The Pram Race - a very silly day indeed
Every year on Boxing Day a curious thing happens in our little village, bleary eyed and blinking in the watery winter sunshine, hundreds of brightly coloured creatures emerge from the shrubberies of
the commuter belt and commence a light-hearted circuit of the village punctuated by a drink at each of our six hostelries, in many ways it's a pedestrian carnival procession, each team of "runners" (some do run, but truthfully not many) is based around a highly decorated trolley, cart or (as originally conceived 40 years ago) pram. It is (for those of us who spend all day in the pub) a very relaxing counterpoint to the excitement of Christmas at the barn. At the request of a nephew (heavily disguised as a banana) I captured some moments on video, click on the delightful picture ( <---- over there) for the youtube link.
Labels: Cadbury, Gorilla, Oakwood, Stuffy, Windlesham Pram
The annual visit to the Pantomime, Henry Winkler in Woking, Oh no he isn't, Oh yes he flipping is !!!!
Peter Pan, some telly soap lass, very poor at flying, singing and acting and much too well-chested to be a credible 'boy who never grew up'
Mr Smee, someone else I'd never heard of, barely amusing,
and The Fonz as Captain Hook,
for those of us of a certain age,
I suspect I need to say no more to share the joy...
PS An old friend of Mrs S was in the cast, (as the delightful Tiger Lily) and she assures us that Henry, who bought end of run presents for everyone on the production is a really, really nice bloke. Excellent !
Labels: panto woking Oakwood Fonzie Hook
A weekend in Munich
My beloved brother, has now moved to Munich in lovely Bavaria and since he was unable to join us for Christmas we decided to him pay a pre-Yule visit, catch up on family stuff and allow Mrs S to indulge in a little desperately needed last minute shopping for pointless tat.
Accompanied by one of my lovely sisters and her long suffering hubby we set off to the place where a BMW is a thing to make rather than something which shouldn't be allowed out of a junction as it's probably driven by some annoying slimy rep with a tiny willy.
Our hotel, the Bayerpost was simply stunning and the all-glass bathrooms sliding glass doors, see through toilet, powered blinds and groovy lighting provided literally minutes of fun for me before Mrs S insisted that I "put your clothes back on and stop acting like a 5 year old". A pleasant meal, (an hour or two late thanks to BA) was followed by a delightful nights sleep.
The Christmas markets - how can one describe the delights on offer, basically there seemed to be three types of offering, horrible candles, incredibly sugary confectionery and 'traditional Christmas ornaments' made from "the stuff that's left when we've finished making something useful out of wood" (that may not be an exact translation from the German but I reckon it's pretty close).
What delights did Mrs Stuffy acquire? A comprehensive list would be too dispiriting but I must share with you the horrible candles, a wood-elf made out of things you would find sweeping the drive, a small deer made out of dried fewmets, a sparkly ceramic Saint Nicholas, an £85 pound Weihnachten Pyramide made out of things found whilst sweeping out the garage, an xmas tree made out of stale dough, dry fruit, grass clippings and string, (which was quite delightful and smelled really interesting after a couple of days hanging on our front door in the seasonal Christmas drizzle.)
Despite these distractions our break seemed to pass much too quickly and it seemed a shame to head off to the airport on Sunday for the flight home. BA, in their compassion, obviously also felt that we hadn't spent long enough in Germany, as we reversed back from the stand, (only and hour or two late) one of the engines fell off and the captain announced that he was off to the bar and that the couple of young ladies employed by BA in Munich to stick tickets on baggage would be only to happy to facilitate our onward journey.
Astonishingly the poor wee BA frauleins seemed to find squeezing the 200 or so grumpy passengers into the 25 remaining seats on the two remaining already severely delayed flights a bit of a logistical challenge. Luckily their manager, who for the sake of legal deniability we'll call Reg eased the entire 5 hour ordeal for all of us by hiding in his office only occasionally emerging to lie to us (admittedly this was under duress, it was apparent that he'd rather not have spoken with us at all).
I do think the British are astoundingly pleasant in such circumstances, there is no doubt that were this a group from many another nation they'd have decided that Reg needed to be lynched, or at least tarred and feathered, and acted upon that decision.
We travelling Brits however subjected him to some serious tutting, and quite a lot of arm folding and eyebrow raising.
Three hours of queuing did provide an opportunity to chat with the (still touring) bass guitarist for Wishbone Ash, Bob Skeat, a really nice chap, who was unlucky enough to get a BA flight out on the 7pm plane and would therefore have been back in Heathrow by 02:30 the following morning.
The rest of us enjoyed an enforced night in the Kempinski and an appalling buffet supper followed by a very efficient Lufthansa flight home in the wee hours of the next morning.
Lessons learned:-
- BA = not impressive.
- Wishbone Ash = still rocking and rolling.
- Christmas Markets = fun and very useful if you need a new battle-axe, some stunning gluwein, or decorations made from garden waste.
- Christmas = a time when (if you're lucky, and I am,) you appreciate family.
- Munich = pretty city, really nice place.
- BA = really not impressive at all.
glückliches Weihnachten zu allen meinen Lesern...
Labels: Bob Skeat, Christmas, Munich, Stuffy, tat, Wishbone Ash
Spot the difference...
We live, to my constant amazement and joy, in an age where it’s possible, (as we did last weekend) to turn up at an agreed location in New York, with 414 other folk, all with their baggage, be organised, packed into an airtight tube propelled and sustained by tons of highly complicated machinery, take off within a 10 minute time slot amongst dozens of other sky borne leviathans, travel thousands of miles across the roiling waves and floe-ridden wastes of the Arctic ocean and land within 100 yards of our target on a tiny, wet and windy island, within 10 minutes of the predicted time.
And quite often your baggage gets there too…
On the other hand, our premier telecoms supplier, BT can’t commit to an appointment tighter than 08:00 to 13:00 for one miserable, noisome and misanthropic engineer in a van to turn up and fix ones broadband connection (after two weeks of 'remote testing' (maybe the Hebrides?) and prevarication).
Even more amazingly you’ll get a phone call (at 09:00) announcing that he’ll be late! The lad in the call centre seemed astonished that I wasn't delighted to be informed, that's not customer service, that's institutionalised incompetence.
14:0-bloody-7 and Mr Chuckles the Engineer turned up and delighted me with his detailed, (and vitriolic) analysis of his employer.
Apparently he's only allowed to spend 2 hours on each job, which makes the timing constraints even more baffling. I think the 2 hour thing is to protect the less robust customers from the increasing likelihood of suicide or self-harm which I'm sure would ensue from lengthy exposure to this chap's world view.
Vodafone by the way, can deliver me a brand new working phone within hours of a phone call, I think BT should get whoever does Vodafone’s logistics to deliver their engineers.
Labels: oakwood rant BT customer service
It may be Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, but it's food and shopping in New York...
Onto the big silver bird at Heathrow and off to the Big Apple for our biennial trip to NY City. Still my favourite place in the States, possibly because it's so familiar from many visits and countless thrillers, gangster movies and comedies set in the metropolis.
There are two threads which run through our occasional visits, see if you can identify the themes...
Thursday - arrive and take a glass or several in the rooftop cocktail bar at our hotel, The Library on 41st and Madison, a lovely 'boutique' hotel, petite but adequate rooms, an eclectic mix of guests, and most excellent staff.
Friday Morning, shopping
Friday lunch, Cafe SFA at Saks Fifth Avenue (a shop, where women do shopping) excellent food and service surrounded by the assorted weirdness of the New York shopping elite, acres of fur surmounted by high pitched nasal old ladies, and strangely Stepford-ish wives with their identikit, badly behaved offspring.
Friday afternoon - more shopping
Friday evening, the River Cafe in Brooklyn, my favourite all round dining experience in the world, really good and inventive food, fine wine, professional but friendly staff, a great bar, we get there early to enjoy the banter with the wise-cracking bartenders and enjoy the piano and chatting to other patrons, usually American, often locals. The best thing of all is the view, incomparable views of Manhattan and the river, then driven home after a superb meal, (paid for this trip by American Express as compensation for administrative incompetence on their part), by a classic 'hey, forget about it' limo driver, who was presumably moonlighting from his full time occupation as a stereotypical Brooklyn mobster.
Saturday Morning - more shopping
Saturday Lunchtime - to Maze at the London, ,the lighter side of Gordon Ramsey's attempt to win over NY city, really stunning food in an attractive location, light but delicious dishes, cooked perfectly and stunningly presented, served by consumate professionals. The colonials don't seem to have taken to our Gordon and there did seem to be a preponderance of European accents, however as the great and wise philosopher, the blessed Mr T might say, "shame on them yankee fools", this is fine food and they don't deserve it anyway.
Saturday afternoon - more bloody shopping
Saturday evening, exhausted, did I mention the shopping ? A light meal at Madison and Vine, Mrs Stuffy remarked, (to my mind with an inappropriate level of ire) on the (in her view) unnecessary familiarity of the young , attractive and very tactile waitress. I'm a more reasonable person and found no problem with such attentive, personable and personal service.
Sunday morning and the first snow of the year was delivering Yuletide ambiance to the the city that never sleeps, what better way to celebrate than with a little festive ... shopping ?
All too soon, lunchtime, and knowing it would be cold I'd planned ahead, a brisk walk down Park Avenue, frostbite nipping at all exposed areas to Les Halles, one time stamping ground of Anthony Bourdain, whose writings I commend to my readership, into the snug and quintessentially French feel of this delightful bistro, stunning onion soup (the best, I'm prepared to wager, on the wrong side of the Atlantic) warming the cockles of a jaded soul, a great bottle of red and the best hanger steak you can imagine, rare and pink and bloody and falling apart with a sharp look.
Sadly no time for any more shopping but back to JFK and an overnight flight to Heathrow.
I can never really relax on planes, I feel it's important that I stay alert in case of sudden flight deck salmonella and the plaintive cry of "anybody got three hours in a Cessna?"
