Tag Archives: Richmond

Alianti Bonne Bouche

11 August 2023 billpaterson1@me.com 9 Comments

You can probably tell that with a highfalutin name like Alianti Bonne Bouche that we are not in Scotland any more. We’re in London imposing on family. Even down here though the name is a bit confusing! Bonne Bouche kind of means ‘tasty bite’. We can go with that but Alianti is Italian for ‘gliders’ … no comprendes!

Confusion

Actually this place is confusing and it’s not just the name. There are no toilet or hand washing facilities and in our old fashioned naive kind of way we thought that that wasn’t allowed these days. An enquiry about these facilities elicits a brusque “don’t have any” from the unsurprisingly surly and cross legged staff. Things were not getting off to the best of starts. There were two scones on the counter and that was it. She said “we don’t have cream but there’s strawberry jam. Would we like that?” Rather than just have a dry scone we replied in the affirmative. Then she added “There’s butter as well. Would we like that?” Boy, they really know how to show people a good time down here! To be fair, she did offer to toast the scones which was great because they looked at least a couple of days old.

External view of Alianti in Richmond — Paved Court leads to Ted Lasso’s flat and the pub used in the TV series

On the upside, it was a lovely day so we sat out in Paved Court which isn’t a ‘court’, more a narrow little lane that runs down the side of the cafe. Is there no end to the confusion? From a sconological point of view, suffice to say that this experience was just a whisker short of catastrophic. The coffee was nice but other than that there was nothing to commend it. If we were ever to return they would have to drop the ‘bonne bouche’ and have a large illuminated sign advertising their brand spanking new toilets. We are not holding our breath!.

She asked!

Our sojourn at Alianti was actually very enjoyable. Nothing to do with the fare we are served but a lot to do with the two ladies sitting at the next table. They were great fun! One was from Germany but had spent most of her life in the US. She was keen to know why Scotland wanted to separate from England. So many reasons … where to start?

Internal view of Alianti in Richmond — Interior of Alianti

Norway has just published that they expect to get £120 billion in tax revenues from North Sea oil in 2023. Scotland has the same amount of oil but gets nothing … it all goes to Westminster. They then waste it on vanity projects in London. Then there’s the lies. Not little porky pie type lies but great big humungous lies. Obviously not big enough to embarrass Boris Johnson, no lies are that big but big nevertheless!

In 2014 we had the referendum on Scottish independence. We were told then that there was only a dribble of oil left. Hardly enough to last the year. Never mind the green issues, a couple of weeks ago Rishi Sunak issued 100 brand new drilling licences with hundreds more to follow. There’s loads of oil! In 2014 we were told that the only way Scotland could stay in the EU was to stick with England. Two years later Brexit ensured that Scotland was dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the EU.

Two Carron K6s with Ted Lasso's pub in the background — At the other end of Paved Court, two cast iron telephone kiosks made in Falkirk with Ted Lasso’s pub in the background,

Also, never mind that Scotland has a devolved government that wants independence or that almost all the Westminster MPs who represent Scotland also want independence, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. All the important powers are retained by England. We could have gone on: the BBC, monarchy, land ownership, the Barnett formula but by this time she was wishing she had never asked!

Morality?

Economics are all well and good but for us it’s simply a moral question. Why should one country be able to deny another country the right to determine its own future. It’s equivalent to Canada having to ask permissions from the US. Canadians would tolerate that for slightly less than a split nanosecond!

We bade farewell to our new enlightened friends and headed off in search of a real bonne bouche!

TW9 1NF tel: 020 8332 2001 Alianti

///saying.sport.manliness

english, Ordinary, Scones

Tide Tables Cafe

21 September 2018 billpaterson1@me.com 3 Comments

Have you have ever wondered how many Richmonds there are in the world? No?? Well, there are 56, so if anyone asks, now you know! In 2009 Richmond was voted best town in the UK but that was the one in North Yorkshire. The one we are in today, however, would probably be voted the wealthiest.

A glance in an estate agent’s window will provide you with several opportunities to rent a house for £30,000 a month … a month!! And if you get fed up sitting in your expensive house you can catch a ferry from here to Ham House or Hampton Court Palace and look at places that even you can’t afford. The town is also in an excellent state of repair. The 21,000 good people of Richmond just read about things like potholes if they unwittingly pick up a provincial newspaper. Potholes are not something they would ever have to actually experience for themselves.

View along river Thames at Richmond — Looking along the riverside from Tide Tables

Historically the town used to be called Sheen. It was here that the Commissioners of Scotland had to kneel before Edward I after William Wallace was executed in 1305. So how did it end up becoming yet another, common as muck, Richmond? Well, in 1501, when Henry VII built his new residence here, he called it Richmond Palace after his ancestral home, Richmond Castle, in ‘town of the year’ Richmond in North Yorkshire. After all, if you have a lot of castles, you cannot be expected to sit around all day dreaming up new names for all of them. Sheen Palace would have had a certain ‘gloss’ to it though! Anyway, the town that grew up here around Richmond Palace ended up adopting its name.

Lycra land

Having said that, it isn’t hard to see what attracted folk here in the first place. Set on a meander in the Thames, its a lovely place to stroll around if you have absolutely nothing better to do. Of course, that’s where we come in …itinerant scone munching vagrants. The riverside is particularly nice, it is always busy with cyclists and walkers. Down here you cannot simply put bicycle clips round your trousers and head off blithely on your bike. No, no, no, you have to be fully rigged out, top to tail, in multicoloured lycra so that you look exactly like a competitor in the Tour de France, even though you are only going to pick up a pint of milk. This rules applies no matter your body shape, giving rise to the acronym MAMILs … Middle Aged Man In Lycra.

You also need all the technology. A phone with a head set so that you can dictate notes for tomorrow’s meetings or chat to your auntie Jeanie while you pedal. The obligatory Fitbit is also required so that you can chart your progress to eternal life and body beautiful. The walkers aren’t much better! As befits a place where the people have oodles of choice, Tide Tables is a hip veggie and vegan café. It occupies an arch under Richmond bridge next to a boat builder but it also has a lovely outdoor seating area under giant plane trees. We were able to sit in the dappled sunlight and watch the riverside bustle while we ate our scones. If you can’t afford all that lycra you have no choice but to sit and watch?

Being alive

On a slightly different tack. You know how we are always bleating on about places that serve butter and cream from England when we are in Scotland, well down here the butter was from France … mon dieu! Mon dieu, as well for the cream, it was very strange, hard and crumbly. Probably because it had never been within a country mile of a cow. The scone itself was quite big and although it had a fair amount of fruit it just tasted okay. Nothing to write home about. So why are you wasting our time we hear you cry! Okay it wasn’t a topscone but the overall experience of sitting by the river in the sunshine watching everyone else putting so much effort into being alive was wonderfully relaxing. So we can, at least, recommend that.

Back to front

Sitting here you could possible believe that all was well in the world. Then you remember Brexit! Just why Michel Barnier doesn’t say to Theresa May ” look, the UK has always been a miserable grudging and small minded member of the EU … just close the door on the way out” is beyond us. Instead we have to listen to Theresa May saying that the EU must compromise if they want us to leave … eh, think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Theresa!

Extradition

And where is David Cameron who got us into this mess in the first place. Playing so fast and loose with the future of the country should be some sort of criminal offence. Presumably, therefore, he is somewhere like North Korea that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK. More likely, however, that he is holed up somewhere in deepest Richmond.

TW9 1TH. tel: 020 8948 8285 Tide Tables Café

Ordinary, Scones, self-service

The Orangery – Ham House

9 September 2017 billpaterson1@me.com

FOR SALE des-res in Ham. Thames side location just a short walk from Richmond. Price £1,131! Okay, that was in 1650, just 40 years after it was built by Sir Thomas Vavasour. Goodness knows what it would be worth today. Only Russian oligarchs need apply. Back then however it seemed to be mainly Scots who had the money. Firstly it was William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart, then Lord Elgin, then John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale, then Archibald Campbell, 1st Duke of Argyll. In fact several Dukes of Argyll were born here?? The last Earl of Dysart, the 9th, died in 1935 leaving almost £5million but with no direct heirs so in 1948 it passed to the National Trust. And hence they let riffraff like us in.

The interior of the house is supposed to be spectacular but we didn’t bother going in … scones we were after! The gardens are extensive and beautifully manicured. Apparently the oldest Christ’s thorn bush in the country is situated right here on the tea terrace outside the orangery. Not old enough to have provided anything for the crucifixion … but old. The orangery itself is said to be the oldest in the country but then again, the country is not exactly stacked out with orangeries.

Cream first?

It was a lovely day for sitting out so, once we had acquired everything from the self service counter, that’s what we did. The scones were good and were accompanied by the ubiquitous Rhodda’s Cornish Cream that we are always going on about. Down here it seems much more acceptable than it does in the Highlands of Scotland

where there is plenty of local cream. There was also ‘National Trust’ jam and a pat of butter. We were here with our daughter who lives nearby. Before we realised what was happening she had done her scone cream first … arrgghh, dragged up!

Dreich

Nevertheless, no matter which way you prepared these scones they were very good, not topscones but very good. All in all this was a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon. A friend from Maryland who had stayed with us some months back had become fascinated by the word ‘dreich’. In Scottish that means ‘inclement’ or ‘pretty miserable’. He emailed to see if it could be applied to hurricanes or if we had another word for that. We had to let him know that ‘dreich’ was about as serious as our weather gets. So, no, we didn’t have another word. It made us realise, though, with Hurricane Irma reaking havoc all through the Caribbean, how lucky we are to have the weather we have. Even though all we do is complain about it.

TW10 7RS tel: 020 8940 1950 The Orangery TA

english, Ordinary

Muriel’s Kitchen

8 November 2015 billpaterson1@me.com 1 Comment

The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is one of those entities that sounds as if it has been around for centuries. However, it has only been in existence since 1965 when three smaller council areas were amalgamated. It is home to many attractions like Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace, Twickenham Stadium. Our favourite is the London Wetlands Centre which we visit frequently.

It is probably the single most affluent area of London and perhaps unsurprisingly is deemed to have the best quality of life. Also unsurprisingly it is almost exclusively white and conservative. You will all, of course, remember that we have been here before at the Bingham Hotel. We spent a very pleasant afternoon sipping tea in rather posh surroundings.

This time we were just out for a walk along the Thames but before we got to the river we stopped off here at Muriel’s Kitchen. There are lots of cafés and coffee shops in town but this one took our fancy. Perhaps because we once had an aunt Muriel who baked a rather mean scone. It’s a very pleasant place with a wide range of food on offer and somewhat retro decor; copper jelly moulds and frying pans in abundance.

Representative?

Sitting here, looking around, you realise that this place, and indeed the whole borough of Richmond, kind of represents the government. Predominately white, male, well heeled, privileged backgrounds, private and Oxbridge educated. A generalisation of course, but the flip side of the coin is a bit more worrying because this borough is nothing at all like the rest of the country. Hence, by definition, the makeup of the current government does not reflect the country it is supposed to serve. Given that only 1 in 4 of the electorate voted for it we should probably not be surprised. However, that’s UK style democracy, the most undemocratic state in the EU.

a jam jar?? — a jam jar, what happened to presentation?

It raises the question though; if a government is crammed full of Oxbridge alumni does it mean that they will make good politicians and govern well. Self evidently, it does not. We have the most right wing government in years introducing the Chinese Communist Party into the heart of UK infrastructure. A move, the only possible beneficiaries of which can be the bankers.

Learning from history

It’s not as if we don’t already know all this. George W Bush’s administration was made up of the cream of Yale, Princeton and Harvard graduates. We all know what happened under that leadership .. catastrophic wars and financial disaster. Whatever happened to politicians from working class backgrounds. The Nye Bevans of this world who had imagination and empathy? Perhaps, by way of an experiment, it should be mandatory for people who run for office to be certified eejits just to see if it would make any difference.

Unfortunately the scones might have been made by some sort of elite academic because, although perfectly edible, they would not have passed aunt Muriel’s exacting standards .. a bit doughy and a tad on the solid side … great coffee though!

TW9 1TW Tel: 02008 948 7011 Muriel’s

Ordinary, Scones

Bingham Hotel

16 April 2015 billpaterson1@me.com 1 Comment

What a day! Not only is the temperature about 22 degrees here in Richmond on the banks of the Thames the atmosphere is such that you could swear you were on Lake Como. Only cloud anywhere is that the Conservatives have just announced a ‘right to buy’ scheme for housing associations. Are they completely bonkers? Have they lost the scone completely? The last scheme rolled out by Maggie was a disaster for the country and now they want to repeat the whole process again. Presumably in the vain hope of getting a few votes from loads of prospective landlords. If we are not mistaken it is also illegal but, of course, they will just change the law.

Rooibos and Jasmine Pearls

Back to serious stuff! When you are in Richmond you could do a lot worse than visit the Bingham Hotel for afternoon tea. It is in a fantastic setting with gardens going down to the waters edge and beautiful interiors. The champers thing just had to be done and it was not long before Francesco, who took us under his wing, delivered us two beautiful glasses while we struggled to decide which tea to have. Eventually it was Rooibos for me and Jasmine Pearls for Pat .. lovely.

As you might expect everything was beautifully presented … fantastic linen napkins and delicate floral chinaware. There was four different types of sandwich, four plain and fruit scones, four assorted cakes and our scones came nicely wrapped in a napkin to keep them warm. What more could you ask for?Well, unfortunately, the scones were a little bit disappointing. They were too sweet and the texture was too fine so that they seemed more like a cake than a scone. Also the Bingham is a little on the expensive side. Then again you are not going to get this sort of afternoon tea experience on the cheap, far from it. Overall the whole experience was really enjoyable and we would thoroughly recommend it.

TW10 6UT tel:020 8940 0902 www.thebingham.co.uk

Scones, history and a dollop of politics