Posts tagged with “historic”
Paul's Prayer to a Bear
This is a poem I wrote many years ago. It appears in a published work of my father's called "lie Lines".
Jean's got the sneezles and weazles,
They sent for a doctor!
Then they decided to decorate a wall
So they telephoned a draper.
The draper was an elephant,
Jumbo came with lots of wallpaper.
Some was plain, some red and white,
Some was decorated with flowers,
Some repeated , some had towers,
Said me to he, "I think he is dead".
We rushed me and my downstairs and said
"Help!!!"
Only to see a bunch of hungry bears.
They all said at once "Let's eat them up!"
So they popped me and my inside
And drank from a cup.
Paul Wrighton (when young enough)
The post was inspired by the recent discovery by my sister of a listing on Amazon for the book, which appears to have appreciated since publication in 1996, when the cover price was "One pint or six mars bars"!
12:57 PM | 1 Comment | Tags: Childhood, historic, poetry, fatherMemories - A restaurant called Manna
There's this restaurant in Primrose Hill and it is called "Manna". When I was a young boy I had to eat there a LOT. My abiding memory is of the glazed earthenware plates and the macrobiotic (IE unhusked) brown rice. I was totally convinced that the plates were chipping and I was eating the glaze along with the rice! It was a co-operative restaurant run largely by a hippy group of women so far as I could tell, but my father did spells as a "chef" there, hence the frequent occasions when I had to eat there.
I think it left me with a prejudice against vegetarian food that I have only recently shed!
There are good memories of those times too though and they all came flooding back when I had to traipse along Upper Street for a day of induction to the Christmas voluntary work I am doing with Quaker Homeless Action at the Union Chapel. I got talking with a colleague who lived in Camden also back in those days (they were in a squat, more recently than my forty odd years ago! But they had no awareness of the rehabilitation of the Roundhouse). I reassured them that Marine ices were still going strong though.
Anyway, coming back to Manna, as you can see from the website I linked, they are a million light years from the co-operative venture that enables them to bill themselves as "London's oldest Vegetarian restaurant". The establishment is EXTREMELY posh and upmarket now, far from the rattan mats and pine furniture it sported when it opened. I found a trip back there some eight years ago very depressing and sad. No-one was interested in the fact I had dined there and my father was once a chef either. So big thumbs down from me!
One thing though - I have a great memory of the condiment they placed on the tables in lieu of salt - it was the only thing I could use to make the rice edible and to this day I would like to know WHAT it was! If anyone can help then please do comment - it seemed like orange flakes that one would sprinkle fairly liberally according to taste and I have not seen it since!
07:35 PM | 1 Comment | Tags: historic, Manna, Marine Ices, Chalk Farm, Camden, RoundhouseHistoric things to blog about
things to blog about:- toggle sidebar blog ides - chyrp? German architecture - cf gaudi Liz Williams Humans will not evolve further tag maelstrom possessive girlfriends three strikes and you're in (my blogroll) hrabbit quote (extract kids) - bash.org (to links) Site "Easter eggs" (CF XFN friendly tag on blogroll) libraries - Indie online 9/10 thought for the day 8/10 - "forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors" (CF - fRA blog post) Orange prize and gender bias in publishing (CF blogging) poetryiamwriting site idea Google cautionary tale - Edith! Ephemera (poem) - scattered poem linkage... Chomosomal inheritance (boys like mother, girls like father) procrastination versus reward out of work flavours of blog process of writing (Esp. preparation VIZ NaNoWriMo) http://www.juliettepochin.com/ Parenting and benefit and me New Deal - parenting thing, highly political, outsourcing - not 10% but 40% Childrens time perception and heartbeat etc cybersex stuff - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/cybersex-rules-inside-the-world-of-lsquoteledildonics-1027699.html [[The Archers]] CD prism stack/rainbow pic (Chirp blog?) Twitter - feed/guide http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/
comments system (WHEN if overhaul especially)
EVEN OLDER (Historic in terms of my life)
Dizzies boogie woogie
Great gigs I have known (oh so many!)
Hood fair
Roger Wilkins cider farm and Joe Strummer
Roundhouse days
- overheads
- naked man art
Rocky Horror in Kings Road
Meeting John Lydon
The Glastonbury bread man? That was me!
Mental health and asylum years
cycling stories (London to Plymouth and London to Brighton)
Carl North
05:58 PM | 2 Comments | Tags: historic, blog
