The Solitary Review

Clattern Bridge

Clattern Bridge, Kingston. Acrylic on canvas, 21 x 15 cm. I am practicing for doing larger canvases but this is a small one for now.

The Clattern Bridge (so called for the 'clattering' of horses' hooves across it back in the day) is the oldest in-service bridge in London. It crosses the Hogsmill near its confluence with the Thames in Kingston, and it dates from the 13th century - a new brick superstructure was added in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the arches are the original. It is in everyday use as it forms part of Kingston High Street.

Kingston Market Place

Kingston Market Place - for a birthday card.

Acrylic and pigment liner.

February 2019.

Cafe Review: The Retreat Kitchen, Richmond

The Retreat is on Hill Rise in leafy Richmond upon Thames, not too far from the river or from the shops of the centre of town. A woody interior and large-paned windows onto the street that may once have been more interesting - above the door line older panes of glass show better detailing. The Retreat is proudly vegetable-based and excellently run by Claire and Maggie and with its origins in a BBC TV show also called The Retreat and whose background is detailed on their website. 

I had: a vegan brunch (£10.95) which was excellent - who would have thought scrambled tofu could be so tasty? and it was. And an Americano with oat milk (£2.30) - in a handle-less cup which should really mean a coffee that has cooled to the temperature that you are supposed to serve coffee at (why does it have to be so hot so many places? A takeaway culture I suspect). There are also salads, quiches, muffins, wraps, herbal teas and smoothies.

 

The Retreat Kitchen

16 Hill Rise
Richmond upon Thames
TW10 6UA

020 8127 0700

http://theretreatkitchen.co.uk/index.html

Cafe Review: & Feast, Barnes, London

Near to Barnes Green and not far from Barnes Common and thus a favourite with dog walkers and well-heeled locals strolling on the common. A big range of cakes and salads - I had an almond cake (£3.90) which was moist and palatable, also an Americano which was really "mmm ... yes, coffee!" for me (£2.40).  & Feast is also licenced - bottles of wine and beer in a rack by the door. They provide coffee in compostable disposables which is a nice touch for those who haven't embraced (or brought) reusables. 

& feast is now also a catering company. 

& feast as you would expect being near the Green and the Common, is dog-friendly which is always a plus with me even if I no longer have the companionship of a dog (maybe when I'm retired, let's see). 

& feast

57 Church Road, Barnes, London SW13 9HH

Tel. 020 8748 7000

https://andfeast.com

 

Tilting at Windmills

This story was first published in 2001 by This Way Up but no longer appears on their website. It shares some points in common with my work in progress Dark Castles but is not connected with it. 

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Captain D'Annunzio reined in his horse at Bleeker and Vine. In front of him, in the ruined end of Vine Street, something was foraging in the rubbish. He'd been heading back to the station for something to eat, probably a bowl of zuppa ai gnocchi. But whatever that was, and it wasn't clear even by squinting at it with his desert-glared eyes, he was duty bound to go and see what it was. He sighed. The zuppa ai gnocchi would have to wait.

     He urged the horse forward slowly into the ruined area. Salmone whickered and tossed her head from side to side but obeyed. She was that kind of a mount; she would complain bitterly about every job, but always get it done. Her hoofs left the sure surface of the street and came down on sand. For a moment he wondered if she minded, but then the entire purpose of a hoof, its tapering shape and hard edge, seemed to be to take this kind of ground in its stride. The world could not always have been grass and tarmac. And Salmone had four of them.

     Yes you do, don't you, D'Annunzio urged. Go my pretty one. Let's see what that is. Shall we? Yes, we shall. He straightened up in the saddle, feeling a slight pang where he had had his bottom pair of ribs removed, and raised a hand to shade his eyes. The light in the Intorsion was harsh and constant, but nobody had ever come back from spending the night there, so it was preferable on balance.

     The flickering whatever-it-was was still there, among what looked like a cluster of old refrigerators, which would have appeared when this part of the Intorsion was formed. A rowan tree was growing over them and its scarlet berries looked good enough to eat. D'Annunzio realised he was thinking about food again. For a Captain of Police he had an incredible obsession with the subject, worthy of the Blessed Carlo himself. And if that rowan was growing in the Intorsion, its berries could have contained anything. An oak tree that grew in Ehlenburg Street, now overcome by the Intorsion, now bore a crop of what looked like translucent blue human heads.

Kingston Riverside in Snow December 2018

Kingston Riverside in Snow

A4, Acrylic and Pigment Liner, December 2018. Judiciously edited using Paint.net - and why not? The sky as originally done was a mess and when the picture was scanned it sprouted weird streaks of purple for some reason. So I deleted it and added a gradient in Paint.net. This picture is from a photograph I took on 2nd December 2010 - very early for snow here - it's now 9th December eight years later and although it's been cold and cloudy there has been no real hint of snowfall.

The Adventures of Bunter in Time, Space and Early Aviation

William at the controls as the plane reaches the bottom of its loop and mistimes it perfectly so that a fence takes off the upper wing and his head. The word ‘bunt’ Is now rarely used for an outside loop. First to carry out a bunt was the Owl of the Remove, William of that name: the original Bunter.

On several occasions he was fatally inconvenienced while attempting this difficult manoeuvre which requires exact spatial discipline and an engine sufficiently powerful to pull the aircraft upwards in the loop after its descent. On one such occasion he crashed in a field and burned for several minutes.

His cries of “Yarooo!” and “I say you rotters!” spurred on many imitators but none truly encapsulated the shuddering insanity of early experimental flight like Bunter. In Barnstorming Bunter, we see the luckless Owl repeatedly attempt daring manoeuvres only to die repeatedly. In Bunter of the Golden West his travelling air circus is beset by an ‘army of horribles’ who appear out of the sunset and slaughter everybody then slaughters them again as best they are able, just to be sure.

In No Peace for the Bunter his efforts to set up a Cross-Channel air ferry are thwarted by his capture by mercenaries who crucify him repeatedly at dawn, while dosing him with a drug which makes him forget the earlier occasions. His cries of “I say you rotters! I say!” are deeply moving. The mercenaries’ leader, naming himself Captain Blood and by no means clearly human, explains his concept of punishment needing to “take physical form (not necessarily violent); be publicly visible; and to be as eternal as is allowed by the boundaries of Time and Space.” Blood claims that Hell is the perfect sanction as it allows for the continuation of punishment after the subject’s life is at an end and is thereby not technically bounded by the space-time continuum. Compared to the Church, he says, I’m an amateur.

In Bunter and the Vardo Volley he takes the controls of a strange craft that does not seem to comply to the laws of our Universe and is plunged into a universe of constant pain and desolation. He meets some old favourites on the way including Randolph Carter and the multi-bodied creature that was once Wilbur ‘Wright’ Whateley. He also makes friends with a pack of smuns – ‘animals in size between fox and wolf, with the look of a small, parti-coloured bear.’ While outwardly fierce these creatures do not see humans as prey and once he understands their social system they are caring and protective towards him, treating him as ‘a somewhat dim and oversized member of their pack.’ HP Lovecraft notably threatened to sue for imagined similarity to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath upon which the author told him to ‘sue away you mean old pisseur.’ Bunter of course enjoys the desolation tremendously and thanks his hosts profusely when at the end of several million aeons he finds his way home.

The Owl is Not What He Seems pits Bunter against the Russian Secret Service in a Wheatleyan adventure full of weird and impractical aircraft, Lovecraftian strangeness, and (again like Wheatley) a prescience regarding the Soviet Union that made the author mistrusted for decades until he was proved to have been right all along. “I say you chaps,” the Owl carols at one point, “I was stranded at Kadath in the Cold Waste for aeons of astronomical time. And between it and Siberia, I’d say hello Kadath, nice to see you.”

Tsinari Cafe, Thessaloniki, Greece

"Tsinari" is a traditional eatery in the Old Town of Thessaloniki, capital of Northern Greece. It has been there for ... many years. I lived near it in the mid 1980s and it was venerable then. Fortunately it is still going strong.

Acrylic and pigment liner, 15 x 15 cm, November 2018.

Chapter Coffee, West Kensington - review

A surprising place perhaps, for a trendy cafe given the downmarket nature of the Olympia end of North End Road, but the area is a bit of a ‘stealth suburb’ - nicer and better-off than it looks and gone upmarket in the years since I left.

I am greeted on arrival by a pleasant young woman – there is a counter but we are ushered to tables if we are dining in.

The kitchen space lets onto the cafe at the far end of the space.

This building is an old bank but I don’t remember when it was a bank even though it’s near the library I used to use when I lived here, and I had been known to frequent the shops in this little parade near the A4.

A big San Remo coffee machine on the counter and bottles of liquor behind. Comfortable sofas and metal chairs by wooden tables and a wood plank floor. All has a modernity that I left behind when I left this area. If I still lived near here, I’d live here.

Young trendy locals (and me). People stare at me. I’m used to it.

Kale figures largely on the menu but I don’t have any, I’m not tempted. Also avocado but in its case I just don’t have any today.

A huge roasting machine behind a glass pane. Pale grey walls in the modern style.

The serving staff are mostly young women – they are pleasant and their uniform is a smart short-sleeved black shirt and dark trousers.

Long black coffee £2.50 – intense and flavourful. Apparently there is a bean menu at the counter but as you are ushered to a table do you get to see it? Coffee was hot on arrival, needed to wait for it to cool. Eggs Benedict £10 – two eggs, chunky ham, two slices of toast and flavoursome sauce. Very palatable and it went down nicely. I was reminded of the crumpets poached egg and bacon that I used to have in a cafe near here and which is still going despite the best efforts of the place to go upmarket.

Filter £2.70

Espresso £2.50

White coffees peculiarly in ounces – 6oz £2.60, 8oz £2.80.

And I like the name – I’ve just passed 50,000 words in my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project so I’m allowed out again, and here I am.

From here I can look down the length of a side street and see my old flats at the far end. My place of dead roads – as William S Burroughs describes them, places you were once allowed to go and now no longer.

 

Chapter Coffee

137 North End Road

London W14

https://www.chaptercoffee.com/

 

The Bullring and St Martins, Birmingham

"Tell you what, right. We'll put it about that Birmingham is a post-industrial wasteland where people speak in funny accents and keep ferrets down their trousers and perpetually on the edge of a race war."

"And not mention the young and vibrant cultural scene, the green spaces, the genuinely integrated population, the house prices about half what they are in London,  and the straightforward and tolerant nature of most of the inhabitants. Or even the amazing sunsets."

"That's the idea. Keep the southerners from moving here and putting up prices, that will."

"Right you are."

 

Watercolour and pigment liner, September 2018