Tag Archives: observation

Restaurants I have Known and one or two Memorable Meals!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

 

Restaurants I have known and one or twoGoing out for a meal has to be one of the great pleasures in life. It’s certainly one of my favourite things to do. There are many things that make for a great dining experience. The food of course is the important factor but it’s not just that. The restaurant and the atmosphere play a big part. The location too, is important and the table, but after the food the most important thing is service.

St Annes and Lytham have some wonderful restaurants embracing various food cultures. There is Anatolia serving Turkish food, The Greek Flame serving, not unsurprisingly, Greek food. The Marrakech has a lovely Moroccan menu. Woks Cooking in Lytham is my favourite Chinese eating house and Ego, also in Lytham serves Mediterranean food with a smile and outstanding service.

One of my all-time favourite meals was at my favourite French restaurant not far from Calais in a place we found on a country road, miles from anywhere. Liz and I stopped there many years ago for an early evening meal. For starters I chose celery soup and Liz ordered the pate.
I was a little disappointed with the rather small dish that was presented to me but then a huge tureen of soup arrived which was wonderful and produced about four small servings, one of which went to Liz while I sampled her pate which was full of rustic flavours and was perfect served with fresh French bread.
The main course was a simple omelette, light and fluffy with a fresh salad and Liz’s fish was lovely with a creamy curry like sauce, unusual for French country cooking.

Another great French restaurant is in Saumur, my favourite French town. Again, I don’t know the name of it and it’s always hard to find, in fact we usually tend to stumble upon it after walking around for a while. It’s a small restaurant that spills out on the pavement and I do so love those three lovely courses that French restaurants serve; starter, main and a cheese course, served with red wine and plenty of crusty bread. There is no rush in a French restaurant and there’s plenty of time to watch life and people pass by as you dine.

IMGA0302Tapas are pretty fashionable in the UK these days and we sampled some lovely tapas at the Blue Note restaurant at the Marina Rubicon in Playa Blanca earlier this year. The highlight was the Canarian potatoes served with mojo sauce, lovely.

Yes, I’ve come a long way as a diner from the Plaza Cafe in Manchester where my friends and I used to call in the early hours of Sunday morning after a late night drinking and chatting up the girls. The Plaza served curry and there were three options: mild, hot, and suicide! Yes, how we used to laugh as we called up “Three suicides please!”

A lot of people seem to think I’m a fast eater. I’m not sure if I am but if that is the case; it surely comes from late night curries like the one above. If you are with six boozed up guys and you want something to eat, you have to grab it and get it on your plate as soon as possible otherwise you might just end up with nothing but a plateful of rice as my friends used to clear the table faster than a horde of locusts.

My one hate of restaurants though is this. Do waiters lie in wait for me to take a big mouthful of food before coming to the table? Many times I’ll try my food then nibble on small portions just in case the waiter approaches. When I finally think, ok, he’s not coming over, I’ll shovel in a good mouthful and out of nowhere a waiter is sure to appear.
“Is everything all right for you sir?”
All I can usually do is nod and try to mime someone enjoying their meal . .

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Breakfast TV and The Apollo Moon Landing.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve always been a sci-fi fan but when I was a child growing up in the 1960’s I was probably more interested in science fact. The sixties was the time of the space race and the Gemini and Apollo missions were covered in great detail on TV and when I say covered I mean full features and bulletins and not just a one minute item on the news.

I don’t know if you can imagine the excitement of a twelve year old boy, getting up for school one morning to find the TV on and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon when the usual TV broadcast at that time would have been the test card! Those black and white ghostlike TV images enthralled me that July morning and how my Mother eventually managed to pack me off to school I do not know.

The moon landing was covered on UK TV by both the BBC and ITV although in our house we watched the BBC coverage exclusively. Cliff Michelmore was the main presenter but it was James Burke who explained all the technical stuff.
The launch of the Apollo missions was always a highlight for me. Although I enjoyed all the other elements too like the crew broadcasts from space, and those from Mission Control in Houston especially when a major decision had to be taken, for instance, ‘are we ok for lunar trajectory insertion?’ And the answers would come from the experts around the control room:

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Mission Control: Image courtesy wikipedia.

Capcom? (Capsule communications)Go!
Retro? (Retrofire officer)Go!
Fido? (Flight Dynamics Officer)Go!
Guidance? (Flight Guidance Officer)Go!
Booster? (Booster Systems Engineer) Go!
And so on round the room.

Now the Space Shuttle has been mothballed there are very few launches from Cape Canaveral. (Originally I had written Cape Kennedy but as usual after finishing writing I did a quick search on the internet to check my facts and found, surprisingly, that Cape Kennedy reverted back to its original name of Cape Canaveral in 1973. I never knew that!) But another highlight of TV space coverage was in 1968 when Apollo 8 made the first manned trip to the Moon. Apollo 8’s mission was not to land but to fly to the Moon, orbit and return to Earth. The three crew members were Commander Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders.

There were numerous broadcasts from the crew, especially during their orbits of the moon and they sent back to mission control their impressions of the lunar surface, Lovell commenting that “the Moon looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a greyish beach sand.”
Every time the spacecraft passed behind the Moon radio transmissions were blacked out and the crew and ground control were relieved to hear each other’s voices once again when they came back, unscathed, from the far side of the Moon.

The crew of Apollo 8 were the first in history to see ‘earthrise,’ the Earth emerging from the lunar horizon. The crew all scrambled for their cameras but it was Anders who took the famous colour photo seen here.

297755main_gpn-2001-000009_full_0The most moving broadcast ever was when the crew read lines from the book of Genesis and Borman finished by saying “and from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.”
Every time I see a documentary about the Apollo programme that includes that transmission, I can feel myself taken back to Christmas of 1968 and once again I become that same small boy, glued to our old black and white TV set. Incredibly, NASA was hit by a lawsuit because of this by an atheist who objected to astronauts broadcasting religious activities while in space.

Back to 1969 though as the Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module piloted by Neil Armstrong dropped down towards the Moon an alarm sounded in the spacecraft. Ed Aldrin passed the information back to earth; “Alarm 1201”.
Armstrong carried on, dropping the craft ever so closer to the Moon’s surface but again that alarm sounded. What was it? Well believe it or not, the Eagle’s on-board computer, which had a memory less than that of your mobile phone had locked up with an overload of data. Armstrong switched over to manual control and landed the Eagle, dodging an area in the Sea Of Tranquillity littered with boulders without computer assistance. His remaining fuel supply when Eagle touched down was just 30 seconds!

Armstrong was the first man to step out of the hatch and to drop down onto the lunar surface and I should imagine everyone is familiar with his famous words: ‘That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.’ However Armstrong’s first step out onto the Moon wasn’t small at all, because the Lunar Module landed so gently that the shock absorbers hadn’t compressed. His first step out onto the Moon was almost a four foot jump onto the lunar surface. TV cameras beamed the event to viewers back on Earth and along with myself, almost 600 million people watched Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon. It seems incredible to me even now, that back then in 1969, I was getting ready for school, eating my porridge or cornflakes and watching science fiction become science fact.

I must remember to ask my Mum though, how did she manage to get me off to school on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?

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Floating in Space

The Writer’s Guide to Mobile Phone Calls!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s funny how mobile phones have literally changed the world. In fact it’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t have them. Off the top of my head I really don’t know what the last mobile free year was and to find out I’ve had to do a google search. The first mobile phone service started in 1983 in, well, where else? The USA. It wasn’t until 1992 that the UK had consumer mobile phones on sale. I remember buying one of the very first ones round about then, it was a motorola personal phone which was a pretty big device and seemed to use its charge up pretty quickly.
The first text message was sent in 1992 and the first camera phone appeared in 2000 with picture messaging available from 2002.

I love my mobile. It isn’t a smart phone but it does everything I need it to do. It has wi-fi which I hardly ever use. It has a camera which is a must for me as I’m always taking snapshots with it. My mobile also has a little memory card with some of my favourite music tracks so I can just plug in my headphones and it’s ideal for whiling away the time on that long train journey. Certain things about mobiles are annoying though and here are a couple of the main ones.

MobileQueuing up at a supermarket till and the woman in front is just about to pay then she decides to answer the mobile phone ringing in her pocket. Is it a vital call? Is it of major importance? No, it’s her mate calling up for a chit chat but all of us in the queue have to wait while she carries on chatting as if she has all the time in the world. I’m at the point of saying “We’re all wanting to pay and get off home!” when someone behind me shouts “We’re all wanting to pay and get off home! Put that f***ing phone down!” The lady appears shocked to hear this but we are all highly fed up of her, including the supermarket till lady.

Why is it that when a vital call is required in a TV soap, the soap star in question has left their mobile behind or is out of battery or even just doesn’t bother to answer? Soap writers just can’t get their heads round mobiles! They are just a plot busting device so what do they do? Characters leave them behind, run out of battery or just plain ignore their phones. Sorry, that just doesn’t happen in real life. Take a look around you in any public place. People are glued to their mobiles!
The other day my phone was ringing and when I looked it was an unknown number. Now, and this is another great thing about mobile phones, you can see who’s calling you! Great stuff! Don’t want to deal with a call from the ex – just don’t answer her!
Called a sickie in to work and your boss rings you in the pub? Leg it into the toilet, put on a croaky voice and say to the boss, “Can’t talk at the moment, I’m really poorly!”

Now normally I wouldn’t necessarily answer an unknown caller after all, it’s bound to be some plonker trying to sell you double glazing but; and here’s the thing about writing and trying to get stuff published, I’ve currently got quite a bit of product ‘out there’ sent to publishers, magazines, and producers, all with my name, address and mobile number displayed prominently so I could not afford to miss that call. I was particularly hoping to hear from a radio drama producer who had looked at a radio play I’d written and had not rejected it out of hand but liked it and wanted to look at the next draft. Well, I wasn’t really contemplating a next draft; I thought the piece was pretty much ok as it was, in fact, I was pretty pleased with it. Here’s what I’d done, I’d taken all my nerdy knowledge as a self-confessed conspiracy theorist, written something about –not the JFK assassination but the RFK shooting, re-invented it as the shooting of a British MP, set it in Manchester and thrown in a lot of speculation about organised crime and MI5 and stuff and thought I’d arrived with something pretty good.
Anyway, you can imagine my feeling when my mobile was ringing. I very briefly imagined a scenario where the radio producer was offering me a lot of money, asking me about who I wanted to play the main characters; did I need a car to pick me up for the rehearsals and what about the recording day? Was the 20th a suitable date? Well, I’m sure you’ve got the picture, anyway, so I pressed the answer button on the phone and here’s what happened; I thought I’d put it in script format just so you can really get a feeling for the scene:

(INTERIOR DAY, STEVE HIGGINS IS AT HOME, WATCHING TV.)
(FX: MOBILE RINGING.)
STEVE: Hello.
CALLER: Is that Steve Higgins?
STEVE: Yes, speaking.
CALLER: Steve, have you ever considered replacing the windows of your house?
STEVE: (APPREHENSIVELY) Well, actually, no I haven’t. .
CALLER: Well here at the Acme window company we have chosen you exclusively to receive a very special discount offer of 45 percent when you replace the window frames of your house with our fully guaranteed hi tech replacement double glazed windows and frames made from hyper glass, our new and exclusive new-
(CLOSE UP OF MOBILE AS STEVE ENDS THE CALL. CUT TO DISAPPOINTED LOOK ON STEVE’S FACE; FADE OUT)

Writing isn’t particularly easy but it’s something I’ve always done and have always loved. The end product is usually its own reward but like any writer it’s great to have your work get somewhere and be read by others. That’s why I so love the digital age. Every time I publish something on wordpress and get some tiny comment back or even just the odd ’like’ it’s a great feeling.
Just going back to the radio producer and his request for another draft it just reminded me about screenwriter William Goldman’s book, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Goldman tells how it’s fine to get your script finished but then the producer always wants another draft and then the star steps in, he wants a new draft and he doesn’t like it when his character does this, he thinks the character should do that so can we have another draft and then he drops out and the new star likes the script only he doesn’t think that should happen so, can we have another draft please . .The day I actually get to hear my characters on the radio investigating the shooting of my fictional MP I’ll be overjoyed but I have a feeling that if the script ever gets produced, someone other than myself will have had a hand in the proceedings.

Anyway, just to finish, here’s my favourite mobile story. Many years ago when I was working as a bus driver in Warrington, I was at the wheel of my bus but had got stuck in a queue of traffic just as we were approaching Warrington bus station. I picked up one of my fellow drivers who had nipped out on his break and popped into the shops. We were talking about a nutter who travelled on our buses and chatted to all the drivers. Now some nutters are pretty nice people when you get to know them but some are the bane of a bus driver’s life! I didn’t really care for this particular guy so I tended not to let him on my bus if I could help it. By coincidence we saw the same guy just then, walking along towards the bus station and my friend said, “go on, pick him up.” Well we were stuck in a traffic queue going nowhere so I opened the doors and let him on. I don’t quite remember how this nutter looked but he did have a kind of Lara Croft thing strapped to his leg.
“What is that?” I asked him.
“That’s me mobile phone,” he said and pulled out a big 1990s style mobile. “I love it,” he said. “You can have loads of fun with it.”
“Fun? In what way?”
“Well,” he said, “watch this.”
Now in the next lane there was a tatty old builders van with a mobile number painted on the rear doors and behind it was a very smart Jaguar driven by a very posh chap wearing a suit and tie.
The nutter dialled the builder’s number and when the call was answered said something like this;
“That bloody van of yours is a disgrace! I’m sat behind you in the traffic and your engine fumes are bloody choking me! Get that great heap off the bloody road!” Then he cut the builder off.
Nothing happened for a moment then the builder, a man with a physique not unlike that of the incredible hulk, squeezed himself out of his van and walked back to the Jaguar.
Just then the lights changed and we drove off. I’ve always wondered what happened next but if you ever get a phone call like that in Warrington check that there isn’t a guy with a mobile phone strapped to his leg in something like Lara Croft’s dagger sheath nearby!

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Job Seekers and Naming That Hurricane!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The job search is a completely different thing today in the 21st century. I remember once back in the 90s when I was unemployed for a short while I was sent to join the ‘job club’. There was one compelling reason to go, attend or we’ll stop your unemployment benefit! OK, fair enough I said, I’m on my way. The very first day at the job club in Levenshulme, Manchester, the club was that packed we couldn’t all get in. It was just give your name, register and get off!

The next week there were slightly fewer people and by week four our numbers had reduced to just a small group. We checked the job cards in the unemployment office, checked the newspaper job advertisements and worked on our CV’s. The staff gave advice on interviews, letter writing and so on, and in between we supped plenty of tea, ate a considerable amount of  biscuits and generally had quite a friendly, sociable morning. Why people didn’t want to attend I really didn’t know. I kind of liked it. When I actually got a job I used to find myself thinking, ‘wonder what the guys are doing down at the job club?’

Hurricane_AnitaJob hunting nowadays is pretty much internet browsing. OK, you’ll still see jobs advertised in newspapers but the internet is where the job action is. I’ve even had a video interview with the BBC. I’m glad to say I passed the interview but as so many people applied there wasn’t a job available for me. Pity as I really did fancy working for the BBC!

There are plenty of dream jobs that I fancy doing, professional writer or blogger or film director, but there is one I job I have never seen advertised, and let’s face it, someone has to do it. Yes, I’m talking about that fabled job as a Hurricane Namer! One day I’ll search just that little bit further, go that extra mile and maybe, just maybe I’ll land that job.

It’s one of those home working jobs I imagine, perhaps one where you have to be on call, after all a hurricane could erupt out of the weather front at any time, night or day. Maybe there’s a control room or central office where you are based but I’d guess that every few weeks or so you’d have to work from home and perhaps be on call at the weekend.

I can just imagine the scene, it’s the middle of the night, I’m tucked up in bed at home and my work’s ‘Hurricane Naming’ mobile rings . .

STEVE: Hello, Hurricane Naming Officer.

CALLER: (AMERICAN ACCENT.) Hey, this is the pacific weather station and we’ve spotted a new hurricane forming over the south west. We need a name straight away.

STEVE: OK, give me a minute here, bear with me.

CALLER: OK but look, we need that name.

STEVE: OK I’m on it. (If my work’s ‘hurricane’ laptop is anything like my own laptop it does take a heck of a long time to boot up!) Let me see, which letter are we up to? Oh yes, J. So it’s going to be . . Joan. Yes, Hurricane Joan.

CALLER: Joan? Hurricane Joan? Look, this hurricane looks like be a real ‘kick ass’ hurricane and I’m not sure Joan is up to it as regards a name.

STEVE: Well sorry you don’t care for it but as of 02:35 hours I’m officially naming this hurricane; Hurricane Joan.

CALLER. Holy smoke. Joan? You gotta be kidding?

STEVE: No. Joan it is.

CALLER: The thing is, my Old Mom was kinda looking forward to having a hurricane named after her. She’s 86 this year and not in the best of health. In fact, (fights back the tears) I wonder if she’s going to make 87.

STEVE. Well, what’s her name?

CALLER: Betsy. Hurricane Betsy would be just great, a real gutsy hurricane name!

STEVE. Yes but we’re up to the J’s. We did the B’s a while back, last year actually.

CALLER. Well what about Juliet, my wife’s name is Juliet.

STEVE: Juliet? But what about your old Mum?

CALLER Well, this way we kind of keep it in the family and well, when it comes down to it, that’s my frikkin’ hurricane. I found it and I can’t believe some God damn limey is going to choose a name like Joan!

STEVE: Well what sort of a name is Juliet? Joan has got an old world feeling about it and here in Hurricane Naming we like to keep old traditions going.

CALLER: Juliet is the name of the woman married to the guy who found the hurricane!

STEVE: Well it just so happens that I am the duty Hurricane Namer and as I said earlier, I’m naming that hurricane Joan!

CALLER: You Limey b-

LINE GOES DEAD. STEVE SIGHS, IT IS ALL IN A DAYS WORK FOR A HURRICANE NAMER!

If you liked this post then why not try my book, Floating in Space? Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information.

Five basic steps for Blog Success!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

There are a heck of a lot of blogs about blogging. How to start blogging. What to blog about and so on. The thing is though, if you don’t know what to blog about you shouldn’t be blogging. You have to have some idea what you want to talk about, some subject or interest that’s close to your heart, otherwise, what’s the point?

quotescoverb-jpg-39My blogs are pretty diverse but generally they are funny or at least mildly humorous observations on life. They usually get serious when I talk about things like the Bobby Kennedy shooting or the JFK assassination or even when I look at my writing or film heroes like James Hilton or Woody Allen.

Blogging is something that I started just to promote my book, Floating In Space, and my blogs are mostly written in the same style as the book so they give the reader a sort of taster of what they will be in for if they decide to purchase a copy but now I’m starting to feel almost like, well a professional journalist! I have my deadlines, well my deadline, my one deadline and that is to have something written ready for Saturday when I post. Throughout the week I’ll usually jot something down then edit it into something like a readable piece of work prior to Saturday, and when I say prior to Saturday that usually means Friday night!

Recently I returned from six weeks in Lanzarote and I had planned to write so much and in fact did so little. I started work on another book and another radio script as the last one was rejected by the BBC (what do they know anyway!) I didn’t make much headway in either of those areas but what I did do is a huge amount of networking and I boosted my twitter profile and quadrupled my followers and signed up to Linked In. Actually I was already on Linked In but never used it that much but there are quite a few writers’ and bloggers’ groups worth joining. I’ve also started posting my blogs on Google+ which has substantially increased my network presence. Has it led to more buyers for my book? Well, the exposure has certainly helped with my free promotion but sales are still not quite where I’d like them to be. I’m reading lots of blogs about blogging and book promotion but I’m sorry to say that the chap who promised that he could boost my sales by 1667 % in seven days did not deliver! Well, I did follow most of his advice but stopped just prior to the bit where I should hand over a substantial amount of cash for even more help!

Anyway, after over six months as a blogger here are a few handy tips!

1. The important thing I’ve learned about writing is this: be disciplined. If you plan to write on holiday then choose a time that is good for you and try not to be distracted by e-mails or the internet. In Lanzarote I’d get up early, switch on my laptop with all the best intentions and then start checking e-mails and tweeting and so on. What I should have done is set aside a time for that later, switch off the internet, write for an hour or two hours, or whatever your allotted time is, then go to the internet later.

2. Try to have something visual in your blogs to catch the eye of a potential reader, even it’s only a graphic showing the blog title. There are plenty of places online where you can sort out a graphic, places like www.picmonkey.com, www.pinstamatic.com or www.quotescover.com. You might even want to create a video. Take a look at one of mine made on the www.animoto.com site, created from still images.

3. A good headline pulls people into a newspaper and the same is true for a blog post. Think about your title as much as you think about the content. You also need to get some vital keywords in the title too, just so google can pick up your post, so if you’re writing about motorcycles, get a snappy title in there using ‘motorcycle’! 10 things you should do before starting your motorcycle engine! Try that one and if you’re stuck for a headline title or even content, try this site at portent.com, tap in a few keywords and it’ll come up with a title for you!

4. Create a blogging schedule. There’s a reason why your favourite TV show is on every Friday at seven thirty: So you’ll know when to tune in. It’s the same with a blog. Some people write every day, some people knock out a random blog every so often. My blog comes out once every week, on a Saturday so my small band of followers know when to look for a new one!

5.One final thing you might not have heard of, it’s the ‘call to action.’ So what’s that? Well it’s the thing you want your reader to do, buy your video, buy your product, or even, buy your book, so it might go something like this . . . .

If you liked this blog, why not buy my book? Click the links at the top of the page for more information.

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Why Finding your voice as a writer is so important

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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I start Floating In Space talking about the weekend as ‘one long high energy cassette’ and looking back I wonder if today’s younger generation even know what a high energy cassette is, or even an ordinary cassette for that matter? Still, the important thing is the idea, the idea that the hero of my book, Stuart, is profoundly fed up of his nine to five life and spends a lot of his time waiting for the weekend to begin so that once again he can replay the high energy cassette and enjoy life.

Like a lot of first novels, Floating In Space is semi-autobiographical and based very loosely on some of my own experiences. Many years ago I left school and started work for an insurance company and very soon the whole nine to five existence became deadly dull and I longed to be doing something more interesting. I packed in my Insurance job and spent a few months in Spain but I quickly became bored there. I do love Saturday nights out but when every night becomes a Saturday night, the whole thing loses its attraction. Back in the UK I started work as a bus conductor just as a quick way of earning money and fully intending to get a ‘proper’ job soon but I found I enjoyed my new life working different shifts and meeting new and different people as I tripped up and down the roads of Manchester.

How did I come to write Floating In Space? Well, when I was younger I used to write a lot of things, mainly action, adventure and espionage stories. The only inspiration I had was film and television and my own imagination. Sometimes your own imagination is enough but for writing to have a real impact and depth it needs to come from within and that’s where an author finds his true voice. James Bond for instance, is a great character but he didn’t spring wholly from Ian Fleming’s imagination. Fleming, like the fictional Bond, was a Commander in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and his knowledge of secret intelligence helped him create the world of 007. When Fleming writes about Bond’s love of food and the good things in life, he is writing about himself. It was Fleming who smoked the bespoke cigarettes which he speaks of in the Bond books. It was Fleming who ate scrambled eggs for breakfast and wore ‘Sea Island’ cotton shirts and these small things he passed onto his fictional character, James Bond.

Finding your own voice is the key to finding your way as an author and one day I sat down and decided it was time to write about the world around me rather than what I was watching on television so I wrote an essay about an evening in the Busmen’s works club. It was an essay about beer and cigarettes, about playing pool and snooker and the banter of young men across the polished bar of the club and over the worn card tables. I wrote more and more about what I saw around me and gradually realised that I could spin all this material together into a novel. I wrote the book in the first person and began to develop a colloquial talkative style which I have used ever since. I never successfully put the various parts together into a complete narrative until a few years ago on a wet rainy holiday in France when I finally wove everything into the final book that you can buy today from amazon.

Go on, give it a read!

FIScoverbuynow

 

 

Tasting the Tapas in Lanzarote

Posted on by Steve Higgins

snaplanzaThis is week five for Liz and I staying here near the Marina Rubicon in Lanzarote. We’re here for six weeks in total, a nice break away from the snow and ice of the UK. The temperature here is in the early seventies and this last week it’s been a bit cool and cloudy which, I have to say, has played havoc with my swimming and sunbathing routine.

We’re away  from the centre of Playa Blanca by the Marina which is good because like a lot of Spanish resorts, the centre of Playa Blanca is a full of ‘British’ pubs and bars and restaurants offering British beer and meals like chips, egg and beans and so on as their staple fare. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against chips, egg and beans, as a matter of fact it is one of my favourite meals but I can make it myself back at home or go to any pub or café to get it. When I travel hundreds of miles I want something different, not something I can have any day of the week back home. It’s the same with beer. Why would I want a pint of British beer or lager when I can have something different? Of course, all the major brands of beer can now be found all over the world. My local pub has San Miguel on draft! The fact is that the whole world is getting smaller and more international by the day. Not so long ago my cousin was in New York tweeting he was at a bar drinking a pint of Boddingtons, the definitive Manchester ale!

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Tasty nibbles at Café Berrugo

I do like my food and dining out can be such a wonderful experience. All you need is a great location, great staff and of course, great food. As we’re here in the canary islands it seems fair to step away from UK pub food for a while and experience proper Spanish tapas. Tapas as you may know is Spanish for small plates. Small plates of food that is, so not long after arriving Liz and I went to our ‘local’ café, a place called Café Berrugo. Now at first I wasn’t sure if this place was a real authentic Canarian eating house. Why not? Well, with items like chips, egg and sausage and hot dog and chips on the menu that was something of a giveaway but actually when we come here of an evening, most of the clientele are local Lanzarote people and if you look closely at the menu there is a nice tapas section which a lot of the Brits seem to ignore. Anyway, we knew that tapas is small dishes so we ordered this lot: Garlic mushrooms, Canarian potatoes with mojo sauce, garlic prawns, Canarian boar with peppers and onions and a portion of, well I am a Brit after all, a portion of chips. (That’s fries if you are reading this in the US.)

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Garlic mushrooms and bread.

Now the thing is, at this cheap and cheerful café the portions are pretty big so we ended up fairly stuffed after that veritable feast but we managed to scoff it all and wash it down with a nice bottle of Spanish red and the excellent staff offered us a nice free vodka caramel to finish off.

Another night we decided to go up market to the Blue Note bar and restaurant and once again we went for the tapas. I only ordered five as part of the five for twelve euros deal and decided to have two as starters and three as a main meal. Now the thing was that here at the posh end of the marina, tapas clearly does mean small plates, or perhaps tiny plates would have been a better description. The chorizo sausages were nice but as there were only three small sausages I didn’t quite get to gauge the flavour. Same with the meatballs, there were only three of them. Anyway, it was all very lovely with nice staff and a picturesque setting by the marina with a small jazz trio playing away. I recommend it highly, unless you happen to be really hungry!

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Canarian potatoes with mojo sauce and a plate of serrano ham.

So after that little bit of research it seems that tapas do not come in a standard size. If you ever visit Lanzarote and happen to be staying near the Marina Rubicon at Playa Blanca remember this; if you’re not too hungry then have your tapas in the posh restaurants by the marina but if you are feeling even a little ravenous, go down to Café Berrugo!

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Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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I’m not totally sure of the origin of that quote. I personally remember it from one of David Niven’s classic books about the golden age of Hollywood but when I looked it up it is attributed to quite a few people, Walter Winchell, Jimmy Durante or even George Raft for instance so who really said it first I can’t say.

Many years ago I used to be a bus driver. In fact I started work on the buses at the very tail end of the driver and conductor years and one of my colleagues was a guy called Neil. Now Neil was a nice fella but he was also a very rum turkey indeed. Way back then there were conductors like me who were honest, well reasonably honest. There was always the passenger who paid right at the last minute as he was getting off the bus and there wouldn’t be time to snap off a ticket. Those few pence went into the drivers’ and conductors’ brew fund and when we stopped at the next canteen (back in the late seventies and early eighties there was always another canteen on the horizon) I’d get the brews in with those few pence. Of course there were conductors who made a habit of approaching customers who were just getting off the bus and they made a regular brew fund out of those last minute bus fares. Others, those more dishonest ones, and I am sad to say Neil fell into that category, went out of their way not to give out tickets or even issued blank tickets. 

One day Neil got his hands burned. He’d issued a blank ticket to a customer and who should board the bus but the fraud squad. They checked the tickets and pulled Neil up regarding the blank ticket. Neil went to a tribunal where he was accused and faced the sack but an incredible stroke of luck came his way. The fraud squad lost the evidence. They’d misplaced the offending blank ticket and Neil managed to hang onto his job with a stern warning. The fraud squad Inspector, a not very pleasant chap nicknamed Himmler, came up to Neil and told him in no uncertain terms, he had him in his sights and one day he’d get him.

Well, Neil went on to become a driver and then a one man driver and by then, as far as I know, he had left his nefarious past behind him. Still, you never could tell. Some busmen took fare fiddling to a fine art form and it wasn’t always the ones like Neil who were the perpetrators. One guy, I’ll call him Arthur, spent a pretty uneventful life working for the bus company. He never upset anyone, was always on time and was rarely off sick. He was very good with money, and apparently invested his bus driving pay packet well. Of course he was one of the first one man drivers and on a good wage. Anyway, he did really well for himself and owned a nice holiday home in Prestatyn. Good on him you might think. Then he dropped dead one day of a heart attack and a few weeks later his widow came into the depot with Arthur’s spare ticket machine. Spare ticket machine? What spare ticket machine? Nobody had a spare ticket machine! Has the penny has dropped yet? Arthur was issuing tickets and taking fares for himself! Somewhere along the way Arthur had ‘acquired’ another ticket machine. Nice scam. No wonder he had a holiday home in Prestatyn! At least the Depot Inspectors didn’t tell the wife.

Anyway, back to Neil although before going completely to Neil I have to tell you this, Just on the A6 in Levenshulme, we had a small busmen’s canteen. The thing about this canteen was that if you were on the Manchester to Hazel Grove or Stockport route you usually stopped here for your breakfast or lunch. Now if you were going towards Stockport the canteen was actually just by two double yellow lines. Just past the canteen was a turn in to the bus parking bays but if you were due for a meal break and your bus was carrying on to Stockport you had to go through the traffic lights and stop in the lay by, leave your bus and then walk back to the canteen. Now, what most people did was stop on the double yellows then shout into the canteen for the new crew. It was wrong but that’s what we did and no one made a fuss. Anyway, one day an Inspector’s job came available. Various people applied but the guy who got the job was Neil and he decided that his first order of business as an Inspector was to stop buses parking on those double yellow lines! He did so and made himself a very unpopular fellow indeed. He’d wait by the canteen door and ‘book’ any driver stopping on the yellow lines and plenty of times myself and other crews would be coming along, ready to stop and we’d see Neil waving us on so we’d carry on, through the lights and on to the layby.

Now here’s where Neil’s past caught up with him. In those days a new appointment was probationary for six months and Neil went along to an Inspectors’ meeting chaired by one of the senior Inspectors who just happened to be, yes you’ve guessed it, it was Himmler. Now Himmler took Neil to one side. Asked what he was doing in Inspector’s uniform and by the end of the week Neil was back driving his bus and someone else was in charge at Lloyd road.

Neil of course, had upset many people in his short term as an Inspector and he had forgotten the golden rule: Be nice to people on the way up because, well, you know the rest. No one ever spoke to Neil again and he cut a sad figure, shunned by his workmates and always sitting alone in the canteen. Shortly after he packed the job in.

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Floating In Space -free on kindle

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Free until 22nd January!

Floating In Space: Free offer!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Anyone who knows me will tell you I never give anything away free, so just to prove them wrong you can download the Kindle version of Floating In Space free from today until the 22nd January! Click the picture below to take you straight to the amazon.co.uk page!

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Floating In space is a novel set in Manchester in 1977 and if you like kitchen sink dramas like ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ and ‘A Kind Of Loving’ then you’ll love this book too.

If you remember the seventies I hope you’ll perhaps enjoy a trip down memory lane, if you’re younger then you’ll be pleased to know life did exist before mobile phones and the Internet were invented and if you’re familiar with Manchester then I hope you’ll recognise some of the locations, particularly the pubs and clubs mentioned.

Here’s me talking about the book on you tube:

http://youtu.be/A4dEXc9zXzI