Royal Fail, and others

31-Mar-11 - It happened again today. They lurk, I swear they do. Just beyond the hedge... Behind that row of parked cars on the side road, under the trees near the bowling green, their binoculars trained on my front door, waiting, waiting. Then I come out to cross the road to pick up a newspaper or a loaf of bread and they swiftly move into action: up the garden path, sprint to the letter-box and back, then off into infinity before I've even come out of the shop door. The record so far is seven minutes between crossing the road and picking up the 'we tried to deliver to you but you were out' card off the doormat.

Dial the fiendishly expensive 0845 or 0870 number and 'press one for sales, two for accounts, three to reschedule a delivery, four if you'd like to strangle the driver...' This is a genuine conversation: cheerful female voice: "we can deliver tomorrow." "Yes, but I work an early shift and am not in in the mornings. Can you deliver in the afternoon?" "I'm sorry we can't give an exact time." "Well can you deliver it to my office - reception there is open all day." "I'm sorry, we can't do that without the permission of the sender." "Well, who is the sender?" "I'm sorry, we're not allowed to give out that information."

Mail-order and internet shopping is, so we hear, booming, and yet the courier companies are still stuck in a time-warp where every front door has, behind it, a compliant housewife with nothing better to do than wait around until they choose to call. Their real interest (and biggest earner) of course, is business packages which can be delivered Monday to Friday, nine to five, and the rest of us can go hang. And don't even suggest evening or weekend deliveries.

No, the record is not seven minutes, One morning my wife Jill was in the kitchen and saw something drop through the letter-box. No-one had knocked or rung. She picked up the 'we tried to deliver...' card, and opened the door to see the courier's van disappearing into the distance. I think they call it 'knock down Ginger', only in reverse.

And this morning history repeated itself. I am waiting for an important delivery for a presentation on Saturday and was in the kitchen at 10:20. At 10:27 I saw a card on the doormat from the Royal Fail - 'we tried to deliver...' etc. No-one had knocked or rung the bell. It was timed 10:25. I went to the door but, of the van, there was no sign. Now I can't pick up the delivery for 24 hours and I have to go to the main post office in Worthing which is just about the least conveniently-situated building in the known world, unless you want to pay £1 to park and then walk (assuming there's a space, of course).

I mean, if they don't want to deliver parcels for a living, why don't thy just get a job designing cathedrals or something? (© Basil Fawlty, 1975).

Camino Canary Wharf 05-Apr-11

29-Mar-11 - I've been a big fan of Camino at King's Cross ever since it opened, and now there's a docklands branch at Canary Wharf. I'm doing a tapas and wine tasting there on Tuesday 05-Apr-11 - details below. Richard Bigg has threatened to get one one of his 'big gun' wines if there's enough support. See you there?
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Spanish Wine and tapas Evening at Camino Canary Wharf
Tuesday 5th April 6.30pm. We expect to be wrapped up by 8.30pm
Introductory offer: 25% off - £86.50 worth for £65 (fully inclusive of wine, food and service)

Hola amigos, we are launching wine evenings at Camino Canary Wharf with beautiful views west across the river. We’re kicking off with strictly Spanish varieties, starting and finishing with two completely different types of Sherry. This will be a fun and relaxed evening learning a bit about the fabulous wines produced in Spain today. The charismatic (shome mishtake, shurely - ed.) Spanish-wine writer John Radford will be there to talk us through them. To help us show off the chosen wines for the evening to their best potential, our head chef Nacho del Campo has prepared a tasting menu to ensure all flavours are a great match.
Scroll down to see what we will be drinking and eating: all wines will be available to buy on the night at discounted rates. Directions here.
Richard Bigg

Book your place now: CAMINO - 28, Westferry Circus, E14 8RR, 020-7239-9077
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Take a peek at our wine list
For the Big Guns list 
Señor Radford
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WINE AND FOOD SELECTION TUESDAY 5TH APRIL 2011
MANZANILLA LA GITANA, HIDALGO
REGION: Jerez
GRAPE VARIETY: Palomino
FOOD TO MATCH:
Ø  Olives
Ø  Grilled organic country bread with garlic tomato and olive oil
Ø  ‘Jamόn ibérico cebo’ – ham from acorn-fed ibérico pigs, cured 24 months

VERDEJO, EL QUINTANAL
REGION: Rueda
GRAPE VARIETY: Verdejo
FOOD TO MATCH:
Ø  Crisp-fried baby squid with alioli and lemon
Ø  Black rice with squid ink and cuttlefish

GODELLO, BODEGAS VALDESIL
REGION: Valdeorras, Galicia
GRAPE VARIETY: Godello
FOOD TO MATCH:
Ø  ‘Escalivada’ – charcoal-grilled onion, aubergine and red pepper roll
Ø  Baked Cornish crab, Basque style

PÉTALOS, DESCENDIENTES DE J. PALACIOS
REGION: Bierzo
GRAPE VARIETY: Mencía
FOOD TO MATCH:
Ø  Cured beef with Valdeón blue cheese and truffle oil
Ø  Charcoal-grilled Ibérico black pig shoulder blade with pea purée
Ø  Pimientos de Padrόn – sautéed little green peppers with sea salt

PINTIA, BODEGAS Y VIÑEDOS PINTIA 2006
REGION: Toro
GRAPE VARIETY: Tinta de Toro
FOOD TO MATCH:
Ø  Charcoal-grilled rib-eye steak, aged 35 days
Ø  Spicy chorizo from La Rioja with roasted peppers
Ø  ‘Sartén de patatas’ – panadera potatoes with green peppers and free-range egg

OLOROSO ‘ANTIQUE’ 20 YEAR OLD SHERRY, FERNANDO DE CASTILLA
REGION: Jerez
GRAPE VARIETY: Palomino
FOOD TO MATCH::
Ø  Cheese platter

We went to London... And had a Pee

26-Mar-11 - The Southern Railway is normally very good about most things - except possibly toilets on trains - but today was the journey from Hell. It didn't start well: we were 20 minutes early at the station and decided to share a cup of  coffee in the station buffet. Given that Worthing actually does have a station buffet I suppose I shouldn't complain, and the staff are usually excellent (and their sandwiches are miraculously slime-free!), but the buffet, like so many wannabe trendy outfits, only serves what I call 'pratting-about' coffee. You know the drill: (a) decided which of the poncy names actually means a cup of white coffee (I've found that latte is the nearest), then (b) watch the ritual - bonk bonk, scrunch scrunch, twist on, glub-glub-glub-glub and the wheesh with the milk and several minutes later (if your train hasn't gone already) you get a cardboard cup with an asbestos holder and a plastic top, filled to overflowing. The asbestos holder is because the coffee is now at a temperature approaching 120ºC and undrinkable. Fifteen minutes later we left it on the table, still full and still hot enough to create industrial diamonds, having spent £2.25 not to drink a cup of coffee. Why they can't just buy a jar of Nescafé, add boiling water and cold milk, I shall never understand

The train was full of giggling schoolgirls on some kind of awayday to London (the perils of travelling on a Saturday), and whilst I love children and there will no doubt come a day when our beloved Evie is a giggling schoolgirl and I shall think she's wonderful, a packed trainload of them for an hour and twenty-five minutes is more than enough.

And then the loo - by some miracle it was unlocked, but the previous 'tenant' had had the most mega-crap I've ever seen only to discover that the flush wasn't working. Fortunately, by this time we were approaching Victoria and we were able to get to Bonaparte's café-bar in time for the loo and a revivifying large one. Yes, they do pratting-about coffee as well, but if you buy a whisky you can 'double up' for £1, which is oft times a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

Matters were, however, to get worse. There were no taxis on the rank above platform 14 and a small queue, and as each taxi arrived the drivers were pessimistic about getting past Hyde Park Corner. This was the big demo and rally about public sector cuts, and it soon became apparent that the police had simply closed down every road between Grosvenor place and Oxford Street. Our driver stretched his 'knowledge' to the limit but still couldn't find a way to get north of Park Lane, or even into Park Lane. Meanwhile I was 'phoning the friends we were supposed to be meeting at Ibérica: old wino buddies Al and John, whom I hadn't seen for two years, and Al's other half Janet, whom we hadn't seen for three years. Al suggested the tube, but the escalators at Victoria are out of action until the end of this year and I couldn't manage all those stairs. Al suggested a train to Waterloo from Victoria and then the Northern line, but there was no guarantee that we would be able to get back, so we reluctantly asked the driver to take us back to Victoria. The meter said £14.50 after our fruitless search for the north-west passage, but the cabbie refused to take a penny on the grounds that "I couldn't get you to where you wanted to go guv, so forget about the fare." A true gentleman of the road, indeed.

So we ended up back at Bonaparte's with a couple more large ones while we decided what to do. In the event, we bought a couple of baguettes and a bottle of Australian screwtop to picnic on the train. This was the end of the nightmare.

Or not, indeed. Apparently the Eastbourne half of the train had broken down that morning and, although repaired by now, was still waiting at Haywards Heath, so from Victoria we had eight coaches' worth of passengers in a four-car train... And guess what? Neither of the toilets were working.

We finally got home at about half past four, having spent six hours in trains, taxis and station buffets, with no lunch and not having seen our friends at all. Is this a record? I hope that the schoolgirls had a better day than we did.

BTW the title above recalls a Radford family story. In 1984 (ish) I was the East Midlands inspector for the (as it turned out one-and-only) Consumers' Association 'Good Wine Bar Guide', edited by the lovely Kathryn McWhirter, and there was, of course, no internet, in those days, so I had to rely on the Yellow Pages - rang every number (without giving my name) to check they were open, and went along anonymously afterwards. There was a wine bar in Glossop, in north Derbyshire which never answered its 'phone, but the 'phone was connected, so we went - me, Jill and James. When we got there we discovered that it had closed a couple of weeks previously, but the 'phone had not been cut off. Opposite was a public loo (remember them?) So we had a pee and then went home. Ever afterwards James coined the phrase "we went to Glossop... And had a pee." They do say that history repeats itself.

THE WINES OF RIOJA E-born

24-Mar-11 - my book THE WINES OF RIOJA has just been republished as an e-book and is available as a download from Amazon, to PC or your e-book device (I've just had to buy a Kindle so that I can read my own book!). The e-version is the 2004 text, so pretty much out of date (except for the history, of course), but the publisher has allowed me to add a paragraph offering updates to anyone who's interested, for a modest fee. My idea is to put together a round-up, perhaps every six months, of what's happening, new bodegas, current vintages, and any changes to the regulations, etc. I'm currently working my way through a mega tasting of current vintages and I plan to spend three or four weeks this year in Rioja visiting the plethora of new bodegas, some of which didn't exist when I was researching the original book. So the idea is to keep enthusiasts, students and the trade in touch with what's actually happening. There'll also be the opportunity for a bit of gossip, restaurant and tourism news and feedback from readers - no doubt many will spot errors and be only too eager to expose them but, of course, 'nobody's perfect' (© 1959, Billy Wilder)..



The first update will probably be July-August. If you'd like to be on the mailing list to know when it happens, please e-mail me with your contact details and 'Rioja Updates' in the subject line, and I'll get back to you as soon as I have more details.

In the meantime - ¡Salúd!