Doing something different

 I love the Channel Four television programme The Secret Millionaire.

Can I have a volunteer...?

Since I notice from the "Blogspot" statistics that I have readers of this blog as far away as Russia and the Ivory Coast, I had better give a basic outline of the way that this TV programme works. A millionaire goes away "under cover" for a period of 7-10 days to live in a deprived area, on an allowance equivalent to the minimum wage, looking at how things could be changed for less fortunate people through relatively small investments. At the end of the stay, the millionaire chooses how to donate a substantial sum of his/her own money to some of the projects that he/she has observed. (For more background, follow the link in my opening sentence above.) This programme always inspires me, and you soon realise that what makes the difference and sparks the change is not the money, but the people who are giving their time. 

The more I watched the programme the more envious I became of the millionaires; not of their money, but of the personal satisfaction they obviously derived from their involvement with a broad range of organisations and activities. So I did what they'd been doing on the TV programme and started to look around my home town for opportunities to get involved with voluntary activities.

I made an appointment for an interview at the Volunteer Centre, where I filled in forms and struggled to answer challenging questions about why I wanted to be a volunteer, and what relevant skills I might have. In the end it was suggested that I might be suited to becoming a "Progression Mentor" under the auspices of the Prince's Trust. I would be coaching and counselling young people into finding employment or becoming self-employed. (At this point I expect my own children will now fall about in hysterics at their memories of the experiences of the two Danish exchange students who, many years ago, ran out of our house in floods of tears and sat on the lawn, refusing to be moved until someone took them away to find a more gentle host family.) But I think I have matured in the subsequent 30-odd years and I might, today, have something to offer. It will, in any case, be a while before they let me loose on the young beneficiaries enrolled in the scheme.

You don't have to be Lord Sugar to help an apprentice

If all goes well then I shall be working as a volunteer, but I have a suspicion that I might find that I enjoy mentoring and coaching to the extent that I add this to my career portfolio and look for clients in the corporate world.(One of the ideas behind the volunteering movement is that it helps people find their niche in commercial activity.) Not that I am keen on getting into full-time business again and marketing myself because that's something I find just too  demanding. Once you work for yourself, you discover that success is 20% talent and 80% marketing. I find it depressing to see how self-promotion outperforms talent in many areas of business, but that is the reality. I'm not going to change at my age: my satisfaction comes from the impact of what I do more than from the money I make.

"I'm not sure what I want to do..."

A while back I wrote about the satisfaction of meeting people who had enjoyed meals in our restaurant, but that satisfaction was nothing compared to meeting the young people who had "Saturday jobs" at my restaurant, or who left school and started their careers as kitchen assistants - a glorified word for washers-up and vegetable-peelers. 
I have found it very rewarding when I have met people - now in their 30s and 40s  - who tell of the value of their school-years' part-time employment in the restaurant. They tell me how they learned to work as part of a team, and how much they learned about customer service from interacting with diners in the restaurant. And more...

It's all about confidence, self-respect   and ambition

Almost 15 years ago, I took my father out to celebrate his 85th birthday at what was Lincolnshire's top restaurant at that time, exclusively listed in the Michelin guide. 
As we pulled into the car park a young man in chef's whites strode out from the kitchen and gave us a cheery wave."Hello, Mr H" he said "I'm Second Chef here now!"  
Nothing could have made me happier...this young man had started in my kitchens on a Government-funded employment scheme, and for a while I almost despaired of his career prospects.

Today, that same young man runs his own highly successful restaurant. And that, above all, is why I look forward to volunteering and mentoring.

Oompah...in Lincoln

It's October and that means Oktoberfest. Not only in Bavaria, it seems. The Rotary Clubs of Lincoln know a good fund-raising idea when they see one and if it involves the consumption of large quantities of beer, then it doesn't take too much persuasion to drum up an enthusiastic response. They got together to rent the events centre on the Lincolnshire Agricultural Showground and persuaded the town band of a Bavarian village to come over and join with the Lincolnshire Fire & Rescue Concert Band to create an authentic event. 

2012 - Lincoln's First Oktoberfest 

But the Musikverein Lengenwang is more than an amateur Oompah Band and would do more than play in the beer tent. 

Rotary had arranged a series of concerts in the High Street, in Castle Hill and in the Cathedral.  Given that the videos on their website showed them performing the rowdy “Prosit!” toast at their own local Oktoberfest, I rather wondered what their repertoire might stretch to in the cathedral. There had to be a story here somewhere, and being intrigued by the background of the  Musikverein Lengenwang, I “googled” it in my best fact-checker and investigative journalist mode. 

Neuschwanstein Castle

I discovered that Lengenwang is a community of just 1,365 inhabitants living in 14 hamlets nestled in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, not far from the famous castles of the eccentric King Ludwig II at Hohenschwangau.

The Club dates back to 1846 and now has a youth division of 19 members in addition to the main band of 45 musicians. That means roughly 5% of the local population play in one or other of the bands – a serious commitment to their music. 

Alas, by the time I felt tempted by the idea of the Lincoln Oktoberfest, the event was a total sell-out. Well done Rotary! - and a welcome boost for the coffers of the chosen charity - Linkage Community Trust which provides care, specialist further education and employment services to enable people with learning disabilities  to realise their full potential.

Alas, no beer in the cathedral!

So no blonde Fraulein would be leaning over the table with a litre of beer for me, but I could get the flavour of their music by walking  across the road from my flat to the cathedral for the Friday lunchtime concert. 

I took my seat in the main nave of the cathedral, somewhat bemused by the traditional dirndl dresses and big Guy Fawkes hats of the lady members of the band and the bucolic breeches and white stockings of the men. The composition of the band was  stereotypical to the point of caricature. The earnest conductor & musical director wore a full moustache and a broad smile as he bowed deeply to acknowledge the welcoming applause of the small but appreciative audience. There were no programme notes to reveal his identity, but he must have been the local schoolmaster and/or church organist. Then there was the teenage percussionist – who looked like every boy drummer in every boy-band on X-Factor. There was the obligatory ice-maiden sylph-like flautist, with looks that could kill, and a back row of red-cheeked, beer-bellied trombonists any one of whom could have doubled for Jimmy Edwards in his prime and had the moustache to prove it.

A performance of outstanding musicianship

All my fears and cynicism proved totally unfounded. The band delivered a faultless programme of classical music and regional tunes that were totally in keeping with the setting of the cathedral nave. The sound of a full-strength brass band in the acoustics of the cathedral was stunning and my only regret was that they didn’t allow themselves to go up-tempo for just one or two numbers. Lincoln Cathedral can take it. There are more than 40 concerts and recitals in the cathedral every year from the Hallé Orchestra to organ recitals, military bands and contemporary jazz. It would have been nice to have a bit of Oompah-pah. 

As they left the austere Uphill surroundings and went off and helped create Lincoln's first proper Oktoberfest, the cathedral returned to normal... but at Lincoln Cathedral, that could mean anything.

I can only hope that the fears that the band had expressed on their website proved well and truly unfounded: “Jetzt bleibt nur noch zu hoffen, dass das englische Bier so gut schmeckt wie daheim in Bayern” – Roughly translated as – “Let’s just hope that beer in England  tastes as good as beer back home in Bavaria." Well - if it was Bateman's of Wainfleet they should not have been disappointed.

Musikverein Lengenwang

You remind me of someone...

Have you every been told that you have  a Doppelganger? - someone who is is frequently mistaken for you - or vice versa. 

Haven't I seen you on the TV news?

When we had the restaurant, people used to confuse me with the late Bob Payton, - the restaurateur behind the Chicago Pizza Parlour and other themed restaurants, mainly in London. I think we met once or twice through the Restaurateurs Association and at similar industry events. He was my age and like me, this other Bob was a big man who loved restaurants and the hospitality industry. 
He lived in Lincolnshire, just up the road from good friends of ours, but died tragically, aged just 50, in a road accident, and was acknowledged with gracious obituaries in the national press on both sides of the Atlantic. 

It's strange when you are mistaken for someone else and it can be embarrassing when people stare at you, trying to work out why your face is familiar. Having run restaurants for the best part of 20 years in Lincoln, and had my own local magazine page as well as a regular spot on local radio, I was quite widely known locally back in the 80s and 90s. Well, to be honest, when you're my size people tend to remember you. 

The wine-list of our restaurant

On BBC Radio Four a few years ago, Professor Laurie Taylor recounted the story of his Sunday lunch in a Lincoln restaurant. Apparently, when I towered over his table and asked if he was enjoying his meal, he looked up at my dominant presence, and felt obliged to smile meekly and concur. I had that effect on customers, sometimes, but I think most customers left with positive memories. 

And many of them still seem to half-recognise this outsize gourmet, now that I've returned to Lincoln a dozen years later. I frequently find myself on the receiving end of puzzled glances when I move around town; it's that "I'm sure I know that person" look.
When I went to see a consultant at the Lincoln Hospital, his secretary glanced up at me, then back at her paperwork, and then her face lit up - "It's Bob, isn't it!" - She'd been one of my waitresses for several years.
On another occasion, when I rode on the bus up from the Commercial Quarter to the Cathedral Quarter, I was conscious of a couple making eye contact. Eventually, we all made the connection and realised that they'd been regular customers at Harveys for many years. I was amazed by their detailed recollections of menus and dishes they had enjoyed a couple of decades and more ago. I now regret that I didn't record more of those recipes, but at least I remember many of the favourites and these  appear regularly on my dinner party choices.

Meeting old acquaintances is not always such a cheerful experience, as I found out when I bumped into a retired bank manager who was helping out as an occasional Cathedral Guide. No, he wasn't a bank manager who had ever given us any problems: far from it in fact, as he set up the account that let us stay in business with the Littlehouse Restaurant at Doddington Hall, after Harveys closed down.  He was busy explaining the history of the Cathedral to a group of visitors, and I hung back so as not to distract him. Then, as the party moved on towards the Norman font, I said "Hello" and his face went white, as he looked at me with disbelief. 

"But I heard you'd passed away.." were his unconventional words of greeting that brought a smile to my face. "I don't think so," I replied, "you probably heard about my father's passing. He was 97, and I've come back to live in Lincoln in the hope of emulating his achievement."
  

Am I Twirly...?

The "Walk & Ride" bus service operates between
the Cathedral Quarter and the Commercial Quarter

This little bus stops at the West Front of the Cathedral, then winds around Bailgate before trundling down to the Commercial Quarter and the Railway Station, conveniently stopping by the Age Concern Day Centre along the way, for the benefit of its average passenger, though I don't consider myself qualified for that venue quite yet.
The logical rationale for this service would not be as a taxi service to the Day Centre, but more to  provide a "Park & Ride" service for visitors, with several stops around the Cathedral Quarter and at the Drop-Off points for tourist coaches. I am still baffled by the name of the service: "Walk & Ride," as distinct from the more usual "Park & Ride," but the little bus does provide a useful shuttle by linking Uphill Lincoln with Downhill Lincoln - the two distinct zones I wrote about in  my last post. Maybe that's the clue; they expect you to walk down the hill and ride back up afterwards, - or maybe vice-versa.
After a few weeks, I found other bus stops and other services that took me to the Central Bus Station rather than around the shopping centres, - and then I found an intriguing website that truly extended my horizons. 

http://www.transportdirect.info

Transportdirect is a website for anoraks like me, who happily drool over reading timetables. I have travelled since I was a teenager, and wherever I went, I picked up whatever information was available. At one stage I had a whole shelf of box-files, each labelled for a different part of the world, and each holding travel and tourism literature from cities and towns all around the world. I could look up the timetables and prices for Post-bus services between remote villages in the Austrian Alps, give you the opening hours of a visitor centre at a renowned vineyard in Cape Province, South Africa, or let you browse over the street plan of a small town in southern India. Discovering Transportdirect opened up a new world of travel possibilities. IKEA would no longer be exclusively for car-owners; the bracing breezes of Skegness could be accessible if I longed for the lonely sea and the sky, and I could hope onto a bus to the Nature Parks around the fringes of the city and join the Eastern European Lincolnites to forage for wild mushrooms.

Transportdirect will tell you how to get from anywhere to anywhere else around the UK, by public transport. You put in the postcode of where you are, the postcode of where you want to go and the date and time you want to travel.... and click the mouse. There is an immediate schedule of times of trains and buses, with maps to show the locations of the stops. I almost resented how easy it became, and missed the wizardry of having to learn to read the rubric and the legend of good, old-fashioned maps and timetables. 

The English Pensioner's Bus Pass

With a Senior Railcard in one hand and a Bus Pass in the other, I could afford to go almost anywhere. 
Of the two, I'd been using the Railcard for years, but the Bus Pass had sat untouched in an old wallet. I had a hang-up about free travel, and while I was perfectly happy to pay the Railways an annual premium for a card that would then give me a substantial discount on rail fares, I was less comfortable with a bus pass that meant I wouldn't have to pay anything. 
Carrying a bus pass felt like claiming a benefit to which I wasn't morally entitled. I felt like a scrounger. Unlike with the Senior Railcard, I hadn't paid for it, and I was uncomfortable using it. I was afraid I might misuse it and be accused of attempted fraud, or commit some other misdemeanour,  like the time I left my railcard in the car at the station car-park and was subsequently severely reprimanded by the on-board  ticket inspector. I only escaped a fine when I produced my Italian Identity Card and pleaded I had been living abroad - a totally irrelevant excuse, but he took pity on me. 
Needs must, so it was only a matter of days before I plucked up the courage to lose my Bus Pass virginity. I learnt that some buses wanted only to see my pass and other buses wanted me to put the card on a card-reader and then issue me with a blank ticket. On one occasion, my heart missed a beat when the card reader declared my pass invalid, but I learnt to spit-and-polish the magnetic strip and magically rejuvenate its validity in line with the printed date on the face of the card.

Throughout Lincolnshire the bus pass is valid from first thing in the morning. It's not like London, where the pass isn't valid till after the rush hour.  Down South, as each bus arrives at the stop, the cry goes up from the waiting pensioners..."Am I too early?"  The nickname stuck.

I've now completed my  bus pass apprenticeship.

Now I'm a Twirly, too.

Life in a middle-England Ghetto

It is neither the best of times, nor is it the worst of times, but Lincoln is, nonetheless, a Tale of Two Cities, (what the Dickens is he on about...?)
There's Uphill and there's Downhill, and in between there's Steep Hill which last year was named "Best Place in Britain" by the Academy of Urbanism. Back in the 1980s we ran Harveys Cathedral Restaurant in the square at the top of Steep Hill.

Steep Hill - Our restaurant was just at the top, on the right,

Most Lincolnites tend to be somewhat diffident about that accolade "Best Place in Britain," but Lincoln is, nonetheless, a fine city, and the increase in publicity over the past few years has taken Lincoln out of a confusing mix of agricultural obscurity linked to an interesting line in heavy industry. The full story is that Fosters of Lincoln built the world's first military tank - and it was tank warfare that ultimately broke the stalemate of trench warfare in WW1.
Today, Lincoln has become an increasingly popular tourist location, and for those of us who knew it in the 80s and earlier, it's a shame..! It was in many ways more appealing for us as residents, when Lincoln was still a very well-kept secret.

But, as I hinted, it is a divided town, split schizophrenic-ally between the austere Cathedral Quarter (Uphill,) and the bustling Commercial Quarter down on the other side of the railway tracks (Downhill.) I live Uphill, in what might be called the Cathedral Ghetto.

Lincoln Cathedral dwarfs the surrounding buildings

My address may be Minster Yard  but it's often referred to generically as a Cathedral Close, and in many ways "Close" is the right word. It's a close, tight-knit, and rather private community: a self-imposed ghetto.  According to the reference works, a ghetto is a "section of a city inhabited primarily by people of the same race, religion, or social background, often because of discrimination." 

Yup... that's Uphill Lincoln..!

When we opened the restaurant (Election Night, 3rd May 1979 - which was also the night my son Toby was born,) there were just a couple of eating places "Uphill." In those days, pubs were mostly places to drink, not places to eat, and folk didn't generally go out much at night. How different today! At least 20 or 30 eating places are within easy walking distance of my home, ranging from award-winning fish and chips to every kind of ethnic cuisine to half a dozen tea shops competing for the cream tea business. In the 80s, we used to drive all around the county, looking for places to dine on our night off from the restaurant, (booking our bills to "Competitive Analysis" and "Market Research!" ) 

Every kind of vegetable in the market

Sadly, eating out is off the budgetary radar now, but that's not an issue when I see what's happened to the food shops. What a change in what's on offer! 
Lincolnshire generates more fresh produce than any other county in England. In addition, Lincolnshire has faced up to the business opportunities created by the foodie boom. 
There are regular, thriving Farmers' Markets, dairies that produce delicious artisan cheeses - including the renowned Lincolnshire Poacher, a hard cheese that's midway between Cheddar and Parmesan. The national supermarket chains have opened vast food halls, offering the ingredients for just about every cuisine. On the other hand there is still room for a branch of Patisserie Valerie on the High Street, as well as traditional craft butchers producing classic Lincolnshire Sausages, pork pies, Haslet and Stuffed Chine, as well as new offerings to meet the demands of an ever-growing gourmet market. 
It's a very different scene from those early days of Harveys Restaurant, when my potato supplier took a curious look at the produce on the kitchen table and queried: "Is that what they call an adervercado?"

The Cathedral Quarter is a charming and picturesque place to live, but I needed the Commercial Quarter for markets and shops, so one of my first tasks was to find my way around. I already said this in my previous post, and all I've done here is waffle on about demographics and retail patterns. Apologies...back to basics....how do the buses work in Lincoln...?

The difference between being there and living there.

Caldarola - view from a nearby hillside

Caldarola. It's a pretty little town, but that's what it is, - and I'm not a small town person. Not that Lincoln is a big town (though technically a city) but a University and a Cathedral make a big impact on the character of a place. Caldarola has a magnificent castle, two fine churches and a picturesque piazza. But it's very provincial, rural and unsophisticated. On the other hand - I mused, as I lunched in the tiny restaurant down by the petrol station - there is a charm in being welcomed into an environment - in the Post Office, at the  bar, in the mini-supermarket, with charm and hospitality that more than compensate for the lack in  finesse. 

A backstreet in Sarnano

Like much of Italy, the countryside around Caldarola is dotted with hill towns that have changed very little over the centuries. in the summer every town has its festa and the different quarters proudly fly the flag of their area and compete in medieval sports, jousting, crossbows and the spectacular flag tossing. 

Just a front door

WIll I miss that? No, because I can go anywhere in Italy and enjoy that as a tourist, and it's something I only did a couple of times when I lived there. 

Then there's the architecture, and the heritage, but how could I possibly consider any sacrifice in that area since I now live a hundred yards from one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Britain.   

To put it in a nutshell, there is a world of difference between being in a country and living in a country. The Italy that we all love will always be there to be enjoyed whenever I reach for the Ryanair website. It is timeless, and it has a character and joie de vivre that is infectious and unchanging. Living in Italy is another matter, and unless you want to be part of the Middle England Chiantishire crowd, or shut yourself away as an artistic hermit, relishing isolation, then Italy is better visited than occupied. So when I drove down the avenue of oaks for the last time, I had few regrets and a lot of excited optimism.

The avenue of oak trees

I made the most of picking and eating sun-warmed figs from the trees in the garden, and I enjoyed my caffe corretto in the bar in the piazza,  and I played around packing and repacking my suitcases, check-weighing them to the regulation 23kg each, and slipping kilo-heavy wedges of Parmigiano into my hand-baggage.

I was booked on the Lufthansa flight from Ancona to Munich, connecting on to London. Lufthansa was a tactical choice because they have a generous baggage policy which allowed me to take an extra 2 suitcases totalling almost 50 kilos of baggage for a very reasonable additional charge. That meant I was pretty loaded down when I landed at Heathrow, but all that I had to do was wheel the trolley to the car I'd hired, sling the cases in the back and drive a couple of miles to my Travelodge where I climbed into bed and lay awake for an hour, pondering the huge decision I had taken.

When I left England 3 years previously, I had cleared out my flat. I had been ruthless with my books - to the benefit of the OXFAM antiquarian book operation, except for a few chosen volumes that I kept and others that I loaned to my son-in-law in trust for the next generation. My furniture and half my clothes had also finished up in charity shops. Before leaving Italy I'd donated yet more clothes to Humana clothes recycling, but there was still another car load of my property - a favourite IKEA chair, my music CDs, bedding, my African drum and all manner of oddments, all of which I ended up flying back to collect, three months later.

Right now, all I wanted to do was start nesting! I was tired of motorways, and I just wanted to get to Lincoln to unload and then return the car to the Car Rental office at Heathrow. It was a strange feeling, sitting in the train at Kings Cross, a couple of days later, and knowing that I'd never again own my own car (unless I won the lottery!) I sensed a new kind of independence which I rapidly grew to enjoy. No more worries about insurance costs or the MOT, never fretting over fuel prices, and never having to hunt for a parking space and pay an exorbitant sum to park while I nipped around the High Street and NEVER being caught out and being obliged to pay an outrageous parking fine. 

I would need a bus timetable, and the phone numbers of the taxi companies. I might even (God forbid!) need a shopping trolley. There would be lots to learn about my new way of life.