Shrewsbury

 

I know you'll laugh but I'd never been to Shrewsbury, and last week that all changed as we drove off the stormy highlands of the Scots/English DMZ into lush, verdant, pastoral Shropshire. Well done faithful Tigra for making it so far, and well done D for driving.

And there it was, Shrewsbury. Turn right over the river into the half-timbered heart of the town and nav through the narrow cobbled streets to the Prince Rupert hotel, GPS is your friend. Then check in, drink a comp glass of sherry, thanks, Prince Rupert, and try and find your room.

This wasn't easy, on account of the hotel being a maze of corridors in a series of interconnected houses, but it was worth the search because the room was pleasant, overlooking ancient awesomeness. You could even open the window, a rarity in today's hermetically sealed hotel rooms.

That night, an old friend came in from Ludlow and we set off in search of adventure, finding it in an unreconstructed 1980s pub, half-timbered of course, complete with a juke box and "we only take cash," another rarity in disturbingly cashless Britain.

The next day we met with an old friend I hadn't seen in several decades, and he was on fine form, what a blessing to catch up with people you haven't seen in many, many years and even more so to find them just as fun as they ever were, perhaps more so. Great fun, and I introduced GJ to Negronis, such a good drink, at a pub on the river; big hit.

Later that evening, I found myself at the bar of the pleasantly old fashioned hotel and fell into conversation with a retired policeman who felt the country had "gone to the dogs." Perhaps he had a point, but Shrewsbury seems to have escaped the wrecking ball of modernity. 

Close run thing too, apparently some commission told the town's elders that if they persisted in destroying historic buildings they'd lose their heritage status. So they stopped. Good.

random street scene

So visit Shrewsbury, it's gorgeous, and stay at the Prince Rupert, a pleasantly old school hotel. Go too to the Hopping Friar pub where beer's three bucks (parityish) a pint. Next stop? The amazing, remarkable, can't speak too highly of it Ludlow.

Your Touring Pal,

LSP

Pubs

 

One of the things you can do in London is go to pubs, I like that and enjoyed the Princess of Prussia, the famous French House and the Coach & Horses, the last two being in Soho.

Just a lot of fun but be ready for a bit of a scrum inside and out the Soho pubs for the first part of the evening. They get more manageable as the night goes on. Then, after last orders, you can stroll down the road to Bar Italia for coffee. Always a good result.

And I know it's not a pub but I like Gordon's, which is a wine bar on Villiers Street, next to Charing Cross station. Back in the '80s the action was all inside, in a cellarlike bar, but now you can spread out onto a congenial terrace, and drink your claret under helpful heat lamps. The food's good too, simple and not too pricey.

Convenient. You can walk down the Strand or the Embankment, pull into Gordon's, enjoy that, then head over to Soho for the rest of the night. Fun, and it was good to revisit old haunts and discover they were still there, mostly unchanged.

Of course other things have changed, but that's another story.

Pints all 'round,

LSP

The Feast of St. Francis

It being the Feast of St. St. Francis, I drove across the dam to say Mass and the sky was huge, such is Texas.

Some say that Francis was a kind of hippy, although his hair was notoriously short, he didn't thieve and was a catholic Christian. Are the two synonymous? I'd say they are, at the end of the day and while we're at it, Europe is the Faith; thanks Belloc, for that. 

ChesterBelloc

Of course the old Europe is fast denying the Faith and becoming something else in its great secularist experiment which has, oddly enough, a peculiar fondness for Islam. 

Foretold, when you think about it, by Chesterton in the Flying Inn,  wherein a cheerful band of heroes roam about England with a large cheese, lots of ale and a "pop up" Inn. 

Say No To The NWO

In doing so they defeat an evil ruling elite which has embraced Mohammedanism and banned alcohol, much less pubs. Prescient stuff, GKC, and with the fierce ChesterBelloc in mind, will America take up the mantle Western Civ? 

Good question and I'd argue, if the present howling, gnashing of teeth and wailing of the Left is any metric, that we are and have a chance of winning. So get your act together, GOP, defeat the antichrist globalist elite NWO and their Illuminati Hollywood shills and #ConfirmKavanaughNow

A Saint

But back to Francis. He may not have been a thieving hippy but he did, apparently, talk to animals. That sounds pretty freakish dreadlock, right? Not so fast, punters. Francis preached to the animals because he felt he got a better response from them than he did with his human congregations.

He also went on to try and convert the great jihad general Saladin. He failed, but the remarkable Moslem, and he was, gave the mendicant saint the True Cross or fragments of it, which the Islamic war horde had captured at the disaster which was Hattin.

Saladin

Moral of the story? 

Don't be a hippy, strive to be a saint, scorn our globalist elite NWO overlords and ask for Francis' powerful intercession.

And as always,

Deus Vult!

LSP

Churches I Like

St. Etheldreda, Ely Place

Back in the '90s I loved going to St. Ethedreda's (off of Leather Lane in London) because it was a beautifully restored medieval church, the liturgy wasn't the usual modernist rubbish, it had decent polyphany and if you were lucky you got to hear Fr. Charles-Roux preach - mostly about the Divine Right of Kings and Marie Antoinette. Always a captivating delivery, to say nothing of a singular theme; Fr. Roux went on to be a sort of unofficial chaplain to 'The Passion of the Christ', saying Mass on set for actors and crew.

After Mass you could go to The Old Mitre, which looked pleasantly Dickensian but had been corporatised and ruined inside, or more sensibly there were the various pubs on Lamb's Conduit Street. Great part of London, I always think.

Speaking of which, you might be interested in the hypocritical, sleazy, self-serving, failed Labour attempt to smear England's top soldier. He's come out well, others less so; I like G.O.T's reporting and the All Seeing Eye.

Deo Gratias.

LSP