A rebel without a clue.

The building of the bypass between 1986 and 1988 signalled the beginning of the end for this middle England, middle English, middle Yorkshire market town. Slowly but surely all the symbols of Wetherby's local mercantile trade were erased until by the end of 2010 Horton and Hollander's, toy shop extraordinaire, vanished on the High Street. All pubs, with the exception of the Crown, have been face lifted out of existence or else banished to be replaced by wine bars, restaurants, toy shops and bedding shops. Every pub, apart from the Crown, has had a few walls removed, appallingly cheaply make overs, façades of MDF and threadbare millenary, gardens covered with vast smoking areas and dens for paving slabs and concrete blocks. All menu's are steam in the bag affairs in kitchen's run by snot dribbling, fag smoking, oil stained 'chef's' for whom food is a four letter word. Just look at the cleanliness of these individuals: would you be willing to eat food prepare...

Worth @ 11pm. If I thought living in a dismal half hearted, cold, excuse for comfort, which equals £50pw on top of working 50+ hours a week for an adhd ad-hoc chef who has a simple mind and rattles on about the ways and means of getting Cajun chicken ready like pick and pick and pick (just do and be done to a reasonable standard! Please!!) and being a  hieronymous Jew in flesh made real. Where there is a Matt who is a dull repeat of my man from Portsmouth 2008 without the dreads: oh I dread the repeat and lies and lies unless he is the actual urban guy who actually swallowed the poisonous tropical fish and spent 6 months strumming a 6 string guitar. Then there are the managers who are nice, but hooked in Cornwall hospitality and are not in this charmless slopping roofed old and smokey joint: people are so happy with my apparent nothing. I expected respect but I got The Rising Sun! Then again the feeling from the Harbour Inn was nonchalant. A commis called Smithy who...

Sunday 10th April, I disappeared on to the train on Sunday. ... I glimspsed 2 Mallards drifting on the early morning Aire and felt a little sprite in my feet.  I could actually travel for ever and never get tired(oh I'd be bone weary). Moving through Leeds City Station I pick up a cup of coffee and a Mcdonald's McMuffin and jog along the platform to await our first leg. I spy a copy of the Daily Star and am about to pounce when the guy beside me just gets there first. I don't read newspapers as I feel they bend your ear and corrode your soul, but then I haven't read any newspaper in a long time so I was ever so slightly moth like for a fleeting moment. That guy saved me an indignity and helped me recover from news melancholy. The first leg is 3 hours from Leeds to Birmingham New Street. I find the carriage with the fewest sets and get a forward facing table chair. I have a dislike of the squeeze that the rest of the seating arrangements provide on any mainline trai...

It is a while since I covered myself in Blog. Recently (12/11/2010) I started working for Natalie, Geoff and Cath @ Millie's Fresh & Organic as their resident chef Monday to Friday. I am trying to develop the scope of the kinds of food they have offered and create a trade with a more diverse clientele than I do currently. Tucked away on Vicar Lane , Leeds the emporium offers a great selection of vegan, organic, ethical and fair trade products from both local and far away. From this variety I am able to create a vast array of balanced salads, interesting and value-for-money meals, vegan and raw cakes, homemade and inspiring dainties, etc, etc (you'll just have to pop in on any day to see what I am working hard to produce). I find myself back @ 97 Whitehall Waterfront 4 years on from when I went off to YHA Afriston and a few years with the YHA and a chance to develop some skills with Jean-Claude Etile and other important persons in the vast world of catering. It is qu...

I've had this feeling in the last year that my life is going full circle. I'm filling all the gaps from the past. I guess Facebook makes this very possible. But I has made me think I may only have another 16 years left if I keep filling all the past gaps in. How do I explain this simply? I had a job trial and I chopped parsley and peeled potatoes: which i last did on that scale in 1989 at the Linton Springs I hooked up with an girl I knew in Newcastle and haven't seen since 1995 who is in Canada now: Victoia Jolley . I went to Harrogate today looking for work and found the place very autumnal and most of the town had a power outage, but got a Job trial at the Old Swan ; I was very very drunk here in 1995 (I woke up in a room in the hotel without a clue where I was and remember the old radiators in the room were so so baking). I got so drunk with Richard Smith from ROCOM that night! Was a good laugh really. ROCOM had some fun times, apart from David Swinnerton being a TWAT...

I've been motivated since my arrival back in Wetherby, but I feel pretty crap physically today. I think it is amazing the amount of adrendelin I must've used in the past week since I frantically camped in Opatija and got back to the Wetherby from Trieste on Sunday afternoon/evening. I need to catch up with folks and properly float back into Wetherby. I am happy to be here actually. Makes a change to feel I can work locally and chill out without that thing I try to find in the places I've worked recently. I've been active on the job front and have already got an interview on Friday. I saw Franco at Sant' Angelo yesterday, but I had a deaf ear and I look a little ragged with my wispy thinning hair. I explained I'd had a tough time getting back home so excuse my appearence. I think it went well and I hope I can work there into the New Year and beyond; the amount that can be learnt from Italian chef must be huge. I've actually made only Italian style food si...