Ad's eats: Bavarian Beerhouse, 190 City Road, London

Possibly the hardest working in London, these waiting staff are in danger of heading for deafness at an early age. They should be awarded with medals for their top service in the face such a racket.



German food, like British native food, does not seem to travel well internationally, at least not without being first maligned for being stodgy, porky and plain. Nothing wrong with any of these qualities if the food is prepared well. I've never quite understood why us Brits, of all people, should snigger at German food. We invented the pork pie after all. If you're a veggie, granted, you're going to stuggle a bit with Deutsch grub, at least with the pub grub type menu Germany is most famous for.

It was this kind of pub food we sought out when a eight of us headed into City Road for Mrs Dukc's birthday do - no, I don't reveal her age, though she is considerably older than me.

The restaurant's website describes the Beerhouse thus: "Bavarian Beerhouse is an unique
combination of excellent food, outstanding service, great German beer and fantastic atmosphere."
The description is oh so accurate, but for one thing. We'll get to that later.

Let's start with the good bits. The food at the Bavarian Beehouse is pretty authentic. I'm not exactly the widest-travelled wanderer, but I have been to Berlin twice and the food served at at the Bavarian Beerhouse tasted very much like the real deal to me.

My starter was a cheese special "Obazda Cheese" which consisted of a soft pretzel with a mixture of different cheeses which tasted like a grated cheese mixture bound together with mayo. My main was about as typically German as you can get, Munich Roast Pork. Four thick slices of butcher quality pork, in rich beer infused gravy, served with a large, gravy-soaking potato dumpling and piles of delish sauerkraut. For dessert, I had a light cinnamon-y pancake with spray-on cream. Cream aside, the cake itself was light and tasty. All in all, the food was fairly close to the perfect German experience.

After not such a promising start with the service, it got better and better, and the German waitress serving us became more efficient and polite as the evening went on. She deserved a medal for staying calm as this was one of the noisiest restaurants I've been to. I was with a bunch of blindos and therefore, only two of us could read the menu. After being told the music could not be turned down (the music being a loop of the ten "best" Christmas tracks in the world...ever" (special limited restaurant edition), I had the bellow the menu to my friends like a crazed market trader. To be honest, I was glad to get away from the noise.

The restaurant has a wide range of German beers on tap too, which I'highly recommend, the dark wheat Pauliner beer being my favourite with a rich, fruity taste, and one suspects, rather higher than you'd expect in alcohol content.

So, overall I would give this restaurant a "wait and see" verdict. I can hardly fault the food and happily give it an 8 / 10 mark. The service was pretty good too, at 7/10. I think even the world's best waiting staff would struggle under these conditions. Tables were set out five-aside 'stamtisch' style and the main clientele on the evening we appeared seemed to be office Christmas partygoers simply having a wonderful corporate time. By the end of it, I was beginning to hope that the guys sharing my air were all employees of Woolworths having the last fling before receiving their redundancy notices.

To conclude, this is s a restaurant let down by its customers. I am going to give this restaurant a "recommended" rating because I really want to like it and intend giving it another bash in January when hopefully things are back to normal. It does exactly what it says it will do on the on the tin. But Christmas party season isn't the best environment in which to relax with friends, unless the Christmas party is your own.

Information about the restaurant and its menu can be found here:

http://www.bavarian-beerhouse.com/

Food: 8/10
Service: 7/10
Environment: 2/10
Value for money: 7/10

Water Gardens, Harlow

Rather liked the way this pic I snapped of Harlow Water Gardens yesterday turned out. The big and over-bright setting sun really brings out the starkness of the “spirit of optimism” 60s buildings to the right. Wish I’d got it when things were a bit more orange later, but that’s mobile cams for ya.

It was nowhere near as dark as it looks here, but I tried to force my camera’s processing thingy to behave rather like how the old fashioned recording level control in cheap radio-cassette players worked. That halo effect around the sun I only noticed on the big monitor. Absolutely no idea what that’s all about, Alfie – some kind of lens distortion maybe?

I go, we go, Yugo. Yu-gone.

The final Yugo car is rolling off the production line today. Apart from the fact I didn’t realise these were still being built, I tried in the mid 80s, unfruitfully, to persuade my dad to buy one of these with the idea that having such an unhip car would actually make you rather hip – this does, in my experience, work, as people are secretly rather curious about things they sneer about without knowing why.

Sadly, he didn’t buy one (or indeed, a Skoda Estelle which I was equally keen to promote). However, my parents managed to own two 2CV during the late 80s/early90s so my campaign was not entirely lost, and yes, people were impressed by their flaky flapping windows and the starting handle potential of it.

MOOG PARTY TIME, or Test Card tale

As a tot, which indeed I was in the early 70s, watching the test card was about as exciting as TV got.

Well, no, that's not quite true.

There was Bod, Mister Benn, Jackanory and a shedload of BBC kids TV. Television which the Beeb at the time thought very important, so lavished millions of pounds at making pretty decent. However, on those luxurious days where you were either sick/pretending to be or for when friends weren't around, you could sit, preferably huddle, under a duvet - and watch, or rather listen to - the Test Card. This was a thing which I doubt exists anywhere in the world today. There is no need. Tellies are too reliable for their own dang good.

Also known as "trade test transmissions" these were pretty un-entertaining, in that they featured a series of coloured vertiicle lines, dots, grey squares and a coloured picture of a girl and her clown doll, playing noughts and crosses. I believe their intended purpose was to assist TV service engineers adjust colour, tint, line-roll fiddle-di-doodahs or whatever engineers did with old valve monostrosities made of finest ticky tacky wood effect. In fact, here is one:

What I most remember about test cards though was the accoompanying music. This ranged from elevator classical to orchestrated film sound tracks to the synth-tastic sound tracks by Harry Breuer, Mort Garson and other mainly unknown, unsung heroes of the synthesizer.

I can't tell you how pleased I was then I my auntie Pat (known by me since as as "Gundigatt" from the days where I could genuinely not speak, resulting from age rather than level of drunkenness) came back from a trip to Woolies with a strawberry Mivvi and this little gem. A very, very fine album it is. The thrid track, Coconut, was one of those test card tunes! Joy - I recognised it and knew, in my smug five year old brain that NO ONE ELSE had this record, or would know from whence the track came!

I can't tell you much about this album's heritage. Even the website I managed to track a copy down from has the artist as 'unknown'. According to this site, I now know it was made in in Italy in 1973, and was on the Contour record label at least in the UK, a very cheap imprint if I recall. Most of the tracks were duds and made with a simple raison d'etre: "Moogs are in and cool, let's make some contemporary rock tracks with a MOOG in them ". Simple thought process, and mainly duff songs, though no less charming for their duffness On this album was a half decent version of "Son of My Father" and a version of Popcorn which in my opinion is better in atmosphere than the Hot Butter original but whose drumming is beyond bad. Where Wendy Carlos is regarded by some as a bit of a novelty artist (but isn't) this music is also regarded as a bit of novelty (and is). But how cartoonishly glorious it is too.

Other superb synthesizer remaindered and charity shop specials can be found at this website:

http://www.basichipdigitalgold.com/moog/moog.htm

Brand and Ross - nothing a good birching couldn't fix

Back in 2000 or so, my old dad made a comment about the Weakest Link, along the lines of it’s a quiz show for bullies and does nothing other than reveal society for its wretched, Darwinian, screw-you-Jack nature. I didn’t get it. I liked the Link. I liked Ann Robinson (and having read her book, admire her all the more). However, his point stuck with me and like many others, I’ve noticed in the intervening years that society seems to revel more in humour that is not funny or worthwhile, just unkind.

Taking the mick out Ann Robinson’s evil mamma persona (or parodying it) has potential for laughs. Taking the mick of Ann Robinson’s alcoholism is NOT, in my opinion, remotely funny. To be amusing, a comedic victim needs to have made a fool out of themselves, or have displayed contradiction between practice and preach (this is why Spitting Image was such a success). Even relatively tame comedies like the Good Life kind of work because of the contradiction displayed by “people we know” or think we do.

Unkind humour can work. But for it to do so, the target must have also been careless in their bad luck. George Osborne springs to mind. Not just unlucky, but stupidly so.

So, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been publicly exposed for leaving rude messages on Andrew Sach’s answerphone suggesting one of them was shagging his grand-daughter.

What smart cookies they are.

What heroes of comedy.

I bet they slapped themselves on the back for this piece of wit.

And what, pray tell, has Mr Sachs done to deserve such a “witty” verbal missive? Has he made some derogatory comments about either of these two losers in the past? Has he committed an act of paedophilia? I’m not aware of anything.

They are freaking bullies, plain and simple. And for anyone who did find it funny…would you feel the same if it was your granddad?

Andrew Sachs = a comic great and a nice, old guy.

Ross and Brand = over-paid celebri-twats with who really, really should know better but who have probably never been told to shut up. I hope they get given the birch. Then get given the boot.

And I hope that when they are sacked, that anyone thinking they are clever enough to pull a similar stunt get the message loud and clear.

Stockholm holiday: goodbye

Here is a picture of the rather funky Arlanda Express. Groovy and expensive. However, it does exactly what it says on the tin - it gets you to the airport quickly and runs very regularly, so a nice, invisible service. But at £12 each way - there are no returns available - for at 15 mile trip it is twice as expensive as the Stansted Express which I regard as complete rip-off mile for mile.

Carly's blog

Daughter Daggersdukc has her own blog.

To read the the angst-ridden ramblings of an early 20something check this out.

http://catchcarly.blogspot.com/

Makes me feel old.

Hellooooo, I AM old.

Polar bread: a sort-of epilogue to Stockholm

I found a shop just off Oxford Street where not only can you find a small cafe, but also a range of Scandi food to take away, including sweets, cans of pop and a slightly larger range than the average IKEA. I couldn't resist buying some Polar bread, which, I suppose can be described as a cross between Ryvita - the lumpy bumpy texture - and mexican tortilla bread, as it is soft and flexible.

Delicious stuffed full of ham, mustard and mayo.

I loved it.

Up the junction? Nope, down the basin

I had reason to visit Paddington Basin, or Paddington Central as it has been dubbed, just behind Paddington Station (which turns the name into a bit of an oxymoron). While everything was lush and sweet and ticked all the boxes for the ideal corporate location, eg, sushi bar - check; Starbucks - check; anono-corporate hotel - check; Italian restaurant (albeit a chain) - check, I couldn't help but think that I really wouldn't like to work here. I'd rather work here than some industrial estate hellhole or the arse end of Mumbai (I'm sure Mumbai has some areas which look uncannily like Paddington Central/Basin too).

Its just if there is an equivilant of a corporate location of a Stepford Wife, this place is it. Canary Wharf is so brash its beautiful. Where I work on Thames Road, Barking is so ugly, its (almost) beautiful. Whereas this place has the looks of a supermodel, and the personality to go with it. To paraphrase Simply Red, it was was beautiful...but oh so boring. By the way, Simply Red only made two decent records, Money's Too Tight and A New Flame. Just my opinion.

See what you think of the Basin.

Stockholm holiday: greenery

Stockholm is a city of greenery, regarding both the "save the planet" type and the actual amount of publicly available chlorophyl. There is a ridiculously large amount of green spaces, parks, forests and below, an city-centre island which is a national park. Some pictures of Stockholm's parks and green spaces, then.

Here's a shot of the island park.



And below, a wilder part of the same place. Almost no-one passed us by for the hour we were here, while Mrs DD tried to persuade her phone's GPS software that we weren't in Malmo. One month later, and despite getting the names of locations correct, it still occasionally insists she's in that Swedish city.



A rather ornate building by the river.



This would be destroyed in just about any other city I've been to, but within a rather residential area of town, we came across this gorgeous fountain. I can picture the beer cans shopping trollies here. Fortunately for Stockholmes, it doesn't seem to happen to their public fountains.



A shortage of household junk within the public greenery is pretty rare - in fact, littering as a whole doesn't seem to exist at all. Unfortunately, at least for the unsuspecting Londoner, fitness and jogging especially is a public pass-time, though I'm not sure how long this would go on into the winter. With those crazy Scandy types being so used to the cold, they probably just don a Neoprene-type jacket and do it anyway.

Future tube trains

I travelled to Euston station today, in order to see a mock-up of the new S stock trains being built for the Met, Hammersmith & City, Circle and District Lines.

They are Muvo type trains, as used, I do believe, in the Berlin S-bahn services as well as in Shanghai and Madrid. They've been customised for the specific needs of London to some extent.

My impressions:

Good: Room under seats for bags, cases, dogs etc. Nice lighting. Air con (at last), colour scheme is pleasant, though nondescript.

Bad: Not enough seats, especially on the Met. Seats are rather hard, but we seem to have lost the art of designing comfort into seats these days.

As for the ride, we'll see when they start running. Track is being upgraded all over the tube to the point where it can be rather hard to plan your weekend's travel. Thank goodness for the recession.

Some pictures of the mock-up taken on my phone are below.





I was told that acceleration on these S stock chuffers should be like that of the Central Line once the old A stock Met lines have been removed entirely from services. These old trains, though big, fusty and rather comfortable, take a bit of time to get moving. The District Line D stock refurbs are a bit like these, so it will be interesting to see the innovations which occur between now the last batch of these going online during 2015.

Only in Britain...

....would Big Brother spy cameras be viewed as a 'facility'.

Gee, thanks for that. I'll have a prison and maybe a couple of politicians with that.

Spotted at Eastleigh station near Southampton.

Stockholm holiday: Suburbia

Some contrasting suburbs here.

Firstly, a picture at the end of the green line (Hogas-something). This felt a bit scummy though I'm sure its pretty safe. There seemed to be more kids running around here.


And, taking the green line again, this time to Alvik, then at the end of the number 12 tram, here is a rather pleasant 'burb.

I wouldn't mind living here - the houses, even the flats were nice and large, and relatively low density compared the suburbs at the end of the metro lines we journeyed to. The tram, unlike every other form of Swedish transport we encountered, was a prime relic of the 50s, with a very loud low-geared motor which sounded like it was being controlled by switchgear made in someone's garden shed. Great to know this kind of transportation still runs, as it has all but disappeared (albeit slowly) from Britain.

Stockholm holiday: taking the hiss

A "hiss" in Swedish is an elevator. The one shown in first pic is quite a high one, going up the side of a building (which itself is on the side of a cliff). Below is the hiss itself, taken at dusk, and some views of the city taken from it the next day when it was running.

Stockholm holiday: Savile Row and the Kultur-al hub

Here are some pictures I took of central Stockholm.


Bus stop. Where the frig is the tram. We waited for while. It didn't come. This was just after doing the boat trip.

I'm flattered by the fact that this fashion shop has borrowed the famous street where tailor made suits are made in London. I also like the postcode, which of course should be W1.


This place, a building full of cinemas and theatres, really reminded me of Alexanderplatz. Now, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, before 1992 looked like a concrete shopping precinct, knocked up in the average British town around 1968 in order to add a modernist yet cosmopolitan look and feel. I grew up with such centres (the one in Uxbridge was until the mid 80s an appealing concrete carbuncle which I honestly liked a great deal. This has nothing to do with Sweden, except the area around the Central Station brings me back to those heady days of 1976 before we discovered marble. Wonderful and extremely nostalgic. OK, this is its a bit posher than the Arndale Centre, Wandsworth - but only just. You know the druggies are only a few steps away, and if this were a town in England, they would be there by fountains injecting themselves or passing round the can of Tennants Super.

Nearly gone

Three days after the last shot ("A good bashing") this is how the Thames View flats appeared at 9 this morning.

Going....going...

Graduation, party, pies, crap journey

Had a busy few days. On Friday, we saw Daughter Daggers Dukc graduate. I’d publish a piccy of this, but I wouldn’t want to compromise her anonymity.

A very proud moment for daddy and mummy Dukc.

Spent the remainder of Friday in Oxford with my mum- and sister-in-law and two dukcs and discovered The Grapes pub, an easy going amble from Gloucester Green. Highly recommended for its food, price and super-friendly landlady. She runs a very tight ship indeed. The two meals for £9 offer is beyond belief in such an expensive city.

Later that day, headed from Oxford the Brummingham for a friend’s party on the Saturday, staying at a Travel Lodge – more on that and the Little Chef next door in a separate entry methinks. Saturday was completed with a trip to Wolverhampton for a few beers followed by the party itself.

Finally, spent Sunday eating a culinary delight at the Mad O’Rourke’s Old Pie Factory, a legendary eating spot in the West Midlands. Mrs DD struggled with, but wolfed down whole the famous Desperate Dan Pie (picture below) and I had the Bob Marley pie, filled with a rather peppery version of jerk chicken (lots of good quality chicken, quite spicy). Unlike the cow pie this pie is somewhat diminutive, so if you should ever find yourself in the Dudley area, and you’ve a hunger on, go for the Desperate Dan. More on this mythical beast, and the pub itself, below.

www.madpies.co.uk


That pie really gives me the horn


I realise this place deserves a full review, and I will write up one when and if I get the time to do so.

After the cow pie experience we then had to get home from the Pie Factory in Tipton, near Dudley. Dudley to London isn’t a neighbourhood trip, but don’t see how you could do this more slowly other than by walking it. So, for the record, here’s last night’s trip home in full detail.

Getting home was deep phun. That’s the extreme version of fun with a P H. The kind of phun you get when a beloved brother dies or you wake up thinking it’s a Sunday morning, only to remember that Sunday didn’t register because of an extended hangover, and it is in fact a Monday. And 9.30am. You have to say it with a heavy, heavy dose of irony. PPPHHHHUN.

In fact you could say that the phun just went on and on….and on and on and on and on and on and on. And on. And phuncking on. Here’s our phun then.

1500 – waited for bus to Dudley by Pie Factory.

1520 – bus came (no. 300, an old L registered Dart)

1540– 126 bus to Birmingham from Dudley bus station.

1620 – arrived in Birmingham New Street

1800 – coach arrived (we could not get one before then as they were all booked up). There weren’t any cancellations.

1830 – the “1800” coach ended up being the 1830. Coach full of Ilford chavs, who actually turned out to be quite nice, helping Mrs DD o the khazi and not stealing our rucksacks.*

2045 – Arrival – Golders Green

2115 – Monument. District delayed, but one turned up. After 15 minutes. No announcements or explanations, other than letting us know that the clockwise Circle line was not running. We tried to care. And failed.

2138 – at Tower Hill, driver announced that there was no replacement bus service between Barking and East Ham because of an accident in the area which was blocking everything up. A pain, but he probably saved us a joint suicide attempt.

2148 – Fenchurch Street, C2C station. We miss the connecting train, which runs parallel to the District Line. Because of the District engineering, was set to run a limited service of half hourly, by 3 mins.

2215 – C2C leaves for Barking.

2240 – Bus replacement picks us up.

2255 – Bus replacement arrives at DaggersDukc East.

2302 - We get home.


Please note that the last time I travelled by coach, my lovely leather jacket was stolen from beneath my seat as I slept for 15 seconds. Needless to say, I was deeply upset, and 20 years later, still bear the scars, despite trauma counselling and many bottles of Holsten Pils. And the arsehole that got off between Middlesbrough and Sunderland – I hope the spirit of he cow from which the jacket was hewn rose up and throttled you with its skin as you bragged to your friends about how smart you were.

Stockholm holiday: boat cruise

We took a boat trip around and about the canals and rivers of Stockholm and these are some of the views- actually I wish I'd remembered to take my camera out earlier, as there was some particularly mournful shots to be taken under the bridges at Slussen.

I did manage to capture a few pictures of some waterside apartments - OK, I hate the word, I'm British, and I meant FLATS. I actually rather like this design which seems to appearing in every city where young wealthy singletons or couples live - the London papers are full of identikit models.



And here is the inside of the boat itself. I'm glad the Swedish flag is on board - in England some dickhead would accuse the boat owner of being racist or something sad. Unless you carry the politically OK (just about) Union Jack.

A good bashing

We interrupt our coverage of Sweden to bring you a few pictures of some flats, specifically those on the Thames View Estate in Barking, being bashed to bits. Took these on my way into work this morning. I wonder if this will still be there on Monday?

That pink paint job in one of the rooms is most interesting. Was it a kid's bedroom, perhaps?

Stockholm Holiday: A right proper estate

Now, there are ways to build a communist style estate. If you were communist, naturally you'd plonk 40 identical tower blocks, put a windswept motorway between them and the tube station and make sure the shops were an inconvenient walk away, and probably ensure that they weren't worth getting to due to lack of stock anyway. That's once you've negotiated the perimeter of the steelworks. People would kill themselves or attempt to obtain high cholesterol alcohol to cope with the daily grind.

However, the Swedes had a different idea. Built 'em nice. Build them with fountains. Put greenery everywhere. Include kids by putting playgrounds in view of the flats, and make sure all the rusty bits and splinters get removed regularly. And what's wrong with a little local dining at places you don't mind going to? And the steelworks? Yes, it exists. Except its a high technology area called Krista, just up the road, with the Swedish HQs of Ericsson and IBM at its centre.

If you're going to do mass housing, you may as well do it right. And Stockholm has. Rarely have I been to a housing estate which feels less like a dumping ground for what the local authority considers its problematic inhabitants, and more of a haven for the kind of middle class people (or those aspiring to be middle class) who wouldn't admit to living in a council flat over here. If our council flats were built to these standards and boasted such facilities, our national obsession with being a so-called home owning democracy would be made a nonsense.

Greenery outside the station. Is it a park?



No, its a housing estate.




And just to prove graffiti exists in the Stockholm 'burbs, this message was found taped to the pissoir in the restaurant at which we'd just consumed a delicious meal.

Stockholm Holiday: Rocky Rails

Here are some pictures taken at Morby Central metro station.

The walls may be carved out of the rock, but the station is thoroughly modern. No dripping water here (unlike in London!)

And here's a mural, found in the same station.

Stockholm holiday: the hotel

Our hotel was a closed-down swimming pool. Apparently, the Stockholm local authority is building, or indeed, has built, a replacement elsewhere. I can imagine this pool being a rather fine place to have swum at, surrounded as it is by a small park and centrally located for convenience. Still, it served rather well as a hotel - apparently the rooms were the original pool changing areas.

Mrs D is on the bed to give a sense of scale. It was taken with my backside pressed against the door, so size is certainly on the New York model of hotel rooms. No mod cons here, not even a cupboard or wardrobe. I have to say though that the beds were extremely comfortable, and it was immaculately clean. Seeing as this was a budget hotel, by Swedish standards at least, we were pretty pleased with it overall, once we abandoned the idea of getting a hotel for our money - more a very well-run hostel.

Stockholm holiday - Arrival

We appeared in the city at about midnight after taking the expensive Arlanda Express train from the main airport. After faffing around at T-Centraalen interchange, we found our route to Odenplan station, and a short walk onwards to our hotel.



This was our view en route. I love the street lighting here, mercury vapour lamps which cast a white-purple glow over the street - you don't see these too often in London any more, though they used to festoon Walthamstow and parts of West Drayton and Harmondsworth near Heathrow, until the mid-80s.

I bet these look rather magical shining on winter snow.

Stockholm holiday - intro

After baiting my breath for many weeks, my beloved wifey surprised me by informing me that the trip we were about to undertake for our annual wayzgoose was in fact one to a city I've wanted to go to since 1976, when I purchase out of my own hard won cash, Arrival by Abba. It took me an age to to save enough to buy this classic album from Woolies in Southall, at I think, £2.79, but my seven year self had just had a birthday, which must have helped considerably. I played the eponymous track and was blown away. Scaring my sis by playing "I Am the Tiger" on our shared record player, while she slept in bed was also a bonus. The "bad thing" creeping through the city streets was never so musically delciious.

The album cover proclaimed that it had been recorded at Polar Studio, Stockholm, Sweden. Alas, the studios are no more, driven out by high rents in this expensive city, but Stockholm itself is a wonderful place despite this.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting some photos taken on my phone. To call these unusual is possibly over-egging the pudding somewhat, but there are only a few touristy shots. Stockholm is renowned for its art and fashion. I don't see enough to really get art, unless it i in my face, and we're too old and cumudgeonly to care much about goings-on in the fashionista world. So there are going to be unfashionable suburbs and occasional shots of metro stations.

The De La Warr

During my short break a few weeks ago, I travelled the short journey to Bexhill on Sea near Hastings where I took some photos of the De La Warr pavillion, a modernist masterpiece - yep, I know using descriptions like "modernist masterpiece" is a cliche. So is calling it land-locked cruise liner, though this is what it resembles externally. I love the curves, the whiteness of it, the fact it is parked by the sea. Wonderful 30s architecture, still looking good thanks to an expensive and sensitive refurb. A lovely bit of art deco.

Some of my photos, shot on the N82, are below.