Breakfast at Elveden, or Bring on the Peasants, sorry, Pheasants

Last Saturday we disregarded all the bad weather doom and gloom on the telly, and set off for Norfolk to visit family. Rather as we'd expected, it was not too bad at all, and the tons of snow that had been talked up were in fact very modest, not to say slightly mean, though it was wonderfully Christmas card-looking in places.

As is not uncommon we allowed ourselves the treat of breakfast at Elveden, in Suffolk (not far from the border with Norfolk) -the Elveden Estate Restaurant does what is quite simply one of the best cooked breakfasts I've ever had, with a delicious combination of eggs, mushrooms, sausages, tomatoes, black pudding, hash brown, bacon and fried bread, for the astonishing price of £7.25. What's more, all the food in the restaurant is sourced from the estate or as from as close by as possible, and is cooked to order, so what you're eating is both fresh and supporting local food production.

The eatery is reached via the food and wine shop, where, well, yes, we usually give in to temptation and buy something, if that's only pork and apple pies for lunch, or fudge for presents (one recent selection being vanilla with cherry and walnut; caramel and cookies; vanilla and chocolate honeycomb; and caramel and chocolate with chocolate pieces). This being autumn, there were some good plump pheasants, so we bought two for dinner on Sunday - yum. Roast in a foil tent and served with jacket potatoes, garlicked roast parsnips, large mushrooms and onion sauce, and even after we'd tucked in, quite a bit over for eating somehow else tonight.

As the East Anglian section of one of my favourite books on dialect 'Yacky Dar, Moy Bewty' by Sam Llewellyn would have it, "Oi loike a pheasant. That eat excellent"!

Rost befe of olde englande

Well, not entirely, to be honest - the accompaniments were rather more twenty-first century.

This evening we dined off a succulent piece of beef sirloin, reared by our friend Steve Rawlings before he gave up these entertainments in the face of too much aggro from the food police etc. It was cooked with lamb and rosemary chipolatas (I don't normally mix meats, but had exhumed these from the freezer a couple of days ago and they needed cooking) with some large mushrooms added towards the end. I also cooked cauliflower, garlic potatoes, and onion sauce, and we opened a bottle of red wine - the lovely Chorey-les-Beaune (2008) which takes no effort at all to drink. It was a sort of rehearsal for Christmas, it was that good...

Yes, this was a slightly extravagant meal, but it was demmed tasty, and made a morceau of space in the freezer. It was also better value than the meat I was looking at in M&S yesterday - a depressing selection of the expensive, quick to cook, and no effort required to deal with inconvenient flavour factors like bone or skin. It caused me to realise once and for all that I am not one of their core customers. That seems to be the suited and booted male and its female equivalent. Yes, I see plenty of grannies in there buying food, and Marks do well at providing things for the single person - but from observation the majority of their profit these days surely comes from dinner partyish food needing the minimum of preparation, with cost not really a factor to be considered. There are occasions when I'm grateful for it, but when I retire those are going to be fewer and further between...

.Advanced communications - not

Some fairly good examples of 'how not to say it' from the PA system on the Tube (the first three are not new, but are still capable of making me wonder at the thought proceses behind them):

"Please use all available doors" - well, OK, but we'll probably be here until midnight, especially if everyone tries to do this.

"Please use alternate routes" - that doesn't sound like a quick way to get home either...

"Please use all available space" - it's no good, I've tried, but I just can't seem to activate my self-expanding switch.

"The District Line is behind" - behind what?

(Having just left Acton Town on the westbound service) "This is Wood Green" - OK, right line, wrong end (like 20-odd stops away, and getting further by the minute).

"This train is being held here due to a train at Oxford Circus with no movement" - obviously a new model.

This was followed a little later by a very exasperated

"We are still experiencing delays because of this defective train, which is making its way to Liverpool Street where it will be taken out of service AND PUT AWAY IN A SIDING! "- for ever, left up to him, I'd guess.

"Due to a signal failure at Waterloo, the Waterloo & City Line is suspended and a good service is operating on all other lines" - there, I knew it. They don't have enough power to run the whole trainset at once!

And last but certainly not least
"This train will proceed one station at a time" - you don't know how relieved I am to hear that, exciting though it might be to zoom through the seventh dimension over Hammersmith...

Thoughts on a bring- and-share lunch

We've just had a bring-and-share lunch at work for one of our interns who's leaving us for her first proper job - congratulations, Kirsty, especially in the current museum climate!

It was a suitably good repast, and a quite glorious mixture - it included a cheese board plus a large bunch of grapes, a large whole pineapple, home-made banoffee cakes, coriander and chilli prawns, home-made pizza, crudités and lots of dips, mediterranean bread, strawberry jam doughnuts, and mozzarella and tomato tart. Apart from bread there really wasn't much left at the end! Oh, and the one thing that my colleagues are quite ludicrously unable to resist (even those who aren't that keen on the sweet stuff, or say that they aren't) is chocolate-covered cinder toffee (aka Crunchie bits).

We've now done enough of these indoor picnics (they're only something we've done fairly recently) that I think we're beginning to know what to bring - there doesn't seem to be much need for bread or meat, for example. We still tend to bring too much food, but too much is better than too little, of course - that just means we graze all day, or the overnight staff get an unexpected bonus, or there's enough food to keep us going into lunch next day.

It is, of course, completely luck of the draw as to the balance of what turns up on the table. In the early days I can remember virtually whole meals of cheese, or cake, and last time we had a lot of falafels (boring) - OK, not exactly a problem, but it's so much more enjoyable when it's more varied. What I particularly like about the idea is that it's so equitable - home-made goodies, smart thinking and sharp-eyed shopping are more likely to bring really good results than just throwing money around.

The Birthweek

As my recent birthday didn't work out all that well, I spread it out over the next eight days - so more of a birthweek than a birthday, really. Not that extensions are unheard of anyway - one or two have gone on for a fortnight, and very enjoyable, too.

Anyway, back to this year's. It was a Monday, although I wondered if it really was the right day, because for one thing, the weather was wrong. It was raining. Hard. This is not allowed on my birthday, as my 'natural' present is fine sunny weather - at worst dry with sunny spells, but more usually the sort of glorious autumn weather we got later in the week. Somebody must have miscounted...

It was also a Tube Strike day: I had to take Harry-the-Cat to the vet first thing. Eight thirty came and went, with no sign of the cab I'd booked. Eventually it arrived three-quarters of an hour late - extra traffic on the roads because of the strike, which I guess is unsurprising. Oh well, I'd warned the vets, and they were being very accommodating, so let's see if we can get through this without any more ado. Part way up the main road, the driver's radio station of choice came up with Credence Clearwater Revival's 'Bad Moon on the Rise'. I smiled at the cheerful tune, as ever, and its combination with the disaster-laden lyrics (earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, floods etc) until we got to "Hope you have got your things together/ Hope you are quite prepared to die". Now look here, guys, that's enough!

I suppose it may account for the fact that when we got there the driver tried to be helpful and back onto the forecourt so I had less far to carry the basket. Unfortunately, he backed into a lamp post instead...fortunately he was doing virtually nil mph, so no injuries. I was lucky, as I had been about to get out, and wasn't wearing a seat belt at that point. He was not lucky, having got a sizeable dent in the back of his people carrier. Oh well, the rest of the day was uneventful: Keith had the bad luck to be unwell, so we ate nothing fancy by way of food, but he still managed to arrange presents and cards for me, which were doubly appreciated, and I did get some other nice ones - thanks, everyone!

It was an odd week - a South Kensington day on the Tuesday; in at the museum on Wednesday, and lunch with a friend at Nico's Grill (steak sandwiches and chips to die for); and a retirement seminar on the Thursday and Friday (held at the National Liberal Club, which has rather stunning Victorian/ Edwardian interiors; the food's not bad, either, notably the fish and chips). Retirement isn't until next year, but it's as well to get any help offered, I figure, and in the current financial climate I can see next year's event being scaled back somewhat.

Having thus barely seen my colleagues, I went out for lunch on the following Monday with the team I work with. Someone suggested Pellici's (trad caff plus native Italian), which we all like. Even the member of the team who was heavily pregnant with twins was particularly keen to go ("It'll be my last chance to go there for a bit" she predicted, all too accurately), and soon we were all excavating large helpings of steak pie etc - there's a plate under there somewhere, I'm sure! The follow up was that the twins started to arrive the next day - must have been the walk back afterwards...or something energising about steak pie ?


(A squirrel in Bethnal Green Gardens ponders his local menu)

More time out of the office

Must be something in the air - I'm certainly not seeing that much of my normal working environment at the moment. I was back on the Embankment on Thursday and Friday, and took the opportunity to explore a bit more and take further pictures of Buckingham Gate. I was intrigued by it, as I often am with gates and windows:



Mind, it looks a bit sepulchral from the back, which is how I first saw it, from Buckingham Street:



Altogether more imposing from the front, though:





It was originally the watergate for York House, which was owned at that point by the Villiers family, so yes, clearly designed to indicate that here lived "an enormous swell". And yes, this is the area of the streets that spelled out the name and title of George Villiers Duke of Buckingham - it's a shame that Of Alley got re-named York Place, I say.

Time out of the office

Off to Mile End this morning - OK, so it's only one step further on the tube than usual, and surely it's all built-up, grimy inner city blocks? Well, no - just beyond the 'Banana ' Bridge (yes, it has a curved yellow underside) on Mile End Road, is an extensive park with fountains and some rather large iris, as in the photos. (Admittedly I'm cheating a bit here, as they were taken a couple of months ago - it was not good photography weather for most of this morning!)





Mind you, there's no limit to the excitement, really - on Monday afternoon I had to visit a learning charity on the Embankment, and couldn't help but admire Victoria Embankment Gardens, especially the rather flamboyant Buckingham Gate, built in 1626 (pictures later). It's a pity that most people know only the big royal parks, like Green Park, but I do love these smaller ones - so much more character, and often quite unexpected detours on the way through crowded areas that have little or no greenery visible.