*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Sunday, May 09, 2021
COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: From my sketchbook, by JD
Saturday, May 08, 2021
THE WEEKENDER: Decorating the money pit... by Wiggia
I think this decorator has been on an inclusivity and diversity course; where to start? |
He’s got to go! He refuses to move or get a job, and I refuse to paint round him; and now he says the sofa doesn’t match the curtains! Ingrate. |
Friday, May 07, 2021
FRIDAY MUSIC: Northern Soul, by JD
The Wiki page explains its origins, ironically enough, in London:
The term "Northern Soul" emanated from the record shop Soul City in Covent Garden, London, which was run by famous soul music collector Dave Godin.[3] It was first publicly used in Godin's weekly column in Blues & Soul magazine in June 1970.[4] In a 2002 interview with Chris Hunt of Mojo magazine, Godin said he had first come up with the term in 1968, to help employees at Soul City differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother. Godin referred to the latter's requests as "Northern Soul":
"I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren't interested in the latest developments in the black American chart. I devised the name as a shorthand sales term. It was just to say "if you've got customers from the north, don't waste time playing them records currently in the U.S. black chart, just play them what they like – 'Northern Soul'".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Thursday, May 06, 2021
Voting Day
In my constituency we have to vote for a Police and Crime Commissioner and Mayor. I did have a look at all the candidates' statements for both roles.
It seems all the PCC candidates are agin crime; no-one is running on a platform of releasing all prisoners and sacking all the police. How to choose?
The Mayoral incumbent had a top role in business but I've heard nothing I can remember about what he's done since donning the gold chain four years ago.
I don't know what others have done. I excluded LibDems who as far as I can see are all things to all people; and an axe-grinder or two. Other than that, I clutched at straws: this one is ex-military; one in each race wears the Reform rosette (formerly Brexit Party) - good or bad? - certainly we need political reform, nationally.
Oh dear.
At least the system is using an Alternative Vote in both contests - first and second preference.
I suppose I'll just have to take a mild interest in the result.
Monday, May 03, 2021
"Build Back Better" - really? by JD
But we have been here before; Alan Hull of Lindisfarne wrote this song about T Dan Smith, 'Mr Newcastle' who wanted to 'build back better' by demolishing half of the City of Newcastle and rebuilding it as 'the Brasilia of the North'. Oscar Niemayer's plans for Brasilia didn't turn out too well either.
The results of Dan's 'plan' were the uglification of the city centre. Just one example of this was the elegant Royal Arcade, designed by John Dobson, which was demolished to make way for a huge roundabout serving the new central motorway. The Arcade was carefully 'unbuilt' and the stones were numbered and stored to be rebuilt in another location at a later date. Under the supervision of the usual crop of 'wise' civic leaders, the stones were numbered in chalk which quickly disappeared in the rain. Dan Smith subsequently ended up in jail after his involvement with John Poulson and a huge financial scandal which led to the resignation of Reginald Maudling who was Home Secretary at the time.
Smith was not the only political 'visionary' who thought he could improve our lives with grand civic projects and brand new housing, which at that time meant flattening terraced housing and replacing them with 'streets in the sky' tower blocks which were universally hated by everyone except architects and planners. I have previously posted on the subject here https://theylaughedatnoah.
It is possibly unfair to single out Dan Smith but his story is the one with which I am most familiar. However I know that planning disasters including the hated tower blocks were widespread in the 60s and 70s. I have also known and worked with many architects and every single one I have known was enthusiastic, almost evangelical about the ideas of the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and all of the other modernist vandals. Nobody bothered to ask the people who were rehoused in those tower blocks. It is no coincidence that most of these blocks have been demolished.
So the current claim that this latest slogan of 'build back better' will give us a bright shiny new future is just more of the same; in other words it is a lie because we know that politicians are not capable of building anything.
And then there will be the unintended consequences of the latest 'build back better' fad just as there were the unintended consequences of the earlier utopian plans to create cities of the future with their skyscrapers (have you noticed it is always skyscrapers?)
In the following video clip, Roger Scruton is in conversation with Hamza Yusuf about the impact of modern ugly architecture on Islamic culture and why beauty matters. He describes the modern city as looking like a mouth full of broken teeth. One of the many people who hated the destruction of human scale cities was an architectural student named Mohammed Atta who had been an architecture student in Hamburg and he hated the inhumanity of high rise buildings of the type his parents were moved into in Cairo. Scruton implies that when Atta flew an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre in New York, it was for him not only a political/religious act against the USA/unbelievers but also a symbolic blow against soulless, oppressive architecture.
Scruton talks about Mohammed Atta flying into the Twin Towers at 1:30 onwards:
Sunday, May 02, 2021
COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Fencing By The Book Of Arithmetic, by JD
The book was published in 1630 after his death and also after the death of Shakespeare. Somehow the man from Stratford knew about Thibault’s style of fencing. At that time there would have been news pamphlets and manuscripts in circulation possibly with information on new ideas from around Europe. And it appears that Shakespeare understood Thibault’s style, or system.
Saturday, May 01, 2021
THE WEEKENDER: Sweet Charity... For Whom? by Wiggia
Advancing years mean different things to different people; items like wills need making or need re-writing according to circumstances.
It is very difficult not to be a cynic when one is bombarded with television requests for £3 a month for everything from clean water to medicines to saving an endangered species. Sponsoring a snow leopard has to be one of the biggest cons in charity advertising, what with so few of them left, though at the moment I feel we are the endangered species; and all these requests come from international charities with huge reserves and CEOs on six figure salaries. I don’t need to go into the minutiae of how they operate and spend money; it has all been revealed many times in recent years and it paints a portrait of greed not charity.
Friday, April 30, 2021
FRIDAY MUSIC: Jazz-ish, by JD
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Six-monthly reviews of our loss of freedom are not enough
_________________________________________________
Dear Xxx
Request for urgent questions in Parliament re HMG’s coronavirus strategy
As one of your constituents I request that you ask questions in Parliament – and encourage colleagues to do so – about the frequency of Parliamentary reviews of arrangements to deal with the Covid outbreak.
As you know, the country has suffered the most enormous and costly disruption to normal life for over a year and yet reviews are scheduled at six-monthly intervals, the last having taken place on March 25. I hope you will agree that the Opposition needs to do much more to challenge the Government, since information is changing all the time about the virus, measures to combat it and most especially the associated human and financial costs.
This may be of particular interest to yourself because of the long and hard work you have done promoting the interests of less-advantaged women and their families, both as an MP and prior to that as a local councillor. People like these have been among the hardest hit by school closures, restrictions on movement and association with others etc.
In case you have not seen it, I enclose an excellent article by Professor Simon Wood of the University of Edinburgh, on the cost per life saved of governmental measures against Covid. His rough estimate is that these work out at some six to nine times the ceiling cost per Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) set by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
Relevant to your political priorities is his point that poorer people have much less life expectancy and quality of health than richer people, and the cost of governmental Covid strategy would be repaid far more by addressing these inequalities.
This is why I urge you to press the Government to much more frequent and thorough reviews – in Parliament, skilfully challenged – of its coronavirus strategy. Had, for example, the Government chosen to use its powers under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, these reviews would be held at 30-day intervals (at the longest), with Parliament empowered to modify or cancel measures at any time.
I hope that this might be raised in Questions to the Prime Minister and the issues also aired by your Party wherever possible in the media.
Sunday, April 25, 2021
COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Ginger biscuits, by JD
These ginger biscuits are better than anything I have found in any shop - they are softer than the concrete hard shop bought ones and if you dunk them for too long they are laible to dissolve into a gingery flavoured tea which is not necessarily a design fault!
- Melt margarine and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat; add the syrup.
- Sieve the flour, ginger and bicarb in a bowl, then add the melted mix of syrup etc.
- Mix well until stiff (the mixture stiffens as it cools) then form into small balls, about 1" or so in diameter. Place these on a greased baking tray and leave a good space between them.
- Bake at gas mark 5 for 12-15 mins., or until the required shade of ginger.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
THE WEEKENDER: Old English Sheepdog, by Wiggia
I read in the Times an article stating that the Old English Sheepdog (OES) is in serious decline as a breed: only 226 puppies were registered with the Kennel Club last year, the lowest number since 1960.
I am not surprised, I cannot remember when I last saw one in a park or street, they were never numerous but you did come across them.
As with all pedigree dogs fashion has a stake in how popular they are. The current league leaders were in most cases themselves a rarity a few decades ago, but the quest for smaller dogs was not something I thought I would see in this country. The French had cornered the market in what I called restaurant dogs, dogs that would appear at the table with their owners, horrible habit but I could always pass that off as a French idiosyncrasy.
No, we always had proper dogs, Not any more it seems, it's now a toss up between Pit Bulls for the chavs and something you can carry in a handbag; neither can be called proper dogs, both are at extreme ends of the canine spectrum and serve two very different needs of their owners.
The current trend to be different shows with celebs talking about their cross bred dogs such as cockerpoos or such, and the silly prices they fetch; why a mongrel should fetch the ridiculous sums they do is beyond me though it isn’t my money so I have no skin in the game as they say. It is as though there is a race to have the most stupid cross as a badge of honour - Great Dane x Dachshund, the mind boggles but I am sure they are working on it!
My first OES was purchased soon after my marriage. We had always had dogs in the family as had my wife's parents so owning one was not the problem, but what to go for? We both wanted a decent size dog with firstly a good temperament, and would have gone for a German Shepherd, but in the early Seventies the breed was suffering from some bad breeding resulting in hip problems and temperament issues, so that was out. Other larger breeds were either what I called, unfairly, draught excluders - Labs or mad such as Red Setters; Golden Retrievers were also going through a time of bad hips and entropion when an eyelid turns in against the eye itself so another crossed off the list. There were other breeds but unlike today in this fashion-driven world you rarely saw them, so we had little knowledge of their ways.
Knowing we were putting a lot on our plate with looking after one we decided on an OES. Again, the only problem I had was that although you did see them around they were not in big numbers and my knowledge of breeders unlike later was scarce (and the truth about the one we used only came to light later.) Anyway, home he came and soon settled in, but as he matured a problem arose: when taking him out to socialise him, it became apparent he was frightened of his own shadow. Walking along a street he would leap across in front of me at the sound of a gate opening and a lot of similar things spooked him, something as a puppy had happened which made him this way but I never discovered what.
Talking to a fellow dog walker one day in the park we spoke of my problems and he said why don’t you go to the local Dog Training Club. Little did I realise what it would lead to further down the line.
Nearly all dog training clubs have a beginners' class or a course for dogs to make them more socially acceptable. The truth is - and I doubt it has changed - these courses pay the hall hire and the rest of the more advanced handlers and dogs benefit from the facilities; that may be an over generalisation but it certainly applied in those days.
As an aside for a pet dog you only need certain basic rules, and all can be imprinted and taught at quite an early age: to learn that no means no, to walk by your side without pulling you all over the place, to come when called (the most difficult to instil in a dog), to stay and to drop on command. The rest is not needed for a pet dog but many dog clubs insist on trying to train pet dogs before they can even get acclimatised to the new surroundings. The only thing a dog club is really good for in puppy training is socialising with other dogs, the rest is common sense.
Oh and sending a dog away to be trained is pointless if you are not trained yourself; the owner/handler needs training first.
As I soon learned with a dog that that is easily distracted, towing him around a hall full of dogs that have no idea why they are there nor the handlers is not the way forward. All initial puppy training should be in a quiet situation and kept as simple as possible for those first steps in obedience training, something I soon learned and acted upon, but progress was slow and he was still spooked by all manner of things and it wasn’t getting any better.
A talk by a very good trainer got me to buy a book that I followed through on. It was an American publication that had a method of training that would be frowned upon, even banned today: it basically made the dog more afraid of you than any outside influences and though I look back in and say never again, all else had failed totally and this was the last resort and it worked, he came on leaps and bounds and the initial hard approach was slowly dropped as he responded.
That old adage ‘you have to be cruel to be kind’ was never more apt, though the experience was not a pleasant one, but it was a different time, not as enlightened as today, nevertheless all else had had absolutely no effect and I had nowhere to go other than forget it all and put up with a dog I could never take off a lead.
So much work had gone into getting to that stage I could walk him down the road without events happening that I took it further. People must have thought I was mad as I tied him to zebra crossing posts and made him stay so as to get him to accept traffic; I would take him to Romford station and wait for trains to come in etc. etc. He was not put in harm's way but it all paid off as he went everywhere with me and after all that was never other than the dog I would want to own.
My second OES did even better and with a better handler would have won championships I am sure. I suffered from nerves at those vital moments and dogs sense that and it got through to him when it mattered, but he got two reserve tickets, second places and was chosen to represent the South of England in the first team competition at Crufts.
But that is enough of the training side. The breed attracts attention and the Dulux advert was a God send for breeders, but not quite so good for the breed: I would be asked where to go to buy one, and there were plenty of poor breed kennels in this breed as there are in all the others, but my initial response was to put people off buying one: unless they have actually owned one, no one can contemplate the work involved to keep them in good condition. The weekly grooming alone is not something to be taken lightly: the muddy paws that have to be washed every time out in rainy weather, the washing of the nether regions which get caked if you don't wash and the cutting away of the hair round the privates for the same reason and the same with hair between the toes that would go solid with mud if you fail to do that. Many owners tie the facial hair up away from the eyes because they have obviously difficulty seeing through that thick fringe, but we cut it away, neater and easier and the dog doesn’t look like a big girl's blouse, and as they weren’t show dogs it didn’t matter. These are all tasks that cannot be neglected, for if you do the task is a chore and a long one plus it is not comfortable for the dog; hairy ears also have to plucked and cleaned weekly.
And this one from 1899. Already, showing them was beginning to make changes to the breed that became ever more pronounced over the years.
When I started looking for my second dog I had heard that there were actually a few still working on farms, but tracking them down turned out be a dead end. In desperation I turned to Florence Tilley, then the owner of the most famous OES kennels in the world down in Shepton Mallett. Shepton was her Kennel Club prefix and the history of her kennel went back to around the early 1900s with her father, but I knew she had an encyclopedic mind as regards the breed, so we went down and visited her.
At first she wanted to sell me a show dog; it was only when I explained about my first OES and wanted if possible one with some working background she changed her tack and said leave it with her and she would ring.
I expected nothing and carried on looking, fruitlessly, myself, and then nearly six months later I got a call: she had three, and was I interested? We went down that weekend and the story was told. These dogs were not bred by her but came from an old friend, a farmer, this was the last litter he'd bred as he was 90 and he brought the pups over in his Rolls Royce which he had had from new in 1937 I believe, but what was important was he still had a couple working on his farm and these were from that stock; one stood out and he came home with us the same day.
And the rest is history. He romped through the lower qualifying classes and qualified for the Championship class; as I said, no other OES has got anywhere near the heights he did; plus his film with Bernard Cribbins and a stellar cast - he played Bernard's dog in the original Dangerous Davies film about a hapless detective played by Cribbins. He was a special dog and a wonderful friend to us as all were.
The Kennel Club and others have a lot to be ashamed of in the way that breeds have become distorted in looks, size etc. To conform with the winning trends in show dogs many are so far removed from what was originally intended it has become a joke. Most breeds were bred to to have a useful working life, the working group; today's OES would look ridiculous on a farm and would be totally impractical.
Even the KC breed standards by which all breeds are judged have become elastic to accommodate what becomes a winning fashion, and in so doing does not ‘improve’ the breed but in many cases creates long-term physical problems.
A good example of how dogs change for the show ring as opposed to a working strain can be seen in Springer Spaniels. Springers as gun dogs are selected for working traits, not how they look; the two side by side are totally different breeds but only one is true to type, whatever the breeders say. Even breeds like the German Sheperd is having fashion thrust upon it, the breed is a guard dog but many of the fashion changes that are now required for winning in the show arena are against the standard set in its homeland; only one can be right and that is the German version. Many other breeds have suffered the same fate - the Bull breeds have become so accentuated in their looks they have trouble breathing as have other pug faced dogs, but still fashion prevails.
I should imagine today anyone looking for an OES like my second one with a working background would be laughed at. He must have been almost the last of a type though even he resembled the modern version as can be seen in the header photo. He is the one on the left, the other was my last OES; he came from show stock, and did remarkably well in obedience up to a point, he simply could not take the pressure of training after a certain point and I retired him and myself from competition.
I had done my bit. The competition at the top level was becoming a one breed event for Border Collies, quite natural that people would want the most intelligent and biddable breed to train and they are without peer, but a lot of the fun had gone out of it and for me it had run its course.
I don’t think the breed will die out. It may have had its zenith in the days when celebrities owned one like Kevin Keegan and Paul McCartney with his ‘Martha.’ It is almost a national symbol after the Bulldog and no doubt fashion will swing back towards real dogs again, in time.
Friday, April 23, 2021
FRIDAY MUSIC: Sun Ra, by JD
Another musician who defies categorisation is Sun Ra with his fabulous Arkestra(sic), who claimed to have been born on the planet Saturn and took his inspiration from Ancient Egypt!
He was a jazz composer and keyboard player who led a free jazz big band known for its innovative instrumentation and the theatricality of its performances. Listening to his music it is hard to believe he was hired by Fletcher Henderson as pianist and arranger in the late 1940s! Whether you love or hate his music, it is impossible to ignore him or his influence on American music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/https://www.goodreads.com/
https://www.discogs.com/
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Newsnight: See Emily Play
BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis tries on the idea that Israel is discriminating against Palestinians re Covid vaccinations:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000vcc8/newsnight-20042021 - from 35:00 in...
Maitlis appears not to distinguish between Palestinians domiciled in Israel who will have been offered the jab like all other citizens, and those who are in the disputed territories where the Palestinian Authority has determined to make its own arrangements using the Russian vaccine.
She also tries to nail the Ambassador on failing to accept a two-state solution but is reminded that it's a solution ruled out by the Palestinian side.
Melanie Phillips unpicks Emily's attack here:
https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/rattling-israels-bbc-tormentors
She's often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrow
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Covid regulations: Parliamentary opposition needs an MOT
When the Opposition forgets its duty to oppose – the
Spectator’s editorial on 10 April called it a ‘collapse of democratic scrutiny’
- HMG is unlikely to be suitably hard on itself. On the contrary, in the panic
to ‘do something’ it drove through the Coronavirus Act in a single day in each
House, worded so as to give itself not only wide powers to restrict our
movements (Schedules 21 and 22) but also a shockingly relaxed six months
between Parliamentary reviews, the last having taken place on 25 March in the
space of a mere 3 ½ hours https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-03-25/debates/9701394F-FF53-4364-85E1-F017B13CE921/Coronavirus
.
As Lord Sumption noted in his October lecture ‘Government by
Decree’ https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/privatelaw/Freshfields_Lecture_2020_Government_by_Decree.pdf
and as reconfirmed by the Health Secretary in the 25 March debate, the Government
is basing its measures on the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984,
which is worded in a dangerously woolly way. Lord Sumption commented: ‘It is a
basic constitutional principle that general words are not to be read as
authorizing the infringement of fundamental rights,’ and contrasted that 1984
Act with one the Government might have chosen to use instead, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/36/contents
.
Like the 1984 Act the 2004 Act allows the Government carte
blanche, but recognising the perils of such power it also requires, says
the noble Lord:
‘a high degree of Parliamentary scrutiny… Emergency
regulations under the Civil Contingencies Act must be laid before Parliament in
draft before they are made. If the case is too urgent for that, they must be
laid before Parliament within seven days or they will lapse. If necessary,
Parliament must be recalled. Even if the regulations are approved, the
regulations can remain in force for only 30 days unless they are renewed and
reapproved. Unusually, Parliament is authorised to amend or revoke them at any
time.’
The Government’s information and strategies may or may not
be correct in every detail, but it should not be left to the news and social
media, demonstration and riot to provide that scrutiny and opposition.
Perhaps our long involvement with the European imperial
project and its masses of secondary legislation has led us to forget how our
own system works. Westminster resembles a vintage car put up on bricks while
the owner was abroad, and now it has to be serviced to make it roadworthy
again. Before the law machine roars into life and straight for the nearest
tree, we need the brakes and steering provided by the committees, the
Opposition and the House of Lords.
My suggestion, which I hope you will accept, is that we
should pick up on Lord Sumption’s observations and ask our MPs to press the
Government to re-base its extraordinary power grab on the Civil Contingencies
Act 2004 so that an equally extraordinary degree of scrutiny can be applied. If
that had happened on 25 March, the 30-day review would be due this week, rather
than next September.
MPs will only respond to their own constituents, so please
find your representative and contact them as per the information on TheyWorkForYou
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ .
Sunday, April 18, 2021
COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: South America in paint, by JD
This painting is 8" x 8" and is acrylic on canvas. I did a watercolour (15" x 15") ages ago which has been hanging on the wall for the past twenty years or so. The second Google maps image below shows the view from within the painting looking out over the Pacific. The cliff top at left is where I stood to take a few photographs which I have used as the basis for the paintings. That original painting was a composite of the photographs.
Saturday, April 17, 2021
THE WEEKENDER: Mighty Meaty Matey, by Wiggia
So as one does I started delving into archives of old menus, from the cafe restaurants of our youth and before to those early fine dining establishments that we went to if we had the cash for a special occasion.
We soon forget, yet some things are very obvious in those periods, how the posh restaurants insisted in printing menus in French which hardly anyone understood and resulted in calling the waiter over and stabbing a finger at what one thought was a dessert to be snootily told it was a vegetable and then having to cringingly ask for advice on what was available in that section, only then for the waiter to, still snootily, repeat the offerings in French with an English translation for the proles.
When they started to put English translations underneath the French version it was the last throw of the dice in pretentiousness.
I remember well the first time I took my to be wife for our first proper meal, lunch at Rules, London's oldest (1794) restaurant:
Having done my ‘homework’ I ordered the Châteaubriand and settled back on the banquette to peruse the wine list. I knew very little about wine in those days apart from my initiation into the intricacies of German wine labels, so when the wine waiter came calling I ordered the Rudersheimer Rosengarten and the wine waiter said ‘good choice’; a kindly man under the circumstances because it was anything but.
In those days fine dining was for the other people. We had the first signs of chain restaurants in the likes of Bernie Inns and others, it made a change from the plastic cheese roll under a glass dome cooking quietly on the pub counter.
I remember Woolworth had a rather good cafe, it was only when researching this I discovered just how comprehensive their pre-war menu was:
Apart from an early attempt at the bottom of the menu to garner feedback, the other item of note is the amount of meat products on the menu and ‘lobster salad’, in Woolworths!
Higher up the scale, this menu from Wheelers The Ivy gives another insight into how the other half ate in the Fifties, still clinging to the French language and a preponderance of meat and fish dishes. Good to see the old favourites up there, the potted shrimps and prawn cocktail, so derided since but making a comeback now:
Menus from other posh eateries abound and none are posher than Buck House. A Queen's menu from 1906 shows nine courses and again plenty of protein; naturally at this moment in time the menu is again in French. Magnums, quite rightly, of champagne for Derby Day: they must have had a tip.
The great ocean liners that dominated transatlantic travel and vied for national pride with elegance and speed for those first class passengers and made sure they never went without during their voyage.
Eight courses at the Captain's table, I bet that went down well - I’ll get my coat...
All things are relative to the age but sometimes there are surprises on these menus in that what are considered delicacies today and have a price to match, were not so in days gone by. Oysters and foie gras were cheap and plentiful, as two examples; lobster as on the Woolworth's menu was available almost everywhere as were ortolans; today you struggle to find decent whelks.
The one below I actually remember. Although the fare is similar to the others a couple of items stand out: tripe and onions, and marrow bones; long time since I saw those two on a menu.
Today we are used to buying products that are cheaper than in the past because of modern big farming techniques and international trade, but not everything works that way. This wine list from a Cunard liner in 1927 shows the price for a bottle of Chateau Latour at 12/6; £1 then equates roughly to £44 today, making that bottle in today's money around £27 and that is a restaurant price; today a bottle of Latour retail would set you back in the region (depending on vintage) of £400-600 a bottle. You really could drink yourself to death in style for very little money then.
And when did you last see a seafood menu like this one? - and while you are perusing the menu, do not play with the candelabres:
But today those whole plates of steak have disappeared, we are presented with artistically arranged plates of very little for very much. At least the Argentinians know how to cook and present a steak - all vegans look away now…