I Like Killing Flies (2004)

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)

Clitheroe, Manhattan

Spotted in the latest issue of the New York Press:

BEST ATTEMPT TO CREATE A FAKE NABE*

LITTLE BRITAIN

"A campaign was started to get a bit of Greenwich Avenue near West 12th Street officially called Little Britain. The main culprits: Virgin Airlines and the restaurant Tea & Sympathy (located, by an odd coincidence, on Greenwich Avenue, near West 12th Street), at which homesick Brits can cop their favorite revolting delicacies such as bangers & marmite, treacle & mash and the ever-popular spotted dick. Bollocks, say we. Shouldn't a new NYC neighborhood start with artists squatting in rancid old hovels where the rent then goes up, the artists are booted out and bond salesmen and Ralph Lauren boutiques move in? And then people start calling it something like NoWesGrenvillAbCa? But we're willing to compromise. We'd support a new nabe if it's called Wee Twee Perfidious Albion."

The author of the unsigned piece can take the piss all they want but, in a scene reminiscent of Kevin Costner in the Prince of Thieves, I dropped to my knees with tears in my eyes when I spotted Cornish Pasties for the first time in Myers of Keswick in Greenwich Village.

It didn't matter that the store looked like something out of Take The High Road circa 1981, and that I was half-expecting Molly Weir to be serving behind the counter, the joy of seeing a cornish pasty and a decent bag of crisps for the first time in two years was nearly too much to bear. The staff at the shop let me sit down on a stack of 'People's Friend' whilst I recovered my composure.

For me, wherever there are jars of Patak, Smiths Bovril Crisps** and re-runs of Tenko playing in the background, there will always be an Inger-lund.

*NABE doesn't stand for 'Never Anything Bloody Edible'.

**I'm teasing. Smiths Bovril Crisps are long gone people. They are never coming back, and the sooner you lot come to terms with that, the sooner we can all move on, and get used to the cardboard taste of Pringles.