Off Topic – Pygges in Spaaace

Midwinter Spuddling 004 – of Cabbages and Kings

“The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things …”

Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland

So the last thing that I did in 2025 was to visit my local dealer for some grass … Burnt grass, rather than the stuff that The Caterpillar was smoking. And the first thing that I did this year was to trawl through the boxes to stick it onto bare bases. It turns out that there were rather a lot of them scattered about – testimony to my haphazard batch processing of purchases in stages in order to get them battle ready rather than completing things to varnished and done.

Santa had a Christmas message for all you boys and girls out there.

Children, tidy up your toys! Santa cake 2025 — Children, tidy up your toys!

So I did. Anyone who has a sad life and trawls through my sidebar (apart from me, obviously) may have noticed that I have done a 2025 update for a lot of my boxes. Some of it was prompted by the need to flag up the DSO orbats for easier access on NQM. Some of it is just tidying up fifteen years of ramshackle posts on an evolving game system. Along the way, a lot of lost toys were reunited with their comrades. Ulysses still hasn’t made it back to the Achaean box though.

Speaking of Cabbages and Kings, Lazerpig is on particularly fine ranting swear-y form regarding the Trump class battleships. Congress seems to agree with him, although far less alcohol would have been used to reach broadly the same conclusions. I can’t see even a single keel being laid down in the next two years or, given the stunning success of the Zumwalts, at all.

And speaking of Cabbages, Wellingborough has England’s only (to my knowledge) Moldovan wine merchant. Oh, sure, lots of places sell Moldovan wines now, but Cristina and her husband, Constantin, only import from Moldova. They run tasting evenings, and I take notes that tend to meander about the page towards the end of the evening! This primitivo describes itself as an amber wine, tastes of oranges and has a balanced, surprising flavour that lasts all the way to the end. We drank it with a lamb shank for New Year’s Day. Eat your (own) heart out, Hannibal Lecter.

Our Epiphany Feast menu with friends, was inspired by a wine tasting session, but with beer, as we have collected rather a lot last year. It looked like this :

Welcome to the House of Pies

–o0o– Proprietors: Chris and Suzanne Kemp –o0o–

Opening Times: Tonight only!!!

Dear Guest, tonight’s event is a wine-tasting evening, but with beer!

The Pie taster menu includes : Home-made* Beef and Ale, Steak and Kidney, Steak, Ale and black Pudding, Pork Chorizo and Butterbean, Chicken Ham and Leek – contents may vary.** Sausages***

–o0o–

Baked beans from a tin and Frozen Peas with Curried Bisto Gravy

–o0o–

Apple Sponge and Custard or Cream****

The Beer Menu

Will be served progressively in tasting glasses. Wine is also available in BOTH flavours, red and white.

ABV	Beer	Brewery	Notes
6.0	Glühkriek	Liefmans 1679	Serve warm
3.6	Mango Weissbier	Brouwerij Huyghe	Fruit beer
5.5	Bad Santa	Nethergate	Dark Suffolk
5.5	Münchener Gold	Hacker Pschorr 1417	Blond Munich
6.5	Abbaye Blonde	Maredsous	Blond
6.5	London Brick Red Rye Ale	The Kernel Brewery	Ruby Ale London
6.6	Coffee Stout	Aldi	Coffee Stout
7.5	Foreign Extra Stout	Guinness	Brewed in Nigeria
	Pause for pies
8	Prior 8	St Bernadus	Amber Triple
8.4	Carolus Tripel	Gouden	Amber Triple
8.5	Brune Résèrve	St Feuillen	Brown Triple
8.5	Choco Squad	Gordon Biersch	Porter Triple
	Pause for pudding
10	La Corne Triple	Brasserie des Légendes	Amber Triple
11.2	Iron Furnace Barley Wine Ale	Jackie O’s	Amber Quad
11.0	Barista Chocolate Quad	Kasteel	Quad Porter

Small Print

*Just not this Home.

** Absolutely 100% guaranteed real meat.

*** Could contain anything. I dunno!

**** Custard is not a garnish. It comes in a jug.

In the end, we only managed to sample half the list before the writing became illegible! So with the midwinter season of feasting and jollity over, it is time to pump up my cycle tyres and to see how much weight I have gained, Andiamo ragazzi!

Unfashionable City Breaks 008 – Frankfurt am Main

Frankfurt's dominating 21st century skyline. — Frankfurt’s dominating 21st century skyline.

Frankfurt am Main is the financial capital of southern Germany and is the largest in Europe, housing the European Central bank, the Frankfurt stock exchange, and a whole raft of other banks, whose managers want to be within dining distance of each other. Due to extensive unplanned urban demolitions, the centre of Frankfurt was largely destroyed, but, in a heroic enterprise rebuilt between 1945 and the 1960s, with the rubble from the centre piled into a mountain and recycled.

The end result is a new old town that is a mix of reproduced buildings in the original style, with some original material in them, and modern buildings in an interpreted style of the originals. (Think Coventry Cathederal.) The end result would horrify English Heritage, but works for a modern city and attracts tourists. It is not to everyone’s taste but the dedicated concrete sniffer will find much of interest.

For corporate supervillain architecture Norman Foster's your man, — For corporate supervillain architecture Norman Foster’s your man,

Towering over all are the new corporate headquarters of modern Supervillains, with the Norman Foster-designed Commerzbank rocking the Despicable Me vibe perfectly. The European Central Bank clearly finds this all a bit crass and has wandered off along the riverbank to be on its own.¹

The European Central Bank. I'm so wonewee! — The European Central Bank. I’m so wonewee!

We went for the Christmas markets, traditional German cooking and beer, Pygging ourselves in the evening and walking it off during the day. Over the forty years that we have lived in and visited Germany we have noticed changes. The Schnell Imbis has largely been replaced by donner kebabs and gyros. We managed to find one – it was very posh with flowers on the serving counter, marble tabletops and jazz music playing.

Mutter Ernst. Try saying Shofferhofer after a couple of glasses. — Try saying *Shöfferhofer* after a couple of glasses. (Sherffer-hoe-fer is only vaguely close)

Otherwise, we dined at Mutter Ernst, behind the Frankfurt stock exchange, Zu den zwölf Aposteln close-ish to our hotel, der Turm Hotel, and Apfelweingaststätte Klaane Sachsehäuser.

Both sorts of beer at the 12 Aposteln. The brewery is through the window at the back. — Both sorts of beer at the *12 Aposteln*. The brewery is through the window at the back.

The 12 Aposteln is a Tap Stube, with both sorts of beer brewed on the premises – hell AND dunkel!

They don't do children's portions for grown-ups at the klaane. — They don’t do children’s portions for grown-ups at the *klaane Sachsehäuser*.

The old part of Sachsehausen on the south bank of the river is a maze of streets that has been colonised by trendy bars for Kool Kids, serving shots and alcopops, but the Stubes hang on in there, like your parents sat in the corner of the room at a family wedding, enjoying a sensible conversation whilst everyone else gets drunk and talks loud b*ll*cks.

It gets dark early but the walk home was a delight.

Apfelwein‘s closest English equivalent is a still, dry fine cider. It comes in half-litres or ceramic pot-bellied flagons and creeps up on you. Very refreshing in summer and an excellent accompaniment to heroically-sized Schweinshaxe! The Klaane Sachsehäuser was full of oldies working on their next heart attack from overeating. The chestnut soup was superb.

You could see the Turm from our saluting balcony.

A day out in Bad Homburg was just thirty minutes away on the U-Bahn. The gardens are really a summer visit.

Karikatur Museum. Frankfurt. — Karikatur Museum.

It was not all fun; we visited the Karikatur museum. Yes, the Germans do have a sense of humour that does not always translate well into English.

We visited the Palm Gardens for the exotic orchids, architecture and warmth on a chilly day, then it was time to come home from dry overcast and sunny weather to rain.

No, no, we're not going there to get ideas for at wargames scenery. — No, no, we’re not going there to get ideas for wargames scenery.

Be warned, it can take three hours to pass through check-in, passport control and security, which is pretty normal for German airports, in our experience. We were surrounded by Americans fretting about missing their flights and some of them did but the Germans are not sympathetic to attempted queue jumping. “Did you book priority boarding? No!

Roman goddess and attendant nymph at Bad Homburgh.

We made it with 15 minutes to spare having allowed three hours from hitting the airport and an hour to get there, which was eaten into by an unscheduled diversion on the S-Bahn. Delays of an hour or more are common nowadays on the Bundesbahn. Ho hum!

Delays at the airport are currently exacerbated by biometric data collection and folk thinking it will be quicker to skip the self service booths and go straight to passport control. It isn’t. On the plus side, once your details are collected it should be possible to use the automatic entry gates … in a few years time … perhaps. Merry Christmas to you all!

Footnote

I will be politer to bankers when more of the wealth starts to spread out a bit.

Unfashionable City Breaks 6 – Birmingham

B 10

Non- British readers may wonder why Great Britain’s second city is unfashionable.¹ It is to do with industry and local accent. Birmingham has both in abundance. What it also has is a wealth of history, a fierce local pride in the city’s achievements and a beguiling mix of old and new architecture.

B 09 Grand Central

War and developers have taken their toll on the city, the latter more than the former, but Birmingham Central station is modern, clean and efficient, with an exterior that warps the buildings and sky around it, due to its polished stainless steel cladding.

B 06 Craven Arms

Brian, our friendly Brummie-in-exile knows all the local watering holes, so we started the day in the Craven Arms, a traditional real-ale pub staffed by a traditionally dry-humoured landlord.

“I suppose you want beer then? The cheese sandwiches aren’t here yet – you’ll just have to have a couple of beers while you wait.” So we did, and the fresh crusty rolls, chicken and ham pie were all good.

B 02

Thus fortified, we set off for the Concert that we had come to see. I enjoyed the Sitar player and dozed through the violin quartet until they started improvising, becoming discordant.

B 05

Rather like the concert, Birmingham fuses East and West, Modern with Old. Sometimes it does this successfully, sometimes not.

B 11

In places, Birmingham looks like a cleaned-up location set for Blade Runner.

B 01

Last year we saw a percussion performance that included some enthusiastic hammering on piano strings in the style of the Blue Man Group playing Baba o’ Riley with Tracy Bonham or The Piano Guys. One of the springs parted company from the frame with an explosive twang! It was great, but despite my hopes this year, none of the violins were sawn in half.

B 03

Afterward, we mooched around the Christmas Market, enjoyed a Hofbrau and then headed for Chinatown to the Pepper Chef – a proper hard-surfaced Chinese Restaurant of the type that I used to enjoy in Hong-Kong. A massive banquet for five of us came to £113, twenty five each by the time we had thrown in a tip.

B 08 Lego

I did a bit of concrete sniffing too – my favourite being the (Lego) Cube. It isn’t quite up to the standard of Rotterdam, but gives it a run for its money, particularly around the canal that runs through the centre of the city.

B 07 Canal

It helps that the direct line from Northampton runs between two modern stations. As we reached Northampton, a robotic floor cleaner was trundling up and down the station concourse. What stirring times we do live in!²

Footnotes

… or third, or … Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester can fight it out amongst themselves.
Quote from Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge, upon hearing that the village well had a new pump.

Welcome to the House of Pies

The Beer Menu

Small Print

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Footnote

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Footnotes

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