Greggs, or the Two Nations

If I had Sky TV, I'd probably watch the new series about Greggs, the North East-based bakery famed for its pasties and sausage rolls.

Greggs: More Than Meats the Pie deserves credit for the title alone. I'm not sure what angle it's taking though. In London, Greggs is seen as a shop only poor people go in and the well-heeled sneer at the basic sandwiches as they pay over the odds for a filled ciabatta. In the North on the other hand, Greggs is where office workers queue up for cheap, tasty snacks. Really, what could be more satisfying as a dinnertime treat than a couple of hot, greasy sausage rolls eaten out of a paper bag?

Bayern Munich beer bust-up

I've only just seen this story about an incident at Bayern Munich's last home game in which French Muslim winger Franck Ribery was doused in beer by a team mate celebrating the club's twenty-third League title.

The story encapsulates a lot about how the press treats Muslims and doesn't bother to check the facts before printing a story. One question strikes me though: why is Paulaner supplying Bayern with alcohol free beer?

St George's Square

Returning from West Yorkshire to Manchester last Sunday evening, I changed trains at Huddersfield.

Huddersfield railway station stands on St George's Square which while it might not be quite up there with St Mark's or St Peter's Square is still a pretty impressive space. As well as the neoclassical station with its two pubs, it also has a statue of Huddersfield-born Prime Minister Harold Wilson facing the George Hotel, the birthplace of rugby league.

It's also where I made my screen debut while working for Granada TV as an extra in the early 90's (briefly, at 49.33).

Classic Cas

My rugby league odyssey around West Yorkshire continued last Sunday with a trip to Castleford.

Castleford's home Wheldon Road is one of the last of the archetypal Northern rugby league grounds.  Built in 1926, it hasn't changed much since with standing terraces on all sides and industrial chimneys looming over one end.

Before the match, I popped in the pub opposite and as it was keg only had a pint of Guinness. It was the first time I've seen the Guinness surger system where you pour a can into a pint glass and put it on a metal plate that sends sound waves through it to create a thick head. I can't really say it improved the taste but at least it wasn't cold or fizzy. I remember the shock of the coffee-bitterness when I first drank a pint of Draught Guinness in a pub as a teenager in the late 80's. Either my taste buds are going or Guinness is toning down the bitterness. I think I know which it is.

I had about forty minutes to wait for a train at Castleford station after the match. Luckily the British Legion across the road was holding an afternoon disco and being a warm day had opened the fire exits so not only could you enjoy the sound of the 60's soul being played but also the sight of middle-aged Yorkshire folk dancing drunkenly while necking cheap keg bitter.

A weekend in the West Riding

I started a weekend watching rugby league in West Yorkshire last Saturday in Wakefield.

Wakefield's home ground Belle Vue is the backdrop for the 1963 film This Sporting Life starring Richard Harris as a coal miner who becomes a professional rugby league player. I can't say I really recognised it much as one end is now taken up by a block of executive boxes but the high terrace at the opposite end of the ground where I stood does have a big, low roof that means noise generated by the fans is trapped and amplified, something missing from more modern stadiums with standing areas.

After the match, I went to a couple of pubs in the Good Beer Guide. The Black Rock, a darkish Victorian boozer that serves a pretty decent pint of cask Tetley's, was full of older guys watching the World Snooker Championship on TV. At the other end of the pub spectrum, The Hop  is a light, modern building with a bare brick interior. Owned by Ossett Brewery, it had most of their cask beers on and was filling up with young people who'd come to see the band that was setting up.

Walking back to the hotel, I noticed a brewery I've not heard of before: Clark's, established in 1906 from what the sign on the brewery wall says. According to the GBG, they stopped brewing in the 60's before starting again in the early 80's. The brewery stands in the shadow of HMP Wakefield, a set-up familiar to Mancunians like myself who remember the Boddingtons and Strangeways towers facing each other.

The Job Lot

I watched The Job Lot, ITV's new comedy set in a jobcentre, last night.

I worked in social security offices rather than jobcentres in my ten years in the civil service but I've signed on in them more times than I care to remember. I wasn't expecting too much from The Job Lot but I actually found it pretty funny and quite accurate too, more so in fact than many dramas set in the civil service.  I'd defy anyone who's worked in or signed on at a jobcentre to say they didn't recognise at least one of the characters.

Bar billiards

Having time to kill after a match at the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield finished earlier than expected yesterday, the BBC put on a short piece presented by Steve Davis about the legendary player Joe Davis.

Joe Davis grew up in the Queen's Hotel in Chesterfield, a long-demolished pub his ex-miner father was landlord of, which is where he honed his cue skills on its full size snooker table. The pub according to the  photo of it in the piece was owned by the Mansfield Brewery which was taken over and shut down by Marstons with production of its beers being moved to Wolverhampton.

Pubs and games such as billiards, snooker and darts have of course a long association. I'm trying to remember a pub scene in a novel set in 1930's England - by Graham Greene or Patrick Hamilton possibly - in which a character demonstrates how to play endless cannons in billiards.