Roman Leicester, 1971 (revisited 2008)

A word of explanation. In the 70s my second cousin (Dick from Durham) lived in Leicester. He wrote a series of poems entitled "A Leicester Calendar". This is one such.

The stars shine down on the broken columns of Rome,
On the fragment of wall, and the tussocky grass;
Long, long ago, the last legion went home:
Civilisations pass.

With the bricks of the Roman city, long and thin,
Men built the broad nave of St. Nicholas;

Near the site of Carey's cottage, we built the Holiday Inn:

Lord have mercy on us.

Old haunts

This past week has been half-term so we decided to go away for a few days. Incidentally, the boys are getting on well at school. Gregor comes home every day with another set of cereal boxes stuck together - mostly beehives, but occasionally an army tank. Alastair will stick to 3 afternoons for the time being. He's very tired by the end of the day and, although it's very fulfilling and beneficial for him, we don't need to push him too hard.

But back to the break. We decided to visit Leicester, where I went to college and where I still have a handful of friends, a couple of whom we were to meet up with and who will feature later in this Leicester series. But first, I retraced a few well-worn paths for the benefit of Belousovi and filling in the gaps.

Along a hidden alley off the busy London Road lies College Avenue in the afternoon sunlight.

I lived here in the second year with Jo from Wigan, Duffy from Manchester and John from Warrington. Next door but one were Helen from Eltham and Sally from Swindon. Opposite was Glaswegian Billy who taught me circus skills.

Skipping abodes in East Park Road and St. Stephen's Road, I jump to Avenue Road. St. Maxime's House. For the benefit of ex-flatmate Sanjhevi most particularly.
And Blockbusters on Queens Park Road. Just to make Sanjh larf.

And any whirlwind tour of Leicester naturally misses out many haunts you can't find the way back to. And so many of the businesses have changed too. Hill House Hammond is no more. Christopher Scotney is still going strong, but the jazz club is gone. So too are the pizza shops that I was a delivery driver for, dashing around in my little unsafe Suzuki. And the building that's going up in the centre is remarkable. Not from an architectural point of view, just mass. St Nicholas is all cranes and scaffolding. Brand new shopping malls. Builders sit in new cafes waiting to get on with something and it's probably going to be transformed for 21st century debt-ridden leisure by consumerism lifestyle when it's done. But I hope they don't touch the old market, however.....selling almost everything by real trading and shouting and knocking down prices and a whole new world for me back then and, if you got there at about 4 o-clock on a Saturday afternoon you could fill two bags with fresh stuff for a couple of quid and a cheeky bit of chat. It's where I bought my first 2 kilos of fresh mussels from Grimsby (though didn't ask for them in kilos then), and started to cook with things I'd never heard of before - okra, coriander, cumin seeds, plantains.

Fun at the Farmers' market

At the end of last month I took the boys to the Easton Farm Park farmers' market in the heart of rural Suffolk. It's a 45-minute drive - too far just for muddy veg and chutney - but there were other attractions to justify the distance.

As usual Gregor had a second breakfast trying all the offerings, the spicier the better; he seems to have inherited his father's palate, and iron stomach.

And my thrill-seeking side, perhaps. We had great fun sending him shooting off on this thing, though almost knocked a wandering Alastair into the next field in the process. Oops.

To calm things down a bit we checked on all the baby goats and rabbits and chicks and big turkeys and geese and ducks and have had quite enough of all that for a few months.

Jinak, I've been doing lots of cooking and lots of thinking about food. I took a picture of this Lowestoftian Indian menu cos the pans looked so nice, though it's slightly lost in blog translation without the appetite and smells. I think I took this photo after we'd eaten as there were more prawns to begin with. Looks like lots of leftovers too. Yum! spicy chickpea and spinach in a tomato sauce, king prawn with pomegranate and yoghurt, brinjal bhajee and rice for breakfast!