Nationwide – proud to be difficult

I’ve recently been having a bit of a clear out, and this included the elephant. Now, before you assume that this will be an unpleasant tale about elephant enemas, I assure you, the elephant involved is actually a piggy bank.
So having emptied, and sorted every coin in the elephant into separate bags for each [...]

The Village Barbers

It’s shearing time again, so this time I thought I’d try The Village Barbers. This is a much smaller, and less ostentatious looking place than Chandler Wright Hair, which I’ve been to in the past (and posted about at length). It has a much better view across the heath (it is up near [...]

Guerrilla Gardening at the Station

I’m sure they wouldn’t think of themselves as guerrillas, but volunteers from The Blackheath Society seemed to be out in force this morning, clearing the undergrowth next to the London-bound platform at Blackheath station. It looks like an ideal spot for some guerrilla gardening, but I wonder what they intend to do with [...]

Zero Degrees

I went to Zero Degrees again the other day, after a very nice time at the Buenos Aires cafe… It is a strange bar. The beer is definitely reasonable, except that you are forced to drink it inside what feels like an enormous industrial kitchen. It’s so noisy, and smelled slightly of chip [...]

Provender Vegetarian Cafe has opened

Provender has finally opened its doors to Blackheath.  I went in there the other day for a snoop around.  To be honest, I don’t think it was a very fair test, as I popped in a bit late, so all the food was looking a bit tired.  I had a coffee and a very nice [...]

Ugh, Comic Sans again…

Now look here… I realise that First Choice Travel was no cultural mecca.  Melvyn Bragg and Mark Lawson were not hot-footing down Tranquil Vale to come and admire it or anything.  But really, Go Travel isn’t doing a lot for taste and subtle design in Blackheath is it?
The photo doesn’t even show it in all [...]

Blackheath Camels

Just found a wonderful local history book -”A Century of Lewisham” by John Coulter.  One of the best images from it, showing a caravan of camels traipsing up Tranquil Vale towards “Billy Smart’s Circus” on the heath, in the 1950s.  The camels were supposed to have been Algerian veterans from the Foreign Legion.  Click the [...]

Booze Busting in Blackheath

Blackheath is not short of places to buy your favourite tipple.  There is the lovely Nicolas of course, pricey and slightly confusing if you know nothing about wine, but very nice nonetheless.  And they do a lovely sparkling dry cider (Duché de Longueville Brut) that is much more within the Bugle’s pocket.  There is another [...]

School for Muggles

I overheard someone at the station a while back pointing up at the spooky Blackheath Hospital building and referring to it as “Hogwarts”…
It certainly does have a touch of the gothic about it…  According to the guru (amazon or abebooks), it was originally built as a boarding school, though not for trainee wizards sadly.  Instead [...]

Hexagonal Hedonism

The Bugle had some misdelivered post today. So rather than stick it back in the post box, I thought I’d walk it to its rightful letterbox. The road in question was Blackheath Park, a beautiful private road, originally part of the Cator Estate, and full of spectacular leafy Victorian and Georgian houses.
I delivered [...]