microfiche copies when I was digging around on the National Archives website last year. Of another relative - our Great-Grandmother's brother Ernest - no such records exist. All we have is a locket containing his portrait in the uniform of a Royal Field Artillery gunner, and the handkerchief embroidered 'To My Dear Mother' he brought back. Ernest was also wounded - by a bullet that went through his leg and into his horse, and he was deaf as a farm gatepost thanks to the guns. Where did he serve? What did he do? We'll never know.

* click *

I'm going to be rather busy for the next fortnight or so. A perfect storm of work commitments, a leaky roof and laptop problems means I might not be able to post for a coupla weeks. My semi-accurate rants about scooters, London, pies, beer, pubs, yorkshire, photography and WW2 bombers will be back soon. Please do not adjust your set.

Talking Of Butchers

Asda opened last week near Keighley station. The local councillors decided that a town of barely 60,000 souls couldn't manage with just a Sainsbury, Aldi, Morrison's, Netto, Iceland and umpteen local Co-op Food Fairs. Nope, the needs of the town could best be served by allowing in the rottweiler of retail, part of the 'Wal-Mart Family'. Goodbye independent shops of Cavendish Street, farewell market. Those entrusted with your future have decreed that what Keighley needs is more boarded-up shops, fast-food outlets, tanning salons and estate agents

Despite the state of the modern British high street, butchers' shops, along with pubs, are often great survivors. Passing through Appleby-in-Westmorland the other week, It was all I could do to wait for the car to stop before rushing over to this gem, Ewbank's. It's a very simple place - plain, painted walls and a window area with the cuts plonked onto bare tiles. It looked like the shop you'd find in a model village.

"How long has this been a butcher's?" I gasped.

"Oooh - at least a hundred years" came the reply. "Not changed much".

No pies for sale, though. Maybe I'll suggest that when I send Mr Ewbank a print.

Super Pie Guy

It started with one, and ended up with nine. And it's getting quite expensive. I'm talking about the amount of meat-and-potato pies my colleagues insist on me bringing back from trips to Keighley. My parents' local butcher, Herd's, has been selling quality meat to the town for at least 50 years. There's always a queue, and at Christmas the locals are lined up right round the corner, or collecting their trays of 12 warm pork pies from the back door for a Christmas Eve pie and pea supper party. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If pie and peas was a Piedmontese peasant dish it would be served up in the finest restaurants in Europe.

Herd's meat is as good as anything I've seen or tasted in Italy or France, and those meat and potato pies have a pavlov's dog-like effect on me whenever I think of them. In fact, my mouth's watering as I type this. It's even whispered that people come from Lancashire for these pies. The beef comes from the butcher's father-in-law's farm, in the bucolic reaches of the Worth Valley. The cows live a happy life eating the lush emerald grass of this rainy corner of God's Own County. The farmer tucks them up every night in their centrally heated byre, and reads them a story as the contented cows drift off to sleep. I can't honestly say if the potatoes had a similarly joyful life before they were pulled from the rich loam of the Vale Of York, to be stacked beneath a lightning-riven oak, then loaded onto a Bedford TK and driven off to the wholesale market at Beverley by a bib-and-brace overalls-wearing pipe-smoking bloke called Alf. Let's just say they did.

Twenty-Six Inch Wheels

Apparently, cycling is undergoing such a rebirth that retailers of can barely keep up with demand. Maybe the downturn is literally making people get on their bike to look for work, just as my maternal grandma did at the age of thirteen when she cycled from Sunderland to Keighley to take a job as a dressmaker. A journey she managed in a single day. For somewhat different reasons I've rescued my bike from the back of the shed, where it was imprisoned under the stepladder, some old curtains and a pile of never-to-be-used lengths of wood which will come with us to our next house (just in case). Being forty with a love of beer isn't a good combination if I want to be able to walk, rather than waddle, in the near future, so recently I've been cycling the five or so miles to work. There was a time when I was quite a serious cyclist. We lived on the edge of zone 1, so getting about by pedal power was a no-brainer. I cycled to work, I cycled to the West End, I cycled to the shops. I regularly cycled to my mates' house in Barnes (30 miles there and back) without a thought. I did some off road - In cold weather my knee reminds me of the time I fell off while riding a moorland trail. I've done the London to Brighton ride, and one year my chum John and me pedalled from Carlisle to Keighley. I also used to cycle to the pub, with the intention of walking the bike back home. I never did, which is why I have scar on my chin after riding straight into some railings. I woke up the next day briefly wondering why I had a pharoah's beard of congealed blood.

Forty Years On

Later this year, I turn 40. Most of my mates reached this alarming milestone in the past few months. We're each strapping on our ale beards to try 40 beers that are new to us over the 365 days from our birthdays. It's not much of a challenge is it? just over three-quarters of a pint per week, if you do spread it over a year. You could conceivably blow your beer beans at a decent-sized festival, or a weekend in Belgium or Germany.  Of course, the new beers are to be enjoyed alongside what you'd normally sup. Any beer counts - even the trampagne from the local Londis. it's just got to be new to the participant. Being the group's tame designer I've knocked up a booklet (cover left) that we can carry with us to record what we drink and what it tastes like. I need the discipline. I've indulged in some shameless tickery before, but I usually scribble what I've had on the back of a damp beermat that ends up going through the washing machine. I've had my share of different ales, but with today's kaleidescopic choice of global micro and macro brews, finding 40 new beers should be an easy and enjoyable experience. Yes, I do realise how chin-strokingly nerdy this all sounds. What can I say? I'm a chin-stroking nerd.

The Keighley News

Bad news for the drinkers of Keighley. The Albert, leased from Timothy Taylor by the Ossett Brewery for the last eight or so months, is back with the original owners. I say bad news, but it's all relative - nobody will mind having Taylor's ales back at the Albert (although Ossett did have a couple of TT pumps as 'guests'), but it was nice to have the full range of another brewery in the town. I only managed to get into the Ossettised Albert once, but I was very impressed. The Albert had been refit from a tired old rocker's pub - complete with motorbike bolted to the wall - in about 1995 when Taylor's refurbished their entire estate, and ended up being done in a sort of chintzy Victorian-lite. Ossett improved the interior a lot with a their retro-contemporary touches, open fire and knocked about Windsor chairs. The beer was spot on, too - especially the Silver King which is still a favourite of mine. It's not clear why Ossett's bridgehead in Keighley failed - some say it was caused by contractual wranglings with Taylor's. It might simply be that footfall wasn't enough to justify the battalion of seven or eight (ten?) handpumps and a large pub which must have cost a small fortune to run. I don't have any pictures of the Albert's interior, but there are some here on the fine Huddersfield-based beer 'n' pubs blog A Swift One.

A Sort Of Homecoming

Carlisle, The Great Border City. It's where I went to art college back in the early '90s. Cumbria College Of Art And Design was a small institution, happy to be a provincial specialist college a long way from anywhere. A long way from anywhere else in Cumbria, even. We were a 'proper' independent art college - not attached to one of the polytechnics who were converting en masse to universities at the time. With no more than a couple of thousand students we all got to know each other well - so well, in fact, that a few ended up marrying each other - like a certain Mr and Mrs TIW. As it happens, the college is now part of the new University Of Cumbria. The 50s buildings we studied in have now been replaced with a glass and wood construction that looks like it's been transplanted from Austria.

Carlisle was (and still is, I am told) a good place to live. It's a handsome town with a beautiful, pocket-sized cathedral and a thousand year-old castle that looks like a WW2 bunker. The streets are bustling and the multiples haven't entirely taken over the shopping choices. With the exception of Botchergate (I'll get to that in a minute) not a shocking amount had changed since my last visit some 15 years ago. The police station where one night I nudged the desk sergeant awake to report a suspected flasher, moved following the 2005 floods. Most of the banks are still on Bank Street, which is also home to John Watts who've been filling the city centre with the seductive aroma of roasting coffee since 1865. The local papers (there are two) still both have large sections devoted to farming. Tweedy old dears still take afternoon tea at the Crown And Mitre hotel.

Our student pub was the Kings Head, where we'd knock back Theakston's every friday, before wobbling back to our digs to the sound of the cathedral bellringers still practising at midnight. Ale in Carlisle then meant Theakston, or the occasional pint of Tetley or Greene King. I don't ever recall a guest beer, anywhere. Even Jennings from (relatively) nearby Cockermouth was rare. I only recall it being available at one city bar, and then only on their 'student night'. It was in far from prime condition - we called it Gravy Ale - but we drank it because it was cheap. The ubiquity of Theakston was a hangover from the brewer buying the Carlisle State Brewery in the early 70s, though beer making had long left Carlisle by the time we arrived. During winter, the pubs often ran out of beer if the drays (or anything else, including the odd opponent of Carlisle United) couldn't get to the city by road through the snow.

Since my last visit, Carlisle's aldermen have decided that what the city needs is a night time economy, and so all the working class boozers, tattoo parlours, bakers and record shops that once lined Botchergate (always the seedy end of town) have been swept aside and replaced with numerous Vertical Drinking Establishments, all full to bursting at noon. The pavements outside Party Party ('Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin') were still sticky with last night's vomit and spilled alcopop. A group of swaying drunks laughed as they all peed in the gutter. Doorways in the once quiet streets off Botchergate had discarded kebabs and the sharp tang of urine. It was like being in Blackpool, complete with shrieking hen parties in pink cowboy hats. At the station end of Botchergate is a barrier which can be closed to turn the street into what it must have been hoped could be a Cumbrian Ramblas. Some hope.

If Spoons Could Talk

This spoon lives in my grandma's cutlery drawer - she uses it for stirring soup. It's had at least three owners, four if you count the US government to whom, I suppose, it still technically belongs. The previous custodian was my great uncle Ernest - her brother - who must have acquired it from an American GI while serving with the Royal Scots Fusiliers in Burma. It would have been in his kit (along with his bullet-drilled tam-o-shanter that his ever-resourceful sister later recycled into a fashionable beret) when, months after the fighting had ended , his troopship finally docked at Southampton. Most of the men on board hadn't seen their families for years, and all of them had seen some of the very bitterest jungle combat of WW2. The dockers were on strike and refused to unload the ship. Until a senior officer of the Fusiliers threatened the shop stewards with a Bren gun, anyway.

Lazy Blogging, Part 9.

Flight Of The Conchords - 'Friends'.

Rockin' Russians

Mother Russia, home of the great constructivist graphic designers like El Lissitsky, Vladimir Majakovsky and Alexander Rodchenko. Home also, to the anonymous artists behind this collection of brilliant, amusing and downright frightening collection of Russian album covers.

The Last Night Of The Fair

Yesterday, we visited Carters Steam Fair at Victoria Park in 'ackney. The Olympic construction has closed all the short cuts to the lungs of the East End, which is a bind if you don't want to travel by car, scooter or - God help us - bus. Until 2012, getting there means cycling along the Eastway, a scratty stretch of rampant Buddleija davidii, ejected coke cans and car batteries. It's the very definition of one of Iain Sinclair's Edgelands.



'Vicky' park (as it's always know to Hackneyites like Mrs TIW) is the perfect setting for John Carter's Famous Royal Berkshire Steam Fair, an utterly glorious collection of original fairground rides and sideshows that's been touring the southeast for 30-odd years. There's waltzers, dodgems, swingboats, chair-o-planes, cork-firing rifles and hook-a-duck. There are those things where you hit a button with a huge mallet in a vain attempt to ring a bell. There's a penny arcade overseen by a superannuated rocker with a quiff and a comb in his back pocket. The deliciously bling Gallopers ride has been used every season since 1895, still powered by a steam engine that also runs a tootling 'calliope' organ. All the rides are tugged about the country by vintage trucks, and the staff live in original showmens' caravans, all in immaculate condition. It's magical, especially at night - i've never seen so many smiling Londoners.





Along with the fair was Ken Fox's Wall Of Death, one of only - it is thought - two left in the country. Compared to Carter's venerable attractions, this wall is practically new - it was built in 1995 at a Liverpool shipyard. In a Britain slowly suffocating with 'elf 'n' safety legislation, to be able to watch 3 riders on 1920s Indian bikes racing each other round the inside of a huge, creaking wooden barrel is something else. No helmets, natch, and often no hands as they roared around only 8 or so inches from the lip of the wall. At the end of the show an obvious question was answered without being asked - no insurance company will touch them, so the riders depend on donations from their audience, who shower the daredevils with pound coins and the odd fluttering tenner. Money very well spent.

Swingin' Safari

Sacha Baron-Cohen's latest flick Brüno is out today, which is as good a reason as any to mention his family's shop. Baron Of Piccadilly have been punting togs to discerning gents for decades at 210 Piccadilly. Seemingly aloof of all that fashion nonsense, it's probably the last place in Britain where a chap can still get a safari suit.

Swarmy Weather

I think this is the ninth time I've been on the Great London Rideout. Ten if you count the time I turned up on a bicycle to watch - a brief and unpleasant encounter with a Camden bus the week before had rendered me temporarily scootless (1967 Sprint V 'Sophia', RIP).

Numbers seemed to be slightly down on previous years, perhaps the credit crunch making its presence felt in a desire for a family holiday rather than essential repairs to clutch or exhaust. Still, there must have been 400 or so scooters in Regents Park, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees (or more properly, wasps) farting two-stroke when the organiser blew his horn half an hour late. A PHd could be earned working out how all theses scooters somehow all avoid each other in the initial melée - it's like a two-wheeled ballet.





These things are always badly organised, scootering being an essentially amateur pastime, but that's half the fun. As usual, nobody knew where we were going, just that Southend was the ultimate destination. On Regent Street - to the delight of dozens of goggling tourists - half the péloton took a left on to Carnaby Street and immediatly parked up, while some of us did a U-turn and joined the rest of the pack through Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square and along the Embankment, Upper and Lower Thames street, Tower Hill and the Mile End road. We eventually lost the biggest group somewhere near the Bow flyover, though their huge cloud of blue smoke could clearly be seen in the distance, like a b-movie monster on its way to devour Southend.

Rocking Roll

It has been speculated that one reason the Americans suffered so heavily on D-Day was their reluctance to adopt the 'funnies' - experimental kit developed by the British for theirs and the Canadian beaches. Gold, Sword and Juno were no picnic on D-Day, but this revolutionary equipment undoubtedly saved lives. 

Some of this new gear was hugely succesful, like the mine-clearing 'flail' tank or the AVRE, based on the Churchill tank that came in umpteen variants, including anti-bunker, ditch filling and bridging roles. However, many of the 'funnies' barely made it past the planning stages. One such project was the ten-foot rocket propelled wheel known as the Great Panjandrum. The idea was that this would roll up the invasion beach, crushing all obstacles in its path before exploding at a pre-determined target. However, tests of a prototype round the coast from Braunton at Westward Ho proved to be as dangerous to the launchers as the enemy, as witnessed by BBC correspondent Brian Johnson:

"At first all went well. Panjandrum rolled into the sea and began to head for the shore, the Brass Hats watching through binoculars from the top of a pebble ridge. Then a clamp gave: first one, then two more rockets broke free: Panjandrum began to lurch ominously. It hit a line of small craters in the sand and began to turn to starboard careering towards (recording cameraman) Klemantaski, who, viewing events through a telescopic lens, misjudged the distance and continued filming. Hearing the approaching roar he looked up from his viewfinder to see Panjandrum, shedding live rockets in all directions, heading straight for him. As he ran for his life, he glimpsed the assembled admirals and generals diving for cover behind the pebble ridge into barbed-wire entanglements. Panjandrum was now heading back to the sea but crashed on to the sand where it disintegrated in violent explosions, rockets tearing across the beach at great speed." 

Tests of the Panjandrum were carried out in full view of crowds of holidaymakers, and it's this lack of secrecy that has lead some historians to believe that the whole thing was some sort of elaborate double bluff, to keep attention away from the real 'funnies', tested more covertly in Suffolk.

A couple of weeks ago, as part of the Appledore Book festival a replica was launched on the same stretch of Westward Ho beach - and thanks to 'elf 'n' safety restrictions it was much less hair-raising, but still spectacular.

The Crow Road

Near Barnstaple in North Devon are the Braunton Burrows, the largest sand dune system in the British Isles, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve. It's a huge, wind-washed tract of marram grass, dandelions and purple thyme where it's easy to get lost among the sandy hills and gorse and swooping, trilling skylarks. In 1943 this area was selected by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Thompson of the US Army as a training area for the planned allied assault on Normandy. What became know as the US Assault Training Centre was temporary home to thousands of young Americans, living under canvas, in Nissen huts and billeted in nearby villages. The bumpy track from the Burrows car park is still known locally as the American Road and leads to an open area of grass and dunes where this dummy landing craft still stands.  There are four or five others - some with wartime graffiti - which are slowly being reclaimed by nature. These concrete replicas of 'Higgins Boats' were used by troops to rehearse what they'd be doing in deadly, bloody earnest on Omaha and Utah beaches 65 years ago, almost to the day.

Metalheads

I started college just when the Apple Macintosh was coming in as a viable tool for the print industry. A typical day's study would have us getting familiar with the astonishing Mac II in the morning, and then handsetting metal type or gloriously tactile woodface in the afternoon. I've spent the last 20 years using Macs, but In a post-computer wasteland I could still set a galley and lock it into a Heidelberg 'windmill' platen, should the need arise.

Other than craft printers like the almighty Alan Kitching, it's rare to see any sort of new analogue printing. Two of the last places to use woodface and moveable metal type were circus posters and, somewhat bizarrely, the signs for polling stations put up at election time. Recent sightings confirm that both of these have now entered the digital age.

Supping a pint of Cousin Jack on my last visit to Appledore's Coach And Horses, my eye was drawn to Bideford rugby club's fixture poster. To my delight I noticed that it was all set in metal - and at the top there in red - a woodface.

The advert up the side for Apex brought back memories of my first proper job. As a stopgap between further and higher education I worked as a 'finished artist' at a family owned printers in Bradford. Because I could draw, I often had to knock up just this type of illustration. My artwork would be made into letterpress plates and printed on Victorian machines in the basement. It was a dismal place to work. I stuck it out for 18 months before I announced that I was off back to college. The boss sacked me on the spot and he could have justifiably booted me out of the door, but he wished me well and gave me the equivalent of a week's wages from his own pocket.

It's still the worst job I've ever had. The reasons are very many, but one is the time the boss's son came in and told us we couldn't have an expected (and much needed) pay rise because he'd bought himself, his wife and his daughters new cars instead. Sorry, lads.

Anchorage

My good pal Stu had his stag do on saturday. The original plan was to start the day with a few jars somewhere, and then shoot some clay pigeons. Someone who'd been to university rather than art college then pointed out that firearms+booze=widows, so we kicked off the day at All Star Lanes in Shoreditch instead. This was my first visit to this convincing replica of 50s Americana, and I fully expected the bar to serve the bland megabooze so often associated with this sort of place. Yes, there was a tap of Coors Light - but next to it was Anchor Steam from San Francisco, and in front of a veritable Manhattan skyline of cocktail mixers was a bottle of Taylor's Landlord - the first time I've ever seen a bottle behind a London bar.

I've had bottled Anchor Steam, but it didn't make much of an impression on me. This draught stuff was glorious - a deep copper colour and a perfect balance of hops and malts with light, buttery notes. Just a superb beer for a hot day, and I found myself wishing it was easier to find. When I'm out on the pop in summer, I don't always want a cellar-temperature ale and most chilled alternatives in an average british boozer aren't even worth considering. Strongbow? Stella? Meh.

It was such a refreshing change to visit somewhere with a bit of imagination. Typically, a trip to the bar of any leisure venue from bingo to cinema confronts you with the choice of Fosters, Guinness or - God help us - John Smith Smooth.



(I didn't have my camera with me - so here's a picture of the Anchor on Appledore Quay, Devon)

Lazy Blogging, Part 8.

Empire Of The Sun: We Are The People

Back In The Day

We're having windows fitted, which meant transplanting all my books to the other side of the house. One upside to this chore was finding a drawing book that I thought I'd lost years ago. When we lived in pre-gentrified Bethnal Green back in the 90s, there were a lot of "characters" knocking around, and I'd do my best to sketch them. Be gentle. I did indeed go to art college, but drawing from life was never my best subject.


"Outside the Carpenters Arms, Cheshire Street, playing for the sunday market. Unconvincing 'old soldier' outfit made from a bus driver's cap and bits of a a postman's uniform. Cap badge and medals made from tin foil "


"The glass collector at the Old George, Bethnal Green Road. The George is known locally as "Kempy's" after the guv'nor Tommy Kemp, the image of Chas Hodges. The glass collector is a grumpy ex-merchant seaman - and never grumpier than the night we saw him ejecting a group of drunk Russian sailors."


These are figures from Bethnal Green Road market - the figure at the bottom left was the perma-singing proprietor of the bag stall opposite the Old George. At the first sign of sun he'd whip off his shirt, revealing a large beer gut. The guy on the right was a body builder who I'd see waddling around almost every day. He had muscles in his face.


"Homeless man, clearly mentally ill. Sleeps in bus shelter on Bethnal Green Road. Holds long whispered conversations with his hand and spends his days around the Bagel Shop. Looks almost like a shadow or silhouette"


"Our neighbour, Reg [a lovely old diamond geezer if ever there was one]. He has a broken nose and is very dapper. He was born in a house on the very spot our flats are now on [I seem to remember his house was destroyed in the Blitz while Reg was in the navy]. I'd love to ask him how his nose got flattened"

1919-2009

It wasn't easy being a young biker in the early 60s. You might have a Norton Dominator with Rita Tushingham on the back, but good luck finding somewhere that would serve you a frothy coffee. Society was in high dudgeon over these leather-clad tearaways blasting past Middle England's Rover P4s on the way to Margate. As if that wasn't bad enough, Mods wanted to throw deckchairs at them when they got there. There were sanctuaries of course - Watford's Busy Bee café, on the "norf circ" there was The Ace and down in Hackney Wick, there was the 59 Club. This was founded - in '59 - by Reverend John Oates as the youth club of the Eton Mission. Somehow, Rev Oates persuaded Cliff Richard and Princess Margaret to open the club, which became hugely popular. Working at the Mission at the time was Reverend William Shergold, who in 1962 saw an opportunity to reach out to these bequiffed pariahs causing havoc on the nation's arterial routes. Rev. Shergold had been a motorcyclist since arriving in London during the Blitz, and on visits to places like the Ace was able to talk to the bikers as an equal as he handed out leaflets; "I just had a chat and invited them to my church". Soon ton-up kids were riding from all over the South East to visit the 59 club with its jukebox and coffee machine, but also for services at the Mission where there were blessings of both riders and machines. The bikers were welcome at the 59, not shunned. At one stage the club was the largest of its type in the world, with a three year waiting list. "Father Bill" (pictured above in leathers and dog collar) died on May 17th aged 89, no doubt happy in the knowledge that the 59 club is still going strong.

I may be a heathen, but riding a motorsickle along the Embankment on a deserted summer dawn is a spiritual experience indeed. And you just don't ever feel that in a car.

Missing Link

Last year my beloved Sprint Veloce failed her MOT, and shamefully I never got round to getting the work done. Apart from the engine being turned over every couple of months, Bella languished in a corner of our garden, sleeping under three waterproof tarps and a film of WD40. Neglect is bad for scooters. Water can settle on unused footboards, rotting the monocoque frame. The best thing is to keep riding them, so I finally got my ass into gear and booked Bella in at Scooterworks.

Pulling the covers off and wheeling the old girl into the road I mused that with Friday the busiest day of my working week, it wouldn't be the best time to break down. I needn't have worried. Despite me not even cleaning the carburettor, Bella awoke after a mere two prods of the kicker and a tickle of choke. The tyres were flat but soon sorted, and twenty-odd minutes later I was at Craig's untidy workshop in Bermondsey.

For the MOT Bella needed a new fork link pivot pin (me neither), the replacement of which has made not the slightest noticeable difference to the ride which remains as joyously tooth-loosening as ever. I hope we get a scooter summer this year.

Harp and Harp

I was lucky enough to be at the press preview of Terminator Salvation last night. The film looks great, with a pumping first half. However, the plot has holes big enough to park a battleship in, some wincingly corny scenes and Christian Bale trying to be all gruff and serious, but coming over as a bit sulky. Oh, and there's a submarine with a Jack Nicholson impersonator in it. The fact that the director calls himself "McG" doesn't help matters. By the time the credits rolled I was glad it was all over, and dying for a pint. We went down to The Harp where I got stuck into a fresh, fruity and hoppy St Edmunds, a beer that gets a bit of stick in some corners of the blogoshire, but I like it a lot. Head and shoulders above the rest of Greene King's products.

In one of those perfect London moments, my District Line carriage home had a girl in it playing a full-size harp and singing in a voice as clear as a Leica optic. Even the hoodies at one end of the car took their earphones out to listen.

Enjoy The Silence

William Castleman's time-lapse film of the Milky Way rising over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, USA.

If It Had To Be Done

Here we go again - Eurovision time. The yookay entry this year is Jade Ewen with It's My Time, which sounds like the national anthem of a new Baltic state. I know the British have nothing to prove about song writing and it's all a bit of a laugh, but our entry is rubbish. We deserve to lose.

The French, contrary and sensible as ever are fielding actress Patricia Kaas, who's also a multi-million selling chansonnier in the Francophone world. Her Et s'il fallait le faire is a breathy and mature song worthy of Edith Piaf or Marlene Dietrich. Tomorrow we're having a Skype-enabled Eurovision party with mates 300 miles away - I know who i'll be cheering.

Behind The Green Door

Every town has a pub that nobody seems to visit. Nobody is ever seen entering or leaving. Nobody knows anyone who's ever been in. The Lamb is Bideford's example. For the twenty-odd years I've been visiting Devon, I've wanted to visit this pub. It's in the middle of a row of Victorian terraces above the Pannier Market, an example of the fast-vanishing simple backstreet boozer. When we were down over Easter, I got my chance. On my way up Honestone Street I noticed that the faded Whitbread sign has aquired a new neighbour since I last walked past - Beck's Vier, so at least it was still trading. Bideford's pubs are in the main disappointing, as I have lamented here before. Maybe The Lamb was an undiscovered gem? The beery equivalent of finding a Shakespeare Folio on an Oxfam shelf stuffed with Jeffrey Archer?

Gingerly pushing open the door I was met with a tired 80s refit and keg beers - was one of them really Trophy Bitter? The locals round the bar were a friendly bunch, discussing darts and horse racing rather than the dead-eyed hermits I half expected. I glumly perched on a buffet and supped my freezing cold Becks before heading back to The Kings. Oh well. Nice window, though.

Hello Sailor

Considering it was the original reason that the city grew, the Thames is a criminally underused feature of London. Nowadays most shipping gets no further than Tilbury, though the odd cruise liner ties up next to HMS Belfast by Tower Bridge. Modern river traffic is pleasure craft, tour boats, the River Police and tugs pulling the city's waste to be incinerated at Chatham, so it's always enjoyable when something substantial can be seen. The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious - known to her crew as "Lusty" - is moored at Greenwich until monday, celebrating 100 years of Royal Navy aviation, so I went down early on saturday to have a look. The ship's enormous - all but 700ft long - though scale was difficult to judge until a tourist boat chugged into view. As I clicked away for the stock library I supply, I couldn't resist a shot of my '81 PX 'Dino'.

"A Charlady's Car"*

The Mini is 50 today. Apart from a flirtation with a Renault Clio, Our Lad's always driven Minis. He kicked off at 17 with a kumquat-coloured Mark III, and followed that up with a couple of Coopers in which we explored a great deal of Northern England, feeling each and every bump, stone and flattened rabbit on the road the ten-inch wheels went over. The footwells of the Mark III had to be baled out every morning if there'd been rain. In Cooper 2 we pulled away from the chip shop, heard a crack, and watched open-mouthed as the offside front wheel bounced down the road away from us. Still, we always forgave the minis, smiling as you might at the antics of an errant but loveable friend. Our Lad now drives the ruthlessly reliable BMW future-retro version after holding out for several years in disgust at the original's demise.

*Mini designer Alec Issigonis. Cinema's best-ever car chase was still a decade away.

Madchester

If you live in Manchester, you can now pay £30 to have your fingerprints taken - yes, exactly like a criminal - at a Post Office, along with 49 other types of information and stored on a central government database.

Presumably, the crooks, terrorists and illegals can carry special ID cards with a red edging.

The Streets Of London

An update: At the beginning of March I blogged about the state of the Bow Flyover, with its alarming wheel-trapping ruts on the westbound stretch. It was a very dangerous place to be on two wheels, especially the smaller ones of yer typical scooter.

After reporting the fault to Newham Council, Tower Hamlets Council, Fixmystreet, Transport For London and even London Bikers the road has been fixed. Well, I say fixed - the worst holes have had some tarmac dropped in them - but it's much better than it was. Given that nobody I spoke to had any idea who looked after the flyover, it's a minor miracle that anything's been done at all.



(pic from the Great London Rideout 2006 - which takes place on June 14th this year)

Lazy Blogging, Part 7.

Flight Of The Conchords: Business Time

New series next week!