At last, London has some plausibly vernal weather - I sniffed my first lilac of the year this morning - but spring is a notoriously delusive season. Here's one canny observer writing in 1898:
'There is twilight and soft clouds and daffodils - and a great weariness. Spring! Excellentissime - Spring? We are annually lured by false hopes. Spring! Che coglioneria! Another illusion for the undoing of mankind.'
I'll reveal who that is in due course (and you'll be surprised), but feel free to post your guesses - let's call it a Spring Competition.
Meanwhile, more surreal developments at Victoria station, which already has the poster proclaiming 'Chichester, The New Copenhagen'. Where once stood the best bagel stall on the station there has risen a self-proclaimed 'Temple of Porcine Perfection' - in fact, a stall selling 'artisan sausages [prefer pork myself] in buns'. I doubt it will last much longer than the short-lived 'Danish Sausage Experience' of evil memory - but somehow some sausagey essence seems to have woven its way into the DNA of Victoria station. I wonder why...
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Is it that bagel outlet (built-in store rather than wheely stall) near the escalator to the shops (Sainsburys etc)? I had a salt beef and something bagel there a few months ago, as it happens. But I've never really understood the point of bagels. Sometimes one wants something sweet, and sometimes something savoury, and bagels seem to fit neither bill. Another American nonsense; porcine perfection sounds like a significant and patriotic improvement.
ReplyDeleteI love sausages from the local butcher but sausages as a business seem to have a kind of jinx attached to them. If I recall, the photographer Norman Parkinson sank money into primo sausages in the form of the "Porkinson" brand. The next thing his house burned down. Still, if that West Country Cornish Pasty outfit can survive, its awful fumes of greasy baking requiring the use of gas masks on the high street, I suppose this one could too.
ReplyDeleteNo Brit it was the one near the back stairs to Wetherspoons, next to (ugh) Krispy Kreme Donuts... Talking of sausages, look at poor Tom the sausage king of Ambridge and his recent troubles - jinxed indeed...
ReplyDeleteIs it the Pole, Joe Conrad?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in short trousers in Coventry (with WW2 rubble still to be seen) I was sent down to the Offy every Saturday night for a half bottle of Gordons Gin, six tonics (must be Schweppes), and a couple of pork baps. This was a small soft bap, opened up, with warm home-made apple sauce introduced. Laid on top of this, from a freshly cooked joint, was a generous slice of pig. You were then asked 'crackling?', and my answer was always yes. A hazy memory perhaps, but I have since harboured the idea that, if all else failed (and it often has), I would start with one outlet, and quickly it would become a chain, so tasty were these simple comestibles
And the winner is... Mahlerman! It is indeed J. Conrad, sounding quite uncharacteristically frisky and Italianate I think.
ReplyDeleteAnd I like the sound of those pork baps...
And isn't coglioneria a fine word?
ReplyDeleteSorry - I kind-of knew who wrote it, and ruined your quiz. I should have kept my nose out of the trough.
ReplyDeleteExpected a bit more enthusiasm for the chain of bap boutiques though....something along the lines of 'Don't suppose you'd be interested in taking on some parners in the venture, Mahlerman?' To which I might have answered.....oh, hang on a minute....that would mean we would have to meet......and you couldn't 'remain anonymous'.....forget it, I'll do it on my own
Internet quizzes are a bit of a waste of time. That's why I once attempted to invent the google-proof quiz.
ReplyDelete"I've never really understood the point of bagels": quite, but must everything have a point?
ReplyDelete