Number Seventy News

A quintet of eating and drinking houses.  The Lamb and Lion at Bootham Bar strikes me as gloomy, more bare wood than I ideally like, and an unimaginative lunchtime menu. c.f. The Guy Fawkes, reviewed a few weeks ago, which is much nicer.

Lo Spuntino on Blossom Street - cheap and cheerful Italian. Good variety.

Meltons Too. A favourite, well revamped. Good locally sourced food nicely presented. One waiter didn’t know how to pour wheat beer.

The Brigantes, Micklegate.  Wonderful range of beers, and they do know how to pour a wheat beer.  Good pub food. Particularly excellent chips. Their fish is good too.

York Spice.  The best Indian restaurant I’ve ever been in. The food does all taste different.  I love the Macher Jhool - fish curry, and the pasanda is good too.  Maybe I prefer Kingfisher to Cobra, but they have the latter on draught.

Have I ever mentioned the Exhibition on Bootham.  It’s on the pseudo-Victorian plush end of decor but always has at least one real ale, usually two, and does exceptionally good, if conventional, pub food.

So, actually, it’s six.

There are four !   In spite of Rob’s confidence that there were none there I saw four, all together, the other day.  What survivore !  Better start feeding them again.

In spite of the man who gutted the garden and cleaned out the pond saying “There’s no fish in there, mate,” there are !!!

Three of the wee boggers. They obviously gave him the slip.  Whether they will survive in the now pretty sterile pond is anyone’s guess, of course.

Birghter than you think, fish.  (See national news).

Well, actually, “Brrr  Paris”,  in that there was an extraordinarily chilly little wind whistling up the Seine and round the Tuileries and up and down the steps of the Metro (of which more anon).

Eurostar did its bit very nicely and on time - I must say St Pancras beats Gare du Nord for facilities, though both seem to think that Eurostar travellers have capacious bladders, in spite of all the on-station opportunities provided to fill them. Oh, and at Gare Du Nord, you just walk off the train and into Paris, while arriving at St. P you follow a circuitous route past passport desks (unpersoned) and customs (ditto).  I suspect it’s a way to make sure you pass the shops on your way out.

The Paris Metro has what seem to be quaintly old fashioned stock on some lines, though now all in smart green and grey livery, and a number of lines have the stock with supplementary rubber-tyred wheels.  I have always assumed these are for faster acceleration and deceleration - happy to have this confirmed if anyone knows for certain.  Cité Station, on the Île de la Cité is a gem - big globe lights on elegantly curved brackets, and then the access to platforms is down stairs in a huge circular, lined with steel, hole in the ground - the guts more on display than usual.

What did we do ?  Went up the Eiffel Tower at dusk - right to the top.  Main feature of Eiffel tower apart from the view is the queues.  But worth it. Feels a bit like clambering up the inside of the Forth Bridge must feel like - though the steel is a different section.

Good restaurants. “Au Roi du Pot au Feu” in Rue Vignon - huge hot pot.  “Au Lys d’Agent” on Rue St Louis en L’Isle”  - excellent lunch-type meals inc crêpes, and “Au Petit Bistrot” on the Rue Mouffetard - again, excellent food on a fixed price menu.  One other place we ate provided adequate food but it didn’t seem to bear a close resemblance to what we had ordered - but by that time we were desperate due to the time spent queuing at the Tour Eiffel.  (Did you know, by the way, that the Eiffel Tower comes out in sparkly very bright lights every half hour or so ? - it’s presumably to titillate the palate jaded by mere floodlighting).

As we know, there are shops for everything - there’s an Elvis shop in Paris, and in a shop called “La Droguerie” you can get a million and one different kinds of …..      wool !

There’s an absolutely huge record shop called FNAC in the Les Halles shopping centre - but Dussman in Berlin is better, to my mind.  From the -3 floor of the Halles shopping you go UP a couple of storeys to the Underground.

Oh, and Monet’s waterlilies in the Orangerie are just stunning.

We had the pond cleared out.  “Watch out for the fish,” we said.  There were no fish.  Sometime in the autumn they must have given up their fishy souls to the great aquarium in the sky - or possibly ended their days in the beak of a great heron in the sky, or the paws of a small hungry cat.  I enjoyed counting them, but I’ve been advised not to acquire any more fish till the pond can be improved - more sunlight, more oxygen, more circulating water.  A solar powered water feature is surely the answer.

Haven’t seen them since about end of October - so either there are none or they will re-appear in the Spring.

Even though I know my readers are few, I feel I have let you down these last six months buy not posting anything at all on this “blog”.  Reasons: mainly, a problem with the website which meant I couldn’t update it, and I thought that applied to the blog as well.  It may not have done and so the world is forever deprived of what I would have posted - too late to catch up now; and as a subsidiary reason, I have been a little busy.  However, it should now be possible to share gems with you all, though whether paste or the real thing will, as ever, be debatable.

I think there are six. Two have died for certain. The others send out 1 to see what’s happening if they sense me coming (ground vibrations), then three to sweep the entire pond area, then maybe the rest if it seems safe.  It doesn’t often seem safe.

They’re messing me about ! One day I go out and there’s nothing to be seen, however hard I peer into the depths and under the pond plants, the next there are 8 of them, then 3, or 1.  Sneaking up on them doesn’t make any difference. I think one died - but usually dead ones float, and I don’t see it.

Perhaps if I keep feeding them they will get too b ig to hide.

Or, to be precise, gold-fish? I bought ten of the little buggers yesterday and there only seem to be three left. No sign of herons and the cats are too incompetent. Can only think that one of the old fat frogs has chomped them up. Next time - pike !