Ladies are now permitted in the main dining room at lunchtime

[nineveh_uk]

I had a very enjoyable day yesterday meeting a friend in London and going to Simpson's in the Strand for lunch, followed by the Fashion on the Ration exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

Simpson's is the restaurant that features in Murder Must Advertise as the location to which hapless Willis tracks Wimsey and Pamela Dean, where he eats mutton and is miserable. It traditionally serves a lot of roast meat. And other things, but mostly roast meat. Some might question the wisdom of arranging to eat a large amount of roast beef at lunchtime on a hot July day in central London, but as the place is air conditioned, this was in fact very easy to do. It was a lot of fun, and not only was the beef (and roast potatoes, horseradish etc,) excellent, but so were the puddings.

Thence to the IWM's exhibition space, which was not air conditioned, and the warmth of which could not simply be put down to the lunch. The exhibition, on clothing during WWII, was fascinating, though (thanks to white_hart for alerting me to its existence), and we agreed that the WRNS definitely had the best uniform, and that there was quite a bit of the Utility clothing that we'd actually purchase if Marks and Spencer's did it as a special line. I have some bits of clothing alterations to do that I have been putting off*; perhaps I should watch Enigma and re-enact 'Make Do and Mend'.

*I hate alterations. They are often quite tricky and you don't even get anything new.

Comments

[naraht]

I've been thinking I ought to try to get to 'Fashion on the Ration.' Now I think so even more!

Also, hmm, Simpson's. Mary Renault is too fond of horrible food to mention anything resembling a decent restaurant so I have no excuse to ever go there for research reasons, but it occurs to me I could let my characters go there even if she didn't. And it's very close to where I work. Maybe I should try breakfast there someday...

[nineveh_uk]

You should definitely see Fashion on the Ration, it was very good indeed, and highly relevant to your interests.

Breakfast at Simpson's sounds an excellent idea. You certainly wouldn't need lunch afterwards!

[oursin]

The other thing about Simpson's, that I learnt from GB Stern, is that there were two dining-rooms, and in one the laydeez were not permitted, and whenever she was dined in the other (the upstairs room, I think), the gentleman would always indicate that the food was not quite as good (though presumably good enough for the female of the species).

Stern liked her nosh and is very good on the subject: one of her books is the account of a gastro-tour of Frances.

[nineveh_uk]

the gentleman would always indicate that the food was not quite as good

I'm surprised that the carving knives didn't get put to more inventive use, if people were doing that. I really must read some Stern.

It's the upstairs room for ladies in MMA.

[white_hart]

Isn't the exhibition great? And I would also quite happily wear quite a lot of the Utility clothing if it was made available (and would be delighted if there was a move to return to Utility standards, rather than the current rather shoddy manufacturing norms!).

[nineveh_uk]

For some reason I'd thought it was quite a small exhibition, but there was lots more than I was expecting. I liked the way that they didn't just have the clothes on display, but material about the administration of the scheme and the details of needing to produce the right products and not e.g. too many corsets in long lengths, not enough in short.

Utility standards would be fine by me. I bet that their trouser waistbands worked, for a start.

[holli]

siiiiiigh, one of my great resentments in life is that there are no DC-area museums that regularly put on fashion exhibits. The First Ladies' dresses don't cut it.

[nineveh_uk]

That is a disappointment in life. The London museums seem to do fashion/clothing exhibits reasonably frequently, and I've been to some really interesting ones. That said, I got into them by seeing an exhibition of Poiret clothing at the Metropolitan museum in New York!

[aella_irene]

You have inspired me to go to Fashion on the Ration with a friend at the end of the week!

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good day. But what kind of lager did you have? :)

I had no idea Simpson's was a real place. The thing that struck me most about that section when I was younger wasn't so much the excessive amount of meat on what are stated to be some very hot days pre-air conditioning, but the fact that people had the time to take a taxi out for a full-service meal during their lunch hour. Was a lunch hour more generously defined, or did the restaurants have fast service down to a fine art, like the old restaurants that they used to have at railway stations?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but I did PhD research on 1920s and 1930s romance novels set in offices in Germany, Britain and the USA, and you get exactly the same thing there, and I am fascinated by the sheer amount they ate. One of the features of those novels is anxiety about money, so you get quite a lot of, "For 30 pfennigs, she was able to buy soup, schnitzel, fried potatoes and rotkohl for her midday meal", and you're thinking, how much? For lunch?!

Is it one area in which the novels depart entirely from real life? (But if they're all saying the same thing, and they were very definitely trying to reflect the lives of their readers.) Were office-workers really doing so much more walking and activity than modern day people that they needed a full two- or three-course meal at lunch? Were portions just tinier? Is it because they never ate snacks between meals? Was everyone eating their main meal at lunchtime and just having tea in the evenings? (But then in Gaudy Nights, someone worries about the students only having a boiled egg for tea, which seems pretty reasonable if you've had your main meal at lunch.) Very confusing!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm always amazed that people are able to eat a lot at lunchtime (and aren't children who then run around for 40 mins to burn it off) and actually do their jobs in the afternoon. I'm hopeless if I have a large lunch.

If they're talking about single office workers and money, I'm inclined to think that one issue is avoiding cooking because of limited facilities in bedsit/boarding house, so you get a good meal at lunchtime, and then can have bread and cheese/ham/jam or an egg for tea. Maybe the students in Gaudy Night are supposed to be bicycling everywhere or something. College certainly do still serve significant meals at lunch.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

That sounds like such an interesting topic! Was there a lot of consistency between the three countries?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't like beer, so I had wine. But some men at a table over had lager to keep up tradition.

I suppose that if it was only 10 mins max each way in a taxi, that would give you 40 mins for lunch, which is doable if you're eating roast meat that by definition is already prepared, but asking for indigestion. I certainly didn't hurry my roast beef!

Wimsey presumably isn't bothered about the lunch hour, because he isn't a real employee, and Willis isn't initially thinking of it. But they still manage not to sign in late.

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the menu is sufficiently limited that all the kitchen had to do was carve & serve, significantly cutting into the time necessary. The true cooking would be done earlier.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

DEfinitely the case for the roasts, but one would still need to pack it away pretty quick to get out, eat, and back in an hour.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Did you attempt spying on any fellow customers, to assess the accuracy of Sayers' description?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yes, and as Mr Willis found, it would be a really rubbish place to try to spy on anyone. Admittedly we weren't in exactly the same room (ladies now being admitted to the main downstairs one), but even in the large room it was very open, very spacious, and very easy to see who was there.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Our work canteen does a lot of filling cooked midday meals, because we have so many shopfloor workers using it. I still find that convenient on occasion (though usually with salad instead of two kinds of veg and a choice of potato product), because it save on the cooking and washing-up at home. Then again others in my department eat the full cooked offering and then complain of being sleepy in the afternoon.