Deal in the rain 1

We had thought to take lunch in the Royal Hotel in Deal on the last day of our holiday, so parked up in the car park adjacent. Off to a weak start when we had to leave a message on the dashboard in lieu of a ticket as the ticket machine was not working. Into the Royal Hotel to take tea (him) or coffee (her), but were unable to make a booking for lunch as the young man concerned (who had provided a very appealing small child, in charge of the grandfather) was far too busy taking amendments to a wedding to trouble with our lunch. But we left, fully intending to return.

In the event however, despite the wind and the rain, we thought to take a walk along Deal Pier, handsomely rebuilt in the fifties after being bashed about at the start of the war by a Dutch freighter. We thought that it was, maybe, one of the last piers to be built. And as the Royal's luck would have it there was a restaurant at the end of the pier, empty but which, notwithstanding, attracted us in. A place called Jasins (see reference 1). Apart from anything else it was licensed and a very welcome break from the wind and the rain.

Some adequate white wine (there seemed to be more choice on the shelves than our young waitress was offering), some good, warming soup, rather spicey, followed by some adequate fish and chips. The fish was just a touch soggy but the chips looked and tasted as if they had been cooked in a fryer on the premises, rather than oven chips. An interesting individual lemon meringue pie, not a patch on that in Smith's Falls (see reference 3), but then they still know about pie over there. Altogether, entirely satisfactory, if, at the end of the day, not that much cheaper than the Royal would have been. But a much more scenic dining room.

The cheerful young waitress had modest versions of the tattoos last seen at Exeter (see reference 2), and had spent serious time in Thailand as a teacher, perhaps EFL to judge by her accent. She also explained that sometimes, marching up the pier in the rain, to report for duty at 0800, she wondered about her place of work. We wondered about the motivation of three (line) fishermen, huddled together over a fag in the rain - with a novelty being that the rails of the pier were painted in black sections and yellow sections, with black reserved for fishermen. There were postcards showing the pier full of them so it must have been a serious sport at some point.

It turned out that both the Ball Tower with its clocks and the small museum were shut, so next stop Deal Castle, the last of the three knocked up by Henry VIII, this one not having been converted to a house and much more like a castle. A ticket claimed that the Tudor cannons had a range of a 1,000 yards, but I was not so sure. Extreme range, small chance of doing damage, maybe. Another ticket announced that the Marquis of Reading mentioned at reference 4 was captain of Deal from 1927 to 1935. Last but not least there were some handsome looking bread ovens in the kitchen, so maybe decent bread was some compensation for the cold & the damp that the garrison would have had to put up with.

Later, in the High Street, we spotted another young lady baring what looked like most of her thigh to the tattoo artist there, with little regard for who might be passing. After all, we might have been her mother. We turned up an opportunity to buy a copy of 'Tattoo Weekly' from the very well stocked newsagent nearby, settling instead for the Guardian. I was reminded of the subcontinental habit of carrying a lot more lines in their shops than is customary with us, a habit first noticed in a very well stocked off-license near the Cock Inn on Green Lanes just before Palmer's Green. Maybe near forty years ago, back in the days when one had off-licenses all over the place.

Regarding the Cock Inn, I learn this morning that 'on the junction of what is now the north circular, was the Cock Inn. Boudier says that there are indications that the pub may have existed as early as 1445 ... Increasingly run down, it briefly became a Polish Sports Bar, before closing as a pub in 2010 and conversion into a continental supermarket'. How the mighty have fallen.

Home to what was maybe the third version of mixed vegetable soup of the week, this one started with a chicken stock cube rather than with a packet of chicken noodle soup (Knorr). Decided against the winter's tale at St. Margaret's (mentioned yesterday), settling instead for 'Shakespeare in Love' on the DVD. A film which I am sure we have seen before, but which was a lot better than I remembered. I liked the way the story of the film had been woven into the first production of 'Romeo and Juliet'; a clever touch, presumably of Stoppard, one of the two script writers. Particularly given the recent visit to the Rose at Kingston (see reference 5).

Reference 1: http://www.jasinsrestaurant.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/isca-dvmnoniorvm.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/train-spotting.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/wooden-boxes.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/romeo-alpha.html.