Martin Fone's Blog, page 302
March 8, 2017
Gin O’Clock – Part Twenty Four
We have come across London’s oldest wine merchants, Berry Brothers and Rudd, before as we were tramping the vicinity of Pickering Place. They occupy number 3 St James’s Street and it is appropriate, therefore, that their address is enshrined in their addition to the ginaissance, No 3 London Dry Gin. For such a long established company with a fine tradition, the addition of an in-house gin to their stable is a recent event with the hooch launched only on 21st July 2010.
Since the phenomenal growth in the popularity of gin in recent years, what is available now spans the whole spectrum of tastes. Some distillers seem to relish the opportunity to throw as many botanicals as they possibly can into the mix – some successfully, others less so – whilst others believe that simplicity is the key to consumer satisfaction. Perhaps it is not surprising that such a venerable firm as Berry Brothers has chosen the latter route. Their gin follows an old Dutch recipe and uses just six botanicals – juniper berries (natch) with orange peel and grapefruit peel adding the citrus components and three spicy botanicals – angelica root, coriander seed and cardamom pods. These are steeped overnight before the spirit is distilled in traditional copper stills.
Before we investigate the spirit it is worth lingering a while over the bottle. It is a masterpiece of design. The glass is emerald green and the shape, tall and square with slightly indented side panels to aid grip and facilitate pouring – always thoughtful additions after a few glasses – apes the open pontil gin bottles that were the norm, because of deficiencies in glass blowing techniques until the mid 19th century. The left-hand side panel is embossed with the legend No 3 London Dry Gin and the right-hand side with No 3 Berry Bros & Rudd.
The front of the bottle has a silver key two-thirds of the way up the bottle – it represents the key to the Parlour, the oldest room in their premises and symbolic of the tradition and reliability of the firm – and the label contains sky blue and white lettering. The stopper is made of natural cork held in place by alloy foil which, unlike many others I have tried, came away very easily. Whilst removing the cork my ears were greeted with a delightfully full plop sound. There is no getting away from it – this gin is presenting itself as a luxury product, a cut above the rest, perhaps gratifyingly so as it retails at a price beginning with a three.
Once the cork is opened, the first sensation is that of juniper, first and foremost, with a hint of sweetness. A clear spirit which packs a punch at 46% ABV, it is remarkably subtle in the mouth. The benefit of limiting the number of botanicals in play is that each has the opportunity to play its part – the citrus sweetening the juniper and the spicy botanicals giving a peppery spiciness. Although the juniper dominates the aroma and initial tasting, there is a rich, dry, peppery feel to the aftertaste. It is a wonderfully subtle and well-balanced drink and is testament to the wisdom of keeping things simple but doing the simple things well. If you can afford it and like a straightforward, no nonsense London Dry Gin then you cannot go wrong with this. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
Filed under: Gin Tagged: Berry Brothers and Rudd, design of No 3 London Dry Gin bottle, ginaissance, No 3 London Dry Gin, open pontil gin bottles, Pickering Place SW1
March 7, 2017
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Sixty Six
Gary Kildall (1942 – 1994)
The early days of computing were a bit like the Wild West where fortunes were won and lost and where the unwary were ripped off. What has been particularly liberating for the ordinary users of PCs has been the development of operating language and protocols which are intuitive and easy to use. You would think that the brainbox who made all this possible would have been assured of fame and riches. Think again as I recount the salutary tale of Gary Kildall, the latest inductee into our illustrious Hall of Fame.
Kildall started working for Intel in 1974, hired to develop programming tools for the Intel 4004 microprocessor. He was a bit of a whizz at coding software, turning out code that would work, albeit not necessarily the final polished article. He proposed and developed a high-level language for the 8008 and 8080 models which would allow the user to issue quasi-English commands to the chip rather than relying on binary code. Intel then developed the now unfortunately named ISIS which was the world’s first floppy disk based system and Kildall developed the operating system, CP/M. When Intel decided not to make the PC available in the commercial market, Kildall obtained their consent to market and sell a version of PC/M.
Kildall set up Intergalactic Digital Research and soon PC/M was the operating system of choice in the nascent personal computing world. But success was not assured. In 1980 IBM was on the hunt for an operating system for their soon to be released PC and naturally contacted our hero. Legend has it that Kildall preferred to fly his aeroplane rather than meet the suits from IBM but the reality is that whilst he was late for the meeting, the sticking point was that the hardware giant was only prepared to pay him a one-off fee of $200,000 for using his operating system.
DOS – heard of that? – now enters our story. It was developed by Seattle Computer Products and purchased by a company called Microsoft, owned by one Bill Gates – heard of him? This operating system took the best features of the CP/M operating system but tweaked it ever so slightly to make it incompatible with Kildall’s offering. Gates, a smarter business man than Kildall, sold the rights to IBM for a paltry $50,000, reckoning, rightly as it turned out, that he could make much more by licensing it out to other computer manufacturers – the archetypal sprat to catch a mackerel.
Kildall threatened to sue but never did and was forced to develop another operating system, DR-DOS, to compete with what was his own system. It never made much traction and in 1991 Novell bought what was left of his company. Gates had pretty much the whole of the market sewn up and when Windows replaced DOS his place in history was secured. Kildall was relegated to a footnote, if that.
Worse was to follow. In 1994 Kildall walked into a bar in Monterey wearing a leather jacket with Harley-Davidson badges. There was a group of bikers in the gaff and an altercation. Kildall was pushed, fell to the floor and died from head-related injuries. The coroner reported that the death was suspicious but no one was held to account.
So, Gary, for developing the first PC operating system and failing to cash in on it, you are a worthy inductee into our Hall of Fame.
If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone which is now available on Amazon in Kindle format and paperback. For details follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=fifty+clever+bastards
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Bill Gates, CP/M, death of Gary Kildall, DR-DOS, Fifty Clever Bastards, Gary Kildall, Intel 4004 microprocessor, Intergalactic Digital Research, Martin Fone, PC-DOS
March 6, 2017
A Better Life – Part Five
The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education (1841 – 1847)
This utopian commune was located in a 175 acre farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and was the brain child of a former Unitarian minister, George Ripley, and his wife, Sarah. They were enamoured with Transcendentalism which held, inter alia, that people are at their best when they are truly self-reliant and independent. The underlying objective of the commune was to create a society where the intellectual and the manual worker could co-exist. Each member could choose to do whatever work suited them best and they would all be paid at the same rate, a dollar a day, even women, a radical concept at the time.
To finance the venture Brook Farm was established as a joint stock company. Shares were sold at $500 a time with the promise of 5% of the profits and a vote. Initially, there were 10 investors but over time this rose to 32. In all, there were some 70 or 80 members of the commune at its peak only those who could afford to buy shares were full members. The commune generated money by selling agricultural produce and handmade clothing but its real money-spinner was the school, run by Mrs Ripley.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a fully paid up member but it seemed he never really signed up to the underlying principles of the movement, rather seeing it as an investment opportunity. He resigned from the farm on 17th October 1842, commenting, “even my Custom House experience was not such a thraldom and weariness; my mind and heart were freer…Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap”. Nonetheless, the commune seemed to make some headway in realising the founders’ lofty ambitions, even though there was an imbalance between intellectuals and people who would roll their sleeves up.
The seeds of the commune’s demise were sown when it adopted some of the ideas of the French Socialist, Charles Fourier, who espoused a more communal approach to living. This caused a schism and some of the disillusioned members left. In 1844 the commune sunk all its available funds into constructing a large central building, known as the Phalanstery, big enough to accommodate 14 families and included a large assembly hall. This drain on available funds meant that a system of what were euphemistically called retrenchments aka cuts were introduced and meat, coffee, tea and butter were no longer served at the table. Members could have meat but they had to pay extra for it.
In November 1845 smallpox broke out and although no one died, 26 Brook Farmers were infected. Ripley, meanwhile, was holding off the creditors, agreeing with suppliers and shareholders a write-off of $7,000. Further disaster struck on 3rd March 1846 when fire swept through the Phalanstery, completely destroying it. Naturally, it was uninsured and for Ripley this was pretty much the last straw. He moved out in May 1846 and others slowly followed suit. One described the slow disintegration as like apple petals slowly drifting to the ground. The whole experience was “dreamy and unreal”.
On its dissolution, Brook Farm had accumulated debts of $17,445. Ripley took it all personally, telling a friend, “I can now understand how a man would feel if he could attend his own funeral”. Fair play to him, though, he took a job at the New York Tribune and thirteen years later had paid off the debt.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, published in 1852, is a novel set in a utopian community which shares some of the features of Brook Farm. The only thing standing on the site from the time of the commune is a rather splendid wooden print house.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Charles Fourier, George Ripley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Ripley, The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education, the Phalanstery, transcendentalism, utopian communities, West Roxbury
March 3, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (117)?…
Put a sock in it
You can imagine the scene. Someone is going on and on, getting on your nerves with their incessant jabbering. In exasperation you cry, “put a sock in it”, often, perhaps, with some form of exclamation or imprecation at the front. The meaning is pretty clear – shut up, be quiet, the sock being used figuratively as the mechanism by which the mouth is gagged. When you stop and think about it, the idea of putting a sock, used or unused, into someone’s mouth is pretty distasteful but where did the phrase originate?
One of the few positives of the First World War was that the trenches on the western front provided a mixing ground for the linguistic inventiveness of the British and Australian troops who found themselves in this man-made version of hell. Our phrase first made an appearance in 1919. Interestingly, though, it appeared in two continents in pretty short order. Such was the speed of communications at the time that this can only point to a common origin.
The Port Macquarie News of 14th June 1919 carried an article in which the journalist tried to encapsulate as many idioms and slang expressions that were used in the trenches as possible. The article report, “It had begun to rain and some chaps called out: “Send it down David!” But others shouted “Put a sock in it!” and after a lot of grousing, we set off”. Back in Blighty The Athenaeum, a rather up-market literary magazine at the time, felt it necessary of 8th August 1919 felt it necessary to advise its readership, “the expression “put a sock in it” meaning “Leave off talking, singing or shouting”. The implication of this bit of lexicography on the Athenaeum’s part is that it is a relatively new idiom, at least in refined civilian circles. The inference is that it was brought back home simultaneously by troops returning to England and Australia.
The front-line genesis is somewhat confirmed by Australian, Frederic Manning’s novel set in the Western Front of France in 1916 during which he saw service in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. The novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune, was only published in 1929, which used the vernacular of the ordinary soldiers to describe their experiences. It was initially a limited edition because of the bad language that peppered the dialogue. There’s only so much reality a chap can stand, after all. But it is fair to assume it was a pretty accurate account of the idioms in vogue there. Within the book, we come across this passage, “Well, put a sock in it. We’ve ‘ad enough bloody talk now”.
There are variants – put a cork in it and put a bung in it but, presumably, these articles were in short supply in the trenches. Socks, however, were a different matter.
One of the enduring battles between parents and their offspring – or at least it was before the general availability of headphones – was the volume at which they played their music. There is an engaging theory that one of the ways to moderate or even muffle the sounds emanating from a wind-up gramophone with a great big horn was to stuff something down it. What better than a sock? The very early gramophones did come without volume controls – after all, getting a sound out of the thing was an achievement in itself – but the fact that the Athenaeum felt it necessary to define it to sort of chaps who might have treated themselves to a new-fangled music reproduction system and related it to speech rules that out.
Time to put a sock in it, I think.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Frederic manning, origin of put a sock in it, put a bung in it, put a cork in it, socks as a way of moderating sound from old gramaphones, The Athenaeum magazine, The Middle Parts of Fortune
March 2, 2017
Double Your Money – Part Fifteen
Charles De Ville Wells (1841 – 1922)
Charles De Ville Wells may be a relatively obscure figure these days but he has two major claims to fame – he was the man who broke the bank in Monte Carlo and perpetrated a massive fraud in France which had all the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme a decade before Charles Ponzi was in action. An engineer by trade, Charles had an inventive mind – he designed a device to moderate the speed of a propeller, selling the patent for $5,000. But he soon turned his grey cells to more lucrative endeavours.
Around 1879 he turned up in France and launched a scheme, fraudulent of course, to raise money to build a railway at Berck-sur-Mer. He attracted a good number of investors who never saw a return on their money. When the scheme unravelled, Wells scarpered with the money and he was convicted in absentia. He next turned up in England where from around 1885 he launched a scheme to fund some of his inventions, promising eye-watering returns. Monies were raised and, of course, no dividends were paid. One investor lost the modern-day equivalent of £1.9m.
Whilst in Monte Carlo in late 1891 he visited the famous casino on a number of occasions. Each table had a cash reserve of 100,000 francs – the bank – and if a gambler won more than was available – a feat known as breaking the bank – play was suspended and extra cash was taken from the vaults in an elaborate ceremony. With a stake of around £4,000 Wells won £60,000, breaking the bank on a number of occasions. Wells claimed he had devised an infallible system, although he was never able to repeat his phenomenal success, others thought he had just had a phenomenal run of good luck but some, looking at his track record, think there may have been something underhand. We will never know but Wells had assured his place in gambling history and popular culture.
With some of his loot he bought a yacht and this proved his undoing. When moored in Le Havre, the yacht was raided and Wells was arrested and extradited to Blighty to stand trial for the fraud he committed in the patents scheme. He served eight years and then was imprisoned twice more – once in England and once in France – as the long arm of the law sought its revenge.
After his enforced rest, Wells popped up again, in 1910, under the alias, Lucien Rivier. He established a private bank in the Avenue de l’Opera, opening for business with the astonishing promise of offering a guaranteed 365% interest per annum. There was a ready audience for such enticing rates and investors scrambled to get a piece of the action. Wells was able to meet the interest payments of the early investors from the deposits paid in by later investors – the classic sign of what we now know to be a Ponzi scheme. The French authorities began sniffing around the bank and inevitably there were insufficient funds to meet the bank’s obligations. Wells fled back to England with some of the money but, in 1912, he was arrested, brought back to France and imprisoned for 5 years.
Over 6,000 investors, depositing some 2 million francs, were stung in Wells’ last scheme. So serious were the repercussions in the French banking industry that the authorities imposed stricter controls on private banks and subjected owners to more stringent vetting procedures.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Charles De Ville Wells, Charles Ponzi, Fred Gilbert, Lucien Rivier, Ponzi scheme in Paris in 1910, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo
March 1, 2017
Book Corner – March 2017 (1)
The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
For a long time I have thought that the award of a literary prize, lucrative as it may be for the writer, is a signal that the book is to be avoided at all costs. Too often the committees forget that the ordinary reader reads for pleasure rather than to admire wordsmithery or the handling of symbol and image. Of course, you want to read something that is well written, entertaining and gripping but you also want something that is a joy to read rather than an endurance test.
Sometimes, though, a book wins an award and you wonder how the hell that happened. Take Adiga’s debut novel, The White Tiger, which won the Man Booker prize in 2008. It is an engaging enough tale about Balram Halwai, a self-made man who has made his fortune in the capital of out-sourcing services, Bangalore. It is well-paced and there were enough twists and turns in the plot to keep me engaged. But there were a number of structural issues to the book that for me made it nothing out of the ordinary.
Firstly, it is epistolary in style. There is nothing wrong in that but why would Balram write unsolicited about his life to a visiting Chinese premier? The question isn’t answered and all the reader can conclude is that with the growing rapprochement between China and India, the protagonist thinks that he should dish the dirt on the real India – a bit of a flimsy premise for a book, I feel.
Dishing the dirt, Adiga does in spades. Having been to India on a few occasions and been astonished by the sights, scenes, collective mania of the big cities like Dehli and having been jostled by a seething crowd trying to get served in a liquor store in Kerala, many of Adiga’s scenes resonate with me. But it is unrelenting, a blunt instrument or perhaps a broken bottle of English whisky to beat the reader around the head with. OK, the country is cruel and the lot of the majority is hard to bear but I think we get that point early on. The relentless tirade gets a tad tiresome.
The characterisation is weak. Balram’s bosses are little more than caricatures of the upper classes. We don’t really get to engage with them or to despise them. Even Balram, who started out on life without even a name and who seemed to be destined to live a life as the lowest of the low, is rather cartoonish.
And then there is the contrast between the darkness of the Indian hinterland, medieval in its hardship and where brutal landlords hold sway and the lightness of the cities. The use of this symbolism is relentless and rather loses its impact. Balram’s rise is due to a rather heartless and brutal murder and corruption – the loot he gets away with is used to grease the palms of the police to enable him to set up his taxi service ferrying night workers to the call centres. Corruption is another theme running through the book – his masters’ coal business has to make frequent unofficial payments to politicians and their lackeys to thrive. Progress through merit is not in Adiga’s line of vision.
The book is funny in parts and goes at a furious lick. It is entertaining but if you are looking for subtlety in this damning critique of the state of modern India, you will be sorely disappointed. Jonathan Swift, he ain’t.
Filed under: Books, Culture Tagged: Aravind Adiga, Balram hilwai, Man Booker Prize, Thee White Tiger
February 28, 2017
Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Fifty
Perry Davis’ Vegetable Pain Killer
In some ways, the tale of Perry Davis is an example of triumph over adversity. Born in 1791 into a desperately poor family and apprenticed to a cordwainer, he was an inventor manqué, several of his patented ideas failing to attract investment and leaving him deeper in debt. He was also desperately unlucky. When 14 he fell off some scaffolding, breaking his hip, an injury which left him lame for the rest of his life. He suffered from respiratory problems which the medics could not cure. Only two of his nine children survived. In 1840 he became very sick and was in great pain.
Eschewing medical practitioners, Davis relied on his own resources and started experimenting with a concoction of herbal and naturally grown ingredients. He had no high hopes as to its efficacy, rather anticipating it to be “handing me gently to the grave”. Miraculously, he got better only for ill fortune to dog him once more. After his house in Fall River was destroyed by fire in 1843 and he was on his uppers, he decided to concentrate on the one thing that had worked for him, his patent medicine. Even then, he had another setback. Whilst tinkering with the formula, a can of alcohol exploded, causing severe burns to his face. The application of his panacea did the trick.
If nothing else, Davis was a consummate salesman and imbued with absolute confidence in his product, he flogged it for all he was worth. Bottles of the vegetable pain killer began to fly off the shelves, so much so that he opened a factory in the aptly named Providence. Advertising was fulsome as to its powers. An example ran, “an inexpensive and thoroughly reliable safeguard is offered by Perry Davis’ Pain Killer which…has stood unrivalled as a household companion. It is used externally as well as internally and is just what is needed for burns, bruises, cuts, sprains etc; and most people know that no other remedy is to be compared with it as a cure for coughs, colds, rheumatism, neuralgia etc in winter and all summer complaints in their season…it is a medicine chest in itself”. Another featured a host of cherubs bearing the distinctive brown bottle.
Testimonials were cited including one from Mark Twain; “those who could run away did. Those who could not drenched themselves in cholera preventatives and my mother chose Perry Davis’ Pain Killer for me”. Its fame spread overseas and during the American Civil War it was dispensed to soldiers and horses alike. An ardent Baptist, Davis gave bottles to missionaries to take with them abroad. His generosity was usually rewarded with a boost in sales. As his personal fortune grew he gave donations to many causes, gifting $50,000 in 1850 for the erection of a new Baptist church. When he died in 1862, his coffin was followed by crowds of the poor whom he had helped.
The production and sale of Davis’ Pain Killer survived his death, his son taking over the responsibility and the potion was still on sale until the early 1940s. And what was in it and was it any good? Although Davis never revealed the formula, it seemed that it was a mix of vegetable extracts, camphor, ethyl alcohol and opiates. With that lot inside you, it is no wonder you felt better, even if only temporarily. The ultimate in pick-me-ups, perhaps!
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Davis and Son factory on Pond Street in Providence, ingredients of Vegetable Pain Killer, Mark Twain, Perry Davis, Perry Davis' Vegetable Pain Killer
February 27, 2017
Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Twenty Seven
Do humans have the same range of facial expressions?
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Every picture tells a story. The human face can be wonderfully expressive and can give the onlooker a sense of what you are thinking or feeling without the need for you to utter a word. To the enquiring mind the obvious question is whether there is a stock range of expressions for emotions or, putting it another way, do humans make the same facial expressions in response to the same emotions.
An interesting question, you might agree, and one which a graduate scientist at the University of Minnesota, one Carney Landis, applied his mind to in 1924. The starting point was to assemble a group of volunteers, most of whom came from Landis’ fellow graduate students. His idea was to submit the group to a range of situations which would evoke different emotions, ranging from joy to fear, and examine the facial expressions that each made. To make life easier for himself, he decided to divide the human face into a series of sections following the musculature and paint lines around each section. By taking a series of photographs he would be able to determine how each volunteer responded and which part of the face moved in response to any given stimulus.
Having developed the methodology, the experiment began. The key, obviously, was to assemble a range of stimuli that would provoke a strong reaction. So, rather like a bush tucker trial, the guinea pigs were asked to put their hands in a bucket of slimy frogs. Whilst this was going on, Landis was happily snapping away. They were asked to look at pornographic images, were subjected to electric shocks, smell ammonia. You get the picture.
All went swimmingly until Landis produced a live white rat on a tray and asked them to decapitate it. Even allowing for the fact that sensibilities around animal rights were not as advanced as they might now be, this bizarre request caused a bit of a stir amongst the volunteers. What was interesting, and perhaps the most significant outcome of the bizarre experiment although the import seemed to have passed Landis by, was that only a third of the volunteers actually refused to carry out his command. Had he pondered this phenomenon, he would have pre-empted Stanley Milgram’s equally disturbing experiments of 1963 into the extent that people would obey orders even if meant causing others harm. The students’ noble refusal to obey Landis didn’t spare the rats. Landis did the job for them.
The other two thirds, with some reluctance, set about butchering the rats. The trouble was that the executioner’s art is a rather skilled one, calling for a steady hand and steely determination, and most made a bit of a fist of it. According to Landis’ notes, “the effort and attempt to hurry usually resulted in a rather awkward and prolonged job of decapitation”. It is hard to imagine the scene of devastation as the rats suffered a slow and painful death. Perhaps Landis should have concentrated on looking at the expressions on the rodent’s faces.
And the result of this rather bizarre experiment? Try as he could, Landis could not see any correlation between an emotion and expression. It seems that people have a wide range of facial expressions to convey the same emotion. Still, it is good that we have cleared that one up.
Filed under: History, Science Tagged: Carney Landis, do humans have same expressions for emotions, experiment involving decapitating a rat, Stanley Milgram, University of Minnesota
February 26, 2017
Course Of The Week
With time on my hands, I’m always on the look-out for an interesting learning experience. An ad in the ever popular North Wales Weekly News came to my attention this week, offering fart classes. So confident were the organisers that it was going to be a rip-roaring success that they were putting on a repeat event and then a class a week. I was particularly intrigued to find out what the refreshments were – pickled onions or Brussels sprouts, perhaps?
Imagine my disappointment then when on making enquiries, I discovered it was an unfortunate typo. It would have been fun.
So upset am I that I have gone away on holiday. Thanks to the wonders of WordPress’ scheduler posts will appear as normal Mondays through to Friday, but the weekend Of The Week posts will not reappear until 25th March 2017. Contain your disappointment!
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: art or fart class, North Wales Weekly News, typo in advert for art class
February 25, 2017
Names Of The Week (2)
What were the odds on the Bishop of Coventry, Christopher Cocksworth, making a cock-up during the vote on gay marriage at the recent Church of England Synod? The only bishop to vote against the motion, he claimed that “due to a moment of distraction” he pressed the wrong button on his handset when the vote came to its climax. Perhaps he was pondering what were two cocks worth in a gay marriage?
Confusing – isn’t it? – when two restaurants have the same name. It was certainly the case for the online version of Guide Michelin France which, I read this week, awarded the sought-after star to the humble Le Bouche a Oreille in Bourges. The gaff was swamped – presumably the news had travelled by word of mouth.
There had been a bit of a Bishop of Coventry but the mistake was soon rectified, the honour being bestowed on the much more upmarket Le Bouche a Oreille in Boutervilliers near Paris. Still, some good honest, reasonably priced fare might have been just what the gourmands needed.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Bishop of Coventry, Bouche a Oreille in Bourges, Bouche a Oreille in Boutervilliers, Christopher Cocksworth, Guide Michelin France,
