Woodpecker and Son

One of our most welcome garden visitors is a green woodpecker who enjoys probing the lawn for ants. The other weekend he or she turned up with a recently fledged youngster.

Woodpecker and Son

The juvenile is on the left. As you can see unlike the adult it has a speckled breast, a bit like a thrush. I did manage to get a slightly better shot of the youngster a bit later. Unfortunately they are quite easy to spook so the pictures were taken at the extreme range of the camera’s zoom and through a window.

Juvenile green woodpecker hunting for ants

Dinner at the OXO Tower, Sneaking up the Shard and Drinks on the Upper Deck

The OXO Tower

It used to be the fancy face of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company’s cold store, but like many of the buildings on London’s South Bank the Oxo Tower, named after the manufacturer’s stock cubes, had a bit of makeover and is now home to a bunch of trendy shops and galleries. The Art Deco tower dates to 1929 and was designed by Albert Moore. On the 8th floor of the building there is a rather swish and expensive restaurant, the Oxo Tower Brasserie. Normally its a bit out of our price range, but we got one of those Booktable deals with three courses and a cocktail, that they use to fill the joint in the early evening and at £30 each we thought let’s treat ourselves.

The Thames from the Oxo Tower

Sadly we could not get an outside table to enjoy the great outdoors, but you can still enjoy the full panorama of London’s riverside through the fully glazed wall. Our table was situated next to the open plan kitchen so we got tantalising glimpses of every tempting  morsel that was passed over to the waiting staff. Our seasonal cocktail, the Sherry Collins arrived as we perused the ‘deal menu’. A blend of lemon vodka, elderflower syrup with a dash of fino sherry and garnished with a sprig of herbs it was very refreshing. I started with the Stilton salad which was a jolly nice confection of cheese, chervil and sultanas, while Mab had the battered Thai chicken. I tried a bit of her ‘posh chicken nugget’, the batter was really crisp and crunchy. For our main we had the comfit of duck, which was served with green lentils and a really nice onion jam. It was very good although it could have been a touch crisper. To finish we both plumped for the Eton Mess with strawberry, meringue and real fruit jam in cream lovely. To drink we had a bottle of the painfully overpriced house white a real rip at £25, but then you are paying for the view.

The Shard

Speaking of paying for the view we decided to try the Shangri La Hotel’s cocktail bar in the Shard on the way home. Having sized up the cost of going to the observation deck at  the top for £25 and thought better of it, the Shangri La initially looked better value until we were told that there was a £35 minimum spend. To be honest for £35 I ‘d expect to get totally sloshed,  so we declined, however I did get a picture from the 32nd floor lobby area, so mission accomplished I say, take that forces of international capitalism.

View from the 32nd floor of the Shard

Still fancying a drink on our way back to Tower Gateway Station we popped into the Upper Deck at HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast

Just so that you are nice and confused the Upper Deck isn’t on the old battleship itself, but on a platform above the ticket office on the riverbank.

Tower Bridge from the Upper Deck

Drinks are a bit pricey, but not unreasonable given that it’s a rather cool place to watch the sunset over London.

Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse

 

Greensted Church and the Fat Turk

I hope nobody is expecting a story featuring an obese fellow from Istanbul, because they are going to be disappointed.

Greensted Church

Last weekend took us out to Chipping Onger, a town in Essex that really isn’t very far from where we live. Now despite having lived in the county for about 30 years I had never been to the town before (well except as the terminal point on the Epping and Onger Steam Railway)

In Chipping Onger we could smell the coal fires from the railway locomotives

Our main point of interest was Greensted Church, which is a bit outside of the town itself. It’s the only surviving wooden Saxon building in the UK. The nave walls

The stave walls of the nave and Crusader grave

were erected around 1060, just six years before the Norman invasion, although archeologists found the remains of a much older building dating back to the sixth or seventh century below the chancel floor and the dedication to St Andrew may even suggest a Celtic foundation .

The Leper Squint

Much altered through the years and restored in the 19th century by local carpenter James Barlow the church has some interesting features including the Leper Squint by the old doorway, although this is now reckoned to be a tiny window for looking out rather than one for sufferers of the disease to look in!

We hadn’t actually planned to go into Chipping Onger itself, but having taken the wrong turn out of the church car park we found ourselves there

High Street Chipping Onger

and decided to see if there was anywhere good to have lunch. We eventually settled on The Fat Turk.

The Fat Turk

Where we received a pleasant welcome from the young waiter who showed us to a rustic table

Next time I want one of these booths

and handed us the menu. Mab chose Kavurma,

delocious Kavurma

a dish of pan-fried lamb and peppers while I had The Fat Turk Toastie, a sandwhich packed full of sucuk (Turkish sausage), Halim (a cheese not unlike Halloumi), gherkins and salad. Both dishes were absolutely delicious. With drinks our bill only came to £25 which wasn’t bad at all.

The Fat Turk himself

I liked the Fat Turk and I’m sure we will visit him again.

Cocktails and a Chinese Meal in London’s West End

Last Saturday took us into London’s west end for a bit of shopping and more importantly a slap up feast at Wong Kei in China Town, but first we took a diversion to the old Simpsons of Piccadilly (203-205 Piccadilly) for cocktails on the 5thView cocktail lounge.

View from the Cocktail Lounge at the Waterstones bookshop

The old Simpsons is now a monster huge Waterstone’s Bookshop with the 5th floor converted to a cocktail lounge. the photo above was taken back in 20011, the present view is blighted by a bunch of cranes. To be honest the cocktail lounge seems a bit blighted too, the decor is looking decidedly shabby, despite the website’s claims of refurbishment and the service is slow and unknowledgable. As to the cocktails they are I suppose average priced for London at between £7 and £11, but the snacks (£3 for a tiny bowl of nuts) are a bit of a rip. I had a gin sour, it was nothing special, but the £40 bill for the four of us left me feeling a bit sour too.

Wong Kei (41-43 Wardour Street) is a bit of a Soho legend. It’s one of the largest Chinese restaurants in the UK with seating for 500 guests and a reputation for having some of the rudest waiting staff in the UK. Oddly enough this is one of the things that drags people in and although service is shall we say a little brusque it is quick and efficient as diners are processed as quickly as possible to make way for more customers. Personally I found that most welcome, as there is nothing I hate more than having to hang around for the bill and my change. If you are dining as a couple or a small group, be warned that you may end up sharing a table with other diners, a bit like Chartier in Paris.

Wong Kei

There are some odd things on the menu including deep-fried intestines and chicken with jellyfish, but I went for the vegetarian pancake rolls to start followed by the Sweet and sour chicken with rice. The pancake rolls were delicious, especially with the lethally hot chili and black bean sauce and the chicken was pretty good too. What with a bottle of Pinot Grigio I liked the bill too, when it only came to £58 for the four of us (Cash only no cards).

The building Wong Kei is situated in has an interesting history as it used to belong to theatrical wig maker and costumier Willy Clarkson (1861-1934). You can if you look up to the clock see the words costumier and perruquier on its face. Designed by the architect H M Wakeley, plaques by the restaurant’s door attest to the foundation stone being laid by  Sarah Bernhardt in 1904 and the coping stone by sir Henry Irving the following year. Clarkson occupied the premises until 1940.

A Hard Act to Swallow at Walton-on-the-Naze

We took a trip to the Essex seaside today for a slap up haddock and chips at Whites and a walk by the Naze. Up on the Naze itself some swallows have made a nest in the public loos and I was lucky enough to get this shot of one of them perched on the tree outside having a bit of a stretch.

Swallow

Sadly the tide was in for most of the afternoon, so I only managed to get a few pictures of some seabirds including this group of juvenile herring gulls on a breakwater down by the pier in the town,

Juvenile herring gulls

and a cormorant having a scratch down by the Naze,

Cormorant

although we did also spot some black headed gulls, wood pigeons, jackdaws and a couple of rabbits which were flushed out of the undergrowth on the red cliffs by an idiot who didn’t have his dog under control. Fortunately the bunny got away with only a fright.

Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse

Classic London Underground Locomotive at the Epping and Ongar Railway

Back in 1994 London Transport closed down the Ongar extension of the Central Line from Epping station, so it wasn’t without a little sense of  irony that we found that the Epping and Ongar Railway, who now operate a heritage railway on the track, had got together with the London Transport Museum to run some very special trains to celebrate the 150th anniversary of London Underground.

Metropolitan No.1 built in 1898

We’d visited the Epping and Ongar Railway before (read about it here) but the opportunity to ride in a real piece of London’s history was too good to miss. Lots of people had had the same idea and the railway’s fleet of historic buses were all busy moving people from Epping Underground Station to the railway’s start point at North Weald Station.

Classic London Transport RT buses at North Weald Station

Ready and waiting on the platform wee a variety of historic Metropolitan Line carriages that used to run on the tracks between central London  and stations out in Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Vintage Metropolitan Line carriages

The star of the show was carriage No.353 which was built in 1892 and ran on the line up to 1906 when it was sold to the Weston, Clevedon  and Portishead Railway.

Carriage 353

It eventually ended up as a a military tailors workshop before being lovingly restored by the London Transport Museum. We paid a £5 supplement on the day ticket price of £20 to ride in the plush velvet First Class luxury of  what we were told was the Queen’s carriage of No. 353.

Plush velvet interior of Carriage 353

Taking us to Ongar was an old British Railways locomotive,

British Railways steam locomotive

but waiting for us at the other end was Metropolitan No.1, which was going to pull us back to North Weald.

Metropolitan No.1 steams back to link up with our train

Metropolitan No. 1 was built in 1898 and it is the oldest surviving locomotive from the age of steam on London Underground’s Metropolitan Line. We had to change carriages as our special red ticket upgrade was only valid one way and our carriage for the return leg had an interior restored back to World War II complete with air raid instructions.

Air raid instructions

and a pre Harry Beck (the guy who designed the classic tube map) map of the Metropolitan Railway.

Metropolitan Line Map

Arriving back at North Weald we also got to see the other London Transport steam locomotive L.150 as it got up steam to take the train back up the line, before heading off to Theydon Bois for a few drinks at The Queen Victoria and a curry at the Theydon Bois Balti House.

London Transport L.150 getting up steam

It was a fabulous day out so a big thank you to the volunteers at the Epping and Ongar Railway and the people from the London Transport Museum who made this trip back into history possible.

Photos copyright QueenMab/Shipscook Photographic. contact simon.ball3@btopenworld.com for commercial reuse

Baby Birds at Verulamium Park, St Albans

We had lunch at Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans on Saturday, it was a very good lunch too, but one of the greatest pleasures of lunch at one of the oldest pubs in the UK is the walk from the car park to the pub through Verulamium Park.  This is because of the huge numbers of water fowl that live around the lake.

Canada Goose Goslings

Most of the birds have broods of young right now, including the coots,

Cootlings

and the Canada geese.

Canada Goose goslings having a wash and brush up

Some families are more grown up than others, as I was shooting the two little guys above this mob came bearing down on us like a pack of velociraptors.

Like a bunch of dinosaurs

I’m intrigued by water rails like moorhens

Moorhen

and coots, I think its their big feet.

Coot

you see both of them are good swimmers, but unlike ducks or gulls that don’t have webbed feet. Instead they have fleshy lobes on their toes that they use to propel them through the water. you can see them quite well on the photo of the coot above.

Unfortunately we didn’t see any baby herons, perhaps the strange weather we have been having this year has messed up their breeding season. We did see some swans, greylag geese, lots of mallards and some handsome tufted ducks though.

Tufted ducks – drake on the right

Verulamium was the name given to the town by the Romans. It was one of the first to be settled by them in the south of England following the invasion in AD43. In AD60 the British Queen Boudicca burnt it down along with London and Colchester. Us Brits like to celebrate such heroics while calmly brushing the following 350 years of Roman domination under the carpet!

Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell

I went to a screening of the restored print of Hammer’s Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell at the British Film Institute  last night. This was the first Hammer Horror that I ever saw on the big screen when I snuck into the Odeon Wood Green at the tender age of 14 back in 1975. It was also the last Hammer Frankenstein and marked the final time that Peter Cushing would wield a scalpel and bone saw as the Baron. It was also the final film of director Terence Fisher, the director who had done more to define Hammer horror than any other having helmed all three of Hammer’s monster reboots in the 1950s with The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy.

The film was introduced by a panel featuring Cushing’s former secretary , Dave Prowse who played the Monster (and of course was also Darth Vader and the Green Cross Man) and female lead Madeline Smith, who all spoke about what a nice man Peter Cushing was. This was especially relevant as Cushing was born 100 years ago this month on 26 May and has recently been featured on a stamp to mark the occasion.

Hammer made the film on the cheap, by confining all the action within the confines of a lunatic asylum, where the Baron had assumed the role of the asylum doctor. Well it wasn’t long before he was knocking up a creature out bits of dead inmates with the aid of his disciple Dr Helder (Shane Bryant) and the mute Sarah (Madeline Smith). I won’t spoil this for anyone by giving away the plot, but the lunatic asylum set makes this the most intensely claustrophobic Frankenstein movie that Hammer ever made. Still reeling from the recent death of his beloved wife Helen, Cushing gave the film one of the most intense performances of his career and this combined with the atmospheric music score by James Bernard and a John Elder script that wasn’t afraid to throw in the odd self mocking gag, make this film a pure British Gothic delight.

Once the panel had finished the introduction they joined us in the audience. Imagine the thrill when I realised that Dave Prowse was going to take the empty seat next to mine. As the film ended I thanked him and shook his hand. I have been truly touched by the Dark Side Young Jedi

I Take a Walk with Dinosaurs in London’s Own Jurassic Park

No matter what way you look at them dinosaurs are pretty cool. Let’s face it what isn’t to like about things that are big and dangerous, but have been dead for so long that they could never have eaten you or any of your family!

Grrrrrrrrr

What I find even more fascinating is how science has tried to make sense of these creatures since their discovery only 200 or so years ago. It was relatively easy to reconstruct the marine reptiles that Mary Anning first excavated in Lyme Regis.

Crystal Palace’s Marine reptiles

The sediments of the early ocean had preserved complete skeletons of the creatures and in some deposits in Germany even the outline of the animals’s bodies, but it was more problematic with the fragmentary remains of the first terrestrial dinosaurs that were found in the UK. All the early palaeontologists had to go on were the skeletal plans of existing reptiles like crocodiles and monitors, so the early reconstructions were of creatures that scuttled through the undergrowth on splayed legs, dragging their bellies along the ground.

Got any fish? ichthyosaur Crystal Palace

By the mid 19th century Richard Owen (the man who invented the name dinosaur) had worked out from the thighbones of creatures like Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, that they actually stood upright on straight legs like an elephant or a rhino. These new-found ideas about what these creatures looked like really fired the public’s imagination. So much so that when the Crystal Palace Company decided to relocate the 1851 Great Exhibition buildings from Kensington to Sydenham Hill, they hired the sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to populate one of the ornamental lakes with replicas of these prehistoric creatures.

Pterodactyl – Crystal Palace

Waterhouse worked with Richard Owen to ensure that when his models were finally unveiled in 1854 they were as accurate as possible, although compared to the more graceful creatures that we know these animals to have been now, some of Owen’s reconstructions still look like lumbering beasts.

The mighty Megalosaurus

And as for the horn on Iguanadon’s nose we now know it’s really a spiky thumb,

Iguanodon – Crystal Palace

that might have been used to poke hie enemies in the eye.

In Jurassic Park Dr Alan Grant was rather alarmed when he discovered some of these,

but I think that particular egg may have belonged to one of these present day descendents of the dinosaurs.

Greylag goose – Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace is easy to reach from central London with frequent London Overground services and mainline trains from London Bridge.

All aboard graphic at Crystal Palace Railway Station

Just take a right into the park on exiting the station and follow the path past the athletics stadium to reach the lake.

Labyrinthodon

Is This the End of the Konga Line?

Sorry but it was too good a gag not to use when I rolled up at London’s Russell Square Horse Hospital arts centre for the Cut‘s screening of the 1961 British giant gorilla movie Konga.

Producer Herman Cohen had by 1961 already established a reputation for cheapy horror movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Horrors of the Black Museum. It won’t coma as any surprise that Konga concerns a giant ape, however thanks to what must have been a tiny budget similarities to King Kong are surprisingly few until the final reel where Konga goes apeshit and tramples through some model houses.

Michael Gough (the economy Peter Cushing) plays Dr Decker who discovers the secret of how to stimulate growth in animals with extracts of tropical carnivorous plants and experiments on Konga the baby chimp he has brought back from Uganda. Of course all this experimenting gets in the way of his teaching at Essex University, but Decker soon sorts that out by getting the by now gorilla sized Konga to murder anyone who gets in the way. Naturally it all goes horribly wrong when Margaret (Margo Johns), Deckers’ mistress catches him trying it on with student Sandra (Claire Gordon) and she gives Konga a walloping great dose of the growth serum with predictable consequences.

Somehow, despite having grown up in the 1960s and being mad for this kind of film I had never seen it before and it is a delightful mix of rubbish special effects (Konga is a bloke in a gorilla suit that isn’t even the same colour as the chimp who plays baby Konga, although it does allow for some spectacular eye rolling) and some of the campest dialogue I have ever heard, with which the cast battle valiantly. I think my favourite line was uttered by the Scotland Yard Inspector as Konga goes on the rampage.

“There’s a huge monster gorilla that’s constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose on the streets”

Thank heaven we had lots of National Service men ready to jump into the backs of trucks and take the menace of Konga down and let’s face it with all the aliens and other monsters that turned up post-war British cinema we’d have been sunk without a huge conscript army!

The Cut is a film club dedicated to previewing DVD releases of the weird. Curator Billy Chainsaw had arranged for 1960s teen idol Jess Conrad who played student Bob (Konga’s third murder victim and probably the only member of the cast still living) to introduce the movie. He did such a nice line in self deprecatory humour that he’s almost forgiven for This Pullover.

Konga is released on DVD on 13 May