With a proper southern accent, I present you with I Like Dicks, Happy Dicks and Clawed Dicks:
{and the uncomically named Billy Florence, of course.} My thanks to the UGA Chemistry Department newsletter for keeping me abreast [heh-heh] of happenings back home (see, guys, I DO read this thing).
It really makes you wonder, though, why they couldn’t get the grandpa, Harry, to come out for the tournament.
I went to the Home Base to buy some suet balls to attract migratory birds to shit on my clothesline, and got a nice chuckle when I found them on this shelf:
Sometimes if you use Google you are glad you have the adult filters turned on. A few years ago I tried to find something for Jamie’s birthday because she was a big Roy Rogers fan as a kid, but “Roy Rogers” as an internet search can deliver you some wild gay porn. Here’s another Google search that could go wrong for you, but didn’t for me:
At Tesco, how could I resist this product:
spotted whilst driving thru North yorkshire
Fish and chip shops in England almost always have some sort of clever name, like the one above I spotted in a village near York. Here are a few more:
“The Frying Scotsman”
“A Fish called Rhondda”
“Oh My Cod” and “Cod Help Us” and “The Codfather” and “Codrophenia”
“A Salt ‘N’ Battered”
“{owner’s name here} Plaice” and “A Summer Plaice”
“I’ve Haddock Up To Here”
I’m sure there’ll be more as I spot them now that I’ve tuned into this
The recession can’t be all THAT bad if this is a viable business:
Yep, that’s http://www.newmarkethathire.co.uk/ for all your hat rental needs in the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire corridor.
In America, there is a snack food of devil’s food cake with a cream filling and chocolate icing known as Ding Dongs throughout most of the US, but the makers thought better of it (considering the imaturity of the customer base and the likelihood of snickering and potential for de facto homophobia-related boycotting) and renamed the same product King Dons.
The American South (which shares with the English the inability to discuss body parts or bodily functions with a straight face) is not alone, it seems, since here in Britain Birdseye renamed their Battered Cod Pieces (now that is funny) as Fish Fingers.
This was brought to my attention from the above pub menu excerpt sent as an email attachment, and since then I have heard it brought up on BBC Radio 4 a few times. The pub in question is in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, unfortunately, but I hope to find an example here just so I can ask, too loudly, for some delicious, hot cod pieces in a strange pub.
This was the most blatantly touristy thing I have managed to do since moving here: I took the tube to Mornington Crescent.
Mornington Crescent is the name of a game section on the long running (decades) radio panel quiz-esque show called I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Hosted for most of the run by the jazz trumpeter (Louis Armstrong looked up to him) and very funny man Humphrey Littleton, the show always had a segment of Mornington Crescent that has, alternately, endless arcane rules and no point or rules at all. A random tube stop is announced and then each panelist in turn names another to which commentary, jeering, and a judgement is appended before the next panelist has a turn; it ends when someone reaches, inexplicably, Mornington Crescent. Google it and you’ll find a bunch of pages, like this one or this one is a little more straightforward if you would like to try to play yourselves (a drinking game could easily be developed).
It was appropriate, in that light, that the first sensory stimulus I had upon finally reaching the top of the stairwell was a powerful blast of marijuana smoke. Mmmmm, we ARE close to Camden Town, aren’t we. The second stimulus was hunger (no not the munchies) and that was to be slaked across the street at The Crescent.
The Crescent is a big, prefab sort of restaurant mad to look like a pub and indeed the bar did have one real ale on tap (Bombardier, which I had). But, the music is too loud to have a conversation and the table arrangement really seems meant to discourage the sort of mingling one might expect in a proper pub. Still, I got a big steak and stout pie, some peas, a bunch of chips and my beer for 5.99, so I won’t bitch too much. The food was edible, too, but it had to come from a microwave it was out so fast.
The music is something I wish I had noticed earlier. It appeared to be the sort of canned 80′s stuff these places adore so I wasn’t at all surprised to here Addicted to Love blaring out. The next song was halfway through when I nearly choked on a pearl onion from the pie: they were playing the J.I.M.B.O. song by the Reverend Horton Heat. They went right back to the Proclaimers doing 500 Miles after that, but I know what I heard, you bastards..you glorious, glorious bastards.
Also noted, the place was clearing out significantly at 7 pm and most of the drinkers I saw appeared to work in the neighbourhood, but didn’t really look like they were likely to be smoking a spliff down by the news stand later on; I soon joined them on our commutes back whence we had come.
Not even nearly caught up with the Pub notes. I’ll keep plugging away…
Friday, I got to work extra early and skipped lunch so was famished on the way to do shopping for supper before catching the 4.10 pm bus to Stretham. I found the Sainsbury’s grocery store up Sidney Street, but thought I could do with a plate of chips to keep up the strength. And, a pint of Abbot wouldn’t hurt, either.
I got both at the Baron of Beef just past the Cambridge Union. I must admit that in my state of starvation induced delusion I thought for a minute I was heading into a gay strip bar but let me assure you there was no Baring of Beef, here.
Instead, it was almost like one of those American theme pubs where the theme is English Pub and they get it entirely wrong. The decor was very Steak and Ale, while the staff was very TGIFriday’s if TGIFriday’s hired every woman ever found on a Polish shipping vessel. The script was meant for them to seem very nice, but the delivery lacked the insincerity you come to expect in the American versions; I would recommend this place after the lunch rush and before the dinner rush if you really want a good laugh.
The beer was good, the chips hot and plump. It was not expensive. I would be willing to try a burger here, eventually.
Most people don’t know why I find Bun Shop a funny name. But, I went out of my way to have a beer here because of it.
The River Cam was flooded and I opted to cut my run short. I had worked up a sweat and only planned to down one quickly (which I did) so I would be miserable when I headed back out and the rest of the way back to work (and, yet, I nearly froze my balls off–best laid plans, etc).
The bar is about as far down King Street as you can get because it turns back toward the older part of town and the University a few buildings away. There is a side street that takes you back out to Jesus Lane in front of Jesus College, but if you follow King Street arround it becomes Hobson, then St Andrews, then Regent as you head towards the Chemistry Department.
The Bun Shop is huge, packed with tables (more of a restaurant than anything, although they promote themselves as a wine bar) and has several dining rooms that I could see from where I quickly downed my IPA (Greene King, as this is the beer in most pubs around here).
The menu that was wriiten on a chalk board as I entered seemed to say it all, though, for the cuisine. You can get a burger on a bun, or chicken on a bun, or burger and cheese on a bun, or chicken and cheese on a bun, or burger-bacon-cheese on…you get the point. Everything comes with chips, which is an unusually daring menu choice in England. Prices seemed good, but I wasn’t really taking notes.
“Still raining?” the guy at the bar asked as I came in, dripping and trying to dry my glasses enough to see if I would get thumped for a smartassed retort. The bar wrapped around in either direction so that whereever you sat you could easily make out the football gossip on Setanta Sports Channel blasting from tv’s on each wall. I got a beer and a pack of crisps, since my bus was only 15 minutes away and I couldn’t settle in.
For a sporting pub, this one isn’t too bad. There were some festering sandwiches for sale on a tray near me and the catwalks above me gave glimpses of spacious dining areas for when the kitchen opened a little later on. Everything was very dark wood, but the stools were comfy and the beer was cool with a chocolate hint that could have just been something growing in the bottom of the glass…but it was tasty, nonetheless.
My weatherman hopped up from his chair and went out to smoke the cigarette he had just rolled. As I walked out behind him to catch the bus, I picked up the pack of Rizla rolling papers he left there and dropped it into the last 1/3 of his beer saying, “still raining, indeed,” which made the barman laugh and the old guy that had been next to me lift his glass and say, “alright, mate.”
A few Sundays back, it was snowing and I didn’t fancy waiting for the last bus of the day to Stretham after an uneventful afternoon of mass spectrometry. I popped into the St. Radegund, named for the patron saint of Jesus College and the “smallest pub in Cambridge” (although the smallest pub in England is over in Bury St. Edmunds). Locally brewed beers from the Milton Brewery are on tap and the whole place is decorated with rowing paraphenalia (the owner sponsors some teams). It hasn’t been crowded either time I have been there, but it wouldn’t take many drinkers to make it quite claustrophobic.
On my first trip I noticed a posting for the ‘King Street Run’ and expressed interest. The KSR is done once or twice a year (whenever the pubs can get organised around it) and participants start at the St Rad, drink a pint (remember that an English pint is 20 mortal ounces), then run the length of King St (about half a mile each way) stopping for a pint in each pub then finishing with one more at the St Radegund. “That sounds like fun,” I said. “Harder than it sounds, mate…that’s eight pints, that is.” “And, you do this whilst running? No, really, that sounds like fun. Does anyone ever actually finish?”
Also on the walls is a copied text about a Convent of St. Radegund, a nunnery closed in the 16th century. The Bishop of Ely closed a number of convents and the Convent of Saint Radegund was targeted because it was down to 2 residents, one of whom had moved away and the other of whom was “known to be of questionable virtue.”
If you are here on a Monday night, the Cantabrigensis Hash House Harriers start their trail here at 7pm (I think it ends here, as well). The King Street Run is their thing; makes you wonder how they might deal with something like this: (CNN coverage of 30-pack marathon July 2008)
Porn stars belabor their choice of name to reflect physical attributes or athletic specialities they hope will tantalize the jaded viewing public to release their credit card information. The results are almost always amusing, but manufactured and synthetic (as, indeed, they should seem).
Lately, though, while waiting in Stretham on the bus to Cambridge, I’ve noticed a perfectly job related name. A small work van for a fencing company drives by every morning; the proprieter is Les Yardy.
“Yes, madam, how can we be of service today?”
“Oh, I need some fencing in my garden, innit? It’s too vast, and I’d like it to be, oh how shall I put it, ‘less yardy.’”
http://ely.inuklocal.co.uk/Tradesmen/Builders/Les-Yardy-Fencing-Patio-Services-76-6902
