Angela Lansbury Travel writer, specialising in food, wine, museums and culture

Please read my blogs for the latest top tips and tipples for your trips:

Top Tips on Tipples - on food and drink - drink with food, food with drink
on interesting, unusual and healthy food and wines,

Top  Tips on Travel
travel tips for your travel trips, and insights into other cultures.

Top Tips on Learning Languages
Tips to help you to learn languages! Where to learn. Memory aids.

Angela Lansbury
Top Tips 4 Trips

Poetry, Comedy, Doggerel on Gravestones At Great Bedwyn

 Before driving back to London from our stay in Little Bedwyn, we indulged in a spot of sightseeing, allowing an hour to drive up the road to find Great Bedwyn, where quaint houses surrounded the old station. An even greater delight for history buffs and photographers is in Great Bedwyn shopping area, where opposite the church a relief sculpture of the Last Supper adorns on the side of the  post office. At ground level the post office is walled with headstones dated 1704 and 1802, presumably saved from a church. Several stones displayed amusing doggerel about the departed.
***
'Here lies John Higgs
A famous man for killing pigs ...
His knife is laid His work is Done
I hope to Heaven his Soul has Gone.'
***
From 1817:
***
In memory of James Culley who died March 4.1817 Aged 64 Years.
My Breath was short my Labour hard
While on the Earth I did remain
But now the Lord hath taken me
From all earthly Labour Grief and Pain.
***
Here Lies of Late the Landlord of the Lion
Departed Hence to be with Zion
The Son inclined to his earhly Will
And carries on the Business still.
***
Curiously, the stonemason has carved double sized capital letters for the words he wants to emphasize.
I foresee a great future career for myself, writing poems for gravestones. Alas nowadays the jobsworths are making rules confining the wording of gravestones to cliches form the bible. Jealous nobodies will not allow even a comment on the job or foibles of a rival dead person. So nothing complimentary nor amusing is allowed about the individual whose memory the loved ones wish to preserve. In the good old days, the headstone's doggerel acted as an attraction-gaining advertising for one's family. The rhyme preserved the memory and the individual personality.
Maybe one could bypass the graveyard censors' system by installing one's gravestone on a post office. A nice little earner for the post office. How about posters for obituaries? I feel another novelty career sprouting in my brain. At least I can write my own here and now and enjoy a chuckle to share with you:

Comic Obituary For Angela
by Angela Lansbury BA Hons

Here is a rhyme an author wrote
Hoping that she would be of note
So that when fate has called her home
If her gravestone is bare, alone
She can be sure none will forget
Her last words on the internet
She wrote ten books, more words to please
For a free sample, copy these.
Angela Lansbury
Writer of comic verse

The Pelican Inn, Froxfield, Wiltshire, and Delightful Ducks

The Pelican inn is easy to find on the old London to Bath main road, now the A4, with parking conveniently both sides. Froxfield, not fox field but Froxfield. I like to think of maidens in frocks photographed against a backdrop field, not noticing the watching fox. The village is between Hungerford (unfortunately well known for the modern times Hungerford massacre), and Marlborough, known to most as the name of school, to some as the name of a brand of cigarettes.

Froxfield's the Pelican is a free house with wifi and its leaflet claims that it attracts walkers. It is also on the little of venues for overnight stays for those indulging in the nearby Michelin starred restaurant The Harrow, which has an interesting wine cellar and holds dinners with talks by visitors from vineyards as far away as Australia, which is what attracted my family to the area.

The Pelican inn takes its name from the Pelican omnibus which used to stop outside the door. We stopped and parked in one of the two car parks on either side.
Walk into the inn and there's reception in the centre between the bar and the open sided restaurant room.
The place is small, fewer than ten dining tables downstairs, probably because there are fewer than ten bedrooms upstairs.
Yes, it's an old inn, with old beams and creaking floors.

I puffed anxiously up the steep staircase, clinging on to the left hand wooden handrail, fearing endless stairs, but there's only one staircase.
We three had booked two bedrooms. Bedroom numbers go up to eight, so three of us occupied a quarter of the rooms. Statistically that makes me a pretty good inspector. I chose the room overlooking the duck pond. Not sure whether the pond links to the stream, but the ducks soon sailed into view of my busy mobile phone camera lens.

In the basic bathrooms I pounded gleefully on the cute complimentary shower get and other liquids - but found no soap.I realised that those clumpsy looking (sic) Victorian taps with the cross tops are the handiest things to turn if you don't know left from right and can't remember whether taps go clockwise or anti-clockwise. I  needed a firm wrench at it because I sealed it tight by turning the wrong way.

The room is small which explains the tiny double beds which leave more room to walk around. Visual appeal provided by cute cushions. British hotels tend to go for bland decor.
 If you like healthy food and fresh milk, you will enjoy the thermos of fresh milk on the tea tray. I've found that only in a two or three hotels in a lifetime of travelling worldwide. So, if you hate sachets of long life so called milk, you will instantly enthuse about the bedroom facilities.

 My family booked two rooms. Mama gets to choose. I wanted the one overlooking the back garden, tree tops seen when you lie on the bed, and duck pond viewed on tiptoe from the window.
Duck pond? Where are the ducks. Just an immobile statue. Ah - as I watched a duck sailed into view and I clicked my mobile phone camera.

Next morning I was glad to learn that the front bedroom overlooking the road did not keep anybody awake at night. Our sound sleeper said if you live in Hendon or Notting Hill, you expect to be woken once a week by drunks, fights, emergency vehicles, and learn to go back to sleep and ignore any noise. That's right.

It's a good thing I was not still lurching drunk at dawn next morning, facing the steep descent down the stairs, with only one fixed solid handrail stuck to the wall, now on my other side. One member of my family is right-handed, another left-handed, so that handrail could not please everybody.
But at the bottom of the stairs I was greeted by a welcome sight facing me, breakfast was ready, already, the table of cereals.

From my dining table I ducked down to look through the fireplace to the bar area beyond. Well-spoken regulars sat near us, but no need to ask them what to do in the area. I'd already read the leaflets telling me that the local attraction was a windmill. No more clutter - no more leaflets!
We saw a signpost to the windmill and followed it but soon got lost in winding roads one car wide. I wished I'd taken the inn's leaflet on the windmill and its postcode. So I've mentally saved the windmill as something  to see on another visit to the nearby Harrow restaurant at Little Bedwyn.

The Pelican inn's bill is a good antidote to the pricey prices of your dinner round the corner for celebrations such as an anniversary at the Harrow. Last time we splurged on the Harrow we stayed overnight at The Bear in Hungerford. The Bear is bigger,  more of an all jumping hotel, but the Pelican offers a nearer and good value alternative.
I never saw the windmill, nor a pelican, only a few ducks.
Quack, quack, quack, I'll go back.

But wait - there's more - about the pelican and the ducks. After enjoying a sniff of the aromatic mandarin and bargamot shampoo bottle, I took a last look at the little 30 ml bottle in the revealing bright light of day.
I noticed the black silhouette of a pelican on the front. Another pelican was raised in relief on the cap.
The title DUCK ISLAND was printed sideways. By dint of a squint, holding the bottle up against a white background, I discovered in small print the website: www.duckisland.co.uk

The bottle gives the toiletries company address as
Duck Island Ltd
51 Queen Anne Street
London W1G 9HS.

More details about

The Pelican inn from
www.pelicanann.co.uk
www.facebook.com/pelicaninnfroxfield
The Pelican Inn, 
Bath Road, 
Froxfield, 
Marlborough, 
Wiltshire 
SN8 3JY. 
Tel: 01488 682479.
Angela Lansbury BA Hons is the author of twenty books on travel, etiquette, public speaking and comic poetry. She is a member of two Toastmasters International speakers' clubs, also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

Chinese USA and uk tourist manners

Which tourists annoy the locals and why, which natives annoy the travellers and why, and how can we improve service? I can explain the problem with tipping. China and Singapore ban tipping. An employee can lose their job if they accept a tip which is seen as a bribe designed to enable the immoral tipper to jump the queue.  Staff are paid wages by the employer and not expected to take tips. If you try to tip it is also deemed as condescending and patronising, saying I'm a successful person and you are a poor struggling soul.

I'm a friendly person but I like the no tipping or 10 per cent optional charge. No delay at the end. No obligation to round up. 

Serrata - family run 'Turkish influenced' restaurant in NW London

Hatch End, 'restaurant capital of North West London' said one of our local paper, has lost Hatchets but gained Serrata. The name means saw-toothed or saw-like in Latin, but they created it by merging the names of two family members.
When is it open? For lunch and dinner. If you can't wait for dinner time, and you are on a budget, the Lunch and early evening menu says: Select a starter and a main course for £11.95.
Great friendly people greeted me. A pity that they can't open in the afternoon because of family commitments.
The small restaurant, recently open in August 2013, was busy on a drizzly September Monday evening despite the dark echoing floor, which looked like lino to me. (I dare say it's practical and clean, but I prefer a warm coloured carpet.)
I decided to look at their menu online and choose my next meal.
The menu includes starters such as: falafel, crispy duck, melon with smoked salmon or prawn. Prices range from £4.50 for soup of the day to £9.95 for king prawns. I just bought falafel in Tesco Express, so I'll opt for melon with smoked salmon.
Main courses include classics such as chicken, calves liver, duck, lamb shank, and fillet or ribeye steak served with potato and season veg. Prices frange from £12.95 for chicken, to £18.95 for fillet steak with fat chips. Meat free options include musakka.
Desserts feature baklava, cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, three scoops ice cream for £4.85, either the healthier sounding option of mango sorbet, or pistachio ice cream, or vanilla. May I have one of each please. Fancy something different? Not stuffed dates but stuffed dried apricots and prunes, filled with mascarpone cheese and rolled in walnuts.
Their opening hours are lunch time 12-2.30, evenings from 6 pm. According to their website they are closed Monday lunch.
One page on their website tells the story of Mrs Beeton, whose house was on this location. You could sit at the restaurant table using your handphone to read the Serrata website and Mrs Isabella Beeton's story, a great topic of conversation.
I was horrified to learn that a German bomb destroyed this historic landmark. Here, right in the centre of peaceful rose garden suburbs of Hatch End. Then and now, Hatch End is far from the bomb sites I recall seeing as a child, bombed out buildings in the East End of London near the docks, Commercial Road and industrial areas. I'd actually been thinking how far from Mrs Beeton's English recipes were the varied European restaurants in this locality today. But the website fondly assumes that Mrs Beeton is forever a benign presence, or memory. They like to think she would have smiled kindly on a family run restaurant. What would she have thought of Turkish coffee? (£2.50.)
Location, Uxbridge Road, Hatch End, Pinner, Middlesex
Tel: 0208 428 9973.
More information from
www.serrata.co.uk
email them at info@serrata.co.uk

CAPITALS or Capitals?

In school in the UK we were taught that only five-year-olds use capital letters for emphasis. The same goes for using more than one exclamation mark. It is not correct, professional, businesslike.

A legal document or court report would not use multiple quotation marks.

A BBC report, like a business report, used to stick to facts. Rhetoric and repetition of words and phrases or  was left to politicians making speeches. Repetition of punctuation marks was not used by adults.

To a coolly detached, impersonal reader who has not yet formed an impartial judgement, multiple exclamation marks and sudden jumps into capital letters are annoying and distracting and suggest that the reporter is carried away by emotion and not giving a news story but an opinion piece, not even a well-argued opinion piece but a rant.

It is not for the newsreader to comment that an event is hilarious or tragic. The comedy awards presenter can say that the no 1 joke of the festival is "hilarious". The family can describe the loss of their loved one as "a tragedy". A news report simply states who, what, where, when, why. The accidental death of an unconvicted, alleged 'murderer', in bizarre circumstances might be a tragedy to their family, a comedy to bystander, a triumph of justice to a third person such as a victim, but a newspaper reporter is like to cause outrage by saying so.  The news report should give the facts without emotion. 

Comment should come evenly from both sides in a court case or any other report.

Punctuation around the world and quotation marks

QUOTATION MARKS?
In the 'good old days', good in my opinion, I learned English from traditional books at school. My view on punctuation was reinforced when I trained as a journalist in the UK.  Traditional punctuation dictated that books, newspaper headlines and handwriting used double quotation marks for quoting a conversation. So you used double quotation marks when reporting the exact words of a defendant in a court case; but you used single quotations for the editor or reporter's comment.
Therefore, James said it was an "accident" means he actually used the word accident. If you describe it as an 'accident', or an alleged accident, you are giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise you are prejudicing the reader. The defendant may ask to be judged in a different city or country or by jurors who have not read the newspaper. he or she might even claim that the case should be dismissed because there cannot be a fair trial after 'trial by media'
A single quotation shows the editors comment, that we have summarised what he said to get in in a headline, paraphrased what he said, or deduced what he implied, or what we inferred from some other statement. Single quotations are also used to distinguish and separate other items which are not reported speech, such as book titles.
For example, "The book everybody should buy," says the author, or the reviewer. (Quoted words.)
The book, 'Everybody Should Buy', is now top of the book charts. (Title of book.)
The book 'Everybody should buy' is selling well. (Book title.)
'The Book' everybody is talking about ... (Praise.)
"He claims it was an 'accident' but we know better." (Here the single quotation is both a quotation within a quotation and sarcasm.
However, sometime at the end of the 20th century or the first two decades of the 21st century, American fashions took over the printed world. Punctuation is reduced to save space and time. the single quotation key on the far right keyboard does not require the use of the shift key, unlike the double quotation mark above it.
The Harrow Writers' Circle has issued instructions for its competitions on the new system of single quotation marks for speech, with double quotation marks used to identify a quotation within a quotation.
In the 'good' old days, when single quotation marks suggested sarcasm by the writer, or a viewpoint of the general public, headlines were clearer. Italics were used to distinguish titles of books. Italics were used to emphasize a word within a quotation.
But now, alas, the single quotation mark is becoming common. The style books of the major newspapers and publishing houses producing books and brochures and leaflets must be promoting it. For the sake of consistency, and modernity, I shall probably have to follow the trend. it would be too confusing for me as a writer and for my readers to see two sets of punctuation produced at the same time. The internet means that what I write in London is read in the USA and Singapore. What I write in Singapore is read in London and the USA. What I write in the USA is read in Singapore and London. I used to feel annoyed and insulted when Singaporean school pupils, who had previously been under the UK education system, and were still doing O level, marked by UK examiners, tried to tell me that they were using the correct spelling and punctuation because they had copied the US films and reports on the internet. Now I am on a see-saw. One more straw on the see-saw and I shall land with a thump, shocked and surprised, on the side of the single comma, while my two friends on the other side look aghast.
No! I have just read a very confusing newspaper headline, which leaves me wondering whether I should go it alone and return to the old system in my self-published books.
Your comments would be appreciated.

Keep Doors Shut In Public Buildings

A child allegedly leaves a nursery school and walks home, via busy roads, past a pub, near a canal and through a wood. How did she get out? Somebody left a door open.
Workers can leave open doors and windows.
Is there a sign on the door warning people to shut it?
All places where there are children (or adults with Alzheimer's and hospital wards) should have a sign saying:
Keep door shut at all times
to prevent
children/vulnerable adults wandering out
and unauthorised adults entering.'

Travel Safely - Road Safety and Park Safety

A mother and child were killed by a park vehicle in the USA. The driver allegedly ran away.


1 Can't understand people who run away. My first instinct seeing an injury is to get help. I was passenger in a car which hit a jaywalker who changed direction. He ran out into the middle of the road then tried to run back to the kerb in Asia. We stopped. I ran around screaming at bystanders to use a phone and call an ambulance.
2 Every vehicle driver should have a test in which they are required to reiterate the correct procedure in the case of an accident.
3 Areas where vehicles operate should be taped off away from the public.
4 Vehicles operating in parks and walking areas should have a 'going forward' bleep, distinct from a reversing vehicle bleep.
5 Vehicles should have loudhailers or announcement systems asking people sitting or lying or palying or standing on lawns to move to seats while vehicles operate nearby.
It's a good idea to note the numbers of other countries' emergency services. Often there are different numbers for fire, police, ambulance; local police for non-emergencies, and in Singapore reporting noise nuisance.

Buying Real and Imitation Silk

I am happy to buy 'Thai silk' some of which is not real silk but silky soft with a lovely sheen and flattering fit. The fabric looks glamorous. It is easy to look after, does not get dirty, but can be washed. It does not crease easily. It is not see-through. It looks expensive.

I recently bought a pure silk item from an ebay seller. It was lined and stretchy but did not look classy and had no label.

I wrote back to the seller: What makes you think it is silk? If so, 100%, 50% Imitation? Silk-like? What evidence do you have that it is silk?

I looked up the tests which seem to be setting fire to the item - in a safe place - not in your house - not where vegetation can catch fire - and without destroying the object but extracting threads - all things which I do not wish to do!

The seller said she had it hand-made overseas for a daughter's wedding. I'll show examples of silk I have seen in shops and which you can buy from catalogues or on ebay.


1 Noil silk is bobbly. It feels rough. What's the point? (If you like it, it's available from Patra, who also do other silks of all kinds.)

2 Stiff, heavy genuine Thai silk, with uneven threads, used for boxy jackets. Expensive. Label Jim Thomson.

3 Heavy silk.

4 Silk mixed with cotton.

5 Silk mixed with elastane to give stretch.

6 Fine silk used for scarves and light dresses. Flows well. Can cling. Fragile - fabric easily torn. garments can be pulled apart at the hems as you pull garments on and off.

Caftans in silk fabric with oriental flower patterns, sold in Singapore. Some dresses are silk, some a good imitation. Look at the label or ask the seller.

Thai 'silk' with lovely sheen - my favourite. 

Gold and silver tops.

Patra in the UK has a catalogue and website. Noil silk is bobbly.

You can buy Thai 'silk' in dark colours or bright colours with contrasting gold. 

You can buy tops sleeveless or with short or long sleeves, jackets, dresses, fishermen's wraparound trousers with bell bottoms, matching top and skirt outfits, or try to order sets, but each batch is different even from the same supplier as the factories may vary or be hand-dyeing. Some of the gold sets are sold as 'wedding' outfits.

7 Imitation 'Thai' silk. Stiffer. From Northern tribes with an oval all over pattern. Classy.

8 Some have a great sheen and are mixed with gold for wrap skirts. Gold elephants can be repeating pattern all over or in a band at the hem. Elephants are the Thai Symbol. (My joke: A buyer never forgets!)

9 Silk velvet can be either a mix, such as a flat pure silk, or silk base mix fabric, with other fibre inserted, or entirely silk. Silk velvet is often devore, or cut-out, with a pattern in the velvet and sheer fabric making it light and pretty.

10 The softest silk I've found is sand-washed silk.

Safe driving. Safe speed.

I read that people are racing around cities in the USA as if they were race tracks.
The speed limits are there for a reason. In built up areas you stay below 30 mph because a person hit at that speed will be injured but may survive. Drive faster and you will kill any pedestrian you hit. (In addition to endangering yourself.)

Some reckless people speed around in cars at night.
Just watch the Singapore video or the slide show of the Ferrari racing across the lights, hitting a taxi and flipping, killing the mainland Chinese Ferrari car driver, the Singaporean taxi driver,  and Japanese taxi passenger.
Comments include (I paraphrase for grammar, good taste, and sense), 'Your car is not the only car on the road." Another comment says, pause at a green light to be sure the road is clear, even if you have right of way.
   
Have you been to Disney and seen the video of the car racing downhill as the woman steps out with the
pram?

If this a speeding driver is out, keep your cat locked up at home at night.What happens when a pedestrian who is drunk or high on drugs lurches out?
Ever if Speedy were an expert (which I don't accept as an excuse) what happens if some other driver copies the trick next week and kills one person, or twenty?