Speeches, Meetings, Tasting and Dining

11-May-09 - It was blowing a gale at Splash Point for the handover, and although the sun was bright and the sea sparkled, it was absolutely freezing... Or maybe I should have worn a jacket. The background here is rather odd. Back in 1999 I was playing Baron Hardup (typecast again!) in Horsham, and so was away from home a lot over the Christmas period (this did not go down well at the Eversley, but you gotta go where the action is). One night just before Christmas there was a violent storm and quite a bit of debris was scattered along the seafront. James was staying with us over the holiday period and was out walking his dog the morning after the storm when he found a notice, lying in the street, obviously having been blown there from somewhere. It read 'WORTHING BOROUGH COUNCIL - STAND RESERVED FOR THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS AND PUBLIC SPEECHES' which he thought was amusingly old-fashioned. We were relatively new to Worthing at that time and I had a vague idea that I'd seen it somewhere before, but couldn't remember where, but I intended to take it to the town hall once the world got back to normal after Christmas. Anyway, it gave us some amusement over the holiday period, after which he went home and I went back to Horsham for the rest of the panto run, which was about ten days. By the time I was back home the notice had been put away somewhere and I had completely forgotten about it.


And so it remained until about two weeks ago, when one of the local papers mentioned that the sign had been at Splash Point and had disappeared 'ten or fifteen years ago'. This jogged my memory, and a quick scout round the house revealed the sign, still intact if a little battered by the storm which dislodged it, behind the sofa in the guest bedroom. I wrote to the paper, and they arranged a handover to Keith Mercer, leader of the borough council, with a reporter and photographer from the Brighton Argus and an astonishingly pretty girl from the council called Linda who had, it transpired, been trying to find the sign for at least a year. Anyway, they took the pictures and did the interview and, apparently, a new 'pulpit' of some kind is being designed to rehouse it close to its original spot... Nine and a half years after it 'disappeared'.

Then it was off to London on the 11:06 for the 'prequel' to the London International Wine Fair (LIWF). A note about the Electrostars (Class 377) which are run by the Southern Railway on this route - when they were introduced in 2002 they seemed to offer a level of comfort and ride which were streets ahead of the old slamdoor stock which they replaced, but on this journey the train jerked, bobbed and lurched all over the place like a fairground ride. Perhaps after seven years and who-knows-how-many-million miles it's time for new suspension.

But back to the day before the LIWF. The Circle of Wine Writers has a committee meeting, then the AGM and our annual dinner on this day each year, on the basis that members from distant parts will be in London ready for the fair the following three days. And, indeed, so it proved, including a seminar on matching wine and charcuterie (terrine, saucisson sec, duck rillette and jamón de Teruel) by Fiona Beckett, with some fascinating wines (including La Gitana Manzanilla which, of course, went with everything, and a fabulous Malvasía Canary wine from El Grifo on Lanzarote which everyone loved but which, sadly, almost no-one can sell). The other wines were a St.-Tropez rosé (good with the ham); Assyrtiko Hatzidakis (went well with everything); Riesling Weingut Christmann, Pfalz (excellent with the terrine); Chapel Hill Verdelho (good with the duck); Lambrusco Reggiano Concerto (er... Better all by itself); Marcillac Cuvée Lairis (corky - both bottles); Morgon, Jean Poillard (good with the duck); and Isabel estate Pinot Noir from NZ (just a very lovely wine).

The dinner was at the same venue - Terroirs in William IV Street - and was a sell-out, and what a great pleasure to see so many old chums, It did remind me (yet again) that the Circle contains a lot of very affable and companionable people with whom it's always a pleasure to share an event. The restaurant has had rave reviews and was packed on the night (a Monday night in the middle of a recession ) which is very good news, but the food was, well, patchy. We started with panzanella which was pleasant enough, and then Lincolnshire smoked eel with a celeriac remoulade. The combination of two cold dishes was a little challenging for me, I have to say. Next up was new season's asparagus with Hollandaise sauce - perhaps one of the greatest combinations in gastronomy. Except that the asparagus was pale and floppy and barely warm, as was the sauce. Snails, bacon, garlic and parsley came on a crouton and were practically cremated, and porchetta and salsa verde which was delicious but, again, barely warm. It's probably not fair to judge a restaurant on a set meal cooked for a private event, and I may have to go again to see what the food's really like. I did also suggest that they might consider putting in a lift: from street level to the sub-basement dining room involves 48 stairs although, interestingly, they have a fire-exit directly into the Charing Cross Underground Station, which would seem to offer a range of possibilities.

The wine theme of the evening was 'island wines' and we tasted wines from Crete, the Canaries, Long Island (NY), Ontario, and Kangaroo Island amongst others - a really eclectic selection.

I left before the cheese as I had a long haul to docklands. Finding a taxi-driver who knows where anything is east of Tower Bridge seems to be impossible. Last year I stayed at the hotel attached to West Ham United at Upton Park, and hailed a black cab in Tower Place. The driver appeared never to have heard of either West Ham or Upton park, drove round in circles, tied to palm me off on another cab and finally arrived after an hour or so with forty quid on the meter. This time I asked the restaurant to call me a mini-cab (on the basis that they charge a fixed fee rather than on the meter) and specifically asked for a driver who knew docklands. The (statuesque and very attractive) girl on the front desk duly sorted it out and I was on my way by 21:45. According to Google maps the distance between Terroirs restaurant and the Docklands Travelodge is 6.1 miles and should take 21 minutes - perhaps rather less at this time of night? But no. After going through the security gate at Canary Wharf three times, asking directions twice and trying to drop me off at the Holiday Inn, the driver eventually stopped, got his AtoZ out and, after a few further false starts, finally got me to the hotel at 22:30. Oddly enough he had a satnav in the car but didn't use it. He did, however, only charge me £22.50 which, for a London cab is about par for the course. But I sink into despair whenever I have to come to Docklands. In the daytime you can use the Jubilee Line or the DLR, but late at night the chances of getting a short-distance taxi are minimal. Please, please, please can they move the LIWF back to Olympia?

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