Sad to say, but in many ways I vehemently hate the “Broken Britain” of today.
I hate ‘Elf and Safety and political correctness gone mad. I hate the current culture of dependency and the degenerate chavscum who roam the streets. I hate the chronic overcrowding, prohibitive property prices, crap public transport, and the fact that you seem to haemorrhage money there every time you but sneeze. I hate that we’ve run up a £900 billion odd deficit by bankers / governments simply being retarded. And I’m just waiting for us to somehow bugger up the Olympics in 2012...
I’m sorry – I seem for a moment to have forgotten that this is Knedliky Etc and not the Daily Mail here. Fact is most of my family, friends and most notably Her Majesty (see next entry) all currently reside there, which collectively necessitates a visit “home” on my part every now and then.
The country might be going down the toilet fast, but for a Home Counties girl like myself, there are still pockets of loveliness (culturally and culinarily) to be found. For example, in the space of just 24 hours, last week Mr K and I managed to fit in several highlights of the other “better Britain” which still somehow plods quietly along behind the hysterical Daily Mail headlines.
First stop on our whistle-stop tour of the Shires was at Kings College Cambridge, where we popped in for lunch in its Harry Potter-esque Great Hall (as alumni I can still get in with Mr K as my guest).
It looks posh, but what you don’t see is that there is actually a modern, bog-standard canteen just to the side of it – the only times you get proper waiter service / actual decent food there is for things like Graduation / Matriculation Dinners or Formal Halls. In this case, Mr K went for the decidedly more cheap-and-cheerful Great British fry-up, with me as usual opting for the healthier salad cart option – total cost £6.30.
After lunch, we then drove out to the nearby Chilford Hall, one of 178 vineyards currently operating in the UK. We had a joint English wine-tasting tour booked here (a present from Mummy K last Christmas), which basically involved an escorted walk round the vines, an explanation of how the wine was produced (lost on me) and finally a tasting of six of their wine varieties – largely Dornfelder, Müller Thurgau, and other grapes that grow well in a cooler climate.
The best I can say here is that there is clearly a good reason why English wine has not caught on.
Home via a 17th century Olde-Worlde English pub...
... before finally rounding off the day with that most revered of all British cuisine – a decent curry! :-))))
And despite all the Daily Mail’s dire warnings, I did not end up mobbed by yobs / gypsies / paedophiles / single mothers / immigrants / Eurocrats / Gordon Brown on the street, and nor did I knowingly contract cancer from my flip-flops, turning the light on to go to the loo at night, or being left-handed whilst I was there either (see full Daily Mail cancer list here).
Oh alright then, I'll admit it - maybe old Blighty isn’t quite so bad or broken as my low-brow choice of online news would have me believe... And I'll say this for merry old England at any rate - at least the food there doesn't need fixing!!!
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ReplyDeleteafter looking at the picture of first dish at Cambridge I would have very violent feelings against the cooks and waiters and everyone around. And I am saying this just after lunch.
Is it only me?
Like I say - canteen food, surroundings make up for it!
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