Llanfair Llythynwg

Exhausted by the morning's necropolitan activities, we decided to retire for lunch. When in London of course, one would want to go somewhere "in", such as top chef Gordon-Pierre White's Yo! Riverside Walk Brasserie, but we prefer the minimalist fare available at Mark Spark's chain of "no frills" cafés, which have recently been wowing London's chattering classes. Being a typically chilly London winter day, we opted for the pomme de terre bakéd avec fromage du cheddar et autres choses indiscutables d'Angleterre, an innovative modernist interpretation of a classic English recipe. Equally innovative was the self-service system, where we were handed a "pager"-like contraption which would buzz when our order was ready for dégustation. But - thumbs down for Mark Sparks here - it failed to buzz, and I was forced to complain to the Maître' d ("Stacey"), who admitted they had misplaced the order. They were however so kind as to take it again and present us with complementary cake anglaise, which more than made up for the previous tribulations.

Following an afternoon spent browsing in various well-appointed bookshops, we returned to Waterloo Station to retrieve our luggage (which had presumably enjoyed a day of luxurious massage and general pampering, at least that's what I'd expect for the price) and engaged upon a daring set of excursions on the country's rail network to various provincial destinations, including an exciting cross-country trip on one of those little provincial diesel trains which had the alarming habit of stalling at every station and had to be resuscitated at Bristol Temple Meads by two blokes with a spanner, finally fetching up in the sheep-infested Celtic Fringes.

Now, as is often the case, the administrative border doesn't accurately reflect the local ethnicity and although Penguin Ancestral HQ is technically in Wales, it's on the England-facing side of that nation's sheepshit-encrusted hills and is actually bisected by Offa's Dike (an early English attempt to copy the Great Wall of China) and there is exactly one Welsh-speaking person in the village. The predominant accent (as is the postal code) is rural Herefordshire ("oo arr, I be in coider curntree") mixed with Middle England, and if war was to break out between the two countries the front line would run along the ridges to the west.

Nevertheless, the area is being exposed to a ruthless campaign of Cymrification, and since my last visit has now gained a Welsh name - "Llanfair Llythynwg" - which has been made up as the village didn't have one, and apparently means something like "Church in the place with a chronic vowel shortage". However - hahaha - according to the only Welsh speaker in the village, who is also the school's headmistress, it's spelt wrong, and should be Llanfair Llwythyfnwg (literally "Church in the place with an even poorer consonant-vowel ratio than before").

But it's not just the English in Wales who are going to have to get used to vowel contraction. The Great Eastern European Migration Wave has hit western Herefordshire, and even the local supermarkets now sell "(insert name of Polish publication with lots of p's, z's, c's and k's here)" in the newspaper racks next to the Sun, the Mirror, the Telegraph and the Western Hereford Apple Fanciers' Journal. Lidl in Hereford is full of them (Eastern Europeans, not apple fanciers), by all accounts, no doubt stocking up on Landliebe Pickled Gherkins and Pickled Red Cabbage and other exotic continental foodstuffs which scare the bejeebies out of your average British shopper.

Mind you, if I was forced to live in the UK again, I'd probably do most of my shopping there (or in ALDI) too. They appear to be the only supermarkets whose products are not affected by the mysterious plague of killer nuts, which - judging from the information on various packaging labels - appear to be on their way to becoming the 21st century CJD.