Lost to Lockdown

-

 

Last Vic Toastie and Bass Before Lockdown II


This is what we currently can't get our hands on - our favourite once a week visit to The Vic in Menai Bridge for lunch. Normally the most predictable punters ever: Me - Cheese & Crispy Bacon Toastie and two pints of Bass; Jane - Jacket Potato with either Cheese or Tuna Mayo and a half of Bass or a Slimline Tonic. As keen-eyed observers will spot, Jane lately has been subverting the norm and keeping the kitchen on their toes by ordering Sausage, Egg & Chips, the radical... Looking forward to being able to go back there when the current mini/fire/circuit/leg/break is over. I'll order extra chips to celebrate.

I realised on our last visit that I've been going to the Vic on and off for the same toastie for nearly a quarter of a century. Duw, böi, why change the habits of a lifetime. Hwyl!

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner3 November 2020 at 05:21

    Glad to see that you're keeping up our old lunchtime tradition from Snowdonia BIC days. I too have the occasional CRISPY bacon cheese toastie and I thought that I was the only one "keeping them on their toes"!!! Sadly you've missed the inaugural meeting of the Ogwen Valley Sports, Social and History Club at Ty Cap which was just Ez & I drinking Nuclear Browns and me filling him in on some of my more scurrilous memories. I've MUCH more but this was "ground bait" which he's taken as he was talking to Jim about recording these memories before I disappear. Which is wonderful as it is precisely this History aspect of the name of the Club that IS so important along with the other two that are NOT yet part of the "Cradle to Grave" aspirations of our NOW protected and possibly cherished NHS that Labour fought the fucking Tories SO hard to establish!!! The next meeting is this afternoon and will (IF the butterfly brianed ex-wife of mine doesn't do one of her disapearing acts) be a surprise 57th birthday party for her with two of her sons one of which (Jim) should be working in Manchester. This conforms with the second of the Club's objectives! You'll note that I'm playing extended "bubbles" with lockdown rules cos we've got fuck all CV-19 up here. I need to talk to you about matters technical as well as phylosopical so RSVP for Friday's 16:00 meeting where we can extend Ez's mentail horizons, if nowt else, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  2. sideways3 November 2020 at 07:14

    We're sticking with the rules as they stand, as the boys work for the NHS and have to spend at least some of their working week at the hospital. As soon as this fire/circuit/leg break is over I'll rethink my strategies re beer and toasties!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more