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Dr John Hawkins
Welcome to my bit of the Maison de Stuff,
home to a huge load of pictures,
and my daily blog.
My email address is as above - I've put it in an image in a vein attempt to reduce the amount of spam I get.
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- Recent Entries:
- Padron Peppers
Entertaining Visitors
Lunch at the Regency Cafe
Lunch at Quilon
Canterbury
Somewhere in Westminster
Vienna Blend
Cufflinks
Airport Adventures with Andy
Back to London
Sunday in North Wales - St. Mary's Well
Saturday in North Wales - Garn Fadryn
Lunch at Noura
Gourmet Night
Lunch at the Regency Cafe
Two Park Plazas and Drummond Street
TomTom
Visiting Mum - Sunday
Visiting Mum - Saturday
Up to the East Midlands
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- Padron Peppers
 [Friday 20th August 2010]
Padron peppers for dinner.
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- Entertaining Visitors
 [Thursday 19th August 2010]
An evening out entertaining visitors from the US, starting with dinner at the Regency Cafe, then a pub crawl through Westminster and Whitehall.
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- Lunch at the Regency Cafe
 [Wednesday 18th August 2010]
Lunch at the Regency - the usual mushroom omelette and chips.
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- Lunch at Quilon
 [Sunday 15th August 2010]
Lunch at Quilon, a Michelin starred Indian restaurant near St. James's Park.
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- Canterbury
 [Saturday 14th August 2010]
Day trip to Canterbury to have lunch with Leon and Yukari-san, and meet their new baby for the first time.
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- Somewhere in Westminster
 [Wednesday 11th August 2010]
A random picture of a church taken on a wander around Westminster.
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- Vienna Blend
 [Sunday 8th August 2010]
The coffee we bought yesterday in H R Higgins.
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- Cufflinks
 [Saturday 7th August 2010]
Quite a varied day out - went to Portobello market in the morning, and bought a pair of antique cufflinks. Had lunch at a vegetarian Japanese place near King's Cross called Itadaki Zen, then coffee at H R Higgins, and champagne at Fortnum and Mason (this month Taittinger - tasting notes here), before returning home to examine the hallmarks on the cufflinks.
The chap in the market had said the cufflinks were Victorian, and were one of a kind - they had been made specially for the gentleman whose initials were on it - GK. He pointed out the hallmarks - although of course I had no idea what these meant - so when I got home I did a bit of research on the web to try and decipher these.
 The first mark is the standard English silver hallmark - a lion passant gardant. Apparently without this it isn't English silver. The next mark is the city mark for Chester - three wheatsheafs and a sword. It seems there have only ever been about 9 or 10 "assay offices" in the UK, so this doesn't necessarily mean it was made in Chester - this office would have covered a large swathe of the North of England. The third mark is the date mark. It seems these go in cycles, and a subtly different font is used for each cycle. I spent some time poring over charts (see here for example) but it was hard to be 100% sure of the year. It seems most likely from the style of the letter it is in the 1901-1925 cycle. Although this looks more like a 'J' it seems these weren't typically used in each cycle so it is more likely an 'F' (1906) or an 'I' (1909). So it's more likely Edwardian than Victorian, but close enough!
 On the other cufflink just two of the three hallmarks appear (no city mark) - looking at pictures of hallmarks on cufflinks on the web this seems pretty common.
 This is the maker's mark, which I think is the earlier of two marks used by Charles Horner of Halifax. The original Charles Horner died in 1896, after which the business was carried on by his sons (one of which was also a Charles) - so it seems likely to have been made while Charles Jr. and his brother James were running the business.
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- Airport Adventures with Andy
- [Wednesday 4th August]
Just within the last couple of days I had heard from my friend Andy (who had moved to Japan back in February) that he'd be passing through Heathrow en route from Tokyo to visit his family in the South of France. He hadn't been able to fit in an actual stop off in the UK, but he did have a few hours between flights, so I jumped at the chance to go and meet him for a drink or two.
We met in Terminal 5, and proceeded directly to the only bar in Terminal 5 outside of security - the Five Tuns. Unsurprisingly it was pretty soulless - as you'd expect from an airport "pub" - and so our thoughts soon turned to trying to escape the airport to somewhere a bit more pleasant.
 So after a quick search on Google Maps I determined the nearest pub with some character was the London Apprentice in Isleworth. This turned out to be rather good - although I think some of the modernisation of the interior is a little regrettable, the exterior of the building is still rather handsome (and hasn't changed much from a 1930s picture of it I'd seen), the beer seemed to satisfy Andy's craving for real ale, and the food was very good too. I particularly enjoyed the "veggie 'fish' and chips" - they'd taken slices of halloumi and coated it in the same batter usually used for fish - a fantastic idea.
I've really missed the guy since he buggered off to Japan, and so it was nothing short of heavenly to sit in a decent pub with Andy, mulling over life, the universe and everything, even if it was only for a couple of hours.
Eventually though, time came for Andy to head back to the airport, and for me to head back into central London. We hadn't really thought this part through particularly well, and it took quite a while to find a taxi (it turns out they're somewhat less common in TW7 than they are in SW1). By the time I did successfully hail a cab, Andy only had about 45 minutes to make his flight! He didn't have a phone that could make outgoing calls with him, so I didn't actually hear whether he made it or not - I assume so... or maybe he just ended up going back to the awful Five Tuns.
I then headed back into the centre of London to meet up with Chie, who had arranged for us to have dinner with her former university tutor (Nozaki-sensei) and his wife Kaori-san, who were visiting Europe for a few days. We'd decided to play it safe and took them to Oliveto, which I think went down rather well. Chie had also taken them to a couple of pubs in Belgravia beforehand (of course following my recommendations). Nozaki-sensei and Kaori-san are both wine buffs, and we'd got onto the conversation of Champagne during the evening. I was rather pleased that when I mentioned there was a bar round the corner with a good selection of champagnes Kaori-san pretty much immediately said "let's go!" - so we rounded off the evening with a bottle of Perrier Jouet at the Ebury Wine Bar.
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- Back to London
 [Monday 2nd August 2010]
Travelling back to London on Monday morning.
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- Sunday in North Wales - St. Mary's Well
 [Sunday 1st August 2010]
An afternoon stroll near Aberdaron, down to St. Mary's well, whilst enjoying the views across the sea to Bardsey. Also an early evening stroll to Porth Colman, and dinner at the Lion.
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- Saturday in North Wales - Garn Fadryn
 [Saturday 31st July 2010]
An afternoon stroll up Garn Fadryn - the mountain Dad is custodian of, on the Llyn peninsula in North Wales.
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- Lunch at Noura
 [Thursday 29th July 2010]
A couple of pictures from my lunch at Noura.
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- Gourmet Night
 [Saturday 24th July 2010]
Went to look at a flat this morning. The address was cited as Pimlico Road, which made me think of the very nice antiques shops, and the farmer's market, but when we got there it was actually round the corner, in a slightly scary looking ex-local authority estate - you know, one of those ones with the outdoor corridors on each floor, where people hang their washing out etc. I guess I should have expected as much given the price - £340k doesn't really get you anywhere you'd actually want to live in SW1.
Still, at least it got us out and about fairly early in the morning. So we went from there for a look around the Pimilico Road farmer's market, and bought some Kent cherries and courgette flowers there. Then we popped into nearby William Curley, a chocolate shop which apparently has some Japanese influence, and had a quick espresso there whilst perusing the chocolates. Headed on from there to the very nice Waitrose in Belgravia, before heading back to the flat.
Spent most of the afternoon just lolling about at home.
Had a very gourmet meal in the evening. Started off with the courgette flowers we'd bought earlier - stuffed these with mozzarella, coated them in a light tempura batter and then shallow fried them along with some sage leaves. Really delicious! For our main course we had tomato and mozzarella ravioli, topped with steamed samphire and drizzled with truffle oil. Also delicious! Finished off with the Kent cherries, and all of this accompanied by a bottle of Camel Valley Brut, a really excellent English sparkling wine we'd picked up in Cornwall.
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- Lunch at the Regency Cafe
 [Friday 23rd July 2010]
Veggie burger and chips for lunch at the Regency Cafe.
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- Two Park Plazas and Drummond Street
 [Thursday 22nd July 2010]
A guy who works on my previous project was visiting the London office this week (we seem to be getting a lot of visitors recently - maybe word has got round that we're actually having some good weather this summer...?). So this evening I accompanied him and another guy from the project to go and find some Indian food.
He was transferring hotels today, so had all his luggage with him, and I thought it would probably make life easier if we went and dropped that off first. Somehow we got confused about which hotel it was, so we ended up visiting two different Park Plaza Hotels, and having a drink in the bar at each. It made me think that might be a fun idea for a bar crawl - visiting lots of different hotel bars like this.
Once we'd finally go our visitor checked in, we headed over to Drummond Street, and had dinner at Diwana. Somehow I didn't think the food was quite as good as usual this evening, but at least the food is cheap, and you can take your own drinks which makes for further economy, so I think it was probably forgivable.
Rounded off the evening just around the corner at the Bree Louise, which I've only recently discovered, and thoroughly enjoyed a pint of perry there.
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- TomTom
 [Tuesday 20th July 2010]
A cup of coffee at Tom Tom in Belgravia.
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- Visiting Mum - Sunday
 [Sunday 18th July]
Spent most of the morning in Mum's kitchen - my favourite room of the house. I'd decided to make a girolle and cider pie, using the two things I'd bought at Ashby farmer's market yesterday. This was augmented with some fresh herbs from Mum's garden - I think the sage worked particularly well.
Had a big roast meal at lunchtime, then got the train back to London around 3:30.
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- Visiting Mum - Saturday
 [Saturday 17th July]
Spent the day with Mum in the East Midlands.
Started off in the morning with a visit to Ashby, and were lucky enough to catch the Farmer's Market there. They have a pretty good mushroom stall there, where I availed myself of some Scottish girolles, and I also bought a keg of Norbury's Worcester Cider.
On the way back from there we stopped off at Breedon-on-the-Hill. I must have driven past it hundreds of times, but don't think I've ever actually been in before. It's quite impressive - they have some Saxon stone carvings in there of weird and wonderful mythical creatures which are over a thousand years old.
Had lunch back at the house, followed by a wander round the village in the afternoon.
In the evening we went for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Golden Dragon, which had a surprisingly good vegetarian menu, considering it's sort of in the middle of nowhere (near a big junction on the A50).
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- Up to the East Midlands
- [Friday 16th July]
Got on a train to the East Midlands this evening. Amazingly for once seat reservations were actually working in both directions on this trip, although we did have to boot people out both times.
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