bill of fare  

Stroud is noted for its steep streets
independent spirit and café culture. Wikipedia
London’s Café Royal opened in 1865.
It was the home of posh café society from its onset 
and is forever associated with Oscar Wilde. 
Long past its café society heyday it’s now 
a restaurant /hotel owned by Trusthouse Forte. 
The Paris left bank café Les Deaux Magots 
opened in 1885 in St-Germain-des-Prés. Its habitués 
included Verlaine Rimbaud and Mallarmé. 
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre’s
literary gang together with Albert Camus 
made their headquarters at the Café de Flore
which rose to prominence pre and post-Liberation. 
The American ‘baroque’ rock group The Left Blanke
(complete with ’e’) had a lovely influential hit with 
their own song Walk away Renée (with acute accent).
The French singer-songwriter Alain Souchon has 
a marvellous celebratory song Rive Gauche à Paris.
The Cedar (Street)Tavern in Greenwich Village NYC 
was a bar-restaurant where artists writers and poets 
mainly met and got drunk in the 1950s: among them 
William de Kooning Jackson Pollock Jack Kerouac. 
Augustus John (1878-1961) a society painter 
and professional bohemian lorded it in 
The Café Royal before and after the first world war. 
Nina Hamnett (1890-1956) was a friend
of Augustus John and also born in Tenby. 
She was a painter model writer and scandale
and In her later life – just as Augustus John 
was known as the King of Bohemia – 
she became known as the Queen of Fitzrovia. 
Fitzrovia – sometimes known as North Soho – 
was an area of pubs cafés and restaurants 
centred on The Fitzroy Tavern at first 
and later on the Wheatsheaf pub 
which became the haunt of literary bohemians –
most famously Dylan Thomas – 
during the 30s 40s and up to the middle 50s. 
‘Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic 
farming originally developed by Rudolf Steiner 
that employs what proponents describe as 
‘a holistic understanding of agricultural processes’. 
One of the first sustainable agricultural movements 
it treats soil fertility plant growth and livestock care
as ecologically interrelated tasks emphasising 
spiritual and mystical perspectives. Wikipedia.
’Take a powder’ American gangster argot
meaning vanish disappear scram vamoose….
hear it in film noir movies from from the 1940s.

 

Jeff Cloves

 

 

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