Friday, November 27, 2009
Dogmoan
Rather intrigued yesterday to be in a queue of vehicles approaching Sutton and to notice that the two vans ahead of me belonged to an outfit called 'Defence Security'. Both done up in police style trim, one perhaps a Transit Connect and the other perhaps a Transit Regular. The first called 'Dog Team' and the second called 'Dog Team Response Unit'. On closer inspection they did not appear to be the property of any state outfit, so why were they dressed up as such? I not care to have commercial people dressing up as state people. Muddies the boundaries. Later in the day it was pointed out that the vans were probably providing doggy services to prisons, of which we have several. Earlier this morning a little googling identifies the culprits as http://www.def-sec.com/en/home. I wonder if these people operate in places like Iraq?
But got to Sutton to find that the Post Office there in Grove Street was a much smarter place than Epsom Post Office, which has been terribly shabby for years. The lady behind the armour glass told me that Epsom had been downgraded in the Post Office scheme of things and could no longer expect to be smart. I suppose we should be grateful that it is there at all. I suppose also that it must be tricky for Post Office management to manage all these large and grand buildings which were built when business was a bit brisker. I remember that there are some very large and grand post office buildings on the continent. Presumably they are in the same kind of trouble.
Which reminds me of a pub theory that has been maturing over the past few months. There are a lot of very large, free-standing pubs in England. Great big three story affairs perhaps built in the nineteenth or the early part of the twentieth century when decent working people were keen to escape from the nappies in their hovels for a few hours and when business was in consequence brisk. Brisk enough to carry these large and often fancily decorated buildings. But times have changes. Business is no longer so brisk. But local councils do not always seem to understand.
Hello Mr Councilman, I own this pub which has been losing money for years despite my best efforts. Can I knock it down and turn it into flats which would provide much needed housing and maybe make me a bit of money for a change? No. Hmm. Well can I turn it into a restaurant instead? No. You would be changing the character of the area and we cannot allow that sort of thing. No. Hmm. Well what can I do? Not our problem.
My understanding is that on the continent their bars are better pitched to the scale of business. You have a bar on the ground floor of a block in a town. The upper floors are all offices or flats or whatever. Getting a reasonable return on the space and everybody happy. Maybe a bit of noise at closing time. Now, we are moving in this direction with town pubs in new-build. But what on earth are we to do with our suburban and country bar heritage which is rotting away? We can only support so many foodie bars.
Which brings me onto the swedes. We have had swede three times in the last five days, mashed with a little butter and pounded black pepper. The first one, which had been sitting in the garage for a week or two, was very hard to mash. Had to resort to fairly severe measures. The second one, fresh from Waitrose, and cooked for maybe 45 minutes rather than the usual 25, was fine. The third, fresh from the Cheam greengrocer was another toughie. This may have been to do with its shape, cylindrical rather than spherical. Not a good sign in radishes which are supposed to be spherical. But that is not the whole story. Swedes are supposed to keep for ages and should be OK after a week in the garage. I shall keep an eye on swedes for the next few weeks and see if I can spot the pattern. There must be one.
# posted by Jim @ 4:13 AM 
