Tag Archives: George Osborne

english, Scones, Top

St Paul’s Hotel

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What is now the elegant red sandstone St Paul’s Hotel started life as St Paul’s School, founded in 1509. Since then the school has occupied numerous locations. Currently it occupies a large site on the south side of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. Between 1884 and 1968, however, it was housed here on the other side of the river.  Like Eton and Gordonstoun, St Paul’s was designed to populate the government, civil service, diplomatic service and the armed forces with men who could maintain the Empire, They were also expected to keep their parents in the manner to which they had become accustomed. And, of course, keep the riffraff in their rightful place. Amongst its alumni are Samuel Pepys and George Osborne. Quite why they would admit to someone whose main achievement, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was to double the national debt to £1.7 trillion, is quite beyond us.

SWALK

Luckily this rather beautiful building has found a renewed sense of purpose serving scones to the riffraff. Enter riffraff. Poster for the film 'Melody', filmed at St Paul's Hotel, HammersmithThe hotel has lots of beautiful rooms and, in what used to be the lecture theatre, General Eisenhower presented the final invasion plan to General Montgomery, King George VI and Winston Churchill just three weeks before the D-Day landings took place in 1944.

For our cream tea, however, we were ushered into the very comfortable Melody Restaurant & Bar. So called because the school provided the backdrop for the 1971 cult film about ‘puppy love’. The film is sometimes known as S.W.A.L.K (some of you will know what these letters stand for) and if you click on the poster and have an hour and forty three minutes to spare you can watch it. Though you would probably be better served just continuing to read this post.

Scone threesomes

The service in St Paul’s Hotel would best be described as ‘efficient’. Absolutely nothing wrong with it but maybe lacking a certain friendly personal touch that would make all the difference. Then again they can probably spot riffraff a mile off and are trained not to be overly effusive in their welcomes. Scones at St Paul's Hotel, HammersmithThey offer a range of teas and we elected, in true adventurous style, for Indian breakfast rather than English. Quite a good choice as it turned out. The presentation of the scones was as you would expect in such a place. Nice bowls of jam and cream, crisp linen napkins etc. The scones come in threes. Okay they’re quite small, and although some of them could never be described as ‘beautifully formed’, they were delicious … nicely warmed, crunchy on the outside with super soft centres, topped off with a light dusting of icing sugar. Fab … topscone!Interior view of St Paul's Hotel, Hammersmith

Meeting in the forest

You cannot turn your back for a second! While we’ve been away Theresa May has ‘done’ Scotland on her “strong and stable – I am the one” general election tour of what she doubtless regards as ‘the provinces’. Lets face it the Tories see Scotland simply as a place to shoot grouse and store nuclear missiles. Oh, and a source of funding for all their fancy London projects. She really got down and dirty with the locals … not! Her only appearance was in a village hall in a forest near to that well known Labour stronghold of Crathes in Aberdeenshire. It had been surreptitiously booked for a children’s party. No shortage of balloons then? It is hard to imagine anything more pathetic. Okay, okay, George Osborne, but at least he has managed to get another job he knows nothing about, as editor of the Evening Standard?

W14 0QL            tel: 020 8846 9119                 St Paul’s

Ordinary, Scones

The Catstrand

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catstrand-06For our return trip from Kirkcudbright we thought we should try and see some red kites on the side of Loch Ken where, because of the Red Kite Trail, there is every likelihood of seeing them. As we approached the top end of the loch, however, we had almost given up hope, when just about Kenmure Castle, we had no less than eight kites wheeling about above us … marvellous sight! In the last post about The Solway Tide Tearoom, we talked of the difficulty of picking the right side and the stark ruins of Kenmure Castle are yet another reminder of precisely that. In 1716, in the Tower of London, Viscount Kenmure paid the ultimate price for his support of the Jacobites and that pretty much signalled the end of the once powerful Gordons of Lochinvar.

Integrity

These days you don’t tend to lose your head simply for supporting the wrong side. Especially if you simply pret

Piture of an art exhibit at The Catstrand in New Galloway
‘Deep Blue Sea’ by Jenny Edwards – acrylic on driftwood

end you didn’t! Mitt Romney, who picked Clinton and said that Trump was akin to the devil is now in line to be Secretary of State in Trump’s administration. What happened to integrity?

Daesh and crazy politics

Mind you, just when you thought politics could not get any more surreal on this side of the pond, Tony Blair is threatening a return to politics with his honchos, Jim Murphy and George Osborne. Apparently because he thinks today’s politicians are too weak. They may be right about today’s politicians but they also have a  very tenuous grasp on reality. Blair’s ‘strong’ politics managed to provide us with nothing less that Daesh. In the modern world of crazy politics however … who knows, they might actually do it?

Picture of café interior at The Catstrand in New Galloway

About a mile or so north of Kenmure Castle we came to the pretty little village of New Galloway. And it was sconetime! At this time of year many places are closed for the season but The Catstrand is an option we would probably have picked anyway. We have been here before and knew it to be good. Little villages like New Galloway, Moniaive and Thornhill sit prettily in their beautiful surroundings and give you the impression that they are a bit sleepy and nothing much ever happens. The Catstrand, however, proves that to be a complete myth. Piture of a scone at The Catstrand in New GallowayThere’s a shop, a cinema, a concert hall, a bar, an art gallery .. oh, and a café!

Baked by the young chap behind the counter every morning, our scones did not disappoint. Lovely jam but unfortunately, once again, the only downside was the seemingly ubiquitous Rhodda’s cornish cream. Nothing specifically wrong with that. When you are in the heart of Scotland’s dairy country, however, why go all the way to Cornwall for cream? The answer is, of course, that it keeps for ever .. but still!

The Grump

Pat thought we should stay for the cinema which was showing The Grump which, for some reason or other, she thought I would enjoy … I disagreed!

Picture of mural in the garden interior at The Catstrand in New Galloway
Mural in the garden of the Catstrand

DG7 3RN             tel: 01644 420374               The Catstrand

Ordinary, Scones

The Coffee Bothy

Logo for the Coffee Bothy at Deanston DistillerySince the closure of our own much missed Rosebank distillery in 1993 we have had to travel almost twenty miles to Deanston  to get to our nearest distillery. Not that we particularly need to get to a distillery. We did the distillery tour several years back. Deanston, however, is always worth a visit, just for the coffee shop if nothing else.

In the beginning

This place actually started life as a cotton mill back in 1785. It employed so many people that they built a model village round the mill in much the same way as David Dale did at New Lanark. Workers were paid in tokens that could only be exchanged at the village shop which, you guessed it, was operated by the mill owner. A perfect monetary circle .. for the owner! In 1966 the cotton industry came to an end and the building was converted to a whisky distillery drawing water from the nearby river Teith. For those of you with twitching tendencies, the river just opposite the distillery is a good spot for seeing common sandpipers. Interior view of the Coffee Bothy at Deanston DistilleryDeanston 03

Initially it was closed to the public but a couple of years back they must have thought they should cash in on the tourism side of the industry. It was opened the place up for distillery tours. Of course, there had to be the obligatory coffee shop. In this case, the Coffee Bothy, one of three such enterprises run by Blairmains Farm. Scones at Deanston DistilleryWe have been here several times before and have always enjoyed it’s good food and good value. When you order a scone you actually get two which, being quite small, isn’t a problem. In fact it’s a positive benefit if you want to try two different kinds. You also get plenty of jam and cream, though unfortunately it’s scooshie cream and you all know what we think of that. Not topscone but very enjoyable nevertheless.

UK economy

Much of the movie ‘The Angel’s Share’ was filmed here. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘angel’s share’ perhaps we can explain it like this. Imagine that our UK economy is the whisky in a barrel. Deanston Distilley name on barrelBy a process akin to osmosis, over the years, the whisky evaporates through the wood and upwards to the angels who gradually get happier and happier. They can hardly believe their luck. Meanwhile the whisky in the barrel gets less and less and weaker and weaker. Think you can see where we are going with this.

Eventually the barrel is empty and useless but in the process a few angels have become very happy indeed. A perfect analogy for Osborne’s UK economy. Sell off everything that belongs to the people to your mates at knockdown prices. Then hire it all back to the people at extortionate rates .. brilliant! We think he may have worked in that Deanston shop at one time!

If you haven’t done the Deanston distillery tour, you should. It is fascinating .. and then go to the Coffee Bothy for a brace of scones. A good day out and there is something strangely comforting about eating scones surrounded by two million litres of the amber nectar.A stag's head at the Coffee Bothy at Deanston Distillery

FK16 6AG             tel:01786 843013                The Bothy

Ordinary, Scones

Johnston’s Bar Bistro

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The menu at Johnston's Bar BistroWhen I was a mere sapling. Long before I met Pat and long before I realised that not all the scones in the world were baked by my mother, this place was a favourite hangout for us cool dudes. At that time, however, it was called the Temperance Cafe.

In about 1920, as was prevalent at the time, the proceeds of a will had been used to buy the Crown Hotel in the Lint Riggs. The intention was to turn it into a temperance public house as an alternative to the plethora of licensed premises all through the town. A couple of years later it famously became the scene for the first ever television broadcast by John Logie Baird.

Politics and girls

Baird was born in Helensburgh but his family were local  farmers at Sunnybrae in Camelon. Little did he know that that single brief event would change the world forever. The equipment Baird used to broadcast a live image of a colleague from one part of the building to another, became known as ‘the Falkirk televisor‘. As an impressionable youth, however, my personal abiding memory of the Temperance was when four of us were sitting round an upstairs table, talking about girls, politics and the price of milk. Maybe not the last two. Internal view of Johnston's Bar Bistro

Memories

We watched a man walk to the top of the stairs. He stopped, then to our astonishment, fell, like a felled tree, face first down the steps. Shocked, we jumped over the banister (these were the days) and caught him just as he reached the bottom. The management ask us to carry him to the kitchen until help arrived. However we could not get him through the door because his arm was sticking out rigidly to the side. It turned out that he had had an epileptic fit, something none of us had heard of at the time, so it made quite an impression. Especially the intense deliberations over what to do about the arm that refused to bend. We had to turn him on his side so that it pointed straight up. No mean feat for four puny wastrels.

Anyway, the whole temperance thing never really took off. After several other incarnations, it has been Johnston’s Bar & Bistro since 2012. One of the town’s favourite meeting places. A scone at Johnston's Bar BistroWe decided to share a fruit scone because they were quite large. When it arrived it was accompanied by the biggest pot of cream we have ever come across. Probably enough to do twenty scones. Needless to say, almost all of it was left, but the scone itself was very good. Their strap line is ‘Food, Drink & Service as it should be‘. A strap line delivered, because we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

Taking things for granted

When you think about it it’s really quite amazing. We sit watching pictures beamed directly into our living rooms. Strictly Come Dancing. Johanna Lumley crossing Siberia. Cameron trying to look as if he is negotiating something massive with the EU. Osborne pretending to have some sort of control. Children being starved to death in Madaya. We take the means by which these pictures reach us completely for granted but it all started here. Sending pictures between two rooms in this building.

FK1 1DG         tel: 01324 637299          Johnston’s Bar Bistro