Victorian Society in Cardiff goes afloat

Posted: August 29, 2009 in Victorian Society, Wales and the Welsh
Tags: ,

Restored Brecon Canal basin

Restored Brecon Canal basin



Like lots of such organisations, The Victorian Society in Cardiff is a bit hid under a bushel. There’s a very English centric website but nothing for Wales – so news of events depends on emails and circulars. This one is particularly interesting and they seem to welcome ‘outsiders’.

A talk on Canals at Theatr Brycheiniog, lunch at Tipple’n’Tiffin and a canal boat trip on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal
on Monday 21st. September
Graham Bailey, one of our members, has very kindly offered a talk on ‘Inland Waterways-Conserving Our Heritage’.
Graham was Conservation Architect for British Waterways for 10 years and is particularly interested in how the significance and unique character of the waterways can be conserved. We have an extensive inland waterway heritage but it is constantly under threat.
‘In spite of the competition from the new railways (of the mid nineteenth century), many canals continued in commercial use for another 100 years and indeed some canals can be considered truly Victorian’.
You may wish to gather for coffee in the Tipple’n’Tiffin, Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon at 10.30 am. I have booked the Studio at the theatre from 11.00 am until 12.30 pm for Graham’s talk. Then we will have a pre-booked lunch in the ‘Tiffin’.
The menu choices are;
Moroccan Spiced Chicken on Mixed Pepper Cous Cous
Spanish Style Pork & Chorizo on Pilau Rice
Bangers ‘n’ Mash or vegetarian if required.
followed by Apple Crumble or Lemon Tart.
At 2.30 pm we will board the canal boat at the wharf outside, for a 2 hours + trip along this famously beautiful canal. On our return journey we will have a cream tea.

The cost for the day is £23 to include main meal and pudding, talk, hire of studio space, canal trip and tea on the canal boat plus the usual administration costs (of postage, photocopying and stationery).
Coffee/tea/etc. in the Tipple’n’Tiffin are additional.

A reminder of forthcoming events;
Radnorshire on 17th.October. Member’s contributions event in November.

Please complete the booking form below and return with your cheque to Elaine Davey, 37 Romilly Rd., Thompson’s Park, Cardiff CF5 1FJ (02920387384) by 12/09/09. If you require a receipt/map-please send an s.a.e.

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama plans – now that’s more like it!

Posted: July 6, 2008 in Arts, Cardiff, Cricket (especially GCCC), Planning

The heritage, listed Bute Parks are being subjected to pressures from all fronts: if it isn’t the big money lure of sporting events, it’s a local authority that thinks status and political short-termism is more important that what we leave for our children. One of the organisations that borders Bute Park itself is the RWCMD with a building of extreme ugliness albeit linking to a sensitive restoration of the stables that nestle into the edges of the Castle’s back door.

Now – Shock Horror! – they want to cover what little space there is on the site with more buildings and even – Horror on Horrors! – ask the Council for a bit of the Park to cover in concrete! And you know what? I’m all for it! I doubt that the governors and chief executive actually need my ringing endorsement to get their planning application through .. but hey, it’s great not be cheer leading the moaners and nimbies (as described in the past) for once.

Firstly: we were invited weeks ago to a very select presentation (their try out it turned out) at RWCMD to hear from the chief executive Hilary Boulding (the horse’s mouth, as it were) about the creation of the scheme and its impact. There was no hiding the effect the scheme would have. Nor of the necessity to acquire part of Bute Park (a scrubby bit of unused land of no value in the grand scheme of things for the Park).

Secondly: this is ambitious, both for the college and the city. We need it. Thirdly: it’s pretty damn good architecture – adding to the vistas you’ll see from the Park. Unremittingly modern (no Prince Charles pastiche, thank goodness). If anything, they need to raise the optimum amount of money so that finishes and public spaces can be even more adventurous. S

So there we have it: talk to people and explain (Eisteddfod passim, note). Be bold. Employ good architects and really know what you are doing, and don’t stint on the ambition (Glamorgan Cricket Club passim). Exciting, relevant and a potential asset for the future. What more do need. It’s on my “if I win the Lottery list”…. See the details

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama plans – that’s more like it!

Posted: July 6, 2008 in Wales and the Welsh

A view of the new RWCMD building

The heritage, listed Bute Parks are being subjected to pressures from all fronts: if it isn’t the big money lure of sporting events, it’s a local authority that thinks status and political short-termism is more important that what we leave for our children. One of the organisations that borders Bute Park itself is the RWCMD with a building of extreme ugliness albeit linking to a sensitive restoration of the stables that nestle into the edges of the Castle’s back door. Now – Shock Horror! – they want to cover what little space there is on the site with more buildings and even – Horror on Horrors! – ask the Council for a bit of the Park to cover in concrete!
And you know what? I’m all for it! I doubt that the governors and chief executive actually need my ringing endorsement to get their planning application through .. but hey, it’s great not be cheer leading the moaners and nimbies (as described in the past) for once.
Firstly: we were invited weeks ago to a very select presentation (their try out it turned out) at RWCMD to hear from the chief executive Hilary Boulding (the horse’s mouth, as it were) about the creation of the scheme and its impact. There was no hiding the effect the scheme would have. Nor of the necessity to acquire part of Bute Park (a scrubby bit of unused land of no value in the grand scheme of things for the Park).
Secondly: this is ambitious, both for the college and the city. We need it.
Thirdly: it’s pretty damn good architecture – adding to the vistas you’ll see from the Park. Unremittingly modern (no Prince Charles pastiche, thank goodness). If anything, they need to raise the optimum amount of money so that finishes and public spaces can be even more adventurous.
So there we have it: talk to people and explain (Eisteddfod passim, note). Be bold. Employ good architects and really know what you are doing, and don’t stint on the ambition (Glamorgan Cricket Club passim).
Exciting, relevant and a potential asset for the future. What more do need. It’s on my “if I win the Lottery list”….
See the details

Residents get the chance to meet Eisteddfod bosses

Posted: June 28, 2008 in Wales and the Welsh

It’s all happening here in the first week in August, you know, Wales’ premier cultural event The Eisteddfod. Not that you’d know if you lived within 100 metres of the big tent and all that it brings because the Eisteddfod and Cardiff Council have been decidedly coy about meeting the locals – let alone engaging with them.
This Thursday 3rd July (at the Scout Hut in Fields Park Road Car Park at 7.30pm) Betsan Williams the Marketing Secretary and Alan Gwynant, Technical Director of the Eistedfodd will face the residents together with Paul Carter the Cardiff Council Operational Manager.
I suggested to local councillors a year or more ago that it would be a good idea that such a meeting should take place: Pontcanna, Canton and Riverside – who will be affected along with Gabalfa ward – has one of the largest populations of Welsh speakers in the country. It’s also media land. And an area blooded over the destruction of Sophia Gardens by the building of the electricity substation that now doubles as a cricket pitch (you know, the Swalec Stadium!).
So you would have thought, maybe, that they’d engage early on: encouraging us to fund raise; to put welcome posters in our windows and in the local shops; for the Council to put great big welcome banners on the main roads; even make us a special offer for admission to make up for all the hastle it will cause.
Hastle – you mean like parts of Poncanna Fields being behind a security wall for months and out of action until April 2009; like noise and light pollution from the all day events in our back gardens (yes literally for many) going on well into to the night; the joy of a Tented Youth Village in the middle of the town; no parking (everyone will park and ride, of course) which means no room for residents and often no access to our own homes; serious concerns about emergency access to the site. And then there’s restitution of the Fields to their former state. We’re assured that the Council has more than enough money in hand to do this.
Then there’s the cost of saying Croeso. Cardiff Council has, of course, made a generous grant. To which is added the £300,000 plus of temporary works and restitution. And there was a budget for new access at Western Avenue (essential for the Eisteddfod and the cricket stadium we are told). Oh, and the plan to spend £1M plus on a new bridge in Bute park – equally essential. And it costs £70,000 or so every day there’s a major event in Cardiff – for clearing up – so that might be an issue. And park and ride. And policing.
So, whatever the bill – and it could be millions depending on what you count -  Cardiff residents will pick up the tabs, and face a long recovery from something they’ve clearly not been invited to. This is bad marketing (they need our footfall), bad pr for the Welsh language, and very bad local politics that is still only driven by Cardiff getting headline events at the same time destroying assets like the Heritage Parklands.
Yes, they will claim an economic benefit to the area of £6.5M. That’s a nigh on £40 spend by every visitor from 2 to 90, every day they are here. Going into the ‘local’ economy, not the franchises on the maes. Likely?
It might just be an interesting meeting.

Residents get the chance to meet Eisteddfod bosses

Posted: June 28, 2008 in Cardiff Council, Planning, Wales and the Welsh

It’s all happening here in the first week in August, you know, Wales’ premier cultural event The Eisteddfod. Not that you’d know if you lived within 100 metres of the big tent and all that it brings because the Eisteddfod and Cardiff Council have been decidedly coy about meeting the locals – let alone engaging with them.
This Thursday 3rd July (at the Scout Hut in Fields Park Road Car Park at 7.30pm) Betsan Williams the Marketing Secretary and Alan Gwynant, Technical Director of the Eistedfodd will face the residents together with Paul Carter the Cardiff Council Operational Manager.
I suggested to local councillors a year or more ago that it would be a good idea that such a meeting should take place: Pontcanna, Canton and Riverside – who will be affected along with Gabalfa ward – has one of the largest populations of Welsh speakers in the country. It’s also media land. And an area blooded over the destruction of Sophia Gardens by the building of the electricity substation that now doubles as a cricket pitch (you know, the Swalec Stadium!).
So you would have thought, maybe, that they’d engage early on: encouraging us to fund raise; to put welcome posters in our windows and in the local shops; for the Council to put great big welcome banners on the main roads; even make us a special offer for admission to make up for all the hastle it will cause.
Hastle – you mean like parts of Poncanna Fields being behind a security wall for months and out of action until April 2009; like noise and light pollution from the all day events in our back gardens (yes literally for many) going on well into to the night; the joy of a Tented Youth Village in the middle of the town; no parking (everyone will park and ride, of course) which means no room for residents and often no access to our own homes; serious concerns about emergency access to the site. And then there’s restitution of the Fields to their former state. We’re assured that the Council has more than enough money in hand to do this.
Then there’s the cost of saying Croeso. Cardiff Council has, of course, made a generous grant. To which is added the £300,000 plus of temporary works and restitution. And there was a budget for new access at Western Avenue (essential for the Eisteddfod and the cricket stadium we are told). Oh, and the plan to spend £1M plus on a new bridge in Bute park – equally essential. And it costs £70,000 or so every day there’s a major event in Cardiff – for clearing up – so that might be an issue. And park and ride. And policing.
So, whatever the bill – and it could be millions depending on what you count – Cardiff residents will pick up the tabs, and face a long recovery from something they’ve clearly not been invited to. This is bad marketing (they need our footfall), bad pr for the Welsh language, and very bad local politics that is still only driven by Cardiff getting headline events at the same time destroying assets like the Heritage Parklands.
Yes, they will claim an economic benefit to the area of £6.5M. That’s a nigh on £40 spend by every visitor from 2 to 90, every day they are here. Going into the ‘local’ economy, not the franchises on the maes. Likely?
It might just be an interesting meeting.

Surprise? the BBC ignores Wales

Posted: June 11, 2008 in Wales and the Welsh
Tags:

Just last week the – increasingly inane – Breaksfast Show on BBC 1 TV was headlining the story about older people being given free admission to swimming pools. At 6.41 am I emailed the show pointing out 1) the story only related to England and 2) Wales had been doing it for years:
“I don’t know about Scotland or Northern Ireland but your news item about swimming should at least point out that us older people in Wales have had free swimming for a long time.
So, do you mean, “the UK government has decided that older people in England should join those in Wales and get free admission to their local swimming pool”?
Please: acknowledge that there are four nations, that we do things differently (free prescriptions, swimming, hospital car parks et al) and credit the devolved governments accordingly ….”
I cannot have been the only one since the bulletin was changed – it became more accurate “in England”, “local authority pools” etc, but still no mention that anywhere else might already be in the lead.
Now theBBC Trust has told the corporation the blindingly obvious – get your national coverage right: make it national, not English, not parochial London. The surprise is not the conclusions, but the surprise at something anyone with half an eye or ear could have detected in 24 hours watching or listening to the BBC.
I used to be agnostic about the idea of the home nations taking control of their own news output. Two things have changed my mind: the ability of the BBC to produce national news programmes (in Welsh, but they are always subtitled as well) for S4C and the absolute inability of London based journalists to get even the simplest things right. So, slash the BBC’s central budgets; devolve news to the nations; boost Wales’ (and Scotland and Nor
thern Ireland’s) indigineous media industries. And if that means lots of narrow minded (bigoted even?), blinkered, second rate London journos getting sacked – bring it on.

Surprise? – the BBC ignores wales?

Posted: June 11, 2008 in Wales and the Welsh
Tags:

Just last week the – increasingly inane – Breaksfast Show on BBC 1 TV was headlining the story about older people being given free admission to swimming pools. At 6.41 am I emailed the show pointing out 1) the story only related to England and 2) Wales had been doing it for years:
“I don’t know about Scotland or Northern Ireland but your news item about swimming should at least point out that us older people in Wales have had free swimming for a long time.
So, do you mean, “the UK government has decided that older people in England should join those in Wales and get free admission to their local swimming pool”?
Please: acknowledge that there are four nations, that we do things differently (free prescriptions, swimming, hospital car parks et al) and credit the devolved governments accordingly ….”
I cannot have been the only one since the bulletin was changed – it became more accurate “in England”, “local authority pools” etc, but still no mention that anywhere else might already be in the lead.
Now the BBC Trust has told the corporation the blindingly obvious – get your national coverage right: make it national, not English, not paraochial London. The surprise is not the conclusions, but the surprise at something anyone with half an eye or ear could have detected in 24 hours watching or listening to the BBC.
I used to be agnostic about the idea of the home nations taking control of their own news output. Two things have changed my mind: the ability of the BBC to produce national news programmes (in Welsh, but they are always subtitled as well) for S4C and the absolute inability of London based journalists to get even the simplest things right. So, slash the BBC’s central budgets; devolve news to the nations; boost Wales’ (and Scotland and Northern Ireland’s) indigineous media industries. And if that means lots of narrow minded (bigoted even?), blinkered, second rate London journos getting sacked – bring it on.

Retro wraps

Posted: November 11, 2007 in Left-overs

Way back in those Babby Belling days (passim) someone hit on the idea of adding curry powder to baked beans: it gave a whole new life to end-of-the-month beans on toast. Then Heinz got clever and started doing them in the can, but they added raisins too, a truly terrible idea that I hope has died along with Vesta curries. Still, it gave me an idea for a quick – don’t mess up the kitchen ‘cos we are ‘open house’ – supper.
Take can of beans (yes, low sugar and salt is fine) add loads of hot stuff (Tabasco, chilli sauce etc and a fresh chilli or two), chop spring onions for crunch, and loads of small cubes of the home cooked ham.
Stuff four wraps and place in an oiled dish, cover with grated cheese, bake and eat.
Posh it ain’t, but retro wraps were not bad at all.

Spiced up mussels, another variation

Posted: November 10, 2007 in Mussels

We’ve a house “Open Day” tomorrow, hence the paucity of food blogs, we daren’t use the kitchen! But tonight the mussels were demanding something a bit more seasonally warming than just, say white wine and cream. So a spiced broth in which to steam them:
a glug of oil, two finely chopped small onions, a large splash each of fish sauce, white wine vinegar, lime juice, dry sherry: some larger than others depending on the result you want. A chunk of ginger, a whole but deseeded green chilli and a big handful of parsley and some lemon thyme add the spicy flavours.
Cook for 15-20 minutes and then leave to cool. Pick out all the stalky things before adding the mussels to steam. Serve with lots of finely chopped parsley (coriander would be even better methinks) and a splosh of sweet chilli sauce: maybe that’s a glug too far, but this is November guys!

Stocking up makes sense

Posted: November 9, 2007 in Left-overs, Soup

There’s been much about this week on how much food goes to waste, and our own experience is that far too much languishes at the back of the fridge when the weekly restock happens. Today it was clear that with what was leftovers, and not likely to be used, there was plenty to start a fine vegetable stock.
Leftovers yielded a third of a swede, some sad but fine once peeled carrots, half a lost onion and a chunk of courgette – where did the rest go? Into the stock pot.
Incoming from the shop went the leek tops – does anyone get dirty leeks these days? – the tops of the spring onions that were already a bit limp, quite a chunk of parsley stalks and some lemon thyme. Bay leaves and marjoram, home dried, and some juniper berries and pepper corns introduced some flavour. Oh, and a couple of garlics and a chunk of ginger. All ready to hubble and bubble and do magic for tomorrow’s soup.
Except, along comes himself wanting know what’s happening to the piece of ham that’s been waiting to be cooked for a week. So that goes in too.
Result after 90 minutes? One ham with much more flavour than it might have had otherwise and ready to be chilled down.
And the stock, strained it went back on the heat to reduce and when tested it had a fine flavour that would have made an excellent broth on its own: in the restaurant we used to take very, very hot soups bowls, put in a scant handful of julienned vegetables and pour on boiling stock like this. Just a tablespoon of dry sherry on top. Very grand, but it’s the stock what does it.
Or you could convert into Tom Yam: never be without a jar of this wonderful paste. If doing for one, similar process – in a hot bowl just slice some mushrooms, or chicken or a mix, add a teaspoon – to taste – of paste and boiling stock. Stir and eat.
In the end though the stock was used to help with the left-overs mountain: sweated leeks, carrots, garlic, ginger, a chilli and half a squash soon started to smell delicious. Half the stock went in together with a handful of chopped parsley. When cooked the rest of the stock was added for a quick cool down so the vegetables could be liquidised in the pan. Checked for seasoning, but it didn’t need ‘owt. A handful or more of red lentils to give a bit of substance and bite and there we have it, sense of stock and leftovers.

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