Breakfasts and Beds: Hotel Cabinn City, Copenhagen, Denmark

Hotel Cabinn City
Mitchellsgade 14
Copenhagen 1568
Denmark
+45 3346 1616
www.cabinn.com

by Joyce Carol Oats

‘You cannot leave without me, Joyce,’ the chap who had been chasing me around the dance floor at my friend’s wedding declared in a husky gush of schnapps fumes. ‘Take me back to your hotel.’

‘Even if I fancied you,’ I replied, prising my forearm from his grip. ‘It would be impossible.’ I paused, gazed with meaning into his dilated pupils. ‘You would not fit. Into the room. The room! It is far too small.’

And that is why I am breakfasting alone this morning at the Cabinn City Hotel, the cheapest hotel in expensive Copenhagen. For about fifty quid, you get a miniature room with two narrow bunks and a bathroom where it is impossible to take a shower without soaking the toilet paper. There is a television and a chair if you like sitting. There are even some lights. And in the basement there is a cafeteria where they serve the breakfast buffet. The breakfast costs an additional sixty Danish kroner, which is about six pounds.

The price is an affront: the choices are cold: muesli with yogurt, cornflakes and puffed rice. There are three kinds of juice, including that very highly sweet kind of orange that tastes suspiciously like it contains some high fructose corn syrup. Tea and instant coffee, butter and jam, and then the breads. There are a wide range of breads: white and brown and those square seedy rolls that they have in northern Europe. I love those square seedy rolls, so I select one and grab some packets of butter and jam. I skip the ubiquitous northern European breakfast ham and salami, and then I see it: the cheese slicer.

It is a miraculous little machine: two bricks of cheese sit across from each other on a round board. In the centre is a sort of screw atop which sits a handle which attaches to a wire (I know, it is difficult to envision: this is because you have never seen such a cheese slicer). You spin the handle and the wire slices off a perfectly even slice of cheese from each block; a second round, and it slides down the central screw and slices two more. I am riveted, and not just because I am hungover: it is a thing of beauty, a masterpiece of Scandinavian design.

I join a long table full of other travellers, who are munching away with the bleary, dazed affect of people who have just suffered three hours of Carlsberg nightmares in a narrow bunk bed in a room with no air conditioning. I consider my selection: a seedy roll, marg, jam, and six slices of cheese because, well, I got a little carried away. The flavours are indifferent. The texture requires a fair bit of chewing. I wash it all down with the instant coffee. I take a sour green apple for the road. I attempt to take the cheese slicer, but it is too heavy. I wonder what my would-be suitor is eating for breakfast, and if it is more delicious. I decide I'm quite content not knowing.

The Bruncheon Club, Hackney

The Bruncheon Club
A Secret Location
Hackney
Sittings occur once a month
Reservations essential
thebruncheonclub.blogspot.com

by Malcolm Eggs

All around the garden, people watched with baited breath. I flung the boule in my trademark style, which I'm sure at least one person would have silently christened ‘the stoat’. It was seven points all. The dense little sphere arced into the air, landed about a metre away from the jack then rolled downslope into a patch of weeds.

We were at the first ever Bruncheon Club, a socio-culinary venture dreamt up by two friends, Gregg and Maya. It’s a hangover-soothing addition to London's new wave of what they’re calling ‘underground restaurants’. These shadowy eateries are a cross between dinner parties and those underground raves in the 80s and 90s, where you’d call a secret number to get the address of a freshly infiltrated warehouse off a slip road somewhere. Twenty years on, I’m sure it must be many of the same people who now go to a private house or flat, eat a home-cooked set menu then pay a suggested donation at the end.

The boules came after three courses served at a garden table, washed down by oft-replenished coffee and water and seasoned with congenial conversation and heaps of newspaper supplements. The atmosphere was that of going to a friend’s house for an 'event breakfast' such as on the morning after a mild win on the premium bonds. Our suggested £12 donation got us bloody maries, fresh strawberries and warm croissants, but the magnum opus was an eggs royale in which duck eggs took all the egg roles. It was one of the eggiest things I have ever seen: impossible amounts of the boldest possible yellowy-orangey yolk gushing out across the smoked salmon, then mingling gloriously with duck-egg-hollandaise, then quickly entering my mouth. The poor muffin halves came nowhere near being able to mop everything up.

After my disappointing throw of the boule my team, hurriedly and a little cringingly titled 'De Beauvoir Rovers', was engaged in a tribute to British sporting patterns: the strong start followed by the pointless unforced errors, the nailbiting war of attrition, the whittling, entropy-like journey towards failure. But, actually, there’s nothing like mutual defeat to help you bond with a group of complete strangers - so my one suggestion to the Bruncheon Club is this: keep the leisure sports, but move them to the start of proceedings. Or indeed replace the leisure sports with hard techno, the food with uppers and hold the whole thing at night in an old business park near Bracknell.

Breakfasts and Beds: The W and The James, Chicago

The W
644 North Lakeshore Drive
Chicago
IL 60611
USA
++1 312 943 9200

The James
55 E Ontario St
IL 60611
Chicago
USA
++1 800 745 8883

by Shreddie Kruger

Americans approach breakfast with the gusto us Brits reserve for grumbling about the weather and joining promising looking queues. So when choosing a hotel in America the only important factor is what their breakfast is like. Everything else is insignificant. A hotel with no beds and rats scurrying around is fine by me if it serves a sensational breakfast.

So… if you are visiting Chicago you must avoid the W at all costs. Their room service breakfasts had me seething with irritation. Not only does a modest breakfast of muffins, tea, juice and granola cost $33, but it also comes without milk, is wrapped in Clingfilm and is utterly miserable. Their cooked breakfast is more expensive. And to make matters worse… worse. Eggs are over cooked and lack the illicit trickling of yolk that we all need to set our days off on the right track. I left the W vowing never to return.

With the W spurned the James stepped in. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. Breakfast is served in David Burke’s Primehouse restaurant, at the base of the hotel, where they age their beef for up to 90 days in a room clad in Himalayan salt. So expectations were high. On the first day my enormous blueberry pancakes with maple sauce instantly turned me into the Cheshire Cat. I giggled all the way to our meeting and spent the rest of morning flying on a sugar high until I spiraled out of control with a migraine as the syrup wore off!

The next morning things got silly. Not content with eggs Benedict, I couldn’t resist ordering a dish titled “fill your own doughnuts”. How could you? It’s impossible. A small cardboard box arrived filled with sugared, hot doughnuts the size of golf balls and two squirty pipettes laced with vanilla cream and butterscotch. Wow. Now, this is what breakfast is all about. Before you could say the word “coronary” I had filled two doughnuts full of gunge and was running around the restaurant like a banshee who’s just injected taurine into his eyeballs.

So if you are on a business trip to Chicago go to the James and make the most of their stupendously good breakfast. And avoid the W at all costs – they put the W into Woeful.

Fluffy Rock Cafe, Glastonbury Festival

Fluffy Rock Cafe
Glastonbury Festival
Worthy Farm
Somerset

by Cher E. Jamm

Glastonbury 2008 was the year I learnt that one should never to get on the wrong side of a vegan. After last year's debacle with cafe names at Glastonbury, I promised myself that I'd go and sample the real Manic Organic's vegan breakfast and report back to you. You see, last year, in my post-festival haze, I  attributed eggs to them in a review for this fine organ, when really, the eggs belonged to Cafe Tango. They didn't like it one bit. I apologised and we'll never quite know if they accepted. Eggs are apparently a big deal when you're a vegan.

So this year, I braced myself and trotted towards Manic Organic with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I stood patiently, edging forward in the long queue (a good sign!), watching people enjoy their expensive vegan breakfast in silence, wondering if it was going to be as revelatory as I hoped it would be. I reached for the tenner in my purse only to find a two pound coin.  Two pounds doesn't buy many alfalfa sprouts, my friends.

I left the Manic Organic queue and started to make my way to the Cashpoint queue. The sheer amount of queueing was weighing heavily on my heart by now. Starving, bleary-eyed and in need of immediate sustenance, I stumbled across what at first looked like a mirage. A yellow and green tent with a small sign stating: Fried Egg Bap - £1.50. I stood staring at the sign for some time. I worried that if I looked away it would disappear. I had to make a move soon.

With much trepidation, I edged into the tent and towards the counter. "May I have a fried egg bap please?". The lovely hippy girl behind the counter smiled and said "yes, yes you may", then skipped out back and came back with my breakfast. The egg was fresh and freshly fried. The bap was white, soft and floury. I helped myself to brown sauce and salt and pepper from the counter. I handed over my two pound coin. She handed me fifty pence back.  Another hippy girl came out with a cup of tea and handed it to me. "It's free - looks like you need a good cuppa". I thanked her. My eyes welled up at the kindness of it all. The hippy girls in the Fluffy Rock Cafe saved me that morning. I even forgave the fact that they watered down their brown sauce. I took a bite. And another. 

Perhaps the vegans are right; I never knew eggs could be such a big deal. 

Breakfasts and Beds: The White Bar, Chic and Basic, Barcelona

The White Bar
Chic and Basic Hotel, Born
Princesa, 50
08003 Barcelona,
España

by Kiwi Herman

Music festivals and breakfast don’t mix.

That’s unless well into your 30s like me, you prefer to couple spontaneous hedonism with premeditated comfort (ie. sack off camping in mudbaths for boutique hotels in the Med).

Commissioned to write a review of Barcelona’s Sonar Festival, I decided to lord it up at the Chic and Basic Hotel in my favourite district, Born - and made damn sure I got up for breakfast (after all who knew when I might eat again?).

Sonar: let’s just say if Glastonbury is medieval, like people going to war, then Sonar is more tribal, like people going to dance, make love… and then eat.

Ever seen a 61 year old Amazonian, once muse to Andy Warhol, hula-hoop in a thong swimsuit? Thanks to Spain’s 3 day electronic music mecca and the scariest lady on the planet - Grace Jones, I have.

But that’s actually all I saw (or remember seeing) because Barcelona has too much else to get involved in – like tapas. Apparently there’s an art to eating them, ‘tapeo’. Well, if it’s artistic to stuff your face at every given opportunity – little and often – then give me a montadito and call me El Gordo.

The hotel: Literally one of the most bizarre places I’ve ever stayed in – like living in an iPod. I now affectionately refer to it as the ‘disco spunk’ hotel.

You enter the century-old building under what looks like a giant jellyfish-slash-womb. Then there’s the corridors – massive plastic tentacles come down from the ceiling and change colour via LEDs every few minutes. It’s all a bit “beam me up, Scottie”. Oh, the photo opportunities that can be had after indulging in too much cava (andthentherest).

As if that’s not psychedelic enough, you can change the colour of your very white room via remote control (and make it flash like a disco – ‘chromo-therapy’ apparently), the glass shower is in the middle of the bedroom (my researcher and I now have no secrets), and the manager knows the perving hotspots on the beach to check out fit Spaniards (what a shame I’m not really their type on these particular beaches).

The breakfast: At the hotel’s ‘White Bar’. Imagine all the above, then add a disco buffet bar made of mirrored tiles (surpassed in kitsch only by the disco boat I’ve spotted on Regent’s Canal by Broadway Market), ‘Streetlife’ coming through the speakers, Guinness bottles lining the walls and another jellyfish thingumejig on the ceiling.

For 8.50E you get all that, plus an all-you-can-eat Catalan buffet of croissants (er, aren’t they French?), cheese and meats. Weirdly there were also Coco Pops (or Spanish equivalent, er… Caca Poopoos?).

Screw cereal, I’d eat gazpacho for breakfast every day if I could (might as well start the day stinking of garlic as you mean to carry on). The White Bar offered the next best thing - a big bowl of fresh tomato pulp mixed with olive oil, garlic and sea salt – ready and waiting to be added to rustic bread to make ‘pan con tomate’, the ubiquitous 19th Century Catalan dish. Simple - but also the best thing that's ever been done to bread. Or to a tomato for that matter. Thanks again Spain for bringing the veg, damnit, fruit, to Europe.

Chic and Basic’s ‘White Bar’ had me at the pan con tomate.

It’s chic. It’s basic. It’s camp - and I’m never camping at a festival again.

Car Park and Cafe, Bethnal Green

Car Park and Cafe
Malcolm Rd
Bethnal Green
E1 something or other

by Joyce Carol Oats

You walk past Car Park and Cafe every morning: it’s the halfway point on your way to the Tube, after the council estate and the railroad bridge, before the drunks sitting on the park benches. Sometimes you walk past it when it is raining; sometimes you walk past it in the sunshine; sometimes you walk past it when you are looking forward to getting to your office and sometimes you walk past it when you are feeling very grumpy and not looking forward to work at all. You are, in general, a moody girl, but Car Park and Cafe has never evoked any emotion from you. You decide to investigate.

You take your flatmate Ben. You and Ben crunch over the gravel in Car Park and you see Cafe: it’s in a corrugated industrial caravan. As you walk towards the entrance, a giant black Doberman leaps at you in a hungry way. It’s fenced in a pen, with a dog house and a lot of large tins of Chum. You feel worried about the dog.

Inside Cafe, a pallid man stands behind a counter. The wall is festooned with pieces of fluorescent card with menu items. The room is full of acrid smoke from the grill. You think about asking for something vegetarian. You think better of it. You and Ben sit at a table as far away from the smoke as possible, which happens to be next to a one-armed bandit, which happens to not be very far from the grill, not really, because it is, after all, an industrial caravan. Ben hands you a tabloid newspaper. You find out what a topless model thinks about the MP expenses scandal (she disapproves).

You drink instant coffee. The food arrives. Fried eggs, fried bacon, fried tomatoes. Fried baked beans. Fried bread which is something you have not eaten since you were a much younger moody girl, on holiday with your parents at a B&B in the North of England: by the fourth day of fried bread, you cried and refused to eat any more. But here, at Car Park and Cafe, it is devilishly good. You are not sure if it is actually good, though, or just better than the sausages, which are two perfectly smooth extruded tubes of phallic meat product.

The man who is charge of the frying is now playing with the one armed bandit. He pumps coins into it from the cash register; he loses; he goes back to the cash register; he pumps in more coins. He loses some more. The one-armed bandit makes cha-ching noises. You finish your fried bread. You look at Ben. He looks at you. The acrid smoke in the room is thicker. Your eyes are watering, or maybe you are just crying. You and Ben agree to leave. He pays because you cannot see in to your wallet. You walk past the hungry dog. It barks. Your stomach churns. You see your reflection in a window: your tears have carved a thick black line down your cheek. You cannot, you realise, endorse Car Park and Cafe under any circumstance, not even an ironic one. You also realise that you are wearing too much makeup.

Covenant Community Church, Cleveland, USA

Prayer Breakfast
Covenant Community Church
3342 East 119th St.
Cleveland
Ohio
USA

by T.N. Toost

The morning started badly. I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep and, in my grogginess, I had trouble choosing clothes. On the one hand, I wanted to show respect and not under-dress, but on the other I wanted to be comfortable. What if I was in jeans and a t-shirt? Would they turn me away? I half wanted to tempt them to do so, to then ask, What Would Jesus Wear?

When I did get there, my clothes didn’t really matter; it was my skin above the collar and below the cuffs that stood out. As I’d suspected, the congregation was entirely black. Well, aside from two middle-aged white women sitting in the front. I immediately thought of Fight Club, of Jack branding Marla a “tourist.” These women weren’t there for the right reasons. They were there to observe, then go back to their middle-class white suburb feeling like they’d been adventurous, intercultural; like they’d gotten something out of it. My motives, of course, were pure.

We were called to breakfast, where women served small portions of eggs, grits, hash browns, bacon, sausage and a half-Danish. I took my plate, got some orange juice and suddenly realized that women surrounded me. One carried my juice three steps to a table and introduced me around to the women already eating, telling everyone my name and saying that we were family. They referred to me as “brother,” and I thought of a third way, one Derek Zoolander had not anticipated: not as an actual brother, or the way that black people mean it, but as siblings to Jesus, and God’s children. I’m not sure which is more meaningful.

The eggs were astounding – rich, buttery, creamy. A woman found me to put a slice of American cheese on my grits, which was something not everyone got, apparently. The cheese was rubbery and gave some resistance to my teeth, in contrast to the otherwise mushy grits. The Danish was average, the sausage small and dry, the bacon gristly and the orange juice reconstituted.

It was good that there wasn’t much food, as there wasn’t much time to eat before we were called to the central hall. We flooded in, almost choreographed, and I was seated by the organizer in the front. The row of girls across from me started dabbing their eyes daintily just as the program started. It was as if they were pretending to be so moved by what was happening and what was said that they had to make a big deal of it. I thought back to Mark Twain’s descriptions of congregations and imagined them at a tent revival, feeding on the spirit – that is, if the white folk would have let them join in.

The talk was abbreviated. Aaron Hopson, the speaker, only quoted a few verses: Genesis 3:8-9, Peter 5:8, 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23. He mostly talked about drinking, doing drugs and chasing tail. Then, when he was in Daytona Beach, Florida for spring break, drunk and stoned, a man walking down the beach stopped and prayed for him. Hopson started hearing sounds and voices, and had visions of angels and demons. Even in my fatigue it sounded ludicrous.

At first, every time I saw someone stand up to applaud, I did the same, assuming the whole church would join us. That’s what would happen in a white churchgoing audience – like sheep, a critical mass would force everyone to stand and applaud. At this church, though, one person standing meant nothing, nor did fifteen. Some people didn’t even applaud when others wept in jubilation. My girlfriend later told me she always assumed that when a black audience didn’t applaud, they were being rude; I thought they were being honest. Standing ovations are a dime a dozen – I read an op-ed once that called for fewer standing ovations at symphonies, saying they were too cheaply granted. Here, applause had to be earned.

Hopson went through some of the common sins to be guarded against – sins on television, pornography on the internet, smoking, drinking, drugs. Then he said, “Some of you are sleeping with other peoples’ husbands. Some are sleeping with other peoples’ wives." “What?” I thought, glancing around. Some people were nodding, while some had blank looks, as if trying to avoid detection. I was in a den of sinners, and, really, I was far from innocent myself. Suddenly I realised that the problems in my life were not based in the outside world – they were part of me, the result of my own actions and weaknesses. And suddenly, salvation was within reach, provided that I changed my ways. When, normally do we recognize our own faults? It’s human, I think, to believe that we’re perfect and others are full of flaws; isn’t that what Jesus was talking about, with the beam and motes in eyes?

Is this why people go to church?

The organizer said that the breakfast was “not about eggs and grits; it’s about souls.” The food, certainly, was not worth $10; the servings were tiny and, except for the eggs, mediocre. However, I was shaken. The experiences of others were my own. They had their own secrets and shortcomings, and I had mine – shortcomings which, no matter how prominent, I always manage to overlook or excuse. For a brief moment, I had to face them, to realize that we’re all guilty, all tainted, all fallible.

At the end, Hopson held up two copies of his books to show the audience that they were for sale, then came down off the pedestal, handing one to the organizer and one to me. I thought they were to be passed around, so I handed it to the woman behind me and headed off, shaking hands, patting backs and praising my way out.

I was halfway down the block when a man’s voice called out. “Hey! You left your book!” I ran back to him and took it. As he stretched out his hand, I thought of the Sistine Chapel.

Then I thanked him, turned around and was gone.

Mon P'tit Chou, East Dulwich

Mon P'tit Chou
53 Lordship Lane
East Dulwich
SE22 8EP
020 7564 3800

by Malcolm Eggs

Hello, my little cabbage. Sit down for a moment: I want to tell you a story. Well, alright it’s not exactly a story - it’s a breakfast review, and is lacking much in the way of plot and character.

Ten years ago I found myself at the opening event for Mon P’tit Chou. We stood on a small raised area, drinking champagne and crunching on bruschetta and it all seemed very exciting, this suave chamber of Gallicism wedged between the optician and the kebab shop.

These days it’s still out of place, but that’s because the bread basket contains mere baguettes, which is plain retro on a high street that offers so many £3 artisan sourdoughs that if you bought them all and placed them end to end they’d stretch from here to the Moon. By Moon I mean the Half Moon pub in Herne Hill, but you see my point. The tabletops are all embedded with black and white photographs of New York reminiscent of the 'arty' section of a Hallmark outlet, which also feels retro but in a way that harks back to a past that, when you think about it, never actually existed.

My old friend Martha and I each ordered the smaller version of Mon P’tit Chou’s full English. It exemplified the “one of each” or “all the talents” approach and was £5.95. The sausage – compact, hot, vivid - was best; the rasher of bacon and ample beans were no-fuss but cooked with, well, decency; the eggs were available any way we liked as long as we liked them scrambled and overdone.

It was a nice, normal breakfast, substantial yet completely ephemeral - like a Sebastian Faulks novel. We ordered some smoothies and then nothing else interesting happened, which is where we feel glad that I said very early on that this isn't a story.

Prime Burger, New York

Prime Burger
5 E. 51st. Street
(Between Madison & 5th)
New York, NY 10022
+1 212-759-4730
www.primeburger.com

by Dee Caff

If you ever find yourself wandering the streets of Manhattan in need of a breakfast fix, go to Prime Burger. As the name might suggest, it’s pretty unassuming from the outside (in a Baker’s Oven rather than a Fat Duck kind of a way), but the array of somewhat faded press clippings plastered to its glass doors give an inkling of the greatness lurking within.

We found it by chance. It wasn’t in our guide books, and we’d have walked straight past it, had it not been for the beady glare of my travelling companion, whose penchant for French toast saw her eyeing every potential eatery with an air of crazed expectancy. I wasn’t convinced – frankly it looked a little shabby – until we got closer and I peeked inside at what can only be described as a quintessential American diner.

On entering we found it not to be the sort of twee, contrived affair I despise, but more of a mystical time warp, a portal into early 60s New York - complete with beige leather seating, deco light fittings and shining wood chip walls. We took a seat at the long bar and fawned over the laminate menu which revealed that Prime Burger is the proud owner of a prestigious James Beard award for ‘Classic American Restaurant’.

Living the American service dream, we waited mere seconds before the Peruvian waiter glided up to us in his starched white waiter suit and dickie bow. It wasn’t long before we were swigging on coffee and OJ, looking like we were in the middle of an Edward Hopper, tummies rumbling in wait for our first, and most important meal of the day.

And then came the main event. Two plates piled high with glistening, golden French toast – dusted lightly with icing sugar and accompanied by some of the saltiest, crispiest, crumbliest bacon I’ve ever tasted. I must have poured about a quarter of a jug of maple syrup on mine too, savouring the novelty of drenching my food in runny sugar. I’m not normally one for sweet things in the morning (give me a full English over a continental any day of the week) but, somehow, this was an almost obscenely delicious exception to the rule.

So next time you’re swanning it on the other side of the pond, don’t bother with the Lexington Grill (as recommended by ‘local experts’ in the Time Out guide), its nonchalant ‘we’re in all the guidebooks’ service and overpriced pancakes. Go and talk to the boys from Queens and eat French toast. Or do as I did, and have a burger for breakfast. A Prime Burger.

Breakfasts and Beds: Aaron House, Port St Mary, Isle of Man

Aaron House
The Promenade
Port St Mary
Isle of Man IM9 5DE
+44 (0)1624 835702
www.aaronhouse.co.uk

by Kiwi Herman

For the London-centric of you, a quick geography lesson... the Isle of Man is nowhere near the Isle of Bestival. You’ll find it smack bang in the middle of the Irish Sea (left at Liverpool or right at Belfast). And the Manx folk? They’re white, 4-horned-sheep-eating, tailless-cat-owning, tax-avoiding, Martin Clunes-haters. Oh, and their 3-leg-logo looks somewhat like a Swastika.

But they sure know how to smoke a kipper.

I found myself in the Wild West of the windy Isle last week – alone in the honeymoon suite of a seaside guesthouse advertising an organic breakfast with a ‘Victoriana ethos’.

Welcome to the living museum that is Aaron House – all decor is period. Patterned wallpaper? Check. Bone china tea sets? Check. Chequered black and white floor? Cheque. What’s more, the relentlessly jolly proprietors Reggie & Kath dress in Victorian attire at all times. It’s Upstairs Downstairs fetishism by day and lordknowswhat by night.

Kath knows her place – pummelling away her homemade breads. I’m not entirely convinced of the Victorian historical authenticity of a full fry-up inclusive of Buck Rarebit and kippers, but she stews her own fruit and makes her own jam… what a woman! (What is it well-known philosopher/ feminist Jerry Hall said about being a maid in the living room, cook in the kitchen and…’?).

Well, if the Victorians were Opium-smoking sex-mad hippies, then there were only 2 things missing from my dish. Or were they? The lure of the grub and Kath’s mumsy, large apron-ed breasts proved addictive. I never get up at 7am, but managed 5 days in a row. Plus, I wonder if you ding that little bell with a certain rhythm you could get more than just a fruit tart.

Oh, and did I mention Reg loves showing visitors his telescope? The puns write themselves.