The Shakespeare Bed and Breakfast
96 St. Leonards Gate
Lancaster LA1 1NN
England
01524 841 041
by Henrietta Crumpet
Not long ago I took time out from my very busy and important life teaching homeless people to train cats to stand on their shoulders and experienced a Wedding Weekend consisting of two expressions of conjugal bliss at opposite ends of the country. Now before you ask, dear reader, if either of these were mine, I ask you to consider your positions on bigamy and Mormonism and let me know if you wouldn’t mind sharing your nether regions with a partner who shares their nether regions.
I am, of course, still unmarried.
These celebrations, being as they were in Lancaster and Dorset - the north preceding the south by twenty four hours - required myself and my erstwhile companion to travel at an un-holy hour of the morning after the one in order to get to the other. Not being familiar with all Lancaster has to offer I popped along to the Internet and had a little browse. Choosing a small, unassuming place with some marvellous reviews, I rang to book a night there. Sally, who was to be our attentive host, rang me back with a rather worried tone to her voice ‘You left a message saying you were booking because you had read all of our nice reviews, well, Fred and I don’t want you to expect too much or think that it will be as nice as they say.’ With this endorsement ringing in our ears we promptly booked, and set off.
I offer you this preamble in order to impress upon you two things: the antisocial hour of our departure at 6am in order to get to Dorset for the second ceremonial coupling of the weekend, and the demeanour of our hostess. I had already explained that despite a penchant for breakfast and a particular fondness for the B & B buffet option, I was expecting to have to forgo this pleasure in order to stumble groggily onto a train on time. Our hostess was horrified. ‘We’ll leave you a bit of Continental out,’ She said, ‘Is 5.45 alright?’ ‘Lovely,’ I said, ‘perfectly wondrous.’ Five minutes later she was back. ‘So how would you like your eggs? Scrambled, fried or boiled?’ There was a slight pause. ‘We can’t send you off without a cooked breakfast now can we?’
And so, very tired and a little worse for wear the next day we rolled ourselves into the living room for a full cooked breakfast. Sally and Fred were up, already unfeasibly cheerful, and had laid out for us everything they could possibly think of that could be called Breakfast. There were cereals in mini boxes, bowls of fruit, cheese and ham, small, pleasingly squidgy packets of butter and tiny jars of jam. Tea and coffee were proffered alongside glasses of orange juice and just as I was about to start panicking that this was too much too early and I was therefore probably still asleep and about to miss my train, turn up late to the second wedding, crash into the bride on my way in causing her to fall and chip a tooth and thus ruin the whole day, the cooked breakfast arrived.
I cannot in all honesty proclaim this as the best breakfast I have ever had. The beans were slightly too runny for my liking and the tomato sliced to such a thickness that the lovely goo on the outside does not permeate its raw interior, but the bacon was meaty and flavoursome and the eggs cooked to perfection – yolk that cascades over the shiny surface of your knife but has started to cook just a few millimetres from the white, leaving you in no doubt that the milky exterior will be fit for consumption. It was a breakfast of kings at a time when the royal head is definitely ordinarily still nuzzling into its well-fluffed pillow. If you ever find yourself in Lancaster, I can think of no better place for breakfast after bed, but don’t tell Sally and Fred I sent you, it will only make them worry.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Workers Cafe, Islington
Workers Cafe
172 Upper Street
Islington
N1 1RG
020 7226 3973
by Henrietta Crumpet
Ah, The Workers Cafe, bastion of socialist Islington, beacon of light for the Marx-reading, poll tax rioting, Labour voting reds from the time when builders were builders, new developments with loft living were factories, and all local primary schools were run by women who read Germaine Greer whilst chain smoking outside the school gates. Those were the days.
I have been a local at The Workers since that fateful day in 1987 when, on a lightly hazy summer morning, Thatcher was re-elected for the third time and I arrived at school to find mothers silently weeping in the playground. I was a local when my father ruined my own mother’s favourite red lipstick by writing ‘WE WON!’ in giant, jubilant capitals on the bathroom mirror on May Day ten years later. And I’m still a local now, when Edward’s Machinery has long gone, Bella’s and Smokes have disappeared from the high street, and the cafe’s interior is no longer concealed in a haze of cigarette smoke.
My breakfast habits have broadened a little since I was six and would only order fried tomatoes on two white toasts (the tomatoes to be served separately) accompanied by a Snapple iced tea. I even eat mushrooms now. The Worker’s horizons have broadened too. Gone are the faded yellow Formica tables with round red seats affixed, the bad instant coffee and the lakes of grease gently pooling around your chosen morning fare. Worried about the impending doom the smoking ban could have wreaked on their loyal clientele, they’ve installed a coffee machine, seats that move, and at-seat ordering, making it the best place to grab a quick cup of reasonably priced coffee on Upper St. It’s still run by the same extended family, a variation on the socialist worker’s collective that the name suggests, and is delightfully devoid of pretension (and music).
And so to breakfast. For a small number of English Pounds (£4.95) there are breakfast selections including a traditional English, a Vegetarian and a Turkish, all with toast and tea or coffee. For that price I’m not expecting hand-selected sausages from Borough Market or Portobello mushrooms, and I don’t get them. What I do get is a really good greasy spoon breakfast at any time of the day or night. This is breakfast with sliced white or brown bread covered with lashings of margarine, pork sausages with a high bread content and unsmoked bacon. But it does exactly what you want it to. No more, no less. The thinly sliced mushrooms are nicely sizzled without being over-greasy, the tomatoes are browned and caramelised, the hash browns crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and the eggs – served any way you want them – are cooked through: no sloppy white but a soldier-ready yolk. So put on your Vote Labour badge; grab a paper from the newsagent’s next door; smile at the local characters, the builders on their tea breaks, the council workers, and most importantly, the charming family busily shouting at each other in the open kitchen; and bed down. I can think of no better place for a no nonsense fry-up. And they still have a fridge full of Snapple iced tea.
172 Upper Street
Islington
N1 1RG
020 7226 3973
by Henrietta Crumpet
Ah, The Workers Cafe, bastion of socialist Islington, beacon of light for the Marx-reading, poll tax rioting, Labour voting reds from the time when builders were builders, new developments with loft living were factories, and all local primary schools were run by women who read Germaine Greer whilst chain smoking outside the school gates. Those were the days.
I have been a local at The Workers since that fateful day in 1987 when, on a lightly hazy summer morning, Thatcher was re-elected for the third time and I arrived at school to find mothers silently weeping in the playground. I was a local when my father ruined my own mother’s favourite red lipstick by writing ‘WE WON!’ in giant, jubilant capitals on the bathroom mirror on May Day ten years later. And I’m still a local now, when Edward’s Machinery has long gone, Bella’s and Smokes have disappeared from the high street, and the cafe’s interior is no longer concealed in a haze of cigarette smoke.
My breakfast habits have broadened a little since I was six and would only order fried tomatoes on two white toasts (the tomatoes to be served separately) accompanied by a Snapple iced tea. I even eat mushrooms now. The Worker’s horizons have broadened too. Gone are the faded yellow Formica tables with round red seats affixed, the bad instant coffee and the lakes of grease gently pooling around your chosen morning fare. Worried about the impending doom the smoking ban could have wreaked on their loyal clientele, they’ve installed a coffee machine, seats that move, and at-seat ordering, making it the best place to grab a quick cup of reasonably priced coffee on Upper St. It’s still run by the same extended family, a variation on the socialist worker’s collective that the name suggests, and is delightfully devoid of pretension (and music).
And so to breakfast. For a small number of English Pounds (£4.95) there are breakfast selections including a traditional English, a Vegetarian and a Turkish, all with toast and tea or coffee. For that price I’m not expecting hand-selected sausages from Borough Market or Portobello mushrooms, and I don’t get them. What I do get is a really good greasy spoon breakfast at any time of the day or night. This is breakfast with sliced white or brown bread covered with lashings of margarine, pork sausages with a high bread content and unsmoked bacon. But it does exactly what you want it to. No more, no less. The thinly sliced mushrooms are nicely sizzled without being over-greasy, the tomatoes are browned and caramelised, the hash browns crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and the eggs – served any way you want them – are cooked through: no sloppy white but a soldier-ready yolk. So put on your Vote Labour badge; grab a paper from the newsagent’s next door; smile at the local characters, the builders on their tea breaks, the council workers, and most importantly, the charming family busily shouting at each other in the open kitchen; and bed down. I can think of no better place for a no nonsense fry-up. And they still have a fridge full of Snapple iced tea.
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