Fanzines and Webpages: The Midlands Embassy

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Like all but the most joy-hating perma-sneered anti-life curmudgeon i love the new St Pancras station. It's a joy to wander round somewhere that's been done, for want of a more sophisticated word, nicely, where even the bits that don't really work - that big statue that looks like it came out of a massive chocolate advent calendar - only make the bits that do - the Betjeman statue - look even better. There's just one thing about it that's missing, and that's The Midland Embassy.

I should confess a special interest at this point - for much of my adult life I lived in Leicester, and so St Pancras was always my Gateway To London. For years I'd come down on the train every couple of months to play a gig and, as these were London Gigs, every one of them was alive with the possibility of Making It. Now I live here I know that London Gigs are exactly the same as gigs anywhere else, with the audience consisting entirely of friends of the other bands and almost exactly no A&R men, TV producers, radio disc jockeys or talent scouts. The only difference really is that, in London, the haircuts are sillier and the beer's more expensive.

In those innocent times, however, every London Gig could be The One, so arriving at St Pancras was always felt like the start of a big adventure and, although things never worked out in the way I hoped, adventures were plentiful. I met lifelong friends, fell in love, drank too much, was extremely rude to people I perhaps shouldn't have been rude too, and did even manage to meet a disc jockey once. It was Mr Steve Lamacq, a very nice man who I've met a couple of times since, but who never seems to realise that we originally met years ago in The Bull & Gate. I'm a bit surprised to be honest - I was that drunk guy in a band who gave him a demo tape, how could he forget?

Anyway, this also meant that every time I got back to St Pancras to catch either the 23.22 last train home or early next morning to sneak back into work, I would always be tired but very very happy, full of stories to tell in my local next time I was there, and I'd always celebrate with a trip to The Midlands Embassy.

The Midlands Embassy was a tiny little shop at the near end of the platforms, between the two almost hidden stairways which were the only way down to the tube system. It was open as long as there were trains going, selling all the usual flapjacks and beers that you get in such places but also, crucially, it sold Samosas.

Now, when i say samosas I'm not talking the effete floppy variety you get in Marks and Spencers, nor the chewy little items you get in selection packs nor even the microscopic pastry fancies you find in a restaurant, but real proper Midlands Samosas. Hot as a Mexican's breakfast and the size of a Country Girl's palm, Midlands Samosas are fried overnight to arrive the taste and texture of a particularly greasy roof tile.

They're fantastic and, although you can to this day buy them anywhere in The Midlands that Crusty Cobs are also sold (another story altogether), I have never been able to find them anywhere in London apart from The Midlands Embassy. It was the perfect end to a drunken evening to run from the Victoria Line (it always seemed to be the Victoria Line) and arriving, gasping for air, in The Midlands Embassy just in time to buy a samosa, a beer and some poloes for afters, and then hotfoot it for the 23.22 along with a platoon of fellow Midlanders who'd plundered the capital for all the fun they could find.

Just before they closed the station down for refurbishment I paid one last visit to the Midlands Embassy. I thought it might be the last time but, over the years that followed, held out a brave hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be saved. It wasn't, off course - in its stead now stands a Carluccio's - and anyway, the platform for Leicester is a good five minutes' sprint to the other end of the building. And who wants to do that at eleven o'clock with a handful of pasta?

(originally appeared for Smoke magazine)

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