Lowland life
Devouring passion
Jeffrey Bernard
To spend just three days in a city is merely to glance at it, but what impressed me most was the architecture and the building materials. The stone is magnifi- cent. Princes Street has been in decline since the 1950s but a walk down George Street should be taken at a slow pace so as to savour it. For once I didn't mind having dodgy legs. What' did greatly surprise me about the place was the food therein. I ate like a glutton. I ate till I didn't want any more and then still went on eating, which is not only rather disgusting but not very good for You either. On the first day there Andrew Brown, the owner of the 369 Gallery, took me to the City Cafe and fed me on oysters followed by grilled salmon. In the evening there were fish cakes followed by turbot. Sunday brunch in the Café Royal consisted of Buck's fizz, a superb beef hash with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, fol- lowed by the best apple pie I have every attacked. I had been expecting porridge and the odd oatcake.
The oyster bar in the Café Royal is a sensational room: mahogany, stained glass, pictures made of Royal Doulton tiles, and the bar itself a lovely slab of red and white marble. The Café Royal and the Abbotsford number among the ten best bars I have ever been to. (The number one spot is still the bar at Bangpar-In upriver from Bangkok.) But, as I say, it was not a weekend of low life. It is true that I met an eccentric man who was drunk on sweet cider — ugh — and who was in love with his pet pug who was afflicted with a hernia; otherwise nothing happened. My `compan- ion' and I, as food writers say, strolled sedately around the city, me sniffing out bars and waiting for the next opportunity to get both feet in the trough, and she bought me a book of Wendy Cope's poetry.
I feel very bad about Wendy Cope. When I read in her column that she had backed all three of my Grand National fancies that was bad enough. When a cheque came whistling out of the blue for me a day later I felt really awful. It appears that I was a little the worse for wear on Grand National day as one can be at Christmas and on big race days and that just before the off I had a good bet on the winner, Rhyme 'N' Reason. I can't remem- ber phoning the bet over and I daren't reveal to the poet the size of the cheque. It is just too embarrassing. But if you are listening, Miss Cope, there is a bottle of champagne or what you will waiting for you in the Coach and Horses.
Speaking of which, returning to that pub after Edinburgh, in a foul mood to be back there, Norman handed me a' letter saying it was a cheque. I snapped at hiM and told him to shut up because it was bound to be a bill. It was a cheque. Having to apologise to Norman is quite horrible. He gets all forgiving and what, in his case, passes for charming. The smile on the face of the what? Rat? Cobra? I dunno. He says he can tell if there is a cheque in an envelope by looking at it. He says it is because he is a Jew. I don't believe him. I think he shoves my letters in the microwave to open them and then sticks them down again. It doesn't matter. I have no secrets from Norman. Nobody does. He can smell out impecu- niosity. Just as he could be a gold prospec- tor using his nose and not a pan. After he cashed my cheque I went out for lunch. One look at the restaurant and another at the menu and I was missing Edinburgh already. Dr Johnson was very wrong about the best thing to come out of Scotland.
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