R F writes
I received a message on a contact form from A.M., wishing to know the state of play with Carnbeg's hotels - specifically, on the afternoon tea front. Where could he go to find a traditional repast with plate-stand and those tea-time cakes called 'famcies'? This, more or less, was my reply to Mr M.
Alas, it's all getting quite ritzy these says. In the blog (not that it really is, yet) section I'll put up an account of current developments by the business editor of the Days. Later in the year there'll be a long story in the South Carolina Review about the horrors suffered by Weaverie Wabster's bar when it's taken over by a couple from the American South (fey piped music, the Gents renamed a Restroom, etc) - but the locals exact their revenge. (I'll put the story on the site, once it's been published.) As the trilling Marschallin was singing in the recent cut-price Latvian staging of 'Der Rosenkavalier' at the Ca'd'Oro opera house (formerly Cinema Bergman), 'It's the way of the world'. (But thereagain, not necessarily.)
You'll find a plate-stand on your table at the Shieling. A British magazine took a story about two Shieling women customers - friends, allegedly - who sit eyeing the one remaining coconut and jam sponge 'eiffel tower' cake under its Perspex dome; I'll check that it has appeared, and regale you with that before too long.
The Pine'n'Art doesn't do a plate-stand - but it does offer fetching triangular plates.
They're talking of re-opening the Grand, which used to be Scotland's finest Italian café. All very 'La Dolce Vita' and impossible-sounding, unless you saw it. It had cost the Lavezzolis a fortune even before it opened its doors in 1961, and the interest on the loans still hadn't been paid off when it folded in 2002. Before that the Café Cortina did good business, if ice-cream cones and sundaes are your thing. Tito Piccolino's pedal bike and refrigerated barrow with striped awning proved a Carnbeg fixture for many years: poky hats and double-nuggets, but unfortunately no plate-stand.
The proprietor of the Shieling, I hear, has said a very firm 'no' to a plasma HD screen in her establishment. 'Over my dead body'. Which, as a rival quipped, could be arranged.
Alas, it's all getting quite ritzy these says. In the blog (not that it really is, yet) section I'll put up an account of current developments by the business editor of the Days. Later in the year there'll be a long story in the South Carolina Review about the horrors suffered by Weaverie Wabster's bar when it's taken over by a couple from the American South (fey piped music, the Gents renamed a Restroom, etc) - but the locals exact their revenge. (I'll put the story on the site, once it's been published.) As the trilling Marschallin was singing in the recent cut-price Latvian staging of 'Der Rosenkavalier' at the Ca'd'Oro opera house (formerly Cinema Bergman), 'It's the way of the world'. (But thereagain, not necessarily.)
You'll find a plate-stand on your table at the Shieling. A British magazine took a story about two Shieling women customers - friends, allegedly - who sit eyeing the one remaining coconut and jam sponge 'eiffel tower' cake under its Perspex dome; I'll check that it has appeared, and regale you with that before too long.
The Pine'n'Art doesn't do a plate-stand - but it does offer fetching triangular plates.
They're talking of re-opening the Grand, which used to be Scotland's finest Italian café. All very 'La Dolce Vita' and impossible-sounding, unless you saw it. It had cost the Lavezzolis a fortune even before it opened its doors in 1961, and the interest on the loans still hadn't been paid off when it folded in 2002. Before that the Café Cortina did good business, if ice-cream cones and sundaes are your thing. Tito Piccolino's pedal bike and refrigerated barrow with striped awning proved a Carnbeg fixture for many years: poky hats and double-nuggets, but unfortunately no plate-stand.
The proprietor of the Shieling, I hear, has said a very firm 'no' to a plasma HD screen in her establishment. 'Over my dead body'. Which, as a rival quipped, could be arranged.
June 13, 2008