When in Barcelona

I was raking around in my handbag for my always elusive mobile phone last week when out came an old sugar sachet from a place we'd eaten last Christmas in Barcelona. It reminded me that I always meant to post a recommendation for the place online:
El Convent, Jerusalem 3, 08001 Barcelona, T 933 171 052
(It' s one minute's walk from the back of the famous food market Mercat de Sant Josep/ La Boqueria on La Rambla de Sant Josep)
There we had a 3 course meal for around 8 Euros, delicious, traditional rustic food in a fascinating old building with friendly but low-key staff.
If you fancy it, read one of my earlier food rants here

Keep the faith

Last weekend we held an Architecture Week event at a log cabin we bought in Cunsey in 2003. For 4 years we have been trying to replace the decrepit cabin with a small contemporary wood and glass house by Sutherland Hussey Architects. The design - on their website - has attracted everything from Sunday broadsheets to Grand Designs, and even if Adam wasn't related to one of them I'd find it hard to fault their credentials, and yet most meetings with the local planners end with them suggesting some design 'improvements' . Even the (failed) Appeal we endured on the first application ended with the Inspector making some 'helpful suggestions' and wondering why we wanted to bother with all this pretentious nonsense - why not just plonk another prefab down?
Thank God I'm not the architect, I'd have to be carried off shrieking, but being the 'client' is no easy ride either.
As anyone who has tried to engage with the Lake District National Park planners will tell you, they're not a bunch to embrace contemporary architecture readily, being much keener on slate-clad walls, cute pitch roofs (Brazilian slate since ours is too expensive, is fine tho') and faux-heritage trimmings. Being a very special National Park they can largely ignore the shift in national planning policy towards 'greening' architecture and accepting that Modernism is here to stay and actually rather nice to live in. Instead we see endless, poorly built perpetuations of Lilliput Lane / Beatrix Potter style houses - Disneyland actually does them better, using better building techniques and attention to detail.

Anyway, back to the event. An amazing 30+ people found our tiny, remote site and an informal support group for self-builders and lovers of good architecture, emerged over cups of tea. After years of neighbour trouble and planning friction, it was genuinely moving to meet like-minded people who loved the design and were willing us to succeed and not give up! I had heard of urban Architecture Week events with noone attending, so was amazed to find that in the heart of what seems the most conservative place in England, there is a healthy group of dissenters.
Let's hope we can keep the faith long enough to do everyone proud and build the darned thing.

You can read Adam's blog about the event here.

Catsnap

One of Adam's conditions placed on the acquisition of cats here at Lawson Park is that they match: Unsurprising for a man with more collections than hairs in his beard.
Since adopting feline no. 2 - the lavishly friendly but rather plain Maurice (named after Adam's grandmother's revolting pug) - I have periodically managed to gather photographic evidence of his matching feline no. 1 - the exquisite but aloof Tomas Bata the Fourth.