Halfway to Heaven

Fulham Palace appeared here in July 2015 in All About You and Heaven. It is just as heavenly in February 2017.

Great Scott

The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was originally the Midland Grand Hotel designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1865. Did Sir Gilbert think he’d done enough that year?

All-Day Brekker

You cannot buy a MacDonald’s all-day breakfast in the UK – not yet. There are lots of London cafes that will oblige but let me point you in the direction of the best all-day brekker in the solar system, probably.

Dry January?

I went to lunch and ordered a Panang (sic) Curry. It was, no doubt about it, road-kill. I didn’t need to be a mortician to recognise those little squirrel bones – well maybe it was something else …

Waitrose

In France a house in a village with a boulangerie is worth more. In the UK good schools raise property prices but what about a Waitrose?

Où est le Garlic

“I’m going to cook you the best meal you’ve ever eaten.” That’s how Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) seduces Jean Courtney (Sue Lloyd) in The Ipcress File, the 1965 film version of Len Deighton’s 1962 novel.

Temple Time

Friends invited me today to the Hindu temple in Neasden, as they thought it would interest me and it did. The building, opened in 1995, has intricate carving in stone and wood and an elaborate archway, above.

Hadji Bey’s Turkish Delight

Memories of childhood Christmases at Barmeath include special things only eaten then. A butcher in Drogheda, Kierans, made spiced beef (aka Red Round), crystallised fruits came from Dublin and Turkish Delight called Hadji Bey was made in Cork.