Favoloso Bellota Bar y Tapas!

Favoloso it is. Fabulous in English. Belloto Bar y Tapas in Brighton. Once again I enjoyed lunch here today with brother Dave and friends Graeme, Phil and Leslie. We try and get together once a month to enjoy the excellent tapas here, San Miguel beer, terrific house Tempranillo red and a few Torres 20 brandies.

Take a look at the menu. Three tapas for £9.95 and it is as much as you can eat:

The Pescado Rebozado is a particular favourite - deep fried white fish in a special-recipe San Miguel batter served with aioli and grilled lemon. The Ensalada Bellota is the perfect salad, consisting of baby gem lettuce, peppers, soft boiled egg and tomato. Add Potatas al la pobre for the perfect lunch at £9.95, washed down with San Miguel beer and house red. The addition of espresso coffee and 20 year old Torres brandy is somewhat incremental but then we weren't counting too much!

If you find yourself in Brighton do give this wonderful restaurant a visit. Great atmosphere, friendly and attentive staff and above all - great food! 

The Troubled Man

I started reading 'The Troubled Man' by Henning Mankell today. It's familiar territory like pulling on a comfortable, well worn glove. It fits perfectly, it's comfortable. It is going back to an old friend, Kurt Wallander, and it is his final case apparently. 85 pages in and I am hooked. Inspector Wallander is one of the most wonderful creations in contemporary crime writing and Mankell is positioned in the first division of crime writing.

It's a book that you do not want to put down and it is a book that you don't want to finish. I have to make it last a few days at least....

Our Trip to Medieval Rye

There is infinite pleasure in travelling by train, particularly if your journey is the 1 hour 25 minutes from Brighton to Rye, on the Sussex coast. A journey that, for several miles, hugs the shoreline from Norman's Bay, along Cooden Beach to Hastings. Shingle beach, calm sea, high tide, sea birds foraging, peace with the world for a while. My journey was with my best friend, my soul mate for 41 years, my wife Ros. There is a special contentment in enjoying her company; we share the same values, the same love of our natural environment, the same love for life and all its vicissitudes, the same love for our country, our environment... and the same delight in a visit to Rye. A visit to Rye is always full of anticipation. This wonderful, medieval Cinque Port is always full of surprises. If we did not live in Brighton, this would be our choice of domicile.

On the journey over I plugged into my iPhone and became bewitched once again by the voice of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing the 'Four Last Songs' (Vier letzte Lieder) of Richard Strauss. Music to calm the soul, utterly captivating.

We arrived at Rye railway station just before 11:00am. The beautiful station building was opened in February 1851.

A short walk up Market Road leads to the High Street, where the full splendour of Rye begins to unfold. Which way to go? So much to see. Ros heads for the Edinburgh Wool Mill shop and I disappear up Lion Street to my favourite Barbour stockist: The Golden Fleece.

It is not possible to visit this emporium without making a purchase. I bought a Guernsey sweater in traditional blue colour. As I browsed, my wife arrived. She found nothing of interest in the EWM shop but found a beautiful (expensive!) dress in The Golden Fleece. I guess we left happy with our new outfits.

When in Rye I always visit my favourite independent bookshop. Martello's. So, it was a major disappointment to find that the owners had retired and the shop was closed. Oh dear!

The next port of call then had to be the best fish and chip shop this side of the South Downs...

Marino's serves fish and chips. That's it. And in my opinion, the best fish and chips by a country mile. Run by a Cypriot family who go out of their way to make you feel welcome and serve up delicious light, crispy battered Cod and the best chips - hand peeled potatoes, hand cut, double cooked - sheer heaven! We enjoyed Cod & Chips, bread and butter, pot of tea for two (fabulous tea) for the princely sum of £13.90 all in. Mind you, this was a special offer for the senior citizen!

No visit to Rye would be complete without a pint of English real ale and here is the place to enjoy it:

Ye Old Bell Inn

It's old, it's fabulous, it's welcoming and you don't want to leave!

Here is Ros window shopping at 'Cordelia James' establishment (Cordelia is the mother of the author Peter James):

OK - she had window shopped, now there's more to explore!

And here are a few more pics of the medieval Rye in Sussex. If you ever have the opportunity, do come along and enjoy!

Mermaid Street

I will never tire of this beautiful old town. Ros and I will continue to enjoy its beauty for years to come... I hope. 

Foreign Aid or Breast Cancer Treatment?

Last year the United Kingdom government sent £280 million in foreign aid payments to India. Why? India is a country that has its own space programme and hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

The pharmaceutical giant Roche offers a breast cancer treatment that costs our NHS £90,000 per treatment. A Herceptin-style drug that can offer some women with advanced breast cancer nearly six months of extra life has been turned down for use in the NHS because of its high cost.

In draft guidance now open to consultation, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) blames the manufacturers, Roche, who are asking for more than £90,000 per patient, which is far more than any comparable treatment.

Argue the pragmatics if you like. But the amount of aid that we send to India could pay for more than 3,000 treatments with this cancer drug for our own people. Is it not time to look to our own first before we send huge sums of money in overseas aid?

I reckon that is almost a rhetorical question....

Pottering around Sussex

To potter: to move about without hurrying, in a relaxed and pleasant way. Lovely verb. As we are not now travelling tomorrow to Copenhagen Ros and I will be pottering around Sussex. Tomorrow we will travel by train from Brighton to Rye in East Sussex. Rye, one of our favourite places to potter, the medieval gem of the Cinque Ports and one of the best preserved medieval towns in England.

I shall be having a potter around one of my favourite independent bookstores - the Martello Bookshop in the High Street and my favourite stockists of Barbour country wear: The Golden Fleece in Lion Street. Ros will be melting the plastic at the Edinburgh Wool Mill shop and we will enjoy a good ol' fish and chip lunch at Marino's Fish Bar, the best of its kind in Sussex, in my opinion. And I shall probably manage a pint or two of real English ale at The Queen's Head public house.

Sounds like a good potter to me....

The Passport Saga Concluded

On Sunday (yes, Easter Sunday) I received a 'phone call from the Durham Passport Office advising that they could not guarantee delivery of my replacement passport by Wednesday 23rd (despite earlier assurances that they could). As Ros and I were due to fly to Copenhagen on Thursday morning I adopted the posture of a headless chicken and, at considerable expense, re-booked our flights for early June (Ros being unable to book leave during May). I also had to re-book the taxi to Gatwick and re-book the hotel in Copenhagen, which will now cost considerably more, the dates falling into their 'peak period'. OK, adopting a philosophical attitude to life's vicissitudes, I thought 'That's that'....

This morning I receive a further 'phone call from the Durham Passport office advising that my passport was being printed and if I was prepared to pay £5.82 to cover the cost my passport would be delivered tomorrow, Wednesday 23rd April before 1:00pm. They had decided to waive the additional cost of £55.50 for the Premium Fast Track service as a senior manager had decided that that was not warranted in my case (it never was; it all came down to my not receiving their so called letter of 13th March about the photos I had submitted).

Their mishandling of my passport renewal has now cost me an additional £400 for a mini break to Copenhagen. It had better be worth it....

The Nick of Time

You have no doubt heard of lastminute.com? Well, in my case it's lastminutepassport.com. Have you ever had to deal with the UK Passport Office? Any of them (there are several)? I sent a passport renewal application on 10th March to the Durham office. The general timescale is for passports to be issued in 3 weeks from date of application. Having heard nothing I completed an on-line tracker on 31st March.... and heard nothing. I sent another tracker two days later... and heard nothing. And then, on 7th April I received a 'phone call from said Passport Office asking if I had received their letter of 13th March advising that the photos I had submitted were not acceptable. No, I hadn't received a letter otherwise I would have acted upon its content forthwith.

I had to obtain new photos in which there was sufficient space between the top of my head and the top of the photo. We are talking an additional 2mm here. I don't look any different in these new photos. Anyway, I did this and, as requested, sent them by Signed For mail to the - wait for this - PRIORITY HANDLING DEPT. Job done I thought. Should now get my passport fairly quickly. Uhuh.

Numerous 'phone calls and emails later I finally had to agree yesterday to pay an additional £55.50 to have my application treated as Premium Fast Track and bumped to the top of the queue. The plan is that I should receive my new passport on Wednesday 23rd April, delivered by courier. In the nick of time you might say as Ros and I are booked on a flight at 8:45am on Thursday 24th to Copenhagen.

And if it doesn't arrive? I am screwed and will lose a fortune. And all for the want of 2mm......