New Year’s Eve 2010- pub opening times in Blackheath

UPDATE: New Year’s Eve 2011 Pub opening times are here.

Whether you’re looking forward to, or dreading the pubs being open for New Year’s Eve, here’s a list of the various opening times in Blackheath. No tickets for any of them, except for Cave Austin. If you’re going to try and watch fireworks over London (like last year), try the junction of Cade Road and General Wolfe Road, shown below

Hare & Billet
Close at 1am
No tickets, but cash only – no credit cards (probably because their card machines are so slooow)

Cave Austin weird Las Vegas thing…
Tickets are £15 in advance, more on the door
Open from 8pm-4am

The Crown
No ticket required
Open until 1am

The Railway
No ticket required
Open until 2am

O’Neill’s
No tickets, small donation on the door goes to charity
Open until 2.30am

Prince of Wales
No ticket required
Open until 2am

Zero Degrees
Can’t get hold of them, but will update the blog when I do…

Blackheath Bugle on Kindle!

Because I’m extremely lucky, Mrs Bugle bought me a Kindle 3 for Christmas! So I immediately began wondering how to get the blog onto the Kindle. If I’m honest, the best way is using Instapaper for Kindle, but if you prefer, you can now subscribe to the blog for £2 a month through the Amazon Store: Blackheath Bugle blog on Kindle
There doesn’t seem to be a way to release blogs for free currently, but as soon as there is, I’ll switch it over to a free version. If you got a Kindle for Christmas, give it a go (and cancel it before the 14 day trial expires!) – the formatting isn’t perfect, but it works reasonably well.

Blackheath: A Ghost Story

Just as you’re settling down with your glass of sherry in front of a warm fire to watch Whistle And I’ll Come To You, a creepy thought… This is one of the most striking images from the excellent Subterranean Greenwich and Kent website. Just think, deep below Blackheath, in a freezing cold sealed cavern, the demon’s head sits in the dank air, looking out across a hidden lair…
(Terrifying 1968 version of Whistle And I’ll Come To You is here. Hopefully the remake will do it justice…)

Strange lines on the Heath

David writes:

“Frost or snow always reveals these odd lines outside the Princess Of Wales. I’ve taken similar pictures a few times and always forgot to send them to you.

Very odd!”

Does anyone know? Sewage pipes maybe?

Last Farmers Market of 2010

If you’re staying in Blackheath over Christmas, don’t forget the last farmers market of the year. Hopefully this cheese will be there. If so, buy some – it’s amazing.

Here’s the list of stalls for tomorrow:

Thursday 23rd December
10am – 1pm

Alham Wood dairy organic buffalo and cows milk cheese, milk, buffalo
meat
Beatbush Farm organic meat and poultry
Nut Knowle Farm goats cheese
Teds Veg
Saffery Farm veg
Wild Country Organics salad leaves & veg
Artisan Food bread and cakes
Potters Preserves home made jams & chutney
Redlays Farm dairy milk, cream, yogurt

See lfm.org.uk
Or twitter.com/londonfarmers

Market closed until Sunday 9th January 2011

They can’t both be right

Above is a map showing the location of all the Greenwich council-owned gritting bins. It’s a great idea, built and conceived by Greenwich.co.uk and Jo Brodie. The interesting thing is the lack of bins on the Lewisham side…

Why? Because…

“The Council has been advised against providing salt/grit bins. Our experience has been that bins are frequently vandalised and the salt and grit thrown into neighbouring gardens.” Lewisham Council’s website.

Clearly they haven’t been advised by Greenwich Council, who seem to think that gritting bins are a great idea. Maybe when you step across the Great Wall of Blackheath, the locals are suddenly unable to resist flinging handfuls of gravel into gardens!

Mind over matter

I took a train back to Blackheath last night after the office party.
I had drunk too much cooking lager, and got the hiccups. Not mild “hic” hiccups. These were horrible, loud, sea-lion-gasping-for-air hiccups, annoying everyone in the carriage. I tried everything, but they wouldn’t stop. I had to put my headphones on, to drown out the racket…

When the train got to Lewisham, a girl on the next row of seats turned around and gesticulated at me to remove the headphones. She said “Excuse me, do you want to come back to my place and have sex with me?”. I thought I misheard, so said “What?”, and she repeated it again.

Because I love Mrs Bugle very much, I of course said “No!”

Then, as she got off the train, she said “I thought that might get rid of your hiccups”.

And the weirdest thing is that it did. Not a single hiccup back to Blackheath!

So the cure for hiccups: an inappropriate request from a total stranger on a packed train!

Lowering the tone

City chairman says the politics of envy is causing an exodus of talent – The UK faces an epic struggle to keep its best bankers. Stuart Fraser is leading the charge for the City.

He has been married to his wife Laura for 41 years They live in Blackheath. In his spare time he enjoys travel, walking, golf and the theatre.

It’s articles like this that give Blackheath a bad name. The bankers won’t all move to Hong Kong, because the air there is highly polluted, and no amount of money can buy a solution to that. There’s a reason they give away CityAM for free. If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Fight the cuts.

(Photo of unreasonably large bankers buildings looming over Blackheath is by Flickr user Nicobobinus. Yes it is photoshopped. It’s a visual metaphor, or something…)

Travel Lounge becomes Black Vanilla?

Spotted by a sharp-eyed Mrs Bugle yesterday, looks like we have

a new modern and sophisticated American style bakery and foody shop in London called Black Vanilla. The main menu will consist of smoothies, milkshakes, gelato, baked goods like cupcakes and whoopie pies etc.

From an article discussing the design of their logo.

I’m sure Greggs are terrified. Boulangerie Jade possibly are. Anyway, looks like they’re also hiring bakers:

Black Vanilla is a boutique bakery & gelateria with a reputation for unique artisan cupcakes and baked goods. This is an excellent opportunity for a hard working and enthusiastic baker to join the team at this stunning location.

Some experience in baking morning goods and vienoiserie is essential. The pastry chef position requires an enthusiastic, reliable and dynamic candidate with sound basic experience working with pastry and ideally with American style cake products.

Shifts of 4 hours daily starting at 6.00am. Pay between £7.00 – £8.50 ph depending on experience.

I didn’t know what Vienoiserie meant either. Google says that it has two “n”s, and means french baking in a Viennese style.

Time for a tidy up?

You may remember back in February – the last time Southern decided to dig up half the pavement outside the station exit, and then leave it unfinished for weeks. This time around, there’s only one exit from the station at night, and it’s directly over Southern Electricity’s Assault Course. The most ridiculous thing is that the barriers appear to be shielding nothing!

They engineers could have put the lids back on, and taken the barriers away until the next time. Instead, the lids are left by the side, with blooming great holes for old/blind/drunk people to fall into when the flimsy plastic barriers have been shoved out of the way.

So, people of Blackheath, maybe the mess should be tidied up for them? How about putting the concrete lids back over the holes, and relocating the barriers to somewhere else … The question is where to?