Crown and Shuttle, 3rd May

I have actually now been to the Crown and Shuttle twice in recent weeks - both times as precursors to the 'main event' elsewhere. Obviously, as I've been twice I liked it enough to go back.

This pub sort of sprung up out of nowhere. I've walked along that stretch of road and not noticed a publike venue or even anyone working on renovating a building and then one day there was a fully formed, nice-looking pub sitting between the kinda sketchy Light Bar and Drunken Monkey. It stood out like a breath of air does in the winter. 

I must have gone past it when it was only just opened as it took me quite a while to discover its origins on the Net. Finally I found out that it had been refurbed from the remnants of a pub (which was possibly a strip club at one point), taken over by the people who own the Water Poet. They seem to have a penchant for beer gardens - the one at the Water Poet is sprawling and they have done the same here. 

There are basically three sections to the pub - the first third is what must have been the original pub building, then they have built on to this an extension - making the outside wall of the old pub  a feature wall within the new pub, and then the massive beer garden - so big it holds a street van with pizza oven within it.

The first time I went was on a Saturday (before Electro Swing) and had no idea it was so vast so it was a rather lovely surprise, especially as there were so many of us. The weather was too chilly to enjoy the garden but we did appreciate the faux woodstove that was in the corner near our group. I instantly liked the place. It felt both spacious yet cosy. It's decor is woody - but a light sort of pine wood, not heavy and dense. Everyone who came along said how much they liked the place and it was barely busy - there weren't really any seats that could accommodate my large group but there was plenty of space at the second bar to congregate around.

My last visit was on a Friday and markedly different. It was heaving. Yet somehow me and my friend still managed to get a seat on a comfy love seat. Getting to the bar was a chore and a half - clearly all the local workers in the area had caught wind of the place and were all there, ordering pints to take outside. Fair dos to the bar staff - they were in no way slacking, but it still meant for a slow wait due to the volume of people crowding the bar. Intentions to have one medium glass of wine for each of us soon went by the wayside and I opted for a bottle in order to avoid having to pay another visit to the bar. I've never before been so conscious of how long it takes to pour pints compared to serving my favourite tipple - wine. 

Anyway, maybe not one for a Friday night if all you want is a quick drink but definitely a welcome addition to the area. I look forward to going back on a sunny day to enjoy the garden and maybe a pizza from their outside oven.

Wildlife photographer of the year, 6th November

The ‘in-laws’ visiting gave us another reason to go out and do something from my list. This time The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Unlike the rest of the museum, admission is not free, and £9 (including voluntary donation to the museum) which seemed a little steep. But we needed something to fill the day with and I thought it could be worthwhile.

I’m really pleased we went. The exhibition contained much more than I thought it would. It took us a good hour to wander around and even then there were a couple of sections that I didn’t get to completely scrutinise. It is a little hard to describe a bunch of photographs, and I didn’t take any of them. Photography probably wasn’t allowed anyway. The first section was of entries from children 10 and under. Ten!! Under!! Each photo had a little note about the person who took it and what they did to get the picture, and then there was another little note about the actual subject. For example, the winner of the children’s category was a close up of a longhorn beetle, and we were told this was taken when the girl was on holiday with her family. There was another picture of a bottle-nosed dolphin playing with some false killer whales. Although it’s been known that dolphins do this, it was almost definitely the first time it had ever been documented in a photo.

There were some spectacular landscape photos, and photos of the ordinary but taken in a different way – like an extreme close up of a bee inside a beautiful white flower. Reading the stories of the photographers and the situations they put themselves in to capture the perfect photo was astounding. Stuff like sitting in what they call ‘hides’ for days at a time, waiting for the particular species they wanted to come along and pose in just the right way.

Naturally I thought it would be a good exhibition or it wouldn’t have gone on The List, but I was pleased by just how satisfying and fascinating it really was.

Walking round a fairly small room can work up quite an appetite. My ‘in-laws’ are quite traditional English folk and were in the mood for a Sunday Roast. I had tasked Stephen (after all, they’re his relations) with finding a place that does a good roast in the area of the museum the night before. He, however, got sidetracked with the evening menu at the Bull & Last, wondering if he should go there for his birthday the week after. No roast venue was found. And so, on the Sunday I found myself hurriedly searching both the recesses of my mind, and the internet for somewhere to go. I only really know places in the East End and had heard of one place that was meant to be good – Mason & Taylor. I also found a blog dedicated to Sunday Roasts – RoastedSundays.com which highly recommended the Water Poet. As that was closer to Liverpool St station than the other one, we thought we’d go by there first and see what they did.

What they did sounded perfectly nice and acceptable to everyone, so we put our names down and waited for 20 minutes for a table.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here. Our roasts were disgusting. Stephen and I opted for the lamb shoulder. The meat was overdone. The gravy was insipid and a token presence on the plate. (Actually that’s a plus for me as I don’t like gravy that much, but I know for most people it would be a negative thing.). It was supposed to come with ‘carrot puree’ and ‘autumn greens’. That translated to sliced boiled carrots and some peas. The roast potatoes were of variable quality – I had one perfect one, and the rest were chewy as opposed to crunchy. Stephen’s relations had the roast chicken and had similarly derogatory remarks to make about it, one complaint being that it was cold. The Yorkshire pudding wasn’t bad.

For some reason (ever the hopeful optimists I suppose) we decided to order dessert here as well. They did sound very tempting. But they were just as disappointing. Stephen’s mum and I opted for the sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and honeycomb ice cream. Stephen’s mum doesn’t like butterscotch sauce and asked for custard instead. This they did get right, but I did notice that she hadn’t asked for the ice cream to be withheld, yet that was also replaced in favour of custard. Which was actually, little did she know it, a good thing, because my ‘honeycomb ice cream’ actually tasted like a scoop of clotted cream. Nothing iced or honeycomb about it. The butterscotch sauce was good but there should have been more of it because the pudding itself was pretty dry.

Stephen ordered the orange pippin apple and plum crumble. He said it was cold in places, making it very unpleasant to eat. I have no pictures, but the place didn’t deserve any being taken.

Last night we went to the Canton Arms for Stephen’s birthday where I had an amazing meal complete with moist, delicious pear and butterscotch pudding for dessert. It put the Water Poet’s roast on Sunday into stark contrast. Perhaps I’ve been harsher than I would have, had I not had an example of how food should be done only a few days later. Perhaps, but I don’t think so. Bad food is bad food and bad food is what we had at The Water Poet. The only thing I can say as a possible defence is that we went very late in the day and so maybe all the good stuff had gone by then. Maybe.