English tea, German beer: spankings all round

So, Patisserie Valerie, the small chain of upmarket London eateries, has been sold for £8m . The original and best branch neighbours Janus in Old Compton Street. It’s thus our traditional location for a traditional cup of tea after visiting a shop promoting traditional values. If you ever spy a couple in there whispering naughty comments to one another about the cutest of their fellow diners, come and say hi: it’ll probably be us.

Meanwhile Munich’s famous beer festival is underway; nearly two million pints were downed during last weekend’s opening ceremonies alone. Scenes behind the beer tents are apparently “Hogarthian” with “couples who were strangers a few hours earlier groping each other.”

What particularly caught my eye, though. in the report in The Times yesterday was the comment that young Bavarian women are “enlisted from farms to serve as waitresses”. They have to be trained to carry up to eight tankards of beer at once.

Given that the festival dates from 1810, I’m imagining ‘Hogarthian’ scenes of a different nature in the earlier days of its existence – with delectable Bavarian village girls being soundly whipped for spilling beer over clients. One complaint would lead to a warning; a second would inevitably lead to a thrashing before the waitress returned straight to work, wiping away the tears.

5 thoughts on “English tea, German beer: spankings all round

  • 21 September, 2006 at 12:02 am
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    I haven’t been inside the Janus shop for reasons I’ll let Pab explain (because they’re his reasons), but I’ve spent many happy hours in the SoHo Patisserie Valerie (and a couple of delightful ones with P and a spanko friend at the one near Spittlefield’s). For a start, in addition to their wonderful pastry, coffee and french toast, they also have an air conditioned non-smoking section.

    Bliss! So ya never know, the spanko couple might be P and me. Though that was a few summers ago.

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  • 21 September, 2006 at 1:37 am
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    The Janus shop: Because it’s a grotty, depressing, seedy little hole. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone going in there and feeling better about their kink.

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  • 21 September, 2006 at 7:17 am
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    Hi, Pablo and Mija! [Waves]

    Perhaps I should have titled this “English tea, German beer, French toast” – Haron eats the revolting stuff every time she goes in, too. Yuk! I know I am tolerant of others’ kinks, but eating French toast is just a perverstion too far.

    LOL I’m now just sitting here imagining the number of readers looking at this thinking, “But we go there too – it could be us,” and responding to the thread until we realise that the whole of the Patisserie is always full of spankos.

    And as for Janus…. Since the grotty, depressing, seedy little hole was the first grotty, depressing, seedy little hole devoted purely to corporal punishment publications that I ever found (back in my pre-internet days), I still wander in occasionally for nostalgia’s sake. I can’t say we ever buy anything there, though, unless we’re short of a school cane while we’re in London.

    Actually, they have revamped it a little. And it is fun going in with Haron and watching the other pervs scatter. And I do like think it’s appropriate that our capital city should have a shop devoted to such matters. And it’s sometimes interesting to check which of the latest publications have stolen my stories and reproduced them under someone else’s name without permission.

    That said, as I wandered down Old Compton Street at the start of the week with only enough time to pop into one shop before catching a train, the Algerian Coffee Store at number 52 won hands-down!

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  • 21 September, 2006 at 12:49 pm
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    So you think the guy who told me the marzipan penguins would make me “randy” was a spanko who’d wondered in from Janus? or just a penguin perv?

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  • 22 September, 2006 at 7:18 am
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    They’d be the marzipan penguins wearing gowns and mortar boards holding canes, would they? (Oh, I *wish*…)

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