Category: Food & Drink

I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

Wells-next-the-Sea was the venue for this year’s works outing with Jo Parfitt, my partner in crime and the force of nature who is Summertime Publishing. We love a day out at the seaside when the weather’s set fair. Getting there was a bit of adventure in itself. The first stage was a stately railway journey through the ripe fields, reedy wetlands and sleepy hamlets of North Norfolk. My sedation was only interrupted when I spotted the large station sign at Gunton. Well, it didn’t look like a G to me. The two-carriage train deposited us at Sheringham, a bucket and spade resort where undertakers and vets never go out of fashion. Then onto a little bus for a white knuckle ride along the curvy coast, through flint and stone villages with impossibly narrow streets called ‘Old Woman’s Lane’ and the like. There was little time to admire the view. I held on for dear life, wishing I’d worn Pampers.

Well-heeled Wells is a gorgeous little resort and working port surrounded by pine forests, sandbanks and saltmarshes. We lunched aboard the Albatros, a genuine Dutch cargo ship serving up fake Dutch pancakes. They were delicious. The tide must’ve been out because the boat had a distinct starboard list; I felt quite tipsy even before a drop had passed my lips. Happily, I managed to regain my sea legs after half a bottle or so. We didn’t make it down the agenda to the 2016/17 marketing strategy. We got stuck on gossip. Can’t think why.

The train back to Norwich was packed with sunburnt kiddies and lively country cousins out on the lash. The painted ladies opposite shared shots of raspberry liqueur and a Bottecelli babe squeezed into the aisle next to me. As the crowd nudged past, the shapely Norfolk broad fell off her heels and tipped her ample rack into my face.

‘My, my,’ I said. ‘A total eclipse.’ How she laughed.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On, Hip-Hip-Hip Hurray

The Sun Has Got His Hat On, Hip-Hip-Hip Hurray

Lunchtime at the Iron House Brasserie on St John Maddermarket is an egg lover’s heaven – Florentine, Benedict, Royale, fried, scrambled, poached, omeletted – you pays your money, you takes your choice free-range wise. Being contrary in lunch as well as in life, we plumped for the dish of the day instead, a spicy lamb burger with a distinctive Turkish twist washed down with tap water and a fruity Sauvignon Blanc. The venue is classy but unpretentious, the staff attentive but unintrusive. All in all, a fun gig.

After the first bottle, we got the taste. Well, you do don’t you? The sun had got his hat on putting everyone in a bright mood so we opted for a boozy crawl home, first to the Sir Garnet  then on to the Champion. I took a few snaps along the way.

Liam was a tad tipsy by the time we fell through the front door of our micro-loft and was snoring like a whoopee cushion by 9pm. ‘Tis my cross to bear.

Mercury Rising

Mercury Rising

Let’s face it, spring is a bit of a hit and miss affair across these islands so it pays to take full advantage when Mother Nature turns up the heat. As soon as Liam returned from family duties in London I bundled him onto a bus for the short hop to Thorpe St Andrew, a pretty riverside spot a mile or three outside town. With Roman scraps, a Scandinavian place-name and a mention in the Domesday Book, the hamlet has ancient roots. Sadly, little survives to this day. Even the church is Victorian Gothic Revival though some ruins of its medieval predecessor, destroyed by fire, still stand.

Thorpe St Andrew is where people go to feed swans and muck about in boats on a sunny day. It’s also where people like me watch people feeding swans and mucking about in boats on a sunny day – from the comfort of a riverside watering hole. So that’s what we did.

Walkers, birders and water sports devotees can catch the little ferry from Thorpe Green to the Whitlingham Country Park, gateway to the Norfolk Broads. There’s no bar there so we gave it a wide berth. Next time, we’ll charge up the hip flask first.

Dirty Weekend

Dirty Weekend

What better way to celebrate our ‘salt’ wedding anniversary than a trip to the seaside for a dirty weekend? We were chauffeured to Gorleston-on-sea in decadent style by a pair of old Norwich rascals (you know who you are), necking fizz all the way in the back of their Mercedes Benz. Our luxurious room with a sea view came courtesy of my sister and the celebratory bottle of red on the Cliff Hotel terrace came courtesy of Liam.

Just a little bit
Just a little bit more
And a little bit more

Mother Nature, a contrary old bag round these parts, was in a bright mood for a change so we were all set for fun on the sand and frolics in the boudoir. The rest I leave to your vivid imagination.

Gorleston Beach from the Cliff Hotel
The North Sea at Gorleston
Gorleston Beach
Liam Brennan at Gorleston
Jack Scott on Gorleston Beach

Alas, we were four months too late to catch a performance of ‘Sindaz’ the adult panto, giving a whole new meaning to the line, ‘he’s behind you’.

SindazSo we squandered a few quid in the penny arcade instead. And what did we get for our coppers? A cuddly toy, obviously. We called him Gallstone.

Gallstone

Short and Curlies

Short and Curlies

My fifties are my contented years. Happy in life and at home, my banner waving days are behind me and I’m resigned to the advent of liver spots and erectile dysfunction disguised by the haze of creeping alcohol dependence. Apparently, there is a growing national problem with over-drinking by older people, or so say the health police. I’d say that’s the least of our worries. The real issue is the shrinking band of underpaid carers struggling to cope with a growing grey herd put out to pasture. Now, that’s something to leave a nasty taste in the mouth. I might just have to drink through the whole crisis.

Red and White WineOne of the least attractive aspects of growing old is daily moulting – and not just from the head. To be frank, I’ve always kept my borders well manicured but hardly a day goes by without the bathroom being overwhelmed by tumbleweeds of short and curlies drifting around the floor. So, I’ve invested in a nifty little hand-held vacuum cleaner to suck up the hairy debris. It makes short work of the problem though I do have to get down on my knees to do the job. Let’s face it. One day I won’t be able to get back up again.

In the meantime, make mine a large one.

On the House

Haymarket 7Pret a Manger, a national chain of coffee houses, has one solitary outlet in Norwich. It’s distinguished by the fact that it is one of the few venues in the city with a place in the sun during the afternoons. Bright days are too few to waste so I take full advantage of their £1 filter coffee and sunny aspect whenever I’m able. Pret is also distinguished by the fact that they don’t have a formal loyalty scheme. You know the kind of thing – swipe this, stamp that, tells us  everything and we’ll give you a free crappafrappachino with every grand spent and we promise not to sell on your personal data to the Russians (yer, right). Instead, staff are encouraged to give away a free beverage to patrons whenever the mood takes them. It’s company policy. Back in the day, I was a regular beneficiary of a Pret freebie when I ordered my morning fix every weekday and 8:45. I like to think it’s because I looked quite the cock of the queue in my sharp business suit. Nowadays, my bargain bucket look goes unnoticed in Pret. At least that was I thinking last time I offered my pound coin to the nice young man with the hairy chest and pony tail. But then he said,

On the house.

Vicious!

Vicious!

Vicious

Norwich life is enriched by regular soirees of beer and banter with a well-preserved couple who have been together since God was a toddler. They will remain nameless to spare their blushes. We’re the same generation and witter on endlessly about the good-old, bad-old days, the state of the nation and who will change our nappies during the bewildered years. It’s a fun and fruity gig.

Last time we met, we all fell into conversation with the pot man collecting a forest of empty glasses from our table. It turned out he was a student at the University of East Anglia working his way through a PhD in Medieval History. He was also gay, clever and quick witted. The young buck took one look at the four old codgers and quipped,

God, it’s like staring at my future. An episode of Vicious.*

Well that put us in our place. You’ve got to love the young.

*Vicious is a recent high camp, hit-and-miss TV sitcom featuring a couple of elderly theatrical types starring a couple of old thespians, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen.

Man About the House

We’re always grateful when old friends spend their hard-earned cash on a pilgrimage to their country cousins, particularly as this invariably means the expense of a hotel stay. Cute as it is, the micro-loft is way too micro for topping and tailing, especially for those in their midriff years who prefer private douching facilities for those intimate moments. Just recently, we’ve had an embarrassment of callers. First on the Norwich trail were a couple of old drinking partners from the Smoke who last graced the city with their designer wear in April. As future exiles to Catalonia, we knew they were partial to a tapas or two, so when a new tapas restaurant called East Twenty Six opened to rave reviews we thought we’d give it spin. The setting was impressive but, sadly, the food was not. We drowned our sorrows in a nearby late night boozer, a place that was once Norwich’s only Irish-themed pub. Delaney’s has now been gutted and relaunched as St Andrew’s Brew House. Whereas Delaney’s oozed fake Oirish ambience with a landlady from Hell, the Brew House now boasts an über-trendy micro-brewery and has been branded to within an inch of its life. Very Shoreditch, apparently.

The next day, like ships that pass in the night, the old reprobates from London exchanged brief pleasantries with our next callers who had driven up from the coiffured hills of Sussex. Jacqueline and Angus have been friends of mine for donkey’s years and brought with them their coffee-coloured Labrador for a spot of dog-walking around the city. After an exhaustive saunter and with Ruby safely tucked up in the loft with an assortment of dog biscuits, dinner was courtesy of Jamie’s Italian. It was delicious. But really Jamie, that much for a bit of pasta?

Angus is a hands-on DIYer with an impressive collection of tools and when I mentioned we were having a bit of bother with a sticking flush, he was at it like a rat up a drain pipe.

A little WD40 will soon sort that out.

And it did. It was good to have a man about the house.

Elvis Has Entered the Building

The Sir Garnet public house is a well-placed Norwich watering hole overlooking the multi-coloured market. Originally called the Baron of Beef, the pub was renamed in 1874 in honour of Sir Garnet Wolseley, one of those Victorian thugs who terrorised the natives in far flung lands for imperial glory, a trunk-load of military bling and a title from a grateful old Queen. These days, the trendy hostelry dishes up superior pub-grub sourced whenever possible from market traders. Particular favourites of ours are the chef’s plump sausage rolls. Moist and morish, they’re a tasty way to soak up the alcohol of a liquid lunch. You can feel your arteries harden with every bite. Our visits to the Sir Garnet are usually pleasantly uneventful. That was until we were entertained by a pantomime of supping Elvis impersonators in every shape, size, age and sex, all dressed as the King during his hamburger years. I’ve never understood the enduring appeal of Mr Presley or his trick hips but it made for an amusing afternoon. Now, what is the collective noun for group of Elvis lookalikes on a piss-up? A thrust? A bell bottom? A graceland maybe? Or my personal favourite, a pelvis of Elvis’?

The Three Witches

The Three Witches

Comptons of SohoA while back, I took a little trip to the big city to catch up with old friends, a regular gig and a tradition going back years. It’s what we call the witches coven, a time to conspire, bitch and stir the pot without the distractions of coupledom getting in on the act. We leave our significant others at home to do the washing up. I’d like to claim it’s a carnival of sparkling wit and profound insight but the excess tends to dull the repartee.

I waited for the coven to convene in Comptons, a Soho bar of some infamy and a regular haunt of my dance hall days. I was early and ordered a pint. Little has changed at Comptons down the years but bog standard beer has been cynically replaced by premium ales with premium prices to match. Even by Soho’s inflated tariffs, the cost is extortionate; I’ve been on cheaper Ryanair flights. It was ever thus. Having a gay old time has always come at a price.

As ever, the beefy bar staff were useless. Getting served at Comptons is like a game of chance and what little change you get back is shunted towards you in a plastic tray, a kind of begging bowl for the minimally waged. Company policy, I assume. Us Brits tend not to tip bar staff but I suppose the ruse works with unsuspecting tourists. I scooped up my coppers and found a quiet spot to sip my beer, thumb through the gaypers and wait for my fellow witches to arrive. Before long, a young Asian man sidled up next to me and began a nervous conversation. From his awkwardness and stuttering babble, I guessed he was a Soho novice. To the uninitiated, even the oppressed can be oppressive and I knew from experience that being gay and Asian doesn’t always make a great cocktail. I was more than happy to put the young whippersnapper at his ease. As it turned out, he was an air traffic controller at Heathrow. That’s all we need in these paranoid times. A jittery air traffic controller with secrets.