Christmas is almost upon us, and it’s a big deal for local businesses trying to make a few extra shillings before the January slump. As regular readers know, Liam and I like a drink or three, so we do our bit to keep the hospitality sector afloat – it’s our patriotic duty. One of our favourite city watering holes is the Gardener’s Arms (known by most punters as the Murderers), a traditional ale house stuffed with old-world charm, oak beams and exposed brickwork. The pub has a deliciously dark past – hence the nickname – and it’s usually our last port of call before we stumble onto our bus back to the village.
To drum up a bit of business, last year the jovial pub landlord posted a video on Faceache – a fantastic spoof of a scene from Love Actually, one of the nation’s favourite festive films. And it’s been posted again this year. Click on the image below. The video is a bit rude, so best move on if you’re easily offended…
Alternatively, watch it on YouTube…
If you happen to be passing the pub, be sure to pop in for a few sherries and admire the murder theme posted on the walls (Dr Crippin, Lizzie Borden, Bonnie and Clyde, Ruth Ellis, to name but a few). And the yuletide windows are pretty good too.
What better way to spend a sunny spring afternoon than a trip to the seaside? We’d never been to Southwold, the classy resort on the Suffolk coast because, without our own wheels, it’s a bit of a trek. So an equally classy neighbour took pity on us and offered to take us. We had a fine time frolicking around on the eccentric antique arcade games at the old pier, strolling along the beach and scoffing scrumptious scones topped with the must-have clotted cream and jam at the posh Swan Hotel. Liam even went for a paddle. The bracing wind blowing in from the North Sea didn’t put him off.
First mentioned in the Domesday Book* of 1086, the pretty town is notable for several things, not least a bunch of bible-bashing, buttoned-up puritans who, in 1637, emigrated to Hingham*, Massachusetts. Southwold was also the teenage home to author George Orwell. His most famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, warns of the slide into totalitarianism. I see a connection.
On a lighter note, the town is also home to the famous Adnams Brewery. These days, I prefer the grape to the grain but Liam tells me they brew a quaffable ale. The afternoon ended with traditional fish ‘n’ chips down by the old harbour. All in all, a fun day out.
Some images courtesy of Pat Jacobs.
*The Domesday Book was commissioned by that bastard William the Conqueror to price up the realm he stole.
*The Massachusetts town was named after Hingham, Norfolk, from where most of the new settlement’s first colonists came, including Abraham Lincoln’s ancestor, Samuel Lincoln. A bust of old Abe takes pride of place in Hingham’s St Andrew’s Church. The Norfolk Hingham is also where Liam worked at the medical practice for a few years to keep the wolves from the door after we returned from our Anatolian misadventures. It’s a small world.
A couple of summers ago, I wrote a tongue in cheek piece about Dwile flonking, a notorious East Anglian pub game involving two teams of twelve players, each taking a turn to girt (dance) around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) flonked (flung) by the non-girting team.
Imagine my amazement to find out that the Locks Inn Community Pub, a gorgeous country tavern in the parish of Geldeston, has resurrected the boozy ‘sport’ as a trial of strength between the north folk (Norfolk) and the south folk (Suffolk) of old East Anglia. The Norfolk pub sits on the north bank of the River Waveney looking down on Suffolk on the south side.
Alas, we didn’t find out about it until afterwards and don’t know the result but I hope the merry folk made it a good clean fight. Okay, what I really mean is I hope Norfolk flonked our rivals into the dirt. And don’t even ask about the turnip tossing.
Our double anniversary has sneaked up on us again – 19 years since our eyes met across a busy West End gay bar fit to bursting with a gossipy after-work crowd, and 17 years since we got hitched. This year, we’ve decided to push the boat out and paddle down the Seine. Yes, we’re off to gay Paree for a gay old time. For these gay old timers, this means a gentle stroll along the handsome boulevards and a big slice of café culture rather than painting the town pink in our disco pants. Our tush shaking days are long gone.
In the meantime, I stumbled across this old Faceache post written by him indoors to mark our seventh anniversary. Liam was challenged to say it all in a single sentence and he did it in style. He wrote…
Seven years ago we met in that bar in Trafalgar Square, shared that Sloppy Giuseppe and over-priced Pinot Grigio, argued about the bill, eventually went Dutch, courted for months like a pair of 1950s Catholics (for heaven’s sake), collapsed out of exhaustion into the world of jiggy-jiggy (terribly messy but strangely exciting), fell madly in love, got married (nice suits), moved in together (delicious scandal), watched the curtains twitch (mostly nets), gave up everything sensible and moved to Turkey (what was wrong with Spain?), fell in-and-out-and-in-and-out of love with an extraordinary (no, challenging, misogynistic, homophobic, primitive and God was it cold – okay I loved it) place, you writing ‘that’ book, ‘that’ book getting critical acclaim and big sales (cha-ching) but ‘that’ book largely ignored by those close to us (discuss?), coming back to look after our own (good call), becoming poor, well poor-ish (bad call), discovering the great city of Naaaarwich (nuff said), having more jiggy-jiggy (apparently unnatural, but terribly good with central heating and an injection of Radio 4 LW), re-discovering UK culture like a long lost friend but afraid to tell the expats how wonderful it was in case it came across as boastful (fine line), you becoming ‘properly’ recognised as a ‘proper’ writer (hurrah!) not to mention radio star (OMG), me re-learning Bach fugues (they are SO hard to play, even harder than Mozart, you really have no idea how my fingers ache), both of us weeping like candles at the latest Cinema City flick (okay, mostly Dame Maggie and thank God for the discounted tickets and blood-warm Merlot at the bar), getting over-excited about that converted railway carriage in miles-from-nowhere (yes, I could wash my bits in a sink with a view like that), improvising those make-shift nappies during the messy norovirus days (thank you Blue Peter and Morrison’s super-padded 2-for-1 kitchen towels, we owe you), people-watching at the Playhouse and longing to be young (clearly, we need to avoid Death In Venice comparisons here), gasping at Bonnie Langford’s amazingly flexible crack (and boy, can that Dolly can write a tooone) but most of all, keeping our focus, always, on making sure our glass is resolutely full. I’d say it’s been an extraordinary seven years, husband.
On a recent shopping and supping matinee in old Naaridge, we spent the afternoon watching the macabre horror flick The Heretic. Hugh Grant is bone-chilling as the over-courteous villain who menaces with oh-so-typical English charm as he dissects faith with a pair of nervous Mormon missionaries. Struck dumb as we left the cinema, we needed a drink to loosen the tongues and unpick what we’d just witnessed. Despite – or perhaps because of – a round or two of the Devil’s brew, we weren’t able to make too much sense of the religious experience we’d just had.
When we got back to the village, we had a final snifter at our local. A couple of likely lads in football kit were sitting at the bar. They kept looking across. We couldn’t think why at first. Usually this means one of two things – fight or fancy. Had we pulled? Fat chance at our age. Should we flee? We soon realised that what they actually fancied was the signed Norwich City FC shirt hanging on the wall behind us. Well, at least they didn’t want to beat us up.
The big screen at Cinema City flickered green – Gremins green. So that was the end of that. No matinee at the flicks for us. What’s a couple of likely lads to do instead on a damp and dismal afternoon in old Norwich town? Find a pub, of course. Down the years, we’ve supped at most city centre watering holes and one of our favourites is the Murderers on Timberhill, a traditional ale house stuffed with old world charm, oak beams and exposed brickwork. The pub has a dark past – hence the name – and it’s usually our last port of call before we stumble onto our bus back to the village.
They serve a very quaffable house wine at the Murderers, at a very good price. And quaff it we do. At the time of our visit, the bar was rammed to the crooked beams with hard-drinking young bearded types. Boisterous but good-humoured, it turns out the hairy merry men had parachuted in from the North Sea gas rigs. And the riggers were hell-bent on spreading the love by offering sambuca shots to everyone from a loaded tray. It would’ve been rude to refuse.
Not to miss a PR trick, the Murderers has stepped into Christmas with a brilliant parody of a famous scene from that perennial festive favourite, Love Actually. So folks, I give you…
For our inaugural visit to luscious Lakka on Paxos back in 2022, cash was king. Flashing the plastic in shops, restaurants and cafés was definitely frowned upon. We suspected this was a hangover from the financial crisis of the previous decade, which brought Greece to its knees. On our return trip this year, cash was still the preferred method of payment, but cards were much more widely accepted. So we mixed and matched to spread the load, settling up when we got home. Complimentary Wi-Fi was pretty much available everywhere, so wherever we ate, the code was first thing on the menu. At one particular harbourside taverna, the Wi-Fi code was:
We knew Paxos would be hot, but we didn’t know quite how sizzling. The mercury rises with each day that passes – 38 degrees and counting. Afternoons are either spent cooling off in the pool or quenching our thirst in breezy harbourside cafés watching the ebb and flow of the yachties from the fancy boats. Some struggle in and out of the small dinghies that ferry them back and forth. Yes, we do laugh – discretely.
All the Nice Boys Love a Sailor
We made an excursion – to nearby Loggos – for a spot of lunch. The bus was blissfully air-conditioned, with fares collected by a formidable Greek grandma – not a woman to trifle with. Smaller than Lakka, Loggos is every bit as cute. The swarthy fisherman we spotted gutting his catch was pretty cute too.
Sundowners
Sunsets in Lakka are glorious and best watched while sipping a stiff cocktail strong enough to put hairs on the chest. Talking of chests, our cocktail waitress has a novel way of keeping her cool – stuffing a hand-held fan down her cleavage. Village food is more hearty than haute cuisine, and the very quaffable house white is probably poured from a bucket out back. But hey, who cares? Tastes good to me.
Star Struck
Lakka isn’t quite St Tropez, so imagine our surprise when we spotted Tim Rice, he who wrote the lyrics for global musical megahits like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, among other smashes. We guessed he’d dropped anchor and jumped ship for dinner. Liam also spotted Frances de la Tour, the wonderful character actress who once flashed her tits at me in a West End play back in the seventies. All for her art, of course.
Thank you to chatty man Kostas for a memorable time and also to our wonderful Albanian chambermaid, Manuela, who has an economics degree and is fluent in three languages. Manuella works two jobs to keep food on the table for her family.
Even by the usual erratic standards of these rainswept islands, the weather so far this spring has been damp and dismal – rain, rain and more bleedin’ rain, with angry storms blowing into the meteorological mix. And it’s been unusually cold too – the central heating is still firing on all cylinders. Climate change? Don’t ask me. The owner of our local corner shop hates this weather; it’s bad for business, he says. Country life hereabouts is dominated by the grey herd and they don’t go out to graze when it’s wet, apparently.
But one advantage of all this water is that the garden has burst into action, virtually overnight. As long as Jack Frost doesn’t come a-calling we should be in for quite a show this summer, with the pansies fully perked. Here’s hoping.
A rare sunny day.
Unlike some of our fellow wrinklies, we go out come rain or shine. Afternoons spent nodding off in a riser recliner while watching Loose Women on the box is not my idea of a riveting retirement. Give it a year or two, though, and that might change. And since our favourite Norwich eatery has reopened – new and improved – after being closed for a while, we’ve popped into town a couple of times for a boozy set lunch. The Last Wine Bar and Restaurant has an extensive and eclectic wine list, and we’re always up for something a bit more than the everyday, tipple-wise. On our first visit, the prix fixe was accompanied by a cheeky little dry white from the Lebanon, and our second lunch was washed down with a full-bodied red all the way from Georgia – the country on the Black Sea, not the US state. Georgians have been cultivating grapes on the slopes of the South Caucasus Mountains for eight millennia or more, so they know a thing or two about the Devil’s brew. I’m not so sure about Georgian glass-blowing skills, though. The bottle was so fat and heavy it took two hands just to pour the plonk. Still, it didn’t stop us indulging.
Გაუმარჯოს – gaumarjos! (That's 'cheers' in Georgian, I hope.)
We fancied another pilgrimage and we settled on Peterborough in neighbouring Cambridgeshire, with its epic house of God. While I may be a dedicated heathen, I totally get that back in the days of the great unschooled, the sheer scale and splendour of such colossal erections could keep even the doubters in line. How could mere mortals create such magnificence without the guiding hand of the Almighty? So we jumped on the cross-country ‘Let’s Roll With Pride’ themed train from Norwich.
Peterborough Cathedral was originally founded sometime during the 7th century as an Anglo-Saxon monastery called Medeshamstede. The community thrived until the 9thcentury before being sacked by pillaging Vikings. To avoid any repeat of that maker-meeting misfortune, the monks enclosed a rebuilt Medeshamstede in thick stone walls, and the settlement became a ‘Burh’ – a ‘fortified’ place. The name ‘Peter’ was then prefixed to honour the monastery’s principal titular saint, and thus Peterborough was born. Or maybe a simpler explanation is that no one could actually pronounce Medeshamstede. Whatever the reason, the abbey church was finally re-consecrated as a cathedral in the 16th century when that old bed-hopping plunderer Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and pilfered their assets to pay for all those lavish royal weddings and glittering codpieces.
What you see today is mostly 12th-century Norman with a few later Gothic add-ons. As we wandered around, we could hear a heavenly choir rehearsing for an evening concert. The divine sound filled the enormous space – a holy tune amplified by superb acoustics.
A bit of a surprise was the discovery that Mary, Queen of Scots was buried in the cathedral after she lost her head for plotting against the first Queen Elizabeth. Mary got the last laugh, though. The Virgin Queen died childless and Mary’s own son, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England, thus uniting the crowns. James had his mother’s remains moved to Westminster Abbey. The rest, as they say…
Looking around a big pile works up a big thirst so afterwards we decamped to a local hostelry for a few sherries. It was called the Queen’s Head and featured, yes, you guessed it, the Queen’s head – of the second Queen Elizabeth.
Today, Peterborough often gets a bad press but we found it to be a vibrant and entertaining city with colourful characters and mouthwatering global street food. The only minor irritant was the large congregation of ‘Jesus freaks out on the street, handing tickets out for God’, as famously sung by that other great British queen, Elton John, in ‘Tiny Dancer’. But I guess these modern-day evangelical ‘monks’ are only keeping the holy vibe alive. After all, that’s how it all began.
Perking the Pansies 