Polish beef

A week or so ago, I thought it was time for a spot of Polish beef from the back of Waterloo Station, otherwise the establishment at reference 1.

It was dull and rather cold on the day in question. Duffel coat and scarf yes. But woolly gloves no; need to hold them in reserve.

No trolleys, but a good sized Thames Water hole outside the Tesco's at the station. The one which later turned into a flood, the one previously noticed at reference 2.

I have also previously noticed the interesting effects of flashing lights on shut eyes that I get on trains quite often. So there was a bit of that on this occasion, plus, for some reason, after images of stuff around me. After images which were fairly wide of the mark, but I could still recognise them for what they were. Seats in the carriage, trees outside, whatever.

Stand at Grant Road near empty, but there was one for me.

I forgot to check on Piggies before I headed up towards the 'Asparagus'. That road and the roads to follow pretty quiet. But there were road works between the dogs' home and Vauxhall and then again at the palace side of Lambeth Bridge. Not that they caused me any bother.

There was a tall auger at work outside the fairly new US embassy. Were the securogeeks at work, checking out some suspicious underground activity? On the other hand, the Gaza flavoured demonstration on the other side of the main road, the one that I was on, appeared to have disbanded, folded up its tents.

One service van from Sunbelt to remind me of their steady inroads into the small plant hire business here in the UK.

And so into the Polish kitchen, where I found a 1500 map of Poland on the wall of the dining area. Very different to how things are now and very much grist to the mill of references 3 and 4, the second of which is work still in progress. 

A modern map of much the same area, with Dneiper River highlighted to provide a marker. Snapped from one of the maps at reference 5. The Dneiper runs up the right side of the pink area in the first snap - with the Ottomans looking to have been in charge of its outlet into the Black Sea. A relic of the days when the Black Sea was a mainly Greek lake? With golden fleeces and such like.

With my thought today being that we were relatively lucky here in the UK to be an offshore group of not very big islands. It might have taken a good while to completely settle down, for the various tribes to learn to give with each other, but at least there was a good, deep-water gap between us and the rest of Europe, which otherwise might have meddled more in our affairs than was in fact the case.

Beer and beetroot to start.

Bread and beef to follow. Their white bread is very good, the nearest thing I know to good English white in a restaurant that I know. Sadly, they were a little stingy with my second portion.

The beef cheek, a little overcooked to my taste, was nevertheless good, made good sandwiches and was surprisingly filling. There must have been lots of fat in the gravy: maybe the Poles like to thicken their gravy with fat rather than with flour in the English way (with roux). Filling enough that maybe they were right about bread supplies.

The version on the menu. My memory of my meat portion is rather smaller than the one imaged here, but maybe that is more a matter of arrangement, of highlighting the dark beef against the white potato, rather than it being lost in the gravy. And I took bread instead of the potato. This last was the right decision for me, visuals aside.

Not busy, but a respectable sprinkling of people, including some solo ladies.

Passed on the giant Brewdog, yet again, as I made my way back to Waterloo. One day I will get there.

Plenty of books and magazines at RPPL, but I settled for three thin botanicals. Not yet digested.

We also had a shambling, rambling old gentleman, a chap whom I am fairly sure I have come across before. A chap who spent most of his time delivering monologues, reasonably quietly but audibly, into thin air. Probably with some learning, possibly once a teacher, a librarian or something of that sort. Or perhaps the saloon bar bore? Seemingly got some kind of dementia now. Hopefully not a danger either to himself or to others if out on the streets - but I leave the platform health & safety people to worry about that.

PS: today a first in the form of  a small trolley which had been mended. An unmarked Waitrose trolley, probably originally from Wanzl, but having passed through TMS - the people at Cricklade - at some point for mending. Mending in the form of fairly crude spot welding to the front of the basket, which had presumably been stoved in. Followed by a bath in the plating dip.

So Waitrose at least think it worth doing more than just replacing the odd wheel, which is as far as previous repairs have gone. At least, that is, the ones that I have noticed. Maybe the Wanzl maintenance division does invisible mending, for a consideration.

Oddly, two unmarked trolleys from Waitrose in one day, at a time when any kind of a Waitrose trolley has become something of a rarity. Perhaps they have just taken in a new batch of small trolleys from TMS, the sort that most customers seem to prefer and which are usually in short supply.

References

Reference 1: https://www.mamuska.net/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/water-hole.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/russia-and-eastern-europe.html.

Reference 4: Lost Kingdom: A history of Russian nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin - Serhii Plokhy - 2017.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper. '... The river is part of the quagga mussel's native range. The mussel has been accidentally introduced around the world, where it has become an invasive species...'.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/trolleyfest.html. The last outing for TMS.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/chicken-dinner.html. A recent outing for roux.