A Letter to an MP

-Lack of Decent Coffee in Feltham-

Dear Seema

I'm writing about my concern over the lack of decent coffee shops in the Feltham area. I have lived here for the past year and am yet to find a cafe that has learnt that if a coffee is murky, it does matter and that the foam on a coffee isn't just for fun.

There are any number of burger shops that claim to do breakfast and countless corner shops with signs for a full English but I am always met with disappointment at the food and drink on offer. Omitted omelettes, outrageous orange juice and suspect sausages are the norm while sitting at a  poorly upholstered seat at a scruffy table.

It is to be said that the service is fair and the clientele of generally good character, but what we need are barista's and chefs! not bodgers and cooks. As an MP you could look into promoting free coffee courses so enlightened eaters will no longer have their americanos swapped with long-blacks, their cappuccinos crossed with flat whites, a place where we are no longer mocked for our mocha's and elites cross borough lines simply to admire our espressos.

I hope I haven't taken to much of your time, but this has bothered me for weeks, months even and I can no longer stay silent about the horrendous hollandaise on my less than holy eggs benedict.

Concerned, but Hopeful Resident

Tim Woods

Indian Buffet

Indian Buffet

5gbp

4.5/5

I can't blame anyone for the presentation but myself...

Sorry its been a while. I've been sort of busy. At least too busy too write about myself. Ya'see I either write about myself doing nothing, or go out, do things to write about and not write them. A horrible paradox... I'm missing the flat jaunt to the cinema right now for this Dear Diary thing. ANYWAY.

The above curry it actually really good. Also I found if I eat two plates I can skip dinner (Don't tell my mother...). I saw on the BBC that this is how the Romans ate, so I feel somewhat less unhealthy for it, not much, but a wee bit. Unfortunately London is quite an expensive city (the Beebs told me that too...) and at the end of the day I'd rather spend money on other things... LIKE WHAT YOU ASK/WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN; YOU HAVEN'T CALLED. Here's the highlights, I'll go into it further below...

1:) Nu Flat
2:) Gigs
3:)Markets
4:)Gallery
5:)Pubs

Right, so after years (months) of searching I finally found a place to live. Its cheap, a little far out, but a pretty big place (3x The lounge of any other place I've been to! (Naturally you're all welcome to stay, I think we might even have a spare mattress).

FOSTERS M8

The commute to work isn't too bad, although getting on a train at Kings Cross always involves a great push and a lot of luck. I found that if you want to open conversation with someone (and you've done the whole weather thing to death) then public transport is your next best option. People love to tell you all about the connections to take, the fastest trains and the time that the trains weren't going so they had to walk/taxi/bus/pray...

This reminds me of the time I had far too much to drink one Friday after work and missed the last train home... After some frantic texting to one of the few numbers I had (that had a place near) and a couple of calls, my phones batteries (eyePhones eh?) ran out. I was left (in the rain of course) to either jump the gates and sleep under the stairs at work, or try my luck at the station. I went with the latter, probably an bad move.

After trying to have a snooze outside (It was like 2am and the trains didn't start till 5...) I ended up talking to a slightly crabby old lady, who for some reason was at the station waiting for a train too. Looking back I'm sure she didn't want me in a state of boozed abandon to talk about the rain with her, but hey. When the doors to the station were finally opened she had the audacity to make me carry her grocery's (why she had grocery at that time I have no idea, think she was maybe seeing her daughter or something near Brighton???)

Eventually I got a train in the right direction, fell asleep at the connecting station, got another train, a bus, another bus and got back just in time for a 1 hours snooze before going back into London (bus,bus,train,tube)... Anyway, my point being is that everyone has public transport stories...

All's well down the road from the flat...

London is a great place for gigs, there seems to be something decent on at least once a week, I saw Cloud Nothings a bit ago, Still Corners the other week and I'm off to see Scrawl tomorrow. The gigs here tend to be during the week which is great; gets you out of the house and instead of drinking 'cause it's Friday and that's what you do, you can actually watch the band. The prices are OK too, although I'm still kicking myself for not getting Pogues/God Speed/Spirtulized tickets. Hopefully they'll be back soon.

Got my Lunch. (These carrots actually were kinda horrible)

As much as the cuisine here is pretty average, the one thing that is a winner is the ginger beer, I'm yet to have a bad one, even the Tescos stuff wouldn't taste too bad next to my fav Gladstones (available from the Warehouse for $5 for 4). The above was enjoyed at one of the many markets around town, in this case the hipster happening Old Street market. It's not a bad place, there's a lot of junk there, but the odd bargain, Although you have to fight for the records 'cause the Haircuts on the fixies are pretty quick to 'em.

How does the song by the Cars go "Just what I needed"?

There's also the Whitechapel gallery around the corner. It's not too bad, modern art, but not too difficult (either that or I've suddenly "got" modern art...). Unfortunately my maturity level has taken a dive as my attention span was shot after drinking too many cocktails the previous night (absinthe,gin,mint. Amazing)...

I bet it's a wood circle...

Also I blame the constant barrage of dick jokes here...

I nearly ended up here after falling asleep on the tube...

The are some great gallery's around here, the National Gallery is pretty good, although I must have went the wrong way and ended up looking at pictures of Jesus for an hour, which pretty much ruined my vague interest in religious paintings... Naturally the Tate Modern is great, and even better is that it's walking distance from work. Can't remember what others I've been to, but they're all good...

So London Bridge hasn't actually fallen down... (as I was standing on it to get this snap...)

The pubs here are pretty good and the weekends seldom spent at home, although still on the vague hunt for a spot I like, Camden loses it's charm after a while of going to the same place, the few other places I've been to I've forgotten there names, so probably won't be going back (good or bad)... The project for this weekend is to make it to Shoredich, I love to say the name really fast, the place seems a precarious balance between Haircuts and Beat-Ups but I think somewhere in the middle could be pretty cool. Just finding the balance could be a bit painful...

World's tallest hospital building (left)

I must try to remember to keep to this. Maybe if I wrote a paragraph every time I had a curry, I'd become a bit of a regular, the owner guys alright, although when he asked me about the football I struggled to have much to offer (the Chelsea coach has just been given' the boot, big scandal if you swing that way), I guess that's another top conversation tip. FOLLOW THE FOOTBALL...

Chicken Burger and Chips

Chicken Burger and Chips

3gbp

1.5/5

Hrmm, sometimes they're ok...

Again I seem to find myself eating rubbish deep fries from from a Chicken Cottage clone (a KFC clone in itself). I decided on this condensed reconstituted chicken burger after my favourite, if not rather divey Italian restaurant was full up. I Picked the burger up from Elephant & Castle, the classy side of London, but not really...

things are getting cold at th' Row

On the subject of nice areas of London the other day I decided to lunch in Green Park (a carbon copy of Hagley park in Smashcity, just with more squirrels). Although the location near the palace was nice, there was no fast food in sight. I couldn't help but wonder what the Queen ate after a night on the champagnes (or Pimms or whatever the Queen drinks), with no deep fries around, does she give Harry a call to make a run out to Brixton?

Hotel party! with the cousins

The flat hunt here is beginning to become somewhat painful, the 4ish hours of commuting a day are really a bit painful and trying to make it home on Fridays nights can prove problematic. Friday gone was Oktoberfest and the work credit card was out at the German bar. After drinking a few steins of beer and stumbling out of the bar in a mystery part of the city, getting home was looking pretty sketchy. The wheels really started to fall of somewhere between hoping into a random bus (where someone dropped a spanking Iphone 5), the rain coming down and the phone batteries running out. Safe to say that I had we'll missed the train when I got to the closed station and spent the early morning talking to a terse old lady who after offering limited conversation asked me to carry her groceries... After various short naps on the 2 trains and the 2 buses back I made it to bed; about 9 hours after beginning the journey. To make things worse I had some flats to check out, so after 2 hours sleep the 2x2 (usually it's a one bus and train but they were repairing the tracks somewhere) rain bus thing had to be done again, then repeated to get back... So after commuting for 10ish hours in one day I got back and settled into a glass of home-brand vermouth.

Sunday dawned with England's lack of bakeries haunting my thoughts. How can there be so few bakeries here? The few that are around are all chains and no one sells bacon and egg pies?! It's really a tragedy...

Beer Fest/Barn dance actually had some really decent beers

Yesterday I decided to have a look at the gig guide to see what bands were in town as I've got the unfortunate job of house sitting in a lovely apartment in central London for a couple of weeks. The standard of the bands was great, to the point that in the first weekend of November Gods Peed! You black Emperor (or wherever they're putting the exclamation mark these days) two shows clashed with both Animal Collective and Spirtialized. But I suppose that's gloating and no one wants to read that...

Believe it or not, I do eat some good food and my diet hasn't fallen to Auckland standards of contestant takeaways, or that year in Smashcity where I had fish'n'chips at least every second day yet...

Oh and by the time this goes to press ('casue I wrote it and forgot to post it), I have would have signed the lease of a decent sized flat (it has a back yard, dining room and conservatory thing!) near the Arnos Grove tube station (New Southgate?), anyway, it's only 2 mins walk to the station and 40mins tubing to everywhere you would want to go,

Le Peri

Le Peri

2.95Gbp

2/5

since bought a new watch strap...

Right, first I shall apologise for a prolonged absence...

Tonight/today's tipple is Le Peri, pear cider. I think I weighed in at 7.5% alc/vol and came in a handy 1.5L bottle. Unfortunately it begin a habit of drinking on the train after work drinks on Friday, with the goal of being in a mood to dance to bad music in Egg. (East Grinstead, I've been here long enough to start making my own names up for things...) safe to say, it's never worked, only made the bike home in the dark far more dodgy.

Having started working I've had to learn to get up early and bike 6kms uphill to the train station, then it's an hour on the train to London. Not the most exciting trip in the world and getting a wee bit painful as the weather cools and the sun goes to bed earlier...

On the upside works good. It's great being in London, around London Bridge, where the Normans attacked the English (then Anglo-Saxon) successfully in about 1000ad after taking Harold's eye out at Hastings. In a funny way Hastings isn't to far from the Row, so maybe tomorrow on the way to work I'll pretend to be a Norman, (or not, as that guy from the Naked and Shameless beat me to it...)

In-between work drinks I've been brushing up on my British history which has been great. I've learnt that England has been conquered many times, firstly the Romans, then Germans/Danish (Anglo-Saxons, and some Jutes) followed by the French (Normans) (that as far as I've got...). Reading adds a nice sense of history, in what is a country that it not short of the stuff.

When I'm not reading on the train, or getting real good a Bejeweled I take to wondering why "on-peak" train tickets cost more than there "off-peak" look-a-likes. Ya'see, on-peak trains are always full of passengers, so are more uncomfortable and according to economies of scale they should be cheaper to run (the ol' Pak'n'Save "we buy big, you save big policy"). I think at the end of the day, people going to work is a captured market, as one must be at work on time, an the private rail companies can charge what they like, but I'll stop there before shit' get politicool (reading far to much of the brilliant Private-Eye magazine)

Green Park, where lepers were buried

On Saturday, unfortunately waking up in Forest Row and not a floor in London feeling hungover, I went and knocked off my errands in London (after the aforementioned 1 1/2 hour trip in and another 30mins on the tube). It was a nice day and decided I would get a pint and came across an unusual problem I find in London. It seems that whenever I feel like a beer I can never find a suitable pub. Usually the place is full of them, but not when your thirsty it seems. On the upside I got to go for a nice walk trough Green Park, I've heard it got it's name through someone trying to pick up the kings missus by bringing her flowers from there (the Palace is next door), and so the king ordered all the flower removed. As much as this makes for a rather lovely story, I can't find it verified anywhere, Wikipedia just says that it's where they dumped bodies and where the occasional robbery happened and I'm sure still does...

Incidentally the Queens house...

While still on the way to a pub a noticed again how much the sky is never really blue in London. The sky, when not grey is forever criss-crossed with vapour trails. It's something that I've never noticed in EnZee, most probably because there simply isn't anywhere near the amount of planes, that said, these guys disagree with me and would have a mind explosion if they zipped from Kingsland to this Hemisphere....

Anyway, I eventually found a sufficient pub and had a beer and compared it to the Le Peri big bottle o' cider. Safe to say the beer was much nicer. The cider was sub-par but represented very good value for money, or "piss for pounds" but otherwise wasn't all that good. To be quite honest it took me a while to work out what it was, and only found out that it was cider when reading the label on the back...

there's a guy at work who used to pull their tails for  LOLS.

Looking back onto that night I drank the pear cider, (well actually looking back onto the photo from that night), I found the above gem of a fox hangin' in the Sainsbury's car park. Having now seen a badger and a rather flat rat on the bike to the station today, my wildlife hunt is coming along pretty well.

In a final note for now the upside of living in the country is that you get nice sunsets. I'd happily trade the sunsets for a divey flat in the meanish streets in London (not Peckam, Old Kent road obviously hasn't improved much since monopoly was invented), but getting a flat is a bit of a challenge. They come and go so fast that you need a bit of luck it seems to get one, but alas that is a tale for another day.

Chem-Trails over th' Row

Supreme Burger Meal

Supreme Burger Meal

3.49Gbp

3.5/5

Yup, hash brown as-well

Something greasy was what I was after and something greasy was what I found. The above value meal came from a knock off KFC not to far from the Elephant & Castle tube stop. I went there thinking the market might be on and maybe get some more knock off products (namely an Iphone case) no such luck.

Had had a pretty decent day, the weather was pretty good at Mr Lanham had told me that the Notting Hill Carnival was going down, so figured what better a day to zip in to London.

Upon getting there I had to use my cunning to work out a way to get to Notting Hill, as the nearest tube stop was closed. I managed to make it but didn't really know where I was going. Unfortunately I didn't see Hugh Laurie either. In fact in my time over here my star spotting has been a write-off, I mean, I was never good, but all I've come up with is a guy, who looked like a guy on TV in Liverpool (so said my great Aunt) on the train and today managed to see a  slightly crazylooking lady being pushed  in a wheel chair who had a striking resemblance to Susan Boyle, possibly it was her and celebrating the paralympics?

BACK TO THE STORY of the carnival. I followed some crowds there and the party was pretty good. It was kinda like a street party over the whole suburb, which was very cool, with live music and drinking on the street. The drinking part inspired me to go to a dairy to get a couple of beers, I didn't have to walk far but getting back turned out a bit loltastic.

Having opened my first beer, and drinking thirstily, I turned out of the street and figured I was walking in the right direction to get back to the Carnival,. Unfortunately I had more than opened my second beer when I realised I was well off course, by the time I was on my third I was walking through a somewhat crowded Westfield mall drinking, with another can in my hand. I felt a little out of place. There's a point I must have crossed when drinking in the street on a Sunday afternoon began to feel a wee bit inappropriate. Probably as soon as I left Notting Hill... On the upside, it's not really that out of place here; a guy drinking on the street, as booze is fairly available, so no one was looking side ways or nuttin'...

Bauhaus

ANYWAY, after stocking up with another couple of beers from the Supermarket in the mall, I set my compass and made it back to the Carnival which was pretty good times. There must have been about a billion people and everyone was having a bit of a groove to the steel bands in the rare London sun. Think I had bought a couple of the fairly  average "Red Stripe" beers, it says it Jamaican, but is brewed by Diago I think, who brew Fosters, and it tastes just as good as the Australian Classic...

Wrong side of town for a riot ,officers... Brixton's on the other side of the Thames,

BRIEFLY, before marrying up this nonsense with the food in question, I wish to explain my initial surprise at how big Fosters is here, It's like one of the most popular beers here. A quick bit of research tells that Fosters isn't big in its Australian home no more, as it really doensn't have a place in their market (VBs working class and Heinken is for the office clerks spose toothy's is in the middle?) but over here it's branded as fairly working class and it's sponsorship in prominent at major sporting events. Either way though, it tastes pretty blah.

At the end of the day I was hungry for something unhealthy and feeling a wee bit guilty for not doing my errands I had missed on account of drinking, and knock off Dirty Bird was the winner. The meal wasn't too bad, I think the real K-Fry does it better, but this was cheep, if you excuse the pun, and filled the space desired.

Beef burger and pint of bitter

Beef Burger and pint of bitter

11.60Gbp

3/5

Couldn't find the rotate button, soz

Righto, so today we have a pub meal; beer & burger. Had this beast after spending the week Mersey side, living the Liverpool dream. After a bit of a drive from Forest Row and a stop off including the aforementioned average Americano, we made it to Liverpool, where I had no reviewable food, until we had left and I had this burger and beer at a pub just out of Shakespeare country (Stratford-upon-Avon).

We stayed in a nice wee cottage on the site of Lord Levers mansion. The same place as some guy that won Big Brother had a wedding and Wayne Rooney once had a party. ANYWAY, Lord Lever is most famous for being the "Lever" part of "Unilever" who pretty much make everything toiletry. Here's a quick history lesson, from what I can remember,

The guys best known, socially, for building 'Port Sunlight" for his workers (kinda like Mr. Cadbury I hear), a nice wee village where all of his workers received a cottage, although also had to adhere to somewhat strict rules, otherwise they'd be given the boot. We/he stayed in Thornton Hough, a village he built for his managers, naturally it had bigger houses than Port Sunlight, unfortunately  these days it doesn't have a dairy to get a paper (although the breakfasts at the town hall arn't too bad)

Don't worry we stayed in a cottage, not quite the manor,

When Lever wasn't getting caught in controversy for using slave labour to harvest palm oil in the Congo, he indulged in Freemasonry, getting to one of the highest ranks, which presumably came with a pretty awesome handshake.

From the door of his manor he had a straight private road that would take him right to the door of his factory, I get a slight hint of elitism from what I've read, but he seemed pretty well looked upon for building places for his workers by my great uncles/aunts that lived around there so maybe he was OK.

All that said, he's probably be best know for sleeping outside, covered only by a glass roof on the top of his manor so he wouldn't get wet...

While we where staying in the cottage there was a bit of a mosquito plague, on account of being surrounded by farm land and constant rain. One night I managed to knock off 8 or so of them in a violent 1am rampage. Just in case you were wondering about my issue of bugs here.

the road was a wee bit flooded so I took a detour
through the road on the way back from a wander

Liverpool isn't a bad place but the pace is complete contrast to that of London (compare the atmosphere of Orkland to Dunedin). It calls itself the "European Centre of Culture", probably because the Beatles came from there. Liverpool seems to be all about the Beatles,their football teams (Everton & Liverpool) and maybe trips to the pub to get away from the missus and have some two quid pints.

As a place Liverpool seems to be in recovery mode. Once a great hub for UK shipping and a huge centre for industry (up to the beginning of the 20th century). Come containerisation and moving production off shore, there's a lot of abandon space with a bit of a rundown feel about it. Especially when heading out of the city centre.

the Liver building (said Ly-ver), named after a prevalent red weed.

To my surprise there is a place called New Brighton in Merseyside, all these years I figured New Brighton in CHC was named after Brighton (South England), but perhaps not. The New Brighton in Liverpool was eerily similar to that of East CHC, after having had a bit of money spent on it, it still felt depressing and isolated. Hopefully Liverpool as a city will continue to grow as it once did and not become another reflection of the New Brightons.

SOo this brings me to the burger. On the way back we stayed a lovely hotel, with a rather cool old, abandon(ish) church onsite, complete with grave stones. Unfortunately I didn't get a ghost hunt in, as it looked like the sort of place that could have a bit of a haunting going down, if my readings of Goosebumps are an accurately reflection of all things ghosty and monster-ey.

Owned by the Shirleys, apparently Shakespeare may have peed in the garden (so I was told).

NOW TO THE CASE AT HAND. The burger was OK. There seems to be a bit of a trend here for burgers to be a bit deconstructed, I mean, could that not have put the salad in the burger? Also the salad/pasta salad/caulslaw stuff seemed like it had been scraped off the plates of diners the previous night. On the upside it was a genuine 16thish centenary pub, with a low ceiling, dodgy flaw and genuine Crapper bog.

The other case at hand is the beer, which wasn't to bad. It seems the best beers I've had here are the ales, other that the fact they all taste a bit like homebrew, are fairly flat and are served room temperature. The cool thing is pubs here have different local ales from one to another on tap which gives me good reason to try out all the pubs I can find (I don't mean all, the country seems to have one on every corner, but yous know what I mean).

Anyway, it was an average meal, but kept me satiated until we made it back down to Sussex.

Americano

Americano

1.70Gbp

1/5

The coffee that takes the blame for all my bad coffees, Jesus coffee if you will...

Coffee, I never though I was all that much of a coffee snob, I liked a good long-black, but thought they were all much the same. I think in the end I was right... but only in New Zealand. Don't get me wrong, I've had some less than amazing coffees, but the mighty NZ, ('specially Orkland) have fairly consistent coffee, according to my pallet.

I was on the tube a week or so ago (after missing the last train home, and having to ask an acquaintance in London if I could stay at his...) and chatted to a guy who worked with a guy from ChChurch and said that it was a bit of a Kiwi thing to whinge about the state of coffee, so I feel bad saying this, but it's hard, near impossible to get a decent coffee here. FIRSTLY, you ain't going to find many places that don't think your just having LOLS asking for a long-black, SECONDLY the few places that do them are "Kiwi" cafes, and one doesn't fly around the world for that...

The final part of my whinge is that an Americano (kinda close to a long black) at one place maybe pretty much a Double Espresso, at others will be a big Black Coffee, it's a painful, often disappointing lucky dip.

The beast pictured above was a sort of murky thing, neither here nor there, I think the barrister slipped a little milk in, half heartedly, so it's no white nor black. To be honest it's one redeeming feature was that I got it in a lovely, sleepy village (Kineton?), like many dotted around this country, rich in history, just not rich in coffee finesse.

One day I'll be all grown up and not get mah LOLS from this...

While we're on the subject of fox pee (sorry for this abhorrent segue, I really am!) but I've had a wee checklist of wild-life I wanted to see, which I've just finished...

Firstly was the squirrel. These strange beasts, a cross (probably) between a rabbit and a mouse was something that rates pretty highty in the novelty rating (think of all those songs, albums and films they're known for?). Can't remember the first one I saw, but can remember getting kinda excited about hearing they had been running around the backyard to the amusements of the cats; squirrels are fairly common here and seem happy to reside in tree's in central London, don't tell Boris though, as I think he might come up with a way to charge them for their multi-million dollar views...

Next was the Fox. Guess these guys are pretty common too and also share the squirrels taste for the high life in London. I saw one in Camden once (central London), I was pretty drunk at the time, but was pretty sure it was a fox. Word on the street is they come out at dawn & dusk and search through bins on a fruitless hunt for the dregs of a decent coffee. The legend goes on to suggest that when they find one they turn into some awesome man beast. Think thriller. It has happened only that once...

Lastly is the bat. A cross between a mouse and a pigeon. It took a while to see a couple of these flying mouse things, as they prefer to keep it rural, but they're out there. Unless it was just a busy night for batman, but will we ever know for sure, he like's to keep these things quite.

Kineton, the mean streets.

The're are also wild deer down Sussex way. They add a quaintness to the area, which the place already has in spoon-fills. I've heard that if your driving and happen to survive hitting one, that you're not allowed to take the corpse, instead the car behind you is the one that is allowed venison caserol... just in case you were wondering...

I like how they too are unsure about the title.

My quest to find a decent kitshless coffee endures. On the wildlife front, I would still like to see a snake. I've also have been chased by a wasp from the south to the north, I think it maybe the same one. If any one has any tips on how to get rid of it, I'm all ears...