Divine Dines - The Cock and Coxcomb, Consett

How many times have you heard some silly arse saying "this is the best restaurant" or even "this is the greatest meal"? Fools of the mouth, fools of the head. Beware! holds that before one can comment on whether this or that restaurant is the best, one has to have experienced all competitors. As William Hartnell opined, "in order to conquer the Earth, you must first consume all living matter!" Welcome to our new comprehensive consumables column, starting in the auspicious surroundings of ex-steel town and notorious shell company hub, Consett, with the ever agreeable tones of garrulous, gorse-chinned one-time politician Barclay Minster.

Barclay Minster. He can talk.

The little woman and I arrived at the Cock and Coxcomb, poorly signposted just past the prole purgatory of B&M, on the south side of town towards dreary Delves, in quite a fug due to the worst traffic. Fools of the road. One wonders what attracts them. That's a rhetorical device; don't write in! (Though if you must, at least address it to Annick and baffle the silly girl.)

Craving some culinary comfort, first our weary eyes were assaulted with the sluttishly attention-seeking faux-Jacobean decor, saturated dripping wallpaper and bulbous accentuated stuck-on synthetic "wood". Although we could perhaps have expected traditional 17th Century meals and a madrigal in the ear, here the menu (early broadsheet-style; bonus points) showcased instead a regrettably modern take on peasant food, a protein-heavy, planet-light entomophagy approach of which tree-huggers would no doubt heartily approve. The link between these disparate eras? Insects, which have evidently graduated from mere passengers, uncomfortable side-effects of sloppy storage and poor hygiene to becoming, unconscionably, the star attraction.

WEEKDAY MENU [abridged]:

Soupcon of soup served in a snail shell

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Roast crickets nestling in woodlouse granola

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Termite mound crumble

DRINKS:
Canal Kombucha

Now, you know me, especially if you've paid attention to my wireless communications on LBC. I'm a rigorous traditionalist and firm believer in the upholding of solid British values. Like my ancestors in the proud Minster lineage, I should be happy if you gave me a 12-bore and pointed me in the direction of the nearest lion. Out of the strong came forth sweetness, et cetera. Grazing antelopes, rampaging wildebeest? Cannon fodder, dinnertime for Barclay. Insects? You get the servants to shoo them away. Insects, I ask you?! Why don't you just serve up socialists and have done with it?

I am nothing if not a man of my word, though, so insects it would be. We chose identical meals at my behest to ensure that neither of us wimped out for the easy option of recognisable food; and so garcon duly brought us the starters, tiny pools of unspecified consommé ladled into snail shells of the most inconvenient dimensions. Imported from the French perhaps? With no cutlery provided, I found this impossible to sip without making a dreadful mess - some went up my nose, some found its way through the dense slalom of my beard and down onto my tie where it remains despite furtive licking. (The little woman suggested this is the most tongue action they've witnessed from my part in a decade. Rank impertinence.)

Before our mains arrived, we knocked back a little of the house special, Canal Kombucha. This had apparently been fermenting for a fortnight and tasted akin to apple cider vinegar, if you're being charitable, with sweaty undertones. This mixture of sharp and sour blew any snail remnant clean away, which perhaps is the kindest compliment to pay it. I imagine it would work wonders on the local drains.

Onto the main course then. The late lamented myopic colonist Buddy Holly famously named his rock and roll band The Crickets after hearing the persistent chirruping noises the insects made around his garage. I am given to understand that our friends in the East Asian fringes regularly chomp heartily on roast crickets that sizzle rather than chirrup, served up by street vendors. This is what we ate, and you can fold your smug expression away and tuck it back into your breast pocket. Needless to say, these vaguely bacon-tasting insects did not roll my rocks, but the legs and antennae did provide a persistent presence around my molars. Remember to pack a toothpick. These crispy creepy-crawlies came on a toasted granola base which would be familiar to any health-freak hippie, but with the minor addition of pre-boiled oniscus asellus, or your common British woodlouse. These, I found, added a shrimp-like frisson that almost rescued the course. I daresay the next time I have escaped for an idle hour in the shed, I will regard my woodlice companions in quite a new light; and they'd do well to return the compliment.

Finally, garcon having brought us the house water (which apparently was just that, and not cat drool or badger bile), we moved wearily to the "dessert"; a traditional summer fruit crumble. What could go wrong? Only its utter defilement not only by the addition of bulbous boiled termites, but also by an architectural monstrosity, the crumble topping having been stacked up supposedly to resemble a miniature of a typical mound as found in North Africa, except of course that crumble mix doesn't stack up as well; and on tucking in it went everywhere, liberally dusting the knees of my slacks.

Gentlemen, I need not regale you at this juncture with the tortured process this meal made through my shuddering system as I got back behind the wheel of my Jaguar. God knows what the little woman thought of it. I leave you with this warning. At last I can say I have experienced true decadence. A restaurant - an English restaurant! - with the ability to serve up the finest venison and foie gras, yet it chooses to offer insects, in the 21st Century. I have visions of the morally-crumbling Roman Empire, too addled to save itself from the gathering savages. Surely we are tumbling gut-first into the end times and Consett is on the front line. Luckily I have a stoutly-provisioned shed. Woodlice and all.

Barclay Minster is on 'Question Time' every week.

Routine UK retail exchange

Copyright © 2018 Gareth Monger/Beware! the Zine

Poetry Hallway - Otter Responds To Hate Mail

Regular readers will be familiar with our regular poetry column, with contributions from the likes of far-left Drew Walton, far-in Limpit Smike, and far-gone Croyland Otter. Our most recent rhyme, a seminal smattering of verse about Brexit and kicking out Poles, rightly attracted angry criticism from just about everybody, including many Brexiteers who understandably failed to grasp the gist of Otter's bollocky poem.

Otter had paid for his naivety and is reportedly in self-imposed exile. (He's in his shed.) We received this confused nonsense this morning, thrust meaningfully, Smike-style, through the letterbox of Poetry Hallway HQ. Shut up, Croyland.





Why Do They Poke? - by Croyland Otter


Scare me, they do, with all spiteful hurtings,
Fear-fill me, they will, with sweary-mouthed dirtings.
Deny me, they shall, all future flirtings,
With the woman who works making nice floral curtings [sic].

Political critics, they think they all know best,
Wind me up with words and now my bed is messed,
With crudulent brownness and fly-blown squirmed infest,
How fri't' all those threats make me; tightness in my chest.

How I hate all those lefties who shout at me, then get,
All rage-filled and screechy with brutal red mindset;
Now I swim in my sleep 'cos I've make my own bed wet,
Caused by mean-minded emails and Facebook-sent death-threats.

Beware! Micro-Tales: Sherlock Holmes and the Grim Old Chair

Beware! the Zine cares about your literary consumption. Accept this micro-tale into your lives and know true ecstasy.

Sherlock Holmes and the Grim Old Chair

Freelance sleuth and social disaster, Sherlock Holmes, upsets Dr John Watson.

It was late afternoon and the winter sun was giving up on London. London, and Londoners, were used to this, and both city and folk continued to live to death as greyness swept through the capital like a river of unadulterated misery. It washed over Baker Street. Baker Street was immovable.

At 221b, Sherlock sat with his back to the window. He was naked, except for his deerstalker, and every few seconds he pushed back hard with his legs, causing his chair to creak. The chair was unusual, like one of those wicker frame chairs, but this one had a thin, beige material stretched over it. Umbrella-like, but with a broader, skeletal quality to it.

The door swung open noisily, its handle hitting the wall and continuing its excavation into the battered plasterwork.

“What the bloody hell is that thing still doing here? I thought I told you to get rid of it!”

Sherlock looked up and, having failed to notice the bang from the door careering into the wall, was now surprised to see Watson stood in front of him.

“Ah, Watson.”

“Yes? Is that it? I asked you a damned question!”

“You know very well why it’s still here. The case remains open.”


“What more can be gleaned from a chair made from human skin? You should have given it to the Yard when you discovered it.”

“The killer is at large and I need to make my deductions before the police are made aware. You know the pattern, Watson: the police learn of events and then the press gives the murderer a stage name. I detest stage names… They cloud everything.”

“You mean to tell me that you’ve kept this from the police? Lestrade will gut you… like a damned cat!”

Watson’s inelegant threat riled Sherlock enough to break the remainder of his concentration.

“Now, listen here, Watson. You know full-well that - wait, what did you say?”

“I said that he’ll gut you.” Watson wasn’t about to repeat the embarrassing ending.

“No, no, no. Human skin. How do you know it’s made from human skin? I’ve not told you that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sherlock. I’m not a complete idiot. That bloody chair’s got more tattoos than a merchant seaman.”

The British Pigeon Menace

Supersized Columba

The US d'A is well-known for doing everything slightly bigger, if not always better. And when they can't do it better, they just do it even more biggerer. That's true for fast food portions, cars, motorways, presidential candidates, and religious lunacy.

But somehow, pigeons slipped through the net. On more than one occasion I've heard American visitors to the temporarily-United Kingdom exclaim superlatives at the size of our resident pigeons, and run for the cover of picturesque Post Offices and red phone boxes.

And they are right to be fearful, for if a British pigeon doesn't catch you, you'll probably catch something from a British pigeon. Here is Beware! The Zine's handy visual guide to the North American and British pigeons:

Microcolumba americanus (left) and Columba philocanis (right). M. acericanus is identifiable by its small size and the excellent condition of its teeth. C. philocanis is noticeably larger, rarely possesses a full set of toes, and lines its nests with the pelts of domestic dogs - which it eats.