Posts Tagged ‘Cambridge’

Ten Questions For… Marcus

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

1) I’m Tim Chilestone, who the fuck are you?
My name is Marcus Alexander Chilestone, I’m 23 years old and when I grow up I want to be an ice cream man / on some kind of official register. I met Tim a little bit after I was born because he had mumps or  syphilis or something rank that kids get. Oh also, I’m possibly the most shameless person ever. Look up poo floors, piss cupboards.

2) Tell us about where you live, why it’s great/shit etc.
I live in a village just outside Cambridge called Grantchester in a pub called The Green Man and it’s fucking wicked. Well, I don’t live IN the pub, I simply live in some accommodation out the back that compromises of bedroom and bathroom.

The main great things about it are the amazing people that work there who have taught me not only what village life is like, but also how to have a laugh in a kitchen without violence or sexual depravity. The bad things are my colleaques have to see me on days off etc when I’m a massive wank smear, and in general a stain on the face of the earth. (more…)

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Ah ha! The chef returns!

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Hello, wanderers! Now, there may have been wonderings as to why I have not posted anything in a while, and this is due to me not having a job! Unfortunately The Castle did not work out and as I slumped into a premature mid-life crisis, the Cambridge life crumbled around me and I unfortunately had to quit my job.

Now although I did enjoy it there, there were a few unresolvable issues between me and the pub and so we parted ways whilst still friends. I also wish my little learning chef Captain Collins all the luck in getting a new chef and carrying on making the place some moneys.

So anyway, what have I been doing? Well, to be honest not much. A lot of time sitting on my arse and a little time seeing family, seeing as I had the time to travel to and from my wonderful mother and sister.

Now last week, while my phone was on silent and I was quietly snoozing away, my excellent brother, and key man of this website, was calling me with the possibility of some agency work, which once he got hold of me I got on top of. Agency work earns you a decent wage. So, I went to a pub in the beautiful village of Grantchester on Saturday and this pub, was called The Green Man.

Obviously a little dubious at first as this is a place with an extremely good reputation and a large amount of possible covers to deal with, which made me a little nervous. But then I met Clint, the head chef. Most laid back happy chef I’ve ever fucking met and I was, once again, at ease. The weekend, after that, was wicked, a nice busy pub with a team of four chefs and one KP, I was a happy little bunny.

So now, thanks to gelling well with the team, and finding that Clint cooks and runs his kitchen quite similarly to myself, I am starting there full time on Friday night as the sous chef of The Green Man, and order is restored, leaving me able to write cheffy things again. I’ll keep you posted you excellent love spunks you!

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Ramblings, Hamblings, and the fact I’m Still Standing

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Yes Chef!

Howdy breds and crips and all you other lot. It is my day off finally after another week of trying to be artistic, passionate, and of course, ok at my job.

This week has proved to be another busy one, leading to me missing my bus three times in a row. So, needless to say after my fourth night away from home, Sunday was a good sleep. My chef, Captain Spoon, or Mr Collins as he’s widely known by Cambridge students and other trampy types, is doing very well, helping me to run the kitchen like a fiery, quick-off-the-draw muthafucka.

Now, my main joy this week was seeing the mother of me, Timothy and Suzanne. She brought the usual perfect loot of sausage, fags and Jäger. So I ordered some ribs from the butchers and Collins and I set about making a sticky Jäger sauce for them. Beautiful, “old Levi Roots better watch out baby!” Of course Marcus, well done.

Unfortunately it’s not all fun and games in the work place and when it gets really busy, Mr Collins and I have to work on full throttle, which as a chef makes me a little short with people, and while I never mean what I say… I think I sacked Antonio about 8 times on Saturday lunch service. Luckily, a bit of verbal abuse has given him a sense of humor and he laughed it off in spectacular Spanish style.

I also realized on Sunday morning, that I really don’t like waiters taking food out of the oven. It really grinds my gears, and I find myself telling people off while they stand looking like a rabbit in the headlights. Either way, I discovered that to keep a little less eggy (I’m not an angry person), all i need to do is, stop listening to heavy metal, and actually just listen to “Elton Johns Greatest Hits” on repeat and sing along to it while merrily getting bummed with tables wanting extra spring onion in their mash and telling me that the Hollandaise sauce is in fact not Hollandaise sauce, but a sauce made with egg yolks and butter (really, really, really? Pretty sure that is infact Hollandaise sauce but if i’m incorrect please tell me and I’ll tell you how wrong you are).

So, another lovely week at work, can’t really comment on the home front as I haven’t been here! However, blud Ben does have a very bad back at the moment which I’ve been trying to fix with beer. And I think, failing. See you next time wankers!

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Food Away!

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Look out for our weekly-ish series of musings from the kitchen of a Cambridge gastro pub by head chef Marcus. Yes Chef!

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Viewable

Monday, February 8th, 2010

After months of searching through Gumtree et al to find somewhere to live in Cambridge, I am going tonight to look at a double room in a shared house in the wastelands between Mill Road and Cherry Hinton Road, somewhere behind Cambridge Leisure.

It’s not a student house, it’s not a bedsit, it’s ten minutes from uni and it’s CHEAP – £90pw all in. Which is GOOD.

But I am having doubts now. As much as I hate getting the X5 every day (although if you have to get a bus every day, the mightiness of the X5 means it isn’t quite so arduous), and want to be closer to uni, able to get a job in Cambridge without being constrained by buses etc., I wonder whether I would miss the security of “my flat”, and whether I am ready to leave St Neots for a third time.

St Neots is great; most of my friends are there, little brother is there, it’s handy for getting into not just Cambridge but also Peterborough, Bedford, London etc.

More than anything though, despite the fact I share a flat, it’s very much “my” place. I can do what I want when I want. I have all my crap spread all over the place, I can have who I want round when I want – I don’t have to live by someone else’s rules. It’s a selfish thing basically. Could I live by someone else’s rules?

So I am going to look at this room in CB1 today, and will keep the following in my mind. If it’s truly an amazing place, I’ll seriously think about moving. But anything less, I’m going to stay where I am, at least for the time being.

There’ll be other places. And £90pw does seem a little TOO good to be true…

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Does Cambridge Actually Need Another Tesco?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Started back at uni on Monday. Got off the bus to be met by the site of the empty bed store on East Road being turned into another Tesco Express.

Everyone knows Cambridge is one of the UK’s biggest Tesco towns, with well over 51% of all retail spend happening at the Evil Empire. Most people also will have heard of the mass protests that accompanied their plans to open a store in Mill Road, mostly citing the fact that the wide variety of independents in that street will be forced to close. (This is crap, of course; if you don’t want the indies to go bust, keep shopping there instead of at Tesco. Bet you won’t though.)

But the arrival of the East Road store seems to have been met with less fanfare. It’ll certainly do well, with all the live-in students of ARU – a few hundred – being three minutes’ walk away. But is there actually a gap for a store here? Newmarket Road Tesco is open the same hours and is only a ten minute walk. Asda is even closer, and the hated Mill Road Express about fifteen minutes.

Then there’s Sainsbury’s in the city centre, Co-Op at Milton Road (two of them), and Chesterton Lane, and Mill Road, and Newnham. Another Express at the Junction site on Hills Road. All these shops are within a fifteen minute stroll at most from the new one.

And while we’re on the subject, why does no-one complain about the Co-Op’s aggressive blanket coverage of Cambridge? No-one kicked up when they opened on Mill Road for example. Maybe because the Co-Op are seen as “nice”, they’re owned by the people that shop there etc. But to you or me, Co-Op is just another place to buy food and fags – exactly the same as Tesco. So why are they not seen as a threat to local business?

Cambridge is a fairly small city, albeit one that’s expanding quite a bit. I think Tesco need to calm down a bit, but maybe Co-Op do too. They have eight food stores in Cambridge, plus banks, funeral services, travel agents etc. Tesco’s website shows 9 stores, not including East Road, and they also seem to have forgotten about Bar Hill Extra, which is slightly outside the city but still very much counted as a Cambridge branch. They also don’t list One-Stop branded stores, which are fully owned by the Evil Empire.

Like it or not, Tesco are a threat to local business, because as much as people say “I won’t shop there” they always will.

No Mill Road Tesco Campaign

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1000 Words

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I wondered if I could write 1000 words, about nothing in particular, in fifteen minutes.

Write or Die is a great little tool which tells you your wordcount in one corner… and time to write in the other. Pause for too long, the screen goes red and you need to SPEED UP! Pause a bit longer and it starts DELETING what you’ve written.

Picture 2
But what to write 1000 words on in fifteen minutes? No time to think or plan reall, no time to go back and edit what I’ve done. No time to try to reach a sensible conclusion. But so far, I’m just filling space, and that isn’t the aim of this exercise! (Write or Die does allow you to click “pause”, but that kind of feels like cheating… It only works once though.)

Have just finished the usual supposed-to-be-three-hours workshop class that I have every Wednesday afternoon. Like most of my classes, it seems to have disintegrated rather quickly, and only around ten people remain.

There’s about four of us from the UK. Then there is Fatmir from Kosovo, Neda from Iran or French Angola or something, Bandar from Saudi, one Portuguese girl, and a couple of others I’m not so sure about. (more…)

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So… uni then…

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

I’ve now been at ARU for a month and am not enjoying it any more than I was.

I’m not gonna whinge about the amount of work, because really it’s no more than working full-time and in fact is often less. I’m not gonna whinge about all the twats around campus because I don’t socialise with them. No, I’m going to have a moan about travelling.

Because of the times my lectures start, I’m on the X5 during rush-hour most days of the week. When I worked at booking.com, it was the summer holidays so even if you got the 8.09 bus you were in Cambo just before 9. Now everyone’s back and the traffic is ridiculous. So for a 9am start I have to get the 7.09 bus and I still only scrape in on time, so I’m reduced to getting the fucking 6.39 bus – which gets to Cambridge in 35 minutes so I have to kill a load of time. Now, I’m all for spending less time on the bus itself, but that’s ridiculous.

I need some sort of transport. I can’t afford a car. It’s too far to bike. I could get some sort of scooter, but as Julie so rightly pointed out, I’d die. The thing that annoys me most is that the journey robs me of two to three hours a day when I could be doing some work, leaving my evenings and weekends mostly free, apart from that mystical just-before-deadline time. I can’t read on buses, it makes me instantly nauseous, and I’m fairly sure that if I tried it for more than thirty seconds there’d be vom everywhere.

Thing is, when you finish at 4 and then spend ninety minutes getting home, you aren’t in the mood to work any more. Those who live on campus or nearby (the famous Mill Road being a prime example and my eventual intended residence) can swing home, work like a bitch and still be eating dinner and watching Hollyoaks before I am.

Because this uni has a “non-traditional” student mix – lots of international and shitloads of mature students, most of whom obviously already have somewhere to live – their housing stock is even less sufficient than most. Renting in Cambridge is a joke so that leaves me traipsing back and forth every day. If it was to work, it wouldn’t bother me so much – walk out the door at the end of the day and relax, you are done. But when you have stacks of “homework” to do, the only reasonable alternative is to stay in the library until the late bus and just get it done.

Which isn’t a thrilling prospect.

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