Saturday, 21 December 2024

A tale of two taverns

The week before last saw rare visits to both the Wetherspoon's at Tooting Broadway and the Marquis here at Epsom. Rare, both in my being there at all and in my being out after dark.

Like here at Epsom, the Wetherspoon's has not changed much, although I dare say that it has had a few wash-and-brush-ups over the years and there are more small tables in the front bar. Some of the pictures on the walls - possibly the work of art students - are still there from the old days. And the corner snapped above, which used to be called the office by its inhabitants, is still recognisable through the festive trim. I deduced that Wetherspoon's offer a festive menu and will be open for the middle part of Christmas Day, but they do not appear to be in the business of Christmas Lunch. That is to say, full on affairs with sausage meat wrapped up in streaky bacon and so on and so forth.

I learned of the merits of heat in the tin kippers from John West, a variation on boil in the bag. None of the bother of the real thing and one only had to be careful when opening the hot tin. Oddly, it was not necessary to pierce the tin before heating (in a pan of hot water). If I remember, I shall attempt to buy some this afternoon.

While serious gas works continue outside the Halfway House at Earlsfield, Works which appeared to include lifting out large chunks of cast iron, mains gas pipes, getting on for a foot in diameter. Much disturbance to the traffic.

Large gaps of the 'mind the gap' variety at both Earlsfield and Raynes Park. I was offered a seat by a young lady at Earlsfield, which was nice of her, except that she did not appear to have one to offer. Perhaps she was going to chase her partner out of his? While there was nothing of interest at the Raynes Park platform library and it is starting to look as if I am going to miss out on the Christmas numbers of both 'drinks business' and 'spirits business'. Will I bother with the online versions?

Started the next day with getting my hair cut by a chap from Cuba whose wife came from the Abruzzi, which I had previously heard of, but I now know to be the chunk of Italy over the mountains to the east of Rome. A place which includes a lot of national parks - which might, if this country is anything to go by, mean that it is rather poorly off compared with the rest of Italy. Poorly off in a material sense that is. A household which has to contend with three languages - two of which are slowly drifting apart from the versions spoken back home. A problem that all emigrants have to deal with.

This followed by a substantial lunch of M&S sour dough under left-over mince, with the mince doing a good job of disguising the sourness of the bread. Plus some white cabbage by way of five-a-day. Followed by a snooze.

Followed by a quick run of 20 minutes down to a festive Marquis with the trolley, so things are looking up. Barely recognisable in the snap above, but which does include a slice of the fine new awning, top left. And there were some puffers outside taking advantage of the mild evening.

Spot of Peroni inside. Boozers in the front, office gathering in the back. An office gathering which appeared to have organised a lot more food than they were likely to eat, but I did not stay long enough for grazing to be polite. Maybe if I was a bit younger and a bit brassier, I would just have muscled in anyway, mince on sour dough notwithstanding.

The thing on the right in the snap above, looks like a a table decoration, but it fails to compute this morning. Perhaps I shall have to go back for a second look this afternoon, in the margins of collecting my tins of kipper.

PS 1: later: Waitrose down to their last tin of John West's kippers by the time I got there. Snagged that, and moved onto M&S to find that they did not sell them at all - or anything else John West that I could see - despite the friendly and helpful intervention of a young lady who had been busy with boxes of something else altogether.

PS 2: the fat book about Italy last noticed at reference 4, does not contain many pages about the Abruzzi. Perhaps a bit too wild and woolly in those days to be of interest to French tourists, even of the arm-chair variety.

A couple of pages on, we have this castle, a shot which does not seem to match anything turned up by Bing for the very large castle - a keep within a castle on top of a hill - turned up by gmaps. Perhaps the answer is the post war renovation talked of at reference 5.

Maybe it controlled the main road across the mountains from Rome to the port of Pescara.

Still further on, there is a striking picture of the west front of what is described as Aquila Cathedral - and not much like those of the roughly contemporary English cathedrals. But inquiry reveals it to be the [basilica of] Santa Maria di Collemaggio, rather more impressive in my old & arty black & white photograph than it is in the modern one in colour above. In any event, not a cathedral at all.

References

Reference 1: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abruzzo.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/towers.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello_Piccolomini_(Celano).

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_di_Collemaggio.

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