LET'S ALL GO DOWN THE STRAND

 As I understand it, imperfectly no doubt, there’s only one real-world pub still in existence that appears in the works of PG Wodehouse, and that’s the Coal Hole, 91-92 the Strand, originally an extension of the Savoy Hotel though now it’s a Nicholson’s pub (no relation).

The place is visited by Ukridge in the short story “The Debut of Battling Billson,” first published in 1923.  The narrator is Bruce "Corky" Corcoran, who seeks out Ukridge when he discovers that he’s deposited a red haired man in his rooms.  He finds Ukridge emerging from the Gaiety Theatre in the Strand.

“The audience was just beginning to leave when I reached the Gaiety. I waited in the Strand, and presently was rewarded by the sight of a yellow mackintosh working its way through the crowd.

“Hallo, laddie!” said Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, genially. “When did you get back? I say, I want you to remember this tune, so that you can remind me of it to-morrow, when I’ll be sure to have forgotten it. This is how it goes.” He poised himself flat-footedly in the surging tide of pedestrians and, shutting his eyes and raising his chin, began to yodel in a loud and dismal tenor. “Tumty-tumty-tumty-tum, tum tum tum,” he concluded. “And now, old horse, you may lead me across the street to the Coal Hole for a short snifter. What sort of a time have you had?”

“Never mind what sort of a time I’ve had. Who’s the fellow you’ve dumped down in my rooms?”

 

The fellow is Battling Billson a boxer: Ukridge intends to make his fortune as a boxing manager but inevitable complications ensue.

My pal Jonathan and I had lunch in the Coal Hole a few days ago.  We ordered the three bar stacks for the price of two and half.  Now I don’t doubt that Wodehouse was a more sophisticated and experimental eater than most of his characters, even so I doubt whether he’d have ordered the Lightly Dusted Calamari, the Crispy Cauliflower Florets, and the Hand-cut Nachos.

  It was all perfectly good and the Coal Hole does offer a sense of eating and drinking in history.  One room is dedicated to Edmund Kean, though as far as I could see there was no mention of Wodehouse.

         The Coal Hole also had a cocktail menu though we thought that was a bit fancy for a weekday lunchtime.  I don’t know whether Wodehouse would have been so reluctant.  Here he is mixing his own cocktails (almost certainly martinis) with his wife Ethel, at their home in New York.  I think it’s my favourite ever author photograph.

 

 

 

 

THE PLUM SANDWICH

 I just ate my first Christmas sandwich of the season.

 

It was from Pret A Manger and it was all right, I suppose, though it didn't seem wildly festive.  In general, I think a turkey sandwich is usually preferable to an actual roast turkey dinner.  And I always think that the stuffing is the best part of Christmas.  This stuffing was OK without being great.  And as always, I could have done without the cranberry sauce but it seems I’m the only man in Christendom who feels that way.

 

And then, a couple of days later, in the middle of a sleepless night, I started rereading a short story by PG Wodehouse titled ‘Jeeves and the Old School Chum.’ Bertie Wooster is speaking about his pal Bingo Little, and the relevant passage runs as follows:

 

‘If young Bingo has a fault, it is that, when in the society of a sandwich, he is apt to get a bit rough.  I’ve picknicked with him before, many a time and oft, and his method of approach to the ordinary tongue or ham sandwich rather resembles that of the lion, the king of beasts, tucking into an antelope.’

 

Is there nothing that Wodehouse doesn’t understand about the human condition?

 

 

MARMITE NIGHTS

Comfort reading is probably better for you than comfort eating, though sometimes they overlap.

I read a little more PG Wodehouse, specifically ‘The Juice of an Orange’ which is about an essentially benign Hollywood screenwriter, Wilmot Mulliner, who’s put on all-orange-juice diet by his doctor, and he becomes a good deal less benign as a result.  Hunger makes him mean and angry.  

He goes to a story conference at which his boss Jacob Z. Schnellenhamer

has a pile of sandwiches on his desk (at least some of them beef), ‘A scenario-writer, informed of the facts of the case, would undoubtedly have thought of those sandwiches as Sandwiches of Fate.’

 Schnellenhamer ‘was not one of those men who can eat sandwiches aloofly and, as it were, surreptitiously.  When he ate a sandwich there was no concealment or evasion ... There was a brio, a gusto about his performance which stripped it of all disguise.  His sandwich flew before him like a banner.’

The famished Mulliner can’t stand it. He blows his top.  ‘Stop it! I say,’ thundered Wilmot, ‘stop eating those sandwiches immediately.’  And he’s immediately fired, but one way or another his meanness and anger is appreciated and respected and he becomes the business manager of Hortensia Burwash  who’s also been on a similar diet.

Which brings me to Helen Mirren as so many things do.  I’ve belatedly started following her on Instagram and she posted the above picture with the caption, ‘Maybe my most favorite super.  Any guesses?’  The image got over 23,000 likes and over 1,500 comments many of which are frankly absurd, suggesting she’s eating jelly, fig jam or Branston pickle with her cheese. A few do cheese and Marmite, which is what it looks like to me, and  sounds fair enough for an Essex girl like Helen.

I also found the above pic of Ms. Mirren drinking in a place called Pal’s Lounge her stepson’s bar in New Orleans.  The cocktail is called, a Helen F***ing Mirren.  Foaming perhaps.  Apparently it contains ‘Belle Isle honey habanero Moonshine habanero, house-made Crescent Vodka Earl Grey tincture with a Belle Isle honey habanero Moonshine lollipop floating on top.’  There are many things I don’t want on top of an alcoholic drink the lollipop is very definitely one of them.  

I also used to think Marmite was another, but most Marmite cocktails just have Marmite around the rim of the glass which is actually not much different from salt around the rim of a Margarita.