Tag Archives: Manchester

Ordinary, Scones

1884 Bo’ness

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Today we are at 1884 Bo’ness. Readers will be aware that from time to time, we go to the cinema. More often than not we go to the Hippodrome in Bo’ness, Scotland’s oldest picture palace. And, more often than not, we go in the morning, just because we can! Logo at 1884 Kitchen and Grill, BonessWe are not quite sure why, because on the face of it it is a perfectly normal thing to do, but it still seems vaguely sinful. It’s not so much going in, it’s coming out when it’s not even lunchtime!

Anyway, us sinners went to see Mike Leigh’s Peterloo today and we had no worries about coming out before lunch. At two and a half hours, it’s something of an epic. It’s all about democracy in 1819 and the British government’s attempts to drown it at birth. They did not want common folk getting ideas above their station like the dastardly French. Four years earlier us Brits had given Napoleon a jolly good thrashing at the Battle of Waterloo and, sadly, our ruling classes looked on the Peterloo Massacre of its own people in a similarly triumphant light. This was amply illustrated by the fact that it actually took place at Petersfield in Manchester but was adapted to Peterloo as a warning to other potential upstarts. Internal view of 1884 Kitchen and Grill, Boness

Democracy

Anyway the take home message of the film was that we’ve not come very far in the intervening centuries. The UK is still the least democratic of all European states and, of course, democracy has yet to be discovered in Scotland.

After almost three hours of fairly intense viewing however, sustenance was definitely required. Just a short distance from the cinema we came across 1884 Bo’ness, a new café /restaurant. It had only opened a few weeks previously. The rather ancient looking exterior belies its nice modern welcoming interior. It does everything you would expect of a ‘kitchen grille’ but, of course, scones were the main attraction for us. When we asked why it was called ‘1884’, we were told it was because it was carved in stone on the outside of the building. It’s construction date. Date carved in wall outside 1884 Kitchen and Grill, BonessAs good a reason as any and for brother and sister owners, David and Kirstie Stein it’s become rather habit forming. They also run very successful businesses, 1807 in Linlithgow and 1912 in Bathgate.

We decided on a fruit scone and opted for their offer of it being toasted. It was wonderfully warm when it arrived and came with plenty prepackaged jam, butter and whipped cream. It would have been nicer to have had a dish of jam, a pat of butter and some clotted cream but that wasn’t to be. Sadly, no topscone but we enjoyed everything about 1884 Bo’ness and would certainly return on our next cinema visit.

1884 and all that

While this building was being constructed in 1884 there were other things happening elsewhere.

  • Here in Scotland, in scenes that must have been reminiscent of Peterloo, Royal Marines and police arrived in naval vessels at the tiny village of Uig on the Isle of Skye to help a landowner evict crofters from his Kilmuir estate.
  • Otto von Bismarck declared South Africa a German colony.
  • In the US, Alaska became a US territory and on Coney Island the first roller coaster went into action with a thrilling top speed of 6mph.
  • Batchelor, Grover Cleveland became President of America in spite of admitting to fathering a child in his youth. It gave rise to the chant used against him “Ma, Ma, where‘s my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”.
  • John Harvey Kellogg, patented “flaked cereal” (cornflakes) which he intended as a ‘healthy, ready-to-eat anti-masturbatory morning meal’!
  • In France the Statue of Liberty was presented to the US and Claude Monet painted “La Corniche near Monaco.”
  • In the UK, Greenwich was accepted as the universal time meridian of longitude though France refused to accept it for another thirty years.
  • The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in Ireland
Cornflakes

From this list we can reasonably deduce that the world has always been slightly mad. Though perhaps not quite as mad as it is today. The EU has sent Theresa May packing. Her attempts to bring about an acceptable Brexit deal  seem almost as futile as Kellog’s ambitions for his breakfast cereal.

Wall decoration in the form of a cows skull at 1884 Kitchen and Grill, Boness
wall decoration at 1884

EH51 0EA     tel: 01506 829946        1884 Kitchen and Grill FB

Ordinary, Scones

Champagne Central

“Typical” we can hear you all say “spend their lives eating scones and sipping champagne!” Now hold on a minute!! Given that we travel the country looking for good scones on your behalf it is inevitable, from time to time, that we end up in places like this. Admittedly though, when it comes to hedonism, we do it rather well. In fact we can’t get enough of it if, truth be known.

View of stairwell chandelier at Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow
Stairwell chandelier over four floors

 

To be honest though, we just happened to be in Central Station catching a train and had some time to spare. And realising that we had not been in this hotel, which forms part of the station, for quite some time we thought we would pop in and see what the scones were like. On your behalf …okay? Opened in 1883 it is very much the grand dame of Glasgow hotels. It has played host to many many stars … Jimmy Durante, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Charlie Chaplin, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to name but a few.

Trigger

Surely, best of all though was Trigger, Roy Roger’s horse who spent a night in the hotel’s most expensive room, the bridal suite, in 1954. The suite had to be emptied of furniture and straw laid out on the floor. Trigger could not fit in any of the lifts and had to be walked up four flights of stairs. Now that’s celebrity! Logo for Champagne Central at Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow

Also, in 1927 the world’s first long-distance television pictures were transmitted to this hotel from London by John Logie Baird. Of course, you will all remember our report on the world’s first demonstration of the new TV technology by Baird a year earlier at Johstones Bar Bistro in Falkirk, albeit just between two rooms. We could go on but you are getting impatient for scone news.View of Champagne Central bar at Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow

Chandeliers, ionic pillars and marble floors pander to our hedonistic tendencies so when we arrived at Champagne Central we felt quite at home. View of Champagne Central lounge at Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow

All good, except…

Mind you, the lighting is such that you could have difficulty finding your scones never mind eating them. We had not long had lunch and the scones come as a brace. They had no difficulty, however, with us having one cream tea between us. View of scones at Grand Central Hotel, GlasgowPresentation was nice … crisp white napkins, generous pots of tea and two bits of shortbread protruding from the clotted cream?? Unfortunately the jam was one of the little Tiptree pots but hey, after a few glasses of champagne, who cares. Just kidding about the champagne? Everything was lovely … apart from the scones. Difficult to describe what was wrong really but the word that comes to mind is ‘flabby’. Soft but not in a particularly nice way. We ate them however and enjoyed the atmosphere looking down onto the bustling concourse of Central Station.

The rushing crowds reminding us that, only yesterday, at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester there must have been just such a scene before that horrific bomb was detonated. Sitting in such cossetted surroundings, even with flabby scones, we do feel extremely fortunate.

G1 3SF       tel: 0141 240 3700        Grand Central Hotel