Shattered dreams...

We all have memories that either fade or are diluted by time, they become unreal because it’s nigh on impossible to remember things exactly as they were. Often, if I go back somewhere, I’m astonished to find that the houses across the street, say, are closer than I remembered them; I might stroll around looking for shops in a long-forgotten high street and note that everything looks a little bit shoddy and not as I recalled it. The end result, of course, is disappointment and sadness that things have changed for the worse and that my memories, the ones lodged in my mind for decades, have now been negatively updated, superseded by something not as warming to my soul. Shit happens, and so it was that last week I took a trip to Lyme Regis in the South West of England with a mind full of memories from decades past that would, ultimately, be tarnished by the reality: that things ain’t what they used to be.

The Royal Lion, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Many moons ago I spent my honeymoon in Lyme Regis. We didn’t have the ready cash for one of those faraway adventures in Mauritius or the Maldives that are far more commonplace today than they were ‘back then’ so we decided to remain closer to home.

I’m guessing that I would likely be long divorced had my original intention of journeying to the Isle of Eigg off Scotland’s west coast, had materialised. The trip would no doubt have involved a choppy boat crossing from Mallaig, the prospect (if I recall correctly) of being off grid and the requirement that all food items would need to be pre-ordered prior to departure and later delivered to wherever I was staying. It simply wouldn’t have worked and I can imagine now how we both would have left the island irate and angry with one another and would likely never have spoken again.

A missing handle on the desk

Fortunately, a couple of days after an incredible wedding and without a usable car, we journeyed to Lyme Regis by train, jumping off at Axminster and taking a taxi to a small B&B (the White House) at the top of Broad Street where we had two weeks in a magical place by the sea. It was here in Lyme that Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons had recently filmed The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a movie of a novel set in Lyme, written by local author John Fowles. and, at the time, still fresh in the minds of locals.

Broad Street was dominated by two hotels: The Royal Lion and the Three Cups. Back in the day, to stay in the Royal Lion or the Three Cups was a big deal. Both properties offered creaky floors, grandfather clocks and traditional British food of the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding variety plus some equally traditional desserts as this was long before the arrival of sticky toffee pudding and Key Lime Pie. With little in the way of disposable income, we dined at the top of Broad Street in the Mad Hatter's restaurant where equally traditional cuisine was just as good but not as pricey.

A nasty carpet stain...

A few years later and with friends, we could afford to stay in the Royal Lion a couple of times a year, enjoying every minute of it: the food, the creaky floors, grandiose sleeping quarters like the King Edward Room and the traditional Olde English Inn vibe of the place. There are plenty of similar establishments dotted around England like the Mermaid Inn in Rye and, I think, the George in Alfriston to name but two. The Royal Lion, however, offered a small swimming pool, which seemed out of place, but added to the entertainment value and we loved it.

I vaguely remember having dinner in the Three Cups, an ethereal experience if ever there was one - or perhaps it was just a long time ago. I remember a darkly lit restaurant, candle light, good food and service, uniformed waiting staff even, but sadly an experience that won’t be repeated. The hotel closed some time ago and remains so today, although there are plans to turn it into apartments. Personally, if I had the money, I would buy it and reopen it as a hotel.

Today, there are, of course, other hotels in Lyme competing with one another and that was the case back in the day too, but the Royal Lion still has pride of place on Broad Street and the Three Cups remains little more than a sleeping partner across the road. The flames of grandiosity and quaintness and tradition at the Royal Lion, however, have flickered and gone out; exactly when (or why) I don’t know, but while the creaky floors are still there and everything is in place, the fire has gone out and what is left, in my humble opinion, is not worth writing home about. I don’t remember who owned the Royal Lion when I used to stay there, but today it is the brewer Hall & Woodhouse and some of the reviews on TripAdvisor leave a lot to be desired.

Nobody cleaned up the mess!

When I booked on Booking.com I wasn’t really thinking to tell the truth. I simply assumed the place would be the same Royal Lion I enjoyed all those years ago, but of course it wasn’t, things had changed and not for the best. There were many rough edges. In one of our two rooms a previous guest’s dental floss remained on the floor in the bathroom, a lipstick-stained towel was still on the rail, and in another room a handle was missing from one of the desk draws. There was also a stained carpet. Out on the stairs somebody had thrown a glass of wine at the wall, presumably in anger, and the stain was still there for all to see many months or perhaps years later. It's there now if you're in the area. At breakfast, uniformed waiting staff had been replaced by men with face piercings, cut-down jeans and calf tattoos. Standards had slipped. It was all a little unsavoury and once we started reading the Trip Advisor reviews it was only a matter of time before we upped sticks and went home a day early. But first, breakfast…

I ordered the full English and when it arrived I could tell by the quality of the sausage alone that little care had gone into its preparation; it wasn’t going to be what I remembered, put it that way. Mushy scrambled egg made matters worse; and believe me it’s rare that I don’t finish a traditional hotel-cooked English breakfast. The tea was fine but then it doesn’t take a genius to make a decent cuppa does it? The Royal Lion’s goose was well and truly cooked and we demanded a refund and left a day early. Having forked out just short of £700 for two nights in two rooms we were given £300 back. We thought it was fair enough but a friend said we should have received a full refund. It’s too late now so I guess we’ll have to make do, but sadly, the dream has been shattered. The Royal Lion has lost its roar and I sincerely hope that Hall & Woodhouse, owner of the hotel, isn’t going to continue pushing out the crapola  we endured. I can’t believe that an established South West of England brewer is going to sit on its laurels and continue to shatter the dreams of those who pay them a visit. In fact, I’d go further and plead with them to make some drastic changes immediately, give the place a huge makeover, up the game of the place. The rooms need more than a little TLC and the food needs a massive re-think.

A previous guest's flosser!

I had an inkling that dinner would be depressing to say the least. The menu was fairly expansive and I figured there was no way the meals on offer would be cooked from scratch by a brigade of chefs. No, we were firmly in microwaved, pre-prepared food territory, a long-time staple of brewery-owned managed houses throughout the land and I found myself wondering why the brewers have never learned their lesson. I spent six years as editor of Pub Food magazine and before that PubCaterer and during my time on both titles we, my fellow journalists and I, wrote many features about keeping the menu limited, making the meals fresh from scratch and not relying upon what were known as ‘frozen multi-portion entrees’, leave that to Brewers Fayre and other 'managed house catering concepts'. Clearly the brewers haven’t learned their lesson and perhaps they never will. In many ways, the Royal Lion is a pub with rooms, the word ‘hotel’ is superfluous. Perhaps we should have stayed in the Mariners up the road.

Within a few hours of what should have been day two of our short break I was heading home when I should have been in Lyme enjoying the sea and the Cobb and the Jurassic Coast, but no, I was on my way back to dreary South London and doubtless will never return to Lyme again.

My left foot... revisited (again!)

Last March I went down the gym and took an induction course. I'd joined the club to swim and then I thought I'd be clever and join the gym, which cost nothing extra so why not? While in the gym I tried various pieces of kit, one being something that required me to push my feet against something and I knew immediately that I'd injured myself in some way or other. Within a day or two I was proved right and I started hobbling around the place. So in the end I went to a local GP hub, had X rays and blood tests and nothing came back, there was nothing wrong with me, I must have just injured myself. But it's always my left foot. In the end the ailment left the building and I was back to normal again. If you check back on this blog there's virtually a whole month between my post on the subject and the next post, which was the time I rode to Sevenoaks and back and stopped off at Soprano's for lunch. Anyway, it was earlier in the year. We're now six months down the line and I must have done something (I know not what) to get the old foot ailment back again. This time I'm not going to see anyone about it because I don't think GPs know anything, they never have any concrete answers even if I'd dropped a piece of concrete on my foot, they'd still debate what was wrong and not give me any answers; it's the same with blood tests, they never tell you the results, presumably because nothing is wrong (that's what I was told, actually) so here I am, hobbling around. Well, not now, it's gotten better. Last night I awoke around 0130hrs (I've not been sleeping well). I came downstairs, poured myself a glass of water and dropped a Nurofen, just one, and then I had the best night's sleep ever, waking around 0800hrs and feeling that my foot was better. By and large it is, but I'll probably drop another Nurofen before too long. It's great to feel better, though, really great. My whole mood lifts when I'm feeling good, as I do now, but I'm not fit enough to get on the bike, perhaps tomorrow. I've had this foot thing back again since Wednesday. I was in town on Wednesday, Mayfair to be precise, and I was limping, but nobody I was meeting noticed (thank God!) as there's nothing worse than being recognised as the underdog, the disabled one, but as I say they didn't notice anything, I concealed it well. The last thing I wanted was sympathy. After a business meeting I chilled in a teashop in Shepherds Market. I'm not sure if there's an apostrophe or not, it could be Shepherd's Market, but not in the way that St James's Park has the double 's'. I sat there listening to some kind of Middle Eastern music and then left. I was going to read my book there, Eric Ambler's Passage of Arms, which is great, but the teashop or cafe or whatever you want to call it didn't have the right vibe so I refrained from reading and just sat there watching the guy outside with the shisha pipe, what a disgusting habit is that? Like smoking generally. Horrible. And I should know, I used to smoke. I started at around 19 years old, stopped when I was 25 and then 10 years later started again, for about a year, then stopped for good. Awful habit, but I just gave up, I'm one of those people, I can take or leave things, I don't think nicotine had anything to do with my smoking. I wasn't addicted, put it that way, I wasn't going to be wearing patches or chewing gum, I just smoked and then I stopped. I was more into the bits and bobs that went with smoking: the cigarettes themselves (Marlboro Reds were my favourite, or Camel or Benson & Hedges Gold); then there was the tin, when I smoked roll-ups I had a tin, full of Old Holborn, plus the papers, the Rizlas, and the Zippo lighter of course. Smoking was fun, but like all fun things it wasn't good for my health so I gave up, pure and simple, and I don't miss it, I just stopped. Likewise with drinking, I just stopped and I never looked back, never had any kind of cold turkey, I stopped and I haven't started, it's been nearly eight years. Okay, so it's Saturday morning and I'm watching YouTube videos of big waves and cruise ships capsizing (almost). Not sure what we're doing today. Somebody's coming round to collect a wicker chair that's languishing in our garage, we don't need it, but it's quite good and somebody's on their way round (we hope), meaning we can't go out until they've been and gone. As a result, it's one of those slobby mornings. After my four-part crapola lunch on Thursday (Marmite Sandwich, Mulligatawny soup, cheese and mustard pickle sandwich, chocolate HobNobs and tea) I kept up the trend with a breakfast of more HobNobs and a Marmite sandwich, no porridge for me today. Perhaps I'll keep up the crapola cuisine all day if we go out anywhere today. If the foot gets better perhaps a ride tomorrow, a 15-miler even! Who knows? Not much else to say other than next door got burgled and the burglars sound like they were pros. Doubtless they won't be caught, they never are: 'no arrests have been made'. I want that on a tee-shirt.

It's nearly 2pm. Johnny and Jake are on the TV making their own chocolate and we're still waiting for the person to come round and collect the wicker sofa. She might not turn up, a strong possibility if you ask me. The plan is a drive to Guildford, which means I'll take a trip to Anderton's, check out the guitars. I'm off next week. I need a break I really do and when I go back I'm going to be different. I'm going to keep out of the politics and just do my job and not sit there working beyond the time when I can officially go home. I'm going to chill more at home, read in the conservatory and not constantly freak myself out listening to what other people think of this and that, which just makes me angry and rebellious when there's absolutely no need. In many ways I've been foolish. The moment I let others in, that was the problem. Leaving doors open is always a problem. My advice is close all doors, lock them, don't listen to others, just do your fucking job.

Give the man a break...

As I write this, Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, is winging his way across the Atlantic towards Washington DC and, of course, the White House. He must be whacked out, no time for a breather. He flew in Tuesday and then on Wednesday he was up with the lark and putting on a face for the public and the monarchy as he had to sit through a lot of tiresome pomp and circumstance in what can only be described as kind of blustery, cloudy conditions. Personally, I would have been wishing the whole thing further and longing for my huge bed upstairs in Windsor Castle. Oh! I would have been looking forward to the moment when speeches were over and the dessert and coffees were out of the way, just a few goodnights and then that great moment when he switches off the light and buries his blond head in the fluffy pillows. Hopefully, he didn't think too much about what the following day had in store for him: talks about business and politics and then a press conference. Who the hell in their right mind would be looking forward to that? Perhaps that's why he said in his speech that he's hoping his second state visit will be his last. I certainly wouldn't want to repeat the process unless I could have the option, perhaps, of a few days loafing around, getting up late and just hanging for a day or two until the jet lag lifted. But the trouble with being famous is that you simply can't do that; no sitting in a local Starbuck's in Windsor for Donald, sipping a cappuccino and munching a pastry with Melania, reading a book or a newspaper. For a start, he'd be recognised before he got through the door and what's the point in trying to lead a normal life if they open the store just for you, like Elvis? No point at all. I suppose they could have erected a Starbuck's somewhere within the grounds of Windsor Castle and populated it with friendly journalists and aides happy not to give the Donald a hard time. The last thing he wants is to discuss Epstein or Mandelson or free speech or Gaza or Ukraine. I bet he hates all that. I'm sure he'd much prefer to just sit there, froth on his upper lip, staring out of the window and considering going back to bed for an hour or two before the banquet. I know I would. And then there's the banquet itself. Perhaps after the Starbuck's he might not be that hungry, but what about all that food, it can't go to waste. And hell, what about the speech? He was last on and, therefore, the most anticipated, people watching his every move hoping he'll slip up, mis-pronounce something, say the wrong thing, stutter, there's so much that go wrong and he wouldn't be able to blame the jet lag because that's not what world leaders do, they are supposed to be super human, no room to mess up, no room to say 'fuck!' after getting something wrong, nothing he does or say will be forgotten for as long as he lives. Satirical news quizzes will 'have the clip' and will be eager to humiliate him and who needs that sort of pressure? 

If I go to the USA for a conference that starts on Monday, I'm flying two days earlier and very often it makes no difference; I spend the entire week nodding off here and there and just when I think I have it under control I have to fly back home. What a nightmare. Seriously, it is, so if I had to be in the spotlight on top of everything else, no way, not unless I had time to relax first. No fun. And that's what I'd want, even if I was the leader of the free world, I'd want to some fun, some down time, a mix of work and pleasure but not all work. But that's what Trump has done: all work and no play and we all know what that leads to, it makes Jack a dull boy. Or Donald.

I'm hoping that right now, just a couple of hours into his flight, that Trump is asleep, perhaps with some soothing classical music in the background. I wonder if he has his own room where he can lie there in the dark listening to Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3 (or at least a recording) and then waking up refreshed as the plane lands at DC. But no, he's probably sitting there signing executive orders or talking to his advisors or the press. No peace for the wicked as they say. And I wonder if he's planning a day off tomorrow? Probably not. It's not a life I'd like to lead and if I was already a billionaire (as Trump is) I'd rather be relaxing, playing golf and basking in the Miami sunshine doing anything but work.

Right wing television...

You know how it is, you're sitting there of an evening watching terrestrial television wondering whether there's anything better to watch apart from the BBC and other agents of the thought police and so you switch over to You Tube and lo and behold there's a whole new world of crap you can watch from extreme camping to pop star interviews and, of course, plenty of extreme right wingers guaranteed to make you angry. There's probably loony left videos on there too, but they don't appear to be as visible.

There's nothing better than a charismatic politician running a low-grade political party to get you wondering what you've been thinking these past few years and that perhaps you were wrong about this or that. Hell! You've been wrong about EVERYTHING!!! Throw in an issue that's bound to get the right wing agitated and a whole new shit show opens up and provides the entertainment you never thought possible.

How about trying to gain access to an illegal immigrants' hotel (that's asylum seekers if you vote labour) and never getting further than the front desk before 'security' - often people with false SIA badges and high viz jackets, themselves illegal migrants (or so you're led to believe) - stand in your way, invade your personal space and lead you (well, not you personally but the person filming the video) to exclaim, "Don't you touch me!" And then the tension mounts, the security detail follows the man around the hotel grounds until the police arrive and the man tells them that trespass isn't a police matter and kindly requests them to 'toddle off and catch some real criminals', ie the shoplifters who the police won't prosecute these days unless the amount stolen is over £200. Or burglaries where the police don't bother to turn up and prefer to hand out a police reference number so you can claim on your insurance. 

During the course of these particular videos you might hear from migrants who, you quickly realise, aren't fleeing a war-torn country at all but are merely in the UK to work or claim benefits or whatever else the UK has to offer these people. Being illegal has its benefits, we are told, but you can bet your life that if you tried to gain access to any country without valid documentation YOU, yes YOU, would get nowhere fast and you certainly wouldn't be given a four-star hotel and three free meals a day. 

Right wing TV is a Godsend! Not only does it make you angry and anti-government - not that that would take a great deal - it might make you write something on social media that'll land you with a few months of jail time. Jail time! You could be one of Sir Keir Starmer's political prisoners for heaven's sake and that might lead to a whole new career, including a trip to the USA where you can meet that lefty JD Vance and tell him how hard done by you've been back in the UK where free speech is rapidly being eroded by woke politics. Oh no! You're not allowed to incite violence, but is that what you're doing? Probably not, you might be a little angry about life because you've been watching too much right wing television. You might be sitting there watching You Tubers walk around a provincial city centre goading drunks and crack heads into lunging at them, just for clicks, or so they can put their bodyguard to good use, proving that the UK is not a safe place to be because of anti-fascist protesters and so-called 'patriots' fighting one another on street corners. 

Surely anywhere is better than the UK. Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, you name it, must be a little safer than Great Britain where the natives of these countries are fleeing war, or so we're told, they need a safe country but even when they land in one they need to risk their lives just a little bit more, crossing the channel in an inflatable dinghy for a night, a week, a month, a few years even, in a Holiday Inn or a Premier Inn where, who knows, they might meet Sir Lenny Henry, now that's Eldorado!

Do the migrants get given mobile phones and tablets? Are they paid £70 per week of taxpayers' money so they can buy cigarettes and drugs and then top up their earnings with a job in the gig economy? Who knows? Sounds like a great life! Wife and kids back home, the freedom to live the single life again, it can't be bad, can it? Fighting age men, we're told, but they're not going to enlist are they? They're more likely to be the enemy within, a secret army of their own that only need to be armed to make life rather unpleasant for unsuspecting Brits sitting in front of their televisions reading the right wing media while waving the union flag and watching right wing television. What was that? No, sorry, the Queen is dead.

Angry television presenters, angry You Tubers, angry people getting angrier by the minute as their country is invaded, yes invaded, by marauding gangs of men in grey tracksuits and top-of-the-range trainers paid for by the British taxpayer. It's a disgrace!  

And then, after you have finished your popcorn and noisily sucked out the last dregs from your clear plastic carton of Kia-ora orange juice, purchased from an imaginary usherette, you stop and wonder. Perhaps all of this IS the reality of the situation! You might find yourself agreeing with broadcaster Rylan Clark and take the view that yes, immigration has been good for the UK and for the NHS and that's all fine, but illegal immigration is a different kettle of fish because it's (ahem) illegal. You know that if you as much as stole a tin of baked beans from your local Tesco supermarket you would be slammed in jail for many years to come and lose your job in the process. Why, then, should somebody entering a country illegally be given a four-star hotel luxury life style for many years while their application for asylum is processed, not considered, but processed. Perhaps you yourself might consider throwing your own passport out of the window of a cross-channel ferry mid-journey and see how you get on when you arrive in Calais. Will you be fast-tracked to a luxury hotel, given a track suit and trainers and told that all your meals will be free until another passport is found and you can return home to the UK? Something says no, the most likely scenario will be your immediate deportation back to Europe's version of North Korea, yes, the UK, where comedians are arrested by armed police for inappropriate comments on Twitter. And you will start to question whether the UK still has free speech, like Sir Keir nervously said it did in front of Donald Trump recently. And when you arrive home, you'll switch on the TV and find Nigel Farage talking to Congress about the deteriorating situation in the UK. "Is it real or is it treason?" 

Union flags appear on lamp posts, all foreign-looking people are viewed with suspicion. Is that an HMO they're coming out of or do normal people live there? Who knows?

You wake up in the morning wondering why you feel bad tempered and then you make yourself feel even worse by watching coverage of Rachel Reeves, our beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is planning to tax your house to pay for all the illegal immigrants in our hotels and unsuspecting HMOs dotted here, there and everywhere around the UK and you realise there's no escape unless you too jump into an inflatable boat and head across the North Sea to Scandinavia where everybody is happy even when it snows, but then you find yourself as headline news as one of many victims who died when their inflatable flipped over in heavy seas. Will you ever learn?

Will anybody learn, I wonder? A perfect storm is brewing politically in the UK with Nigel Farage's Reform party on the up and with Jeremy Corbyn's as yet un-named new party soon to be the left's answer to Farage. In other words, if, as Nadine Dorries was saying earlier today, that the Conservative Party is dead, then that means the Labour Party really needs to get its act together and fast. Yes, it has four years to do so (less if you listen to Farage) but if it doesn't get a move on then two extreme parties, one to the left, the other to the right, will be battling for power against the Lib Dems to be in Number 10. I don't want to see Corbyn or Farage in power or, for that matter the Lib Dems. So unless the Tories somehow get their act together or the Labour Party sorts itself out we, as a nation, could be in trouble. Personally, I want Labour to continue, but they must learn from their current mistakes. The UK electorate does not like extremes of the left or the right, but the left does itself no favours and always allows the right access to the seat of power by being pathetically woke (at present). The British public do want free speech, they don't want to see Irish comedy writers being arrested for a few controversial tweets about transsexuals, they don't like even the perception of two tier policing, they also don't want to be told that illegal migrants are more important than the British people. Reform with all it's extreme right wing baggage and it's threat to the NHS would be a disaster for the UK. Farage is a one trick pony, he's fine if he's talking tough about immigration, but that's about it: immigration and, of course, Brexit, which, in his eyes, was all about immigration anyway. Corbyn, while he means well, is not, in my opinion, leadership material and would equally be a disaster, particularly on the world stage. So the two mainstream parties need to get their acts together, immigration must be sorted out, the asylum hotels must go and a stricter regime needs to brought into play to calm the nerves of those who could vote Reform. Politicians generally must stop gaslighting the public (or the pooblic, as Angela Rayner might have said). I'm sorry to see her go, but she broke the ministerial code and that's her lot. 

I've said enough.