One of the nice things about attending the Hypercomics preview in Battersea Park was coming across one of my favourite little-known spots in London bathed in golden hour sunlight, which might possibly be the best time to see it.

This spot is what remains of the Festival of Britain Pleasure Gardens, built in 1951, when Battersea Park was filled with a huge fairground, complete with a rollercoaster and a miniature railway based on designs by Rowland Emmett, the Far Tottering & Oystercreek Railway.

Despite the fact that the Festival Gardens featured designs from such luminaries as Emmett and Lewitt-Him and Abram Games, and despite the fact that many of the structures have remained in place for almost 60 years, it was surprisingly difficult to find any information about who designed the garden structures themselves. However, thanks to some judicious detective work, I have finally tracked a name down. He was James Gardner, arguably "Britain's most important post-war exhibition and museum designer" (so say these people), so his absence from sites like Wikipedia or even the Design Museum site seems all the more surprising, especially as the Design Museum does have a page about Ernest Race, the furniture designer who probably designed the lovely Battersea pleasure garden benches (hat tip to George Rex for that bit of detective work).

Although it has been quite hard to find out very much about him, I did eventually track down some information on James Gardner. Thanks to this obituary from 1995, it was possible to learn some more about this remarkable man, who worked as an apprentice to Cartier in the 1920s, and Chief Deception Officer (how cool is that job title?) of the Army Camouflage unit during the second world war, before going on to design the superstructure of the QE2, and the public decorations for Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953. No small achievements, by any standards, so how come it's so hard to find much information about him? (If you do a search for "James Gardner industrial designer" quite a lot of pages come up, but it took a lot of searching just to find out his name in the first place.)

Gardner also designed the exhibition for Britain Can Make It in 1946, and the catalogue cover has been making the Tumblr rounds in the last couple of weeks, which seems like synchronicitous timing.

But apart from all of that, he designed one of my favourite spots in London, and since that is where I discovered him, I'll let you discover him there too.

We made plans to meet at Barking, where I arrived early, having taken the Goblin from one end of the line to the other. Since I had a bit of time to kill I went along to see the new Lemonade Building and take a few pictures. 

I was struck by how the place looked like a miniature model made lifesize, especially the way the trees looked like those tiny trees you find in train sets. The fact that their colouring matched the balconies only increased the feeling but it was quite a nice touch. 

There were some interesting contrasts between the old and new buildings, although it served to reinforce the playset aspects somewhat. 

There's a good article on Barking here, a reread of which reminds me that I missed seeing Barking's new folly (if it counts as a proper folly, and I'm not sure if it does).   

After David arrived in Barking, we caught the train to Dagenham Dock. We were the only people to get off at this bleak and urban wasteland. It was hardly the most romantic of settings, but there was a sign inviting us to "kiss and ride".

As we stood beneath the huge flyover, I became aware of the loud crackle of electricity coursing through the pylons around us. The flyover has funny little lamppost supports which almost look like an afterthought.

Dagenham is of course home to Ford, so it was inevitable that we'd see at least one building sporting the Ford logo. 

More surprising was the odd-looking pavement, with random strips of tarmacked-in York stone haphazardly placed along it for no apparent reason. 

We could only assume it was there for some sort of "heritage" reasons, except that there's little else there besides huge industrial sheds behind long fences, or huge patches of scrubland behind barbed wire. This stretch of road is filled with skip hire companies, recycling plants and truck fleets, but not much else. 

Most of the sheds seemed to be various shades of blue and grey.

We passed a closed caff offering ice pops and mysterious "orange jubblys" for 40p each. 

At one point we came across a huge family waiting at a bus stop, which seemed incongruous, until we realised they'd just been to church. I can't think of a more bleak place to worship. Surely it'd be nicer to worship in some pretty park rather than an industrial shed in the middle of some urban hinterland. 

Nearby, we came across these odd lamps, sitting in front of some sheds. 

I had to squeeze my arm through the fence to take the top photo, but it was obvious someone had gone to a lot of trouble over their layout, even though not many people would ever see them, and the thick bars of the fence made it harder still. There was a touch of whimsy about it which we liked. 

Then there was this sign, which was surprisingly classy, compared to the designs of all the other signs and logos we saw on our wander.

After a seemingly endless walk down a dreary road, we cane across some horses, standing on a small bank underneath more pylons. There was another bank across the road, so we decided to climb that to get better angles for photos. We were barely up the small crest when we were running down to the road again, scared off by a man in camo gear crouching over a rifle. Unfortunately it meant we didn't get the iconic photographs of horses under pylons we were hoping for. 

Further horseless disappointment occurred when we found ourselves at Thameside City Farm. Since this is a location that feature on local bus maps and in my A-Z it didn't seem unreasonable to expect to see some evidence of a city farm there, but when we arrived — having walked right past it — it was clear there hadn't been a farm there for some time. 

By that time we decided we'd had our fill of bleak urban industrial landscape and abandoned our walk to the riverside, heading back to Liverpool Street, a pub lunch and some fine conversation. 

This year's photos from my London Borough Photo Challenge are being collected here.

Last week I went to a preview of a great exhibition of Hypercomics, which has filled Battersea Park's Pump House Gallery with magical mystery and multi-directional narrative. There are strange deer-like creatures dancing on windows, blood-red masks, choose-your-own-adventure comic strips, and a comical-medical library of London, full of fake books with titles like Interesting Awning Eyelids of the Ritz Hotel And Like Edifices or Cough Cough Cough: Bus Tales.

Each floor of the gallery features a different artist working to tell stories in a completely different way, starting with Warren Pleece's animation on the ground floor, and moving upstairs via Daniel Merlin Goodbrey's multi-directional comic strips, and Dave McKeans multi-media installation, up to Adam Dant's work on the top floor. It's a great demonstration of the many different ways words and imagery can combine to tell a story.

There are also a series of outsize comics panels down in the shelter by the lake, featuring various takes by several artists, on the mythical Battersea Park Free Festival, which may or may not have actually taken place in 1974.

Here are some more photos from the night. First up here's Ed Hillyer, Warren Pleece, Woodrow Phoenix and Etienne Gilfillan on the top floor, looking over Dave McKean's installation. Ed and I ended up having a rather disgusting conversation about gallstones, which was spurred on by some of the titles of the books in Adam Dant's Doctor London installation, including discussing whether or not the removal of a gallstone was what killed Samuel Pepys. (Actually, Pepys had kidney stones, but we got them mixed up, although the conversation so disgusted us that neither of us wanted to pursue it.)

Here's Dave McKean. I was taking this picture for the juxtaposition of the two bottles when I realised he was standing behind his sculpture. (This narrative was a bit of a fiddle to follow!)

Here's Sarah McIntyre looking through one of the windows.

The windows have pictures on them which line up with the trees outside if you stand in the right place.

I'm going to have to go back and give all the stories the time and attention they deserve. Fortunately, I already have plans to go back this Sunday, because it's the day of the summer Comiket, and the list of exhibitors looks fantastic. See you there?

Like many seaside towns, Bognor has a rather bizarre array of architecture on display. At one end of the promenade are a selection of concrete beach huts, which could look quite ugly, but they've all been given a pretty paint job.

We spotted a wedding couple with a photographer, taking cheesy photos of the groom carrying the bride down the beach (which seemed fair, as she wasn't wearing shoes and the beach was all shingle just there). We also spotted a huge, dead seagull lying on its back, so I couldn't resist this picture of it with the wedding party in the background.

At the other end of the promenade, where the houses aren't so posh, the beach huts are wooden and painted in a bizarrely radioactive array of IKEA-like colours. I think these were available for rent by the day, unlike the concrete ones which all seemed to be privately owned.

Nearby, we spotted these eccentric mish-mash houses built from old train carriages and garden sheds. They didn't look too weatherproof: one sharp gust of wind might blow them away!

And these, which seemed oddly Mediterranean, and like little tug boats at the same time. I like the balcony/porch combo with the portholes.

Then there's this monstrosity, which could have been good, except that the proportions are all wrong and the mirrored windows are too aggressive. Judging from the few balcony ornaments we spotted (there was a really hideous elfin Peter Pan statue sitting on the penthouse patio), it's going to be full of people with too much money and no taste, which is what you'd expect from anyone who'd want to live in a place that looked like this (the photo actually makes it look better, which means it probably passes the Architecture Squint Test Owen refers to in this essay):

Bognor has a big Butlin's resort which you can see from the train when you're coming in — it's got a peaked marquee that looks like something from a fairytale at a distance. Up close it looks a lot less romantic, but the really interesting thing about the place is that it takes up a huge stretch of the Bognor seafront, but almost none of the place can actually see the sea. There are no windows, and all sorts of fences blocking access between the buildings and the promenade. There's something rather twisted about that.

There's one place at Butlin's that does have a seafront view, the new Shoreline Hotel which was built a few years ago. It's not a bad building, as it seems to follow the seaside moderne tradition of buildings that look like ocean liners (such as the De La Warr Pavilion or Marine Court which I blogged about here). I forgot to take a photo of the side view to show you what I mean, but the front view is quite nice.

But my favourite building in Bognor was "this cleverly quaint little house, a sort of building which in its optimistic quality and simplicity might be emulated in thousands all over the kingdom."

No, not the ugly yellow thing squatting on the side of the road, which I included in the frame for comparison, but that elegant and odd little tower. It's called the White Tower, and looks like it was built sometime in the 1930s when both square whitewashed buildings and suburban cottages were commonplace, so I was interested to learn that it's actually much older than that. It was designed in 1897 by John Cyril Hawes, who was just 21 at the time. It's been surmised that he built it as a tower so as to be able to have a view of the sea, rather than the other buildings in front of it. You see pictures of the interior in this pdf. [link takes you to GoogleDocs version of an estate agent's pdf]

The more I think about it, though, the more I find myself wondering when it was whitewashed and when it acquired its name, because it wasn't particularly common practice to whitewash buildings like this in the 1890s when red brick and terracotta were still at the height of popularity. I was under the impression that it wasn't until the birth of modernism that people started painting their houses white like this, but I could be wrong — feel free to comment if you know anything about it. (Incidentally, Hawes himself went on to live in a hermitage in the Bahamas which he designed in the 1940s.)

It was a pretty mixed day, with dramatic changes in the sky, but it only rained twice: once when we were in a cafe having lunch, and once when we were in the pub. To give you an idea of the dramatic weather, these two photos were taken around the same time, from the same bit of the beach (those steps were quite interesting, covered in green and purple seaweed, limpets, barnacles and whelks, not to mention a little pool with tiny fish in it).

Bognor may not be winning any style awards or high accolades any time soon, but it's a very pleasant place for a relaxing day out by the sea. So get yourself a cuppa, and sit down and enjoy the view. More photos here.

Instead, one thing I decided to do was go and check out this year's Serpentine Pavilion. (It is hard and shiny and very very red and the cafe is expensive and there's not really much more to be said about it. I also popped into the Serpentine Gallery as I am wont to do when I am in the area, but the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition was pretty dull.) When I got off the bus outside the Albert Hall, I noticed that there was an exhibition of Roman Cieślewicz posters at the Royal College of Art. I'd been interested in seeing it but I thought it had already closed, so that was a nice surprise (it closed at the weekend though).

The exhibition was good fun. Cieślewicz had a varied career, designing book covers and film posters in Poland in the 50s and 60s, as well as working for all sorts of magazines and institutions when he moved to Paris. There was a strong use of collage which I found quite inspiring and I was looking forward to going home and creating something, when I came into the last room and found a collage workshop taking place. So I collected some printouts of various source images, sat myself in a corner with some scissors and glue and got my art on!

This poster is the first piece I glued down, though it wasn't my first collage idea but more like my third or fourth. The other ones weren't working for me because the pieces were all printed on different-coloured paper and some were awkward sizes and it wasn't as coherent as I wanted. But once I started on this piece it came together really quickly. (the colours came out a bit weird on the camera but it's too big for my scanner!).

After that, I made this one, from just four pieces — see if you can spot the individual elements.

I also took some photos of some of the other collages because I thought they were brilliant.

This fishman was made by the women running the workshop. I later found out one of them was Natsko Seki whose illustration has made the design-blog rounds a few times recently. (The other woman was from Finland but I didn't find out her name.)

This one was done by a teenage boy who kept making it bigger and bigger until it was about half his size.

It's a shame I can't give anyone a proper credit for the rest of these

And here's one last picture, a remixed version of my first collage poster. I ran it through Plastic Bullet when I was feeling bored, and this was my favourite result because it looks like it was taken underwater. Plastic Bullet is fun for that.

I'd like to make more collages now but while I have a box file full of clippings, I don't have any engravings like the ones I used here and they're fun to play with. Anyone know a good resource for copyright-free illos? Most of the sites I've looked at have truly awful search funtions and it takes ages to find anything even remotely interesting or useable.

Anyway, I figured I should say something for all the people who follow me via RSS, because even if the site disappears at least there'll be a post out in the ether somewhere to let you know why. And there's always my livejournal account as a back-up — the RSS feeds directly into it, and it's chock full of archives dating back to before I got around to getting my own website at mondoagogo.com.

It does give me a good excuse to finally get around to the redesign, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Mayfield Lavender Farm in Banstead. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this part of England was the centre of the world's lavender production, before urbanisation and cheap French imports did for it, so it's nice to have some back again in the same area. The farm has quite an interesting history. It's a lovely place, just on the edge of London; two fields of purple flowers, leased from Sutton council.

There were so many bees that the constant buzzzzzzing began to sound like noise pollution similar to planes. Strangely, it didn't smell very strong when I was there — must be one of those weird things where the smell is so distinct and potentially overpowering your brain switches it off so you can recognise other things over the top of it. Odd.

Inevitably, I took some photos. So here they are. If you click on them, you can see them at a bigger size.

little fat bees getting drunk on pollen

spot the baby

See the whole set here. They've started harvesting the lavender this week, but there's still a bit of time to go and see it before the end of August. It's worth a look.

It was too hot for a full meal of fish and chips, and most of the places weren't very cheap (not as cheap as Margate or Hastings anyway), but we did get chips from Bailey's Fry Inn, which has fantastic vintage 1970s signage.

After that we went and had tea at The London Restaurant, because the pretty red-and-green awning had caught my eye from down the road. It's a very old-fashioned cafe/restaurant, which looks like it hasn't changed since the late 1960s. They were even showing Thunderbirds when we walked in (then they switched to the racing).

The funny thing about this place is that I later found out from my mum that her aunt (who I never met) worked there, probably some time in the 1950s or 1960s! Maybe it even had the same decor back then…

Gorgeous blue skies and blazing sunshine called for ice cream, and Southend just happens to have its own chain, Rossi's, who've been serving ice cream to the holiday-makers of Essex since the 1930s.

We had ours on the pier, after a loooong walk from the shore — Southend Pier is the longest pleasure pier in the world; over 2km (almost a mile and a half). That meant there was about three miles of bunting (on both sides), made from actual fabric remnants rather than the expected scraps of plastic. It's the the longest line of bunting in the world!

If you don't fancy the walk, there's a train track, with a couple of cute trains, as well.

The pier is so ridiculously long because there's a massive sandbar which means that the tide never gets very high even when it's full. In fact, even over a mile out there are spots under the pier without water when the tide is low. All the same, you wouldn't want to walk around under there, because there's no sand or pebbles; the ground is thick with crusty barnacles instead, and a few squishy starfish that got left behind.

The tide being so low so far out leaves you with the somewhat surreal sight of people standing slap in the middle of the Thames estuary with the water barely coming up to their waists, as you can see in this handily annotated picture I took from the pier:

We actually watched those three people in the middle walk up the end of the pier. It was surprisingly dramatic, as a lifeboat came racing around the end of the pier, and a security guard dashed past us to intercept them as they climbed up. You can see the lifeboat and the trio in the distance here:

We got a bit worried, as we noticed one of them needed to be carried up the slope. It turned out she'd had been stung by a jellyfish just as they'd reached the pier (we'd spotted some in the water ourselves). She was okay, though, as we found out on the train back to shore, because they sat next to us. They were three teenagers who'd made the walk on a dare, and it had taken them a couple of hours. Security felt sorry for them and let them catch the train back for free!

The little old-fashioned train reminded me of the train journey in Spirited Away, and it was quite fun. It was interesting to see the difference in the tide from when we went out and when we came back:

Our evening ended up in a quiet little beer garden of what turned out to be "Southend's premier gay bar" where we had a great time bonding with the landlord on the subjects of good gin, Batman comics and gloriously rude innuendo. Pity about the limited selection of beer (only extra cold stuff, and no ales), but it was a much more cheerful and friendly than the enormous and depressing Wetherspoons pub across the road.

I was almost sad to leave Southend so soon, but got back to London in time to watch Catherine mess around on a couple of street pianos at Fenchurch Street and the Royal Exchange before they all disappeared the following morning. There's something wonderfully, magically strange about watching someone play a piano at midnight, in the middle of the street, as red double-deckers drive past you and the Bank of England. I was almost expecting passersby to break into song and dance at any moment, but all they did was break into applause. Still a lovely end to a lovely day, though.

More pics here.

A few days ago, I went to The Complete History of Food, presented by Bompas & Parr. Despite the fact that the title was a bit of a misnomer (there was nothing "complete" about their history, and, given that it was sponsored by a cognac company, it didn't really feel much like a history of food), it was an entertaining and unusual night out with two of my best pals, Nikki and Billy. (Apologies in advance for the poor quality of my photos, but the light was very dim in there, and I only had my phone.)

We started in a dark wood-panelled room, which had the ambience of a gentlemen's club after hours, or perhaps the room where the body was discovered in some Agatha Christie murder mystery. (It was clearly a library, although the bookcases were mostly empty.)

There, a chatty young man gave an introduction on what we could expect to see later. He claimed that he was "The Doctor" (although I didn't spot any bowties or extra-long scarves), and that he would prescribe our first cocktail based on the medieval elements of Humours.

Our "prescriptions" were indicated by coloured stickers stuck on our lanyards and, after a rather cheesy recorded introduction, we were sent off down a darkened staircase to find the next room. At the bottom of the stairs we went through a doorway, only to find ourselves having to jump onto stepping-stones through a flooded basement. "Be careful, there are eels in the water, and they're feeling a bit frisky tonight!" warned our guide for this part, but we made it through the room without incident, and boarded the wooden ship at the other end.

As you might imagine, walking across a flooded room filled with eels to drink in a wooden ship moored in a cellar should be a singular experience, and it certainly was. The ship was very dark, mostly lit by candles, with the sound of waves washing up against the hull. There was a jar of leeches on the bar, and for one brief moment I worried that they might be some bizarre ingredient in our cocktails, but fortunately that was not to be.

The three of us had been given different prescriptions, which gave us an opportunity to try three of the four cocktails on offer. I'd been diagnosed with an excess of phlegm (not far off as it happens; my sinuses are always stuffed up) and my prescription was supposed to boost my yellow bile (lovely). My "Choleric" cocktail was a fruity mix of cognac with rose-water, although I must admit I didn't detect much of the rose flavour as it was overwhelmed by the huge amount of ice in my drink (hmmm… since when did they have ice cubes in medieval London?) and the slightly salty flavour of the rather boring amuse-bouche that came with it — a piece of toast with artichoke and red cabbage. Although it was tasty, it looked and felt more like a party nibble and didn't feel like it had been particularly chosen well to accompany the drink. I was also a bit disappointed with the extremely haphazard way the drink was poured, as the woman standing next to me got twice as much as I or the other chap did (maybe the bartender fancied her).

Having joined the three of us in the middle of a conversation about beards, The Doctor had suggested that Billy was a "chin-stroking melancholic" and should have something to boost his blood. To that end, he was prescribed the "Sanguine" cocktail, a spiced mead, which was nice but sweet, and came accompanied by a teeny portion of fig covered in beetroot sauce.

Ironically, given the fact that Nikki is pregnant and can't drink alcohol, she was prescribed the tastiest cocktail. She told the doctor that she was far too knowledgable about the state of her yellow bile at the moment, so he prescribed a "Phlegmatic" cocktail, which fortunately wasn't made with phlegm, nor did it encourage it. In fact, it was a bloody marvellous combination; a cognac and apricot martini paired with porcini and truffle popcorn. The popcorn was extremely moreish (even though none of us are fans of porcini), and the flavours really complemented each other, with the buttery richness of the truffle lightly cutting the sweetness of the apricot. I was a bit jealous that she'd got a better prescription than me, but soon stopped complaining when she handed me most of the martini to finish after she'd taken one teensy sip (there are benefits of going to cocktail-themed night with a pregnant woman).

I was getting quite relaxed in the dim candlelight, chatting to people I could hardly see as the sound of waves came and went, but we had to move up to the next room, so up we went. Literally. First we piled into a teeny box of a lift, then using the lift as a time machine (which was certainly no TARDIS) we left the medieval spice boat and went up to the roof for a twenty-first century "deconstructed" champagne cocktail and a meaty Rocher, overlooking the London skyline. Although the views across London were great, and the herb-garden covering the bar was pretty, aromatic and practical, in hindsight I wish there'd been something a lot more futuristic at this point. But that's just wishful thinking, because at the time I was too busy admiring the view, discussing herbs with the charming French bartender and gasping in amazement at fizzy grapes to complain about anything.

Unfortunately, besides the fact that it looked exactly like a Ferrero Rocher, I don't remember much about how the Rocher D'or tasted. Obviously it tasted of meat, which was less of a shock than I expected, given how it looked, but I think the problem was that I was so bloody hungry I was actually too hungry to pay enough attention to the flavours. And there were only the teensiest blink-and-you'll-miss-'em singular specks of gold flake on each one, which barely justified their poncey name (not a problem, really, but everyone else's review seems to misleadingly imply that they were smothered in gold, which they weren't).

The cocktail, on the other hand, was a definite talking point. It was a classic champagne cocktail, but made with chardonnay instead of champagne, and with grapes as a garnish. Somehow, as the grapes soaked up the alcohol, the cocktail became paler and flatter, and the grapes got fizzy! Amazing. (Definitely one to try at home, although I suspect there's some secret trick they didn't share with us.)

The view was pretty good, too.

Then we all trooped downstairs again to find ourselves in yet another darkened room, this time with a vintage lampshade barely glowing and a vintage television flickering with vintage adverts. Ostensibly this was a celebration of the mass-production of the 1950s, and we were handed sheets of card and told to enjoy our TV dinners.

Our TV dinners were in fact scratch'n'sniff meals, although to be honest they smelled a bit disgusting. There was some debate between Billy and myself, as I was convinced that the roast chicken in fact smelled of coronation chicken (something that Cook Sister seems to agree on), and the peas smelled of mint toothpaste. Overall, it wasn't very appetising, and even now, days later, the artificial smell still lingers on the cards (which we took home as souvenirs), only now it smells even more disgusting! Fun idea, but not quite a success.

By this point we were wondering where our actual real dinner was and if we would ever get to eat it, but it was time to move onto the next room, down another set of stairs. There was nothing to eat or drink in the next room, the only thing to do was bounce. Or get bounced. Inside the room was a giant inflatable stomach that filled the four walls rather alarmingly, but a brief bounce around was quite good fun. (For anyone concerned about it, the pregnant woman sensibly eschewed this part.)

Then we followed a trail of mushrooms down a corridor, past a couple of rooms with hand-written "no entry" signs pasted up on the doors. One door was open, and the room was filled with junk and equipment. It was a peek behind the scenes, but it slightly spoiled the magic, as did the signs written in biro. The mushrooms reminded me a bit of mushroom tunnels, and looked almost as though Fairyland had gone through some kind of urban development.

At the end of the corridor, and down some stairs filled with flickering images projected onto the walls, we finally came to the dining room for our main course, which was good as by this time Nikki and I were ravenous (although we nearly wandered into the bar by mistake, as it was the first door we saw when we got to the bottom of the stairs). In the dining room we were greeted by a female maitre d' in a pretty dress. Unfortunately, given that this was the room for the grand Victorian banquet, although it was a pretty dress, it wasn't a very Victorian one (more like a noughties version of a sixties version of the twenties). I'd been feeling a bit sad that the staff hadn't been in period costume where possible because I think it would have enhanced the historical aspects of the theme and helped us immerse ourselves in each period to better effect. Probably nobody else noticed or cared, but this was one of those moments where my disappointment was reinforced.

Because the dining room was full, we had to wait a few moments before they could seat us for our own moment of recreating the famous new year banquet inside a Crystal Palace Iguanadon in 1853.

Waiting meant that we actually got to have our dinner seated inside the replica of the Iguanadon at Crystal Palace, rather than at one of the many tables at the edges of the room. Admittedly, in reality it was slightly awkward as I was over-conscious of not wishing to disturb the two women already seated at the other end, and the decor of the table cloth and place setting made me think of some stuffy municipal dinner, rather than anything as fantastical as eating dinner inside a dinosaur. Again, that was probably just me — and might have had something to do with the fact that I only had the back wall to look at, rather than out over the small balcony into the main room, like the other two.

Unfortunately by this time I was so hungry that once again I didn't really pay enough attention to what we were eating, a confit of duck with puy lentils with a black champagne sauce, although — tasty as it was (which was very) — I can't say I really tasted much champagne in it, nor could I work out how they'd made it black. To be honest, the room was so dimly-lit there wasn't much way of telling what colour anything was anyway. The duck was nicely cooked, falling-off-the-bone tender, and the puy lentils were perfect. Sadly, the bread rolls they provided were a disappointment; the fact that our waiter arrived carrying a huge tray piled high with them only reinforced my mental notion that they'd been bought in bulk from a supermarket, which undermined the feeling of "decadence" that the chefs claimed to be aiming for in this room (at least, according to the programme).

The cocktail at this juncture was a bit disappointing too; a summer punch made with cognac, green tea, apple juice and elderflower. Much like my first cocktail, it seemed to have far more ice than necessary (if you must insist on ice, then one or two cubes is much better than five or six, especially in short glasses), and its light fruitiness didn't complement the meal as well as a glass of wine or something with more body would have done (I also would have liked the option of a glass of water at this point, and I'm sure Nikki would have as well!). However, it was quite refreshing as a digestif at the end of the course, and would probably work very well on a hot summer's day eating cucumber sandwiches and strawberries-and-cream. Of course, it wasn't really a digestif because it wasn't really the end of the meal, and there was one more course to go: the Renaissance Dessert.

I was quite surprised on entering the dessert room to discover that there was first an anteroom showcasing the gingerbread Gherkin from the Parliamentary Waffle House (which I sadly didn't get to visit, because I always passed when I had a full stomach). As impressive as it sounds on paper, it was — again — too dark in the room to really see it properly, and it was hardly the reason we were here. In fact, other than as an excuse to show off what they can do, I have no idea why it was even there: it's not like any of us got to taste it, and it wasn't even appropriate to the Renaissance Period anyway.

Although, to be honest, the rest of the dessert room wasn't really very Renaissance, either, as it was being soundtracked by cheesy 1980s pop music and it was full of pink frilly curtains that wouldn't have looked out of place on an 1980s soap opera. (I wanted to compare it to Barbara Cartland's boudoir, but another blogger already beat me to it, so I won't, in case I'm accused of copycatting. You get the idea, though.) Behind all the pink frippery was a giant cake turntable, with dishes laid out on it for us to take (here's a 5 second video).

This dessert was one of the highlights of the evening: an iris jelly with candied orange, ambergris posset and one perfect raspberry. The jelly had the colour and shape of a really good creme caramel, so the light, slightly citrussy flavour came as a (pleasant) surprise. The texture of the jelly was wonderful, too, firm but yielding, and it was complemented very well by the sweet dollop of creamy sauce on the plate.

The sauce provided one of the funnier moments of the evening, as there were people already tucking into their dish when the food guide started telling us what had gone into it. "Does anyone know what ambergris is?" she asked, to a responding chorus of "yeahs" from our corner (hey, we're nerds, we admit it). The look of slight shock and horror on some peoples' faces when she explained it was regurgitated by whales was mildly amusing, because I bet those same people eat honey without ever wondering or worrying where it comes from, even though it's regurgitated by bees. Billy muttered something about how expensive ambergris is, which prompted me to ask whether it had been gathered ethically. The guide was quick to reassure me that no whales had been killed in the collection of the ambergris, but I was no closer to finding out how it was (or is) sourced (but that's what Wikipedia is for). However, it was one of the only moments of the evening where people were confronted with the idea of where their food had come from, and I liked that it got them thinking and talking. I wish there'd been a few more moments like that, really, especially from an event marketed as The Complete History of Food.

Amongst the pretty pastel-coloured frou-frou frills and sugared ornaments, there was a funny little technical gizmo which provided much amusement. This was basically a table fitted with a heart monitor. You could stick your finger in the hole and make the table vibrate, and of course there was a plate of jelly on top of the table to wobble with as much thrust as you could muster. Sadly, because I have short, stumpy fingers, I couldn't even reach the sensor properly, so I couldn't manage much in the way of thrust, but Billy did better — here's a video.

And after that, dinner was sadly at an end, so we popped into the bar to prolong it a while longer. Unfortunately, after ending on such a fun note, the bar was something of a disappointment, especially for Nikki. There was only a choice of two cocktails: a pre-mixed Parisian Rendezvous punch, or a rather boozy cognac Sidecar. It's a real shame that the Parisian Rendezvous had been pre-mixed, because without the alcohol it would have made a very refreshing drink, and even though the evening was sponsored by an alcohol company, I think it's poor service not to provide an alcohol-free option, especially as they had the drinkaware website brashly emblazoned on our lanyards.

And this brings me back to my main problem with the night: it was misnamed. As a History of Food it wasn't really a great success, no History of Food would forget to mention potatoes, or honey, or fish (although there were eels in the water, there were none in the food, and the ambergris doesn't count because whales are mammals), or rice, or bananas, or cheese (I've just realised there was no cheese! How can you have a food event without cheese?) Instead, what they gave us was a very entertaining cocktail party with some food attached. Often, it felt a bit like the spectacle was the most important part of the night — especially the scratch'n'sniff dinner, or the inflatable stomach — and that was fine, but it meant that we sacrificed sating our appetite at the expense of sating our other senses, which is not really what we were there for. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like I didn't have a great time, because I really did enjoy myself. It's more that the down notes of the evening dragged the high parts down as well, so that the overall good feeling at the end of the dinner was somewhat spoiled by the rather lacklustre experience in the bar afterwards (and to add insult to injury, we had to pay extra for that bit, which none of the reviews mention).

I'm still glad I went, and I did enjoy myself a great deal. After all, it's not every day you can drink cocktails in the bowels of a wooden ship in a flooded cellar, or nibble gold leaf and fizzy grapes in a herb-covered roof garden, or experience a scratch'n'sniff TV dinner, or jump around inside an inflatable stomach, or walk along a corridor that's been colonised by mushrooms, or dine on duck inside a dinosaur, or eat whale vomit and iris jelly, or wobble a plate by the power of your pulse alone. And I'm very grateful I got to do all of those things, because they all add up to a wonderfully eccentric evening of fun times with two of my best friends. And frankly, experiences like that are worth a little disappointment in less important areas.

Other reviews (and much better pictures) from:
Eat Like A Girl | Gourmet Chick | Fernandez & Leluu | Londonist | Cook Sister | the Telegraph | Domestic Sluttery { Crafts' Council | London Eater | The English Can Eat | Caroline's Miscellany

…and past the cathedral, which is surprisingly huge for a small town (suggesting it must once have been quite the seat of power, what with the castle and all)…

…then up into Arundel Park, past the funny little gatehouse…

you'll find a lovely little castellated folly called Hiorne Tower.

Built in 1787 by Francis Hiorne, it's a triangular prospect tower with a marvellous view across the south downs, and a perfect place for a picnic. Which is what we did.

Hiorne built the tower to demonstrate his architectural ability to the Duke of Norfolk, but there's not much information available about his life or any other buildings he may have worked on, and he died before he could go on to actually do any more work for the duke. The tower is reputed to be haunted, but we saw no signs of anything.

In front of the tower is an unlikely curiosity to find sitting in a field, in the shape of an antique urn, brought back as spoils from the Crimean War after the siege of Sevastapol in 1855.

The tower itself is quite unusual, with a checkerboard pattern made from flint.

One side of the tower is extremely weathered, but the other side is not (I forgot to check the third side, but suspect it was also unweathered).

After our picnic, we had a a nice slow amble down into the valley, along the Monarch's Way, where we mostly talked to sheep.

It was quite a surprise to turn a bend and suddenly come across the lake.

At the edge of it is pretty Swanbourne Lodge, which houses a tea-rooms, but we didn't stop because we'd just had lunch. You can rent rowing boats to go on the lake, which looks like fun if you can get someone to row you around whilst you lounge.

We followed the River Arun, stopping to talk to ducklings and get excited about seeing a water vole, and wandered back into the centre of town. There's a rather good second-hand bookshop there, Kim's, which has a great selection of kids' books, including at least two bookcases which are filled floor-to-ceiling with vintage Ladybird books. It's not very cheap but I picked up a couple of things anyway. After that, time for a quick pint in a pub and then the train home. Marvellous. More photos here.

Thanks to Anwen for suggesting it, and for being great company.