The Pryordurkins

Posts Tagged ‘london’

On Saturday, we went along to Chelsea Flower Show in London with our friends Steve and Russell.  We arrived at around 10am having walked from the Crowne Plaza hotel on Buckingham Gate where we were all staying for the weekend.  Entering through the gates, the memories of my last visit came flooding back.  With the sun shining and it being the last day of this particular RHS flower show the crowds were out in force.

One of the best things about the Chelsea Flower Show is that no babes in arms or children under five are allowed.  As a result you were hard pushed to find anyone under thirty years of age.  We spent the next couple of hours walking round the site, getting acquainted with the layout, taking in the show gardens and smelling the flowers in the main pavillions.

At 12 noon, because we had previously booked a table in the Rock Bank Restaurant, we took our seats for a three course lunch and bottle of champagne.  We were overlooking the main avenue and were quite close to the BBC broadcasting stand so had a great position for people watching throughout our meal.

Having finished up, the afternoon lay ahead with many more show gardens to visit.

It had started to cool down around 3pm when we took a break in the picnic area for a glass of Pimms or two!

We left the show just before the final day sale of exhibits started at 4pm.

It has been a couple of months since I last used this East Coast Main line to get from York to London, via Doncaster, Grantham and Peterborough. This morning however has me travelling from York on the National Express service that leaves at 8.36am.

There was an air of excitement around York station as I waited for the train. I couldn’t put my finger on what was creating this atmosphere until I noticed quite a few Events Co-ordinators (evidenced by the big bright yellow jackets which said Events Co-ordinator!). They were putting up posters that would direct people who were clearly expected to visit the station and view the new Tornado Steam Engine which was due to pass through. Watching the preparations kept me amused for a while as I waited for my service to arrive into platform 3.

I boarded the National Express East Coast train and we left York bang on 8.36am. The outside of the train looked a bit grim, with old style doors and a lot of winter dirt. However inside was very pleasant indeed. I’d decided to upgrade myself and was happy to find a double seat with a table all to myself. Who says I’m miserable?

A few improvements seem to have been made since I last travelled. The at-seat menu has been revamped and you can now enjoy full dining at any seat in first class. The prices are quite high but I suppose they do have a captive audience and when you think about the space they have to work within to prepare food, it is quite a feat that they can produce so much for so many when they are so full.

In the interest of research I tried the freshly cooked bacon and tomato toasted sandwich (£3.75) and it was nicely prepared and tasty. Another change they have introduced is that you now find sparkling and still bottled water all ready placed on your table which is a nice touch in my view. Along with complimentary biscuits (which I avoided in the interest of my waistline) they served up fresh coffee which was passable and hot. I do wish they would invest in better beans though.

The staff were a little grumpy and barked requests to each passenger …… Coffee?……Milk?……Tickets?……. I just felt they could have been a little happier in their work.

Finally, I should mention the ticket prices. Since I last travelled the open return ticket to London seems to have gone up by £36 since early December. By my reckoning that is the equivalent to a 15% increase. This is on top of the price rises they introduced earlier in 2008. However I do recall a news story which explained National Express pay the government billions of pounds for the privilege of running this service and have to sell several thousand tickets each day before they earn a penny to cover their own running costs. Tax by another name me thinks?

Anyway we continued our journey and arrived into London Kings Cross bang on time.

Pryordurkin rating 3 stars.

While I was working in Reading today I received a text from Paul.  It read “Well I have forgotton my poster and now I have thrown coffee all over me!”  You could say I was surprised.   You’d be wrong.

Let me take you back a little and imagine how Paul’s morning went.

6.00am. Woken by Sooty walking over face….Lay in bed wondering why it’s all so difficult.

7.00am Got up, fed Sooty and Tia.  Sat down in ’silent’ lounge with bowl of cornflakes.  Contemplated for a few moments.  Contemplated for a few moments more.  30 minutes contemplation later decided to ring Michael on his phone.  2 minutes later, hung up clearly realising Michael was fast asleep before I rang and is now grumpy.

8.00am.   Showered, shaved and sh….ould have gone to gym but started up laptop and did some work instead.

10:15am.  Taxi sounds it horn.  Look around house for keys.  Put coat on. Say good bye to Sooty and Tia.  Put shoes on (laces untied) and leave house.  Remember to lock door.

10:36am.  Sit on train at table with three strangers.

10:48am.  Realise the poster due to be presented at scientific conference in London (purpose of trip) is still at home.

10.50am.  Need to console myself.  Order up coffee from the trolley.  Try to open milk.  It doesn’t comply.  Try to squeeze milk carton.  Squirts, hand hits cup.  Coffee goes flying.  Clean white shirt now covered in and smelling of coffee.  Three travellers mopping up coffee from table, legs and bags.  Face a lovely glowing colour… not from heat of coffee currently burning legs.

11.00am.  Sent text message to Michael.

11.38am.  Received call from Michael who said.  You’re special…..

This week has me staying at the Holiday Inn Reading South for a couple of nights.  I turned up at reception around 8pm last night and the check in experience was fine.  They had all my details and all I needed to do was sign for my pre-prepared room card.  The reception area was smart and clean.  The bar and restaurant areas looked busy with business and tourist people alike.  It seemed like a fairly relaxed affair.  Not many stuffy suits sitting around.  I made my way to my room and it took a while.  This hotel is quite sprawling and the walk to my room must have took at least three minutes ( a long time for me!).

The room was as I now expect.  Clean, no character and functional.  The only immediate problem I could find was the TV remote control didn’t work and having reported this, was a little disappointed that it would take till the next day to fix.  I had to resign myself to the old fashioned way of changing channels and volume ie. getting off my ass and pushing buttons.

Room service last night was a bit of a disapointment.  The waiter nearly dropped everything on the floor and the food was barely warm.  I still can’t understand what the tray charge is for either, given the prices charged for room menu items are generally a whole pound more expensive than the same item in the restaurant.  Anyway I was too tired to worry about this for too long and after the guy / or girl upstairs had finished walking backwards and forwards across their floor for half an hour, I fell asleep. (what do they do to keep walking backwards and forward across such a small room?  I’d love to know!)

Anyway this evening, having got back from work, I decided to try the swimming pool out and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Clean and relaxed, it was nice to be staying at a hotel (unlike many in London) that actually has some space for a gym and pool.  Feeling virtuous I then made my way to the restaurant for dinner.

Surprise, surprise.  It was actually excellent food by hotel restaurant standards.  The starter of mushroom soup was freshly prepared and had fantastic taste and consistecy ( I do like a good soup).  My main was equally good; presented well and clearly cooked fresh by someone who cared.  With such good food coming out of the kitchen I then had for try (for research purposes) the dessert menu.  Again this was excellent.  The chocolate sauce was to die for!

All in all, I am very pleased with this hotel.  A great experience so far.  The restaurant food is very good indeed and it has a great gym.  To top all that, it is also moments from the M4.

Pryordurkin rating 4 stars.

We’re both thankfully back to normal now following our experience of the Norovirus over the last week.  Paul returned to work this morning having dropped his car off for the annual service and MOT and I take up another assignment later this week having finished my last one early December.

So with a reasonable holiday (especially for me and barring the bug!) we are both now firing on all cylinders again and looking forward to 2009.  So much so, we started to browse the holiday websites last night and are considering a long haul holiday around April/May time.  We’ll have to check the loose change bottle down the back of the sofa to see if it stretches as far as our likeness for five star treatment goes but will probably firm things up over the next week.

My new assignment is likely to have me spending time in London a few nights a week again, at least for the early part of the year, so expect the usual London restaurant reviews to start up once more!    In the mean time while catching up with emails etc I am going through the house top to bottom, with disinfectant, bleaching every surface and washing all our clothes and bedding with added Dettol to ensure no return of the so called winter vomiting bug.  Having checked the latest advice (read some here), we’re assurred we’ve now past the point of being infectious to others and look forward to welcoming Christine, Graham and the kids this weekend, where we are taking them to the local panto.

It’s been a pretty fast paced week that ended with me picking Paul up from York Railway station last night at 10.00pm.  Paul had been into London on some science people type meet up.  Earlier in the week, I had been into London for a couple of meetings and a couple of Jollys.  We’ve also welcomed a new review to the Pryordurkin website from my fellow diner and friend Sticky T (read it here).   We’re still waiting for our Australian correspondent to submit her first review!

Before Paul got back last night I took the opportunity while he was away to put up some tacky flashing Christmas lights outside the house.  A nice blue LED lit doorway awaited his return.  Those who know him well can only imagine the look on his face.  It was priceless and worth every penny I spent at Barnitts buying them.

Having a fairly leisurely start to the day this morning, while Paul was ignoring me by playing with Lara Croft downstairs (the game – for those who don’t know Paul!), I found myself stumbling across some good music on BBC Radio Three and enjoying it for the next hour or so.  I remembered while listening that the general rule of thumb when it comes to getting old in England is that you start life by listening to Radio One, move onto Radio Two when you hit your thirties.  This is then followed when you reach middle age by becoming an avid BBC Radio Four listener telling your friends and colleagues it’s for the news and comedy only.  The final stage before you order the box that will take you into the ground is listening to BBC Radio Three and being intolerant of noise, children, the general public and basically anyone who gets in your way when walking on a pavement, into a post office or queueing at Marks and Spencer for a little treat.

Those who know me, will realise that this brief encounter with BBC Radio Three is just that because I have never displayed any of the other aforementioned symptons.

To celebrate a piece of good news with many a colleague I found myself at the Fire Station on Waterloo Road in London last night.  As the name suggests this place is or should I now say, was a Fire Station before being turned into this popular pub and eatery.  I arrived at little after 6.30pm.  I was supposed to be there a little earlier but I got completely lost having left the underground at Waterloo itself.  Following my colleagues directions did not help!  Anyway, as I arrived the pub was very busy indeed.  Mostly with suits who like me had just left their offices after a hard days work   With a free bar being laid on by the company I did not get a chance to see what the cost of drinks were but the quality was certainly good.  As many a regular reader will know, I much prefer a fruit based drink (for the lady – according to Al Murray, the pub landlord) so I ordered up a large Red Malbec which was served in a crisp clean glass.  The waiter was pleasant enough and once we had worked out each others accent, even offered up a smile.  There wasn’t a lot of standing room available and for the next hour or so, trying to catch up on conversations with colleagues while being pushed and shoved was a challenge, but to be fair quite good fun as the local talent kept touching my shoulder asking to ’squeeze’ past.  The wooden floors and high ceilings allowed for many a voice to echo around the place though so as I write this post my voice is a little coarse.

At around 8pm we were shown thru to our table near the kitchens which looked spotless.  Fairly slow service then took place, but again to be fair, the pace was fine as it offered my group the chance to continue chatting and swapping stories.  The food itself when it did come was actually very good.  I went for a Courgette Soup starter (£5 approx) and a Beef Fillet main (£18 approx).  Both of which were well seasoned; my beef being cooked as requested – medium rare.  With the Zinfadel flowing (£23 a bottle) the evening quickly went past.  The service continued to be friendly throughout and as the time moved past 10pm, the place was starting to empty.  As we left around 11.30, we were pretty much the last people to leave the dining area.

Pryordurkin rating 3 Stars.  Tel: 020 7620 2226  Fax: 020 7633 9161

I needed to pop into the City today to catch up on all those little jobs I’ve not managed to do having been working in London pretty much everyday now for some weeks. The old faithful car started up immediately and so I set off.  I noticed as I approached the first roundabout it felt a little funny, but I just thought it was because it had been stood without use for some weeks and was in need of warming through.  As I approached the City centre I then noticed a strange smell; a sort of shoe-polish smell.  I pulled over when I noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet.  I did a quick roadside check (once I’d found how to open the bonnet) and could see the engine looking a little moist.  I decided to head immediately to my local garage.

I never quite made it.  The engine with a shudder gave up the ghost and suddenly stopped.  It was (of course) by this point pouring down with rain.  I phoned the nice people at AA.  Within twenty minutes (excellent service) a man in a big yellow coat had come behind me.  Within minutes of opening my bonnet, he asked if I lived near a field.  I answered; we are surrounded by them.  He said I had been attacked by mice.  I don’t remember the little creatures hitting me at any point before he then went onto say they had been nesting inside my engine compartment and eaten their way through lots of my rubber piping.  He pointed to a big black tube with diesel pouring out onto the engine.  He sucked his lips and said this is going to be expensive.

Apparently, he said, having mice eat their way through your car is not that common but occasionally happens to the unlucky few and I immediately thought the old Pryordurkin effect was clearly having a laugh today.  Of course I am now going to have serious words with our two cats who have clearly been slacking of late.

We went along to see Monkey. Journey to the West by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn at London’s O2 Arena in North Greenwich last night.  We had seen a documentary earlier this year about the making of this new Opera and were fascinated by the creative process behind its making.  Having missed it playing in Manchester and being too busy to see it at the Royal Opera House in London we were pleased to have bagged a couple of tickets ahead of them being released to Joe public.  I’d listened to the Album some weeks ago and couldn’t quite buy into it.  I had therefore thought with the context of the show, it might all fit together and the penny would finally drop.  Unfortunately it didn’t really. The talent was obvious to see from the start both in the way the Opera had been written and the brilliant graphics used throughout.  The acrobatic players were themselves clearly excellent in what they do and could easily have being mistaken for a Cirque de Soleil cast.  However it never quite seemed to come together in a way that connected with the audience.  It was a bit like going to see Cirque de Soleil only without the gasps of awe and clapping from the audience you usually get when amazing feats of human acrobatics play out in front of you.  The audience at this show sat predominantly silent throughout.  The only time there was a connection was when the main character playing Monkey sat on the edge of the stage with another cast member, taking a sip of water and asking his colleague in English, if he wanted a drink; his colleague replying with another question about whether he wanted a smoke in return.  Monkey commenting “it’s England they don’t smoke here”, before returning to character and climbing back on stage.  A momentary burst of laughter from audience at this point reminded me there were several hundred people behind us watching the show.  The best scene played out in the second half of the show following the interval, when for a moment it nearly came together; the music, the acrobatics, the characters and the amazing graphics, but this soon passed and the ending came without much of a crescendo. We only knew to clap when the curtain started to fall.

An interesting experience all in all.  It was technically brilliant but unfortunately lacked any passion resulting in little connection between the players and the audience.  It was an Opera with high IQ but little by the way of EQ.

Pryordurkin rating. 3 Stars.

With a show to get to at 8pm we wanted something quick to eat last night.  Arriving at 7pm we were sat immediately on the top floor of Nando’s restaurant at the O2 in London.  As soon as we entered we felt uncomfortable.  The atmosphere was just a little bit threatening and we could quite put our finger on why.  We persevered with our order and were pleased to find, that despite the place being extremely busy, we were served up our food within 15 minutes.  It was it’s usual consistent self.  Comforting, filling, spicy and good value.  I made a quick visit to the Loos which were up yet another flight of stairs and to say there could do with a clean, was an understatement.  They didn’t look as though anyone had checked on the state of them for many hours.  As we finished our meals, birthday parties were in full swing at other tables, queues continued at the order points and the noise became ever louder with kids in hoods competing with each to be the centre of attention at various tables around the place.  The service was efficient and reasonably friendly for such a busy place, but I have to say, I was pleased to get out of there within half an hour because I’m convinced it was all about to kick off.  The metal detectors at the entrances to most pubs and restaurants at O2 didn’t serve to improve my confidence, although I was pleased to see this place now full of life, given last time I visited it was an empty shell.

Pryordurkin rating 2 Stars.