What can I tell you about the Great Bear escapade we undertook in August 2019?  Not much!  My memory has been scrubbed clean since then due to various life events and the global pandemic, but at least I have photographs to remind me that we did do it!  My hair has grown to about 1,000x the length it was back then and gone pretty grey too…

The Great Bear Project began way back in 2018 when myself and Mr R began taking day trips out to stations on the Northern Line.  All the stations on that tube line have been renamed by the artist Simon Patterson as movie stars. The artwork is called The Great Bear, I have recipes for almost every one of the 50 stations.  It had to be done!

Spaghetti Bolognese was the second thing Mr R ever cooked for me I think, and he got that special long pasta so we could recreate the scene from Lady & The Tramp.

When I told him that I had a recipe called “The Saint’s Best-Ever Bolognese Sauce” attributed to Roger Moore he was more than game to take this one for the team.

Even though we were going to be cooking and eating this at his place, we still did the traditional trip up the Northern Line to salute the roundel.  Here’s the spaghetti en route…

and here is the salute…

We just zipped up there and zipped back – NO PUB EVEN?!  But we did take a “coming next” photo.

Next up, Colindale…

Which in the world of Simon Patterson is of course, Bo Derek (third down on the left)

Was Roger’s spaghetti sauce as good as Mr Rathbone’s own?  I cannot possibly say, but we wolfed it down and heartily enjoyed it.

The only other thing I can tell you from photographic evidence is that we listened to the most excellent Das Clamps album after dinner.

Here’s Roger’s recipe.

Mr Rathbone’s Station Factoids

Opening a couple of months after the Northern Line’s extension from Golders Green to Edgware was completed in 1924, Burnt Oak, situated on the ancient Roman road, Watling Avenue, was originally going to be named Sheves Hill after the Sheveshill field which lay near the eventual site of the station until the early nineteenth century, and was briefly displayed as such on a rare early tube map.
 
The station name was altered slightly to Burnt Oak (Watling) four years later, and a couple of the surviving – and quite handsome – roundel benches bearing this name still grace the platforms today, although it reverted to its original name in 1950 and has remained plain old Burnt Oak ever since.
Watling Avenue also holds the distinction of being the site of the very first Tesco supermarket, opened just down the road from the station in 1929
Aww, thanks Mr R.  Wish that Tesco was still there, looking exactly like this!

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