shewhomust: (bibendum)
There will be more, and not too far off; but for now, it's over and we are back home.

D. researched restaurants in Berwick, and we booked Sunday lunch for the four of us at Audela (so called because it is immediately beyond the Old Bridge, though only if you approach from the south, which on this occasion we didn't). The causeway closed at 10.20 am, so we took both cars, and did our own thing: D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada visited a stately home (Paxton House), while [personal profile] durham_rambler and I visited the Union Chain Bridge for the first time since its renovation, and walked across it into Scotland. Since we still had some time, we drove further into Scotland, to Eyemouth (where once upon a time we used to breakfast after watching the sunrise - but that was long ago and much has changed since then).

Lunch was delightful. They offered a slightly incongruous mixture of haute cuisine and traditional Sunday roast, but I took my own advice, and had two starters: a very rich crab risotto with a sweet and juicy scallop on the top, a piece of chicken confit on an assortment of vegetables (less successful, and over-salt to my taste, which errs in that direction anyway); and a dessert which called itself cranachan but was unlike any cranachan I have met before, more raspberries than whisky cream, with a scattering of some sort of granola, all concealing an intense, ruby, sorbet. A glass of Puglian white wasn't earth-shattering, but refreshing and went well.

After which, Sunday afternoon was Sunday afternoon: I may even have slept, briefly. Later, I sat at the kitchen table writing the previous post, and thinking that the sky was getting darker and perhaps I wouldn't go for a walk after all - and then I saw this:

Rainbow over the sewage pumping station


The building is the island's sewage pumping station, halfway between our cottage and the castle. It seemed like an appropriate 'last photo' (though I may post others in due course...

Yesterday, we stopped at Alnmouth on the way home.
shewhomust: (ayesha)
A couple of small irritations, which need to be written about, apparently, just to get them out of my system:

Customer service fail I: Majestic )

Yesterday [personal profile] durham_rambler and I did not leave the island, but went our separate ways, wandering about each at our preferred speed and distance. I went down to St Cuthbert's island:

St Cuthbert's island


and spent a peaceful while sitting on a bench listening to the seals mooing to each other on the far shore - and trying and failing to spot the oystercatcher(s) I could also hear.

Customer service fail II: the Crown & Anchor )

I did not get up at 4.00 am to watch the sun rising: but D. assures me that it did so, before the mist closed in. Another solstice past, and the nights begin to grow longer.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
It's a lovely drive from the Ayrshire coast to Kirkcudbright, even in the rain: you drive up the Doon valley into the hills, then follow the Water of Ken down again. The signs insist that it's the tourist route to Gretna, but you don't have to go there, you can just admire the scenery, soft green hills and silver water, trees dotted about for decoration, and plenty of sheep. At the top, just after the border, there's a herd of Belties, belted Galloway cows, to make it quite clear that you are now in Dumfries & Galloway: and we sighted another example of the road sign bearing the conventional 'Beware of cattle' image, edited by painting a broad white band across the midriff of the silhouette of the cow, so that it now conveys the message 'Beware of Belties'. (Previously spotted on last Sunday's Magical Mystery Satnav Tour.)*

We stopped in St John's Town of Dalry for lunch at the
Clachan Inn. The quirky décor maybe goes a bit over the top - there's nothin wrong with any of it, in fact it's all fun, but there is just so much... But the food was terrific. We have a booking for this evening, so we couldn't do it justice, but they let us sit in the bar and order a starter from the menu: three juicy scallops in a nest of squid ink risotto, on a layer of creamed cauliflower (and a glass of dry cider). They don't open on Monday or Tuesday, or I'd be plotting to return.

When we reached Kirkcudbright, the on-again-off-again rain was on: rather than come straight to our hotel, we called in at the Galleries. I wanted to see their temporary exhibition, Andy Goldsworthy's 'Winter Harvest', but was a bit disappointed in it: I knew the title described some of his early work, but had hoped for some sort of context. Always a pleasure to look at the pictures, though. A floor down, we looked into Creative Legacies - William Hanna Clarke and Alison Kinnaird MBE because it was there, but with, if anything, a faint hostility (I'm opposed to heredity on principle). I knew nothing about either of them, and was very struck by some of Alison Kinnaird's glass pieces. Not everything: some finely engraved botanical images were beautifully done but - well, fiddly. But a war memorial, an architectural triptych and something you could call a self-portrait:

Red List


made a great impact, and while the lighting obviously helps, the use of light is part of the artwork, so that doesn't count against it. The piece shown is Red List, and depicts crafts which are on the Red List of Endangered Crafts, of which wheel-engraving is one (others pictured include Shetland lace knitting, wooden flute making and glass eye making). So I have learned something today.

*ETA: Leaving Kirkcudbright on our way home, I spotted another modified cow road sign; and shortly after it, a modified deer - at full gallop, fine set of antlers, white midriff. Local artist getting carried away?

Eating out

Feb. 7th, 2024 04:50 pm
shewhomust: (bibendum)
We dined out spectacularly last Friday, with not just one but two pub quiz teams. It is the practice of our team to pay our entry fees from, and pay our winnings into, a kitty: we don't always win, but we cover our costs, and over a period it mounts up. Once in a while, we spend our accumulated capital on a meal out; and since those whiles are pretty long, the meals out can be quite fancy. We haven't done this since the eve of lockdown, and in the interim our restaurant of choice has closed. But another door opens: not only has coarse opened, they have now also opened an upstairs floor. When we discoved that another team had similar plans (our friends and rivals, usually referred to as 'the Physics Department', because several of them work there), we got together, and booked the two big tables which fill the entire upstairs.

It was enormous fun. The food was good. The discreet lighting increased the sense that each course was a surprise, and some dishes more successful than others: there were scallops, which I can never resist, though I didn't think they were enhanced by the little sphere of deep-fried haggis (tasty in itself) nor by the Italian red wine which accompanied them. None of the wines was a revelation, though I enjoyed the chasselas: people were generally pleased to taste a Swiss wine, and there were comments about not having done so before; we had, but enjoyed doing so again. And the company was great: perhaps we should have made more effort to move about, and mingle between courses, but I enjoyed staying where I was and talking to the people around me.

On Monday we went to lunch with A and D in Barnard Castle. A complete contrast: lunch, not dinner; at home, not in a restaurant; more relaxed, continuous conversation. Simpler food, though D's smoked haddock soup was as good as anything we ate at coarse (and his sancerre was nicer than most of what we drank). We lingered, talking books and politics and gossip and work until late in the afternoon.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: tonight we will eat at the Elm Tree, so that we will be there early enough to secure a table for the quiz.
shewhomust: (Default)
The Carol Evening last Sunday went well. The mulled wine that I had left to mature after breakfast was pronounced the best yet by several different people: so, for the record, Banrock Station shiraz mataro and heavy of the (fresh root) ginger. A slightly altered seating arrangement meant that GirlBear was in the middle of the musicians and had a slightly different view to her usual, and when I grabbed the seat by the door (so I could slip out after Down in Yon Forest to put mince pies in the oven and refresh the mulled wine) I was just at her shoulder and could enjoy this. Some of the usual singers had carelessly absented themselves, and one had to withdraw at the last minute with which covid: we have been doing this for 40 years, so we are always conscious of absent friends. But A is still finding copies of the songbook in which she has not yet corrected the spelling and punctuation. At the Winter Songs concert [personal profile] boybear had asked me how old was Il est né, and I had looked it up. The initial response, of course, is "We learned it at school," but now we were able to add a proper provenance, that it was first published in a nineteenth century collection of Christmas songs from Lorraine (which doesn't actually go much further than "Nobody knows!") As we say each year: always different, always the same!

On Monday we celebrated [personal profile] durham_rambler's mother's centenary: for many years, trying to allocated our Christmas visits among three sets of parents, we would spend her birthay with her, a week ahead of Christmas Day (I'm not sure she ever found this an entirely adequate substitute for spending Christmas with them, but better than nothing): this year we met with those members of the family not detained by work (his brother, sister-in-law and nieces at the cemetery where [personal profile] durham_rambler's parents' ashes are interred on the margins of the memorial to his illustrious relative; after which we adjourned again to the home of Younger Niece, who had prepared a lunch which would remind us of her grandmother (she had not recognised [personal profile] durham_rambler's suggestion og banana custard, and prouced a very elegant cream, in the manner of a fancy restaurant deconstructing a familiar dish).

In the evening we went with the Bears to Unity Folk Club, which is where we learned to sing Deck us all with Boston Charlie. C. startled me by singing A Sailor Courted a Farmer’s Daughter (what Mainly Norfolk describes as Dominic Behan's version): why was this song which no-one else seemed to recognise so very familiar to me? (Mainly Norfolk blames Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor, which means I knew it very well more than 50 years ago). It's a very supportive club, and wedid actually take up our turns on the singaround: since we had had some (political) parodies of Christmas carols, I, with the help of [personal profile] boybear sang Hark the jelly babies sing..., and [personal profile] durham_rambler with the help of the assembled company, sang The Man who Waters the Workers' Beer and Alex Glasgow's Socialist ABC.

What did we do on Tuesday and Wednesday? A little light shopping: guided by GirlBear, we went to Kentish Town, to the Phoenicia Food Hall and the Owl Bookshop, and then to the Wellcome Collection, whose gift shop filled the last few gaps in my Christmas present list. We had planned to meet [personal profile] boybear at the East West restaurant which serves various Indian inflected pizzas; I wasn't sure about this, but the Bears recommended it. Anyway, it was closed, so we crossed the road and ate Thai instead, which was fine. Back at our flat, [personal profile] durham_rambler and I caught up with an episode of Only Connect which delighted me by including a reference to Peter Dickinson in a sequence of fictional detectives (his was the difficult first one, which you aren't supposed to recognise, and I didn't, until we reached 'the second son of the fifteenth Duke of Denver' whom none of the contestants identified).

Wednesday was mainly packing. Lunch with Bears, an evening of tapas with [personal profile] helenraven in Southwark. High points, catching up with [personal profile] helenraven, fishy rice, excellent wine (Montsant,adjacent to Priorat); low point, spilling a glass of said wine over myself (and the table, but luckily no-one else).

And yesterday we left London via Waltham Cross, where we had coffee with A. Now we are in Ely, with D. and [personal profile] valydiarosada. Not going anywhere right now, just lazing with crosswords and internet, watching the wild muntjac deer browsing in the garden, being looked after by our hosts.
shewhomust: (guitars)
Yesterday afternoon was a big family gathering hosted by the Younger Niece: this overlaps substantially with tomorrow's event, but also included some people who won't be at that one, including the whole of the youngest generation (great-nephew level). We also met for the first time the Elder Niece's new partner, and his son (bonus great-nephew-person).

Quite late in the day, Younger Niece informed us that there was a challenge, to come wearing or carrying a clue to a seasonal song, but that it was purely optional. With no time to think and very limited resources, I decided to pass, but [personal profile] durham_rambler cut up the packaging from our lunchtime mini-panettone and made himself a festive badge. "Life is a panettone," seemed the obvious comment, but caused confusion when our host tried to add it to the party playlist, and couldn't find it. Our hostess with her mistletoe wristband collaborated with her husband who didn't have to work too hard to represent Mistletoe and Wine; an Elvis fan in a blue Santa bonnet (never seen one of those before) indicated Blue Christmas; and thoughtful Elder Niece had a bag of seasonal odds and ends for anyone who hadn't brought their own reindeer antlers and very shiny nose, or even a stick of jingle bells.

We left the party early, to go to Leytonstone Folk Club's concert of Winter Songs: a completely different set of winter songs, I don't think there was any overlap at all, though there will certainly be overlap between the concert and tonight's carol evening - and some overlap of performers, too! We had Cranbrook, for example, with almost no audience participation, which was odd. Sweet Bells got slightly more response, but the fun aspect of that one was that singers were sent out from the stage to the back of the church, to sing "Sweet Bells" back at the performeers. Il est né le divin enfant turned up in a sequence of French songs, between a splendid Noël nouvelet (I should hunt down more of this song) and something I didn't know and couldn't grasp, but suspect may have been humourous. Two Joni Mitchell songs: River, which has become a Christmas regular, and, unexpected but welcome, The Circle Game; Sidney Carter's When I needed a neighbour; the Rolling Stones Winter (how did I not know this? I mean, it wasn't that special, but surely I should have heard it before...?); and assorted Muppets and Greg Lake. No Fairytale of New York, and I'm happy about that, since I think it is very overexposed, but I'm quite surprised, too.

This morning we breakfasted with the Bears, did a little light tidying, and I combined the ingredients for the mulled wine and left them to get acquainted. [personal profile] durham_rambler and I lunched at the Tufnell Park Tavern: the soup this year is chestnut, and the wine list is full of things I want to try (I had a glass of txakoli, dry and almost saline, which cut beautifully through the richness of the soup). We had hoped that J & J would call on us before the Carol Evening, but they have worn themselves out doing other things, and have spent the afternoon recuperating, ready for this evening - and we have done likewise.
shewhomust: (Default)
Chronologically, our visit to Bishop Auckland last Friday was a lunch of tapas followed by a visit to the Faith Museum, but I find it easier on the tongue the other way around, so I'll let that title stand. They may sound like two very disparate activities, but in fact both are aspects of the Auckland Project, the extraordinary development charity which has grown from Jonathan Ruffer's intervention to save a set of Spanish old master paintings from dispersal (some background here) into a cultural powerhouse. We met friends for lunch at El Castillo (see what they did there?) the tapas restaurant at the ground floor of the Spanish Art Gallery, before visiting the Faith Museum which is the Project's newest venture.

Tapas ought to be the perfect food style for people who suffer from buyer's remorse in restaurants: if you always see what others are eating and wish that you'd ordered that, well, at least you get to share what your companions have chosen. But the more dishes you order, the more chance there is that you will regret some of them. Or perhaps it's just me: certainly, I should get over my conviction that this time the croquetas will be as good as they sound. So it's no criticism of the restaurant that I liked some of the dishes better than others - not to mention that our party was evenly divided between those who really like whitebait, and those who really don't. But I was right that even though I don't like calamari, they'd be worth ordering for the chickpea accompaniment; and I was doubly right to toss in that last minute order for bread, which was delicious. I only wish I'd gone with the impulse to double up on the order for charred broccoli. The carafe of rioja was perfect: we used to drink a lot of rioja, I don't know why we stopped...

Steer cleer of the desserts unless you have a very sweet tooth. An allegedly Basque cheesecake was heaped with cherries in sweet syrup which overwhelmed the delicate cheesecake. I think they were glacé cherries, and I think that was a mistake, but we did spend some time discussing whether they were maraschino cherries, and what are maraschino cherries anyway? Are they a variety of cherry, or does the name come from the liqueur? Subsequent research says that a maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry in syrup, originally containing maraschino liqueur. The liqueur is so called because it is made from marasca cherries (from the Italian amaro, bitter), but the cherries preserved in it are varieties of sweet eating cherries. We did not have profound abstract conversation about faith, so this meditation on cherries will have to do.

Time to visit the museum: entry is through the castle:

Castle gates


More pictures, plus a few words )
shewhomust: (Default)
The lazy days of summer appear to be over, and we are suddenly busy once more: with work, with play and - annoyingly - with things not working. This is the executive summary (as we old folks used to call the tl;dr versuin):

  • We revisited coarse, the restaurant where we enjoyed a joint birthday meal back in the spring. We wanted to take A. and D. out to lunch in Durham, and the options (once you have decided on eating out, rather than cleaning the house enough to invite people here) are few, and fewer than they were, Finbarrs having closed. We weren't sure coarse was a good choice for a relaxed, talkative lunch: would the demands of the tasting menu tend to upstage the social side of the meal? In fact it worked very well. A.'s thankyou may have been just a touch backhanded: the waiting staff gave lengthy explanations, but were softly spoken and on her deaf side, "so lots of tastes came as a great surprise to me as well as a delight." D., who is the serious cook of the household, was taking notes. The menu is seasonal, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it more than once a season. But I'd certainly be happy to see what they serve in winter.


  • Our ISP has been transferring things to a new server. No doubt this was a good and useful thing to do, but it keeps knocking out our websites, and our e-mail. When [personal profile] durham_rambler logs a complaint, they reply that things are working as designed: the reason you can't find your e-mail on this server is that we have moved it to that server. You just have to change your settings. Oh, right. Thanks. Meanwhile, at least one high-profile client has tweeted to her followers that You'll find my forthcoming UK tour dates on my website... So here's hoping normal service resumes asap.


  • There's also family stuff which I'm trying to arrange but which I don't feel like talking about just now...


  • Went to a gig in Middlesbrough last night. The venue, Toft House, was new to us: it describes itself as "the home of unpopular music" which makes it a perfect setting for Pete Atkin, who titles his website "Smash Flops" (and who I have heard recommending that his records be filed under "uneasy listening"). It was the first time in years we've seen him live, and I wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be 'an evening without Clive James'. That's not just because it was all about the songs they wrote together, which are surely the best work Clive James ever did, but but also because Pete talked a lot about Clive, and their process of writing songs together. There were one or two songs I didn't recognise, but mostly they were old friends, and it was a pleasure to hear them. One or two stumbles, but mostly an excellent performance, which seemed to gain in power in the second half. A chilling, dramatic I see the joker, and one last delightful surprise. Apparently taken by surprise by the demand for an encore, Pete hesitated about what to sing: he seemed to be leaning towards Laughing Boy, which is fine by me, when a voice from behind me demanded Master of the Revels - perfect choice, perfectly delivered.


  • This afternoon was scheduled for a neighbourhood tea party, rained off from the Coronation weekend. After days of blazing heat and sunshine, at three o' clock, as the party was supposed to start, the sky darkened. Was that thunder I heard? It was indeed. Within half an hour the WhatsApp group had swung into action, and we relocated the number 17. I am not a sociable person, and hadn't been looking forward to the event, but it was fun - I chatted to someone who had holidayed in Orkney at the end of May, and been taken by surprise in so many ways...
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Coarse describes itself as a "tasting menu restaurant in Durham city centre" and we have been curious to try it since it opened in the autumn (press coverage here). So when J. suggested taking us out to lunch as a birthday treat (midway between [personal profile] durham_rambler's birthday and mine), that's where we suggested, and she very generously agreed.

It's in Reform Place, which sounds grander than it is: it's a little courtyard off the North Road (once a main shopping street, now in limbo while the bus station is being rebuilt). At the far end of the courtyard is the Head of Steam, a pub with a good reputation, in a building which was once the gardening department of Archibalds:

Coarse restaurant


This picture doesn't really convey the enclosed nature of the space. It wouldn't have taken much effort to falsify it still further, by cropping out the edge of the dustbin - but a gaggle of dustbins do dominate the space, evidence of how all the premises above shops are being converted into student flats (not in itself a bad thing)...

Food in words and pictures )

A shot of espresso fortified [personal profile] durham_rambler for the walk home, J and me for a tour of the North Road's charity shops, the perfect end to -

Well, look, here's the thing: I've been quite critical about the experience, but that doesn't mean I wasn't enjoying myself, it just means that being critical is aa majoe part of how I enjoy myself. I would certainly do it again. The food was good, but the entertainment was even better.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
After all the excitements of yesterday morning, we had lunched very late, and made a leisurely return to our hotel through the streets of the walled town. By the time I had finished posting about our adventures, it was time to go out and look for dinner, although neither of us was very hungry. We enjoyed exploring a little further, reading menus and wondering what might tempt us, and eventually settled on Bara Gwin, just round the corner from the hotel. They had no tables indoors, but we compromised on a table (set for four) under the awning, rather than one of the smaller ones right at the road's edge - which is why you see [personal profile] durham_rambler sitting next to a window still bearing the publicity for last week's Quai des Bulles comics festival (wearing the satisfied expression of a man who has just seen off a bowl of moules marinières):

Snack


I had the house galette, which involved generous quantities of goat's cheese and potatoes, and a sprinkling of walnuts; and we shared a 'route du rhum' ice cream - vanilla and rum-and-raisin, with a shot of rum (the Route du Rhum solo yacht race has apparently been going since 1978, but it seems to have raised its profile lately). We shared a carafe of unconvincing muscadet (deep yellow in colour, and perfectly drinkable but completely anonymous). I first drank muscadet as an undergraduate, visiting Richard in Rennes when we were both spending the year in France our course required; I have rarely drunk it since without thinking of him, and we raised a glass to absent friends.

The name 'Bara Gwin' was nagging at my memory: isn't there a French verb baragouiner? And doesn't bara mean something in Welsh? (my culinary Welsh suggests that bara brith is a kind of fruit loaf). And doesn't gwin mean white? Well, half right. It turns out that Bara Gwin is Breton for bread and wine (which suggests that there was no Breton word for wine, and the name arrived with the drink) and that baragouiner means to talk gibberish, and is indeed (probably) an insult to the Breton language, though one of some antiquity. I'm glad we've got that cleared up.

This morning was grey, with a threat of rain, so we put aside any plans for more ambitious walks, and set off to stroll around the ramparts. This, too, is something I had done on that long ago visit with Richard: he was, as I recall, looking for vestiges of the lost tramways of Ille et Vilaine, but I also remember him gazing for some time out to sea (a habit we later referred to as 'communing') and talking about the tomb of Chateaubriand on the island of Grand Be - Richard was fonder than I am of Romanticism...

Anyway, we had a very pleasant if not very long walk this morning, and took our time and admired the view, and discussed why Saint Malo isn't a World Heriage Site (mysteriously, it seems not to be) and when we reached a dead end just as the rain was setting in, we descended from the walls and started looking at menus. So, Sunday lunch at the Café de l'Ouest short version, it was extravagant, but it was worth it.

Sunday lunch at the Cafe de l'Ouest


I lunched on four hand-dived scallops in pools of butter (with a huge chunk of tasty sourdough to mop it up) accompanied by a panful of truffle risotto. I'm not always a fan of truffle, but this was delicious. And this time the muscadet was absolutely classic. Almost as good as the food was the theatre. At least half a dozen waiters in long aprons bustled about the salle; [personal profile] durham_rambler could see over my shoulder the person whose job it was to open the oysters; and I could see behind him a French couple who seemed to be celebrating a special occasion, with champagne and lobster. The lobster was brought out for them to admire and photograph (and the waiter posed with it to enable this) and later flambéed with a whoosh of flame we felt three tables away. [personal profile] durham_rambler's desert was a coupe colonel (which is lime ice and vodka), which was brought to him as a glass of ice cream and a bottle of Grey Goose (French vodka). My 'Suprenante café' which I was promised was their version of the café gourmand, was surprising indeed: a gilded chocolate sphere, broken open just nough to show me that there was treasure within the thin shell - tiny meringues, chunks of nut brittle, a fruit jelly, worms of pink mallow, a macaron in an almost toxic shade of green, a chocolate truffle, toasted flakes of almond... In the end we ordered two more coffees, and worked on it together.

We took a slightly zigzag route back to our hotel, via another bookshop. And we are not likely to be dining out tonight.
shewhomust: (Default)
Back on the train, northbound this time, and not as busy, thank goodness. Yesterday was full of many things, which I am still processing: what follows is ordered by chronology, not importance -

Mercy cut )

And that was that. This morning we had time in hand - I had thought we might enjoy the opportunity to look around the area, but that didn't seem to apply. We vacated our room, booked a taxi, waited and read in the sitting area, lunched at the Upper Crust at Parkway (better than I had expected) and now we are on the train. Homeward bound, mission accomplished.
shewhomust: (Default)
  • Yesterday, in honour of World Book Day, I may have ordered a book. It's a bit uncertain, because I was so excited about it being available from Waterstones that I tried to order from them - and I may have succeeded in doing so, though it felt as if there was a final step missing (possibly because payment is due on dispatch, and there are still a couple of weeks to publication ...)


  • Oddly, the other book I was thinking I needed, and for the first time this year, is a diary. It felt odd at the end of last year not to be shopping for a diary, but I haven't actually missed having one - until now, with the year a quarter passed. Suddenly there's a Bank Holiday weekend I hadn't been expecting, and I want to be able to consult an actual paper diary before saying 'yes' to appointments (and then to write down what I have said 'yes' to...)


  • Am I just jumpy because I have agreed a time and place for my second vaccination, and don't want to get that wrong? This is, like my first vaccination, out of sequence: [personal profile] durham_rambler has a long-standing appointment for the day after the Bank Holiday, but despite being younger, I will be a week ahead of him.


  • Last night we attended a virtual 'wine tasting and tapas' event, organised by local wine merchant Guest Wines (they took over the business of Michael Jobling, expecting, I think, that Michael would be retiring, and so acquired both us and Michael): they work with a caterer, who turned up on our doorstep with a selection of little dishes and little bottles. At the appointed hour we fired up Zoom and (with two other couples) were talked through a tasting of the wines, and then encouraged to consider how each wine worked with the food. This was slightly awkward: we wanted to, and eventually did, start eating while we were still supposed to be tasting, and actually this was the right call, because if we'd done the tasting properly we'd have had no wine left to go wirth the food, and where's the fun in that? But our guide surprised himself at how well the fino sherry worked with the chorizo and bean stew, and I was sorry not to try that - I ate it wirh the Monastrell, which was good, but not startling. The star of the show was probably the white rioja, completely atypical and out of my price range. A glass of PX to accompany the dessert was a treat, but had me checking the Wine Society's list rather than tempted to order this one. Outstanding taste of the evening: the prawn croquetas.


  • What can I say about the lead story in this morning's news, other than that I was not expecting to be lectured about integrity by Dominic Cummings? This, possibly: how far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves would you say Boris Johnson fell when he made the Downing Street rose garden available to you, Dominic, and backed your explanation of why you had broken lockdown, and vouched for your phone giving 'proof' (which he wasn't going to share) that you had made no second trip?

shewhomust: (Default)
My brother the [personal profile] boybear and my sister-in-law the GirlBear have been with us for the weekend, and I have been having too much fun to find time to write about it. But the coming week will also be busy (and not without fun) so this is the condensed version:

  • On Saturday [personal profile] boybear went into Newcastle to do tai chi and chatting with his sparring partner.


  • GirlBear and I spent the morning at the cathedral: this is the first time I have visited since they removed the prohibition on photography, and I had fun taking pictures.


  • [personal profile] durham_rambler joined us for lunch at the Almshouses, followed by a little light shopping and home for a nice rest on my lovely reupholstered sofa).


  • We ordered dinner from Holi and Bhang, the current incarnation of the restaurant at Farnley Tower: worth a try, we thought, because it is very close, and could be good. Unfortunately, they had gone into meltdown, having distributed thousands of menus around the city, and not had the sense to turn down orders that they couldn't fill. We were told we'd have an hour's wait, which turned into an hour and a half, and weren't impressed by the food (quality was uneven, and some dishes were better than others, but overall, not great). So now we know.


  • On Sunday morning we visited the Penshaw Monument,


Pictures )

  • and bought an excellent sourdough loaf - and some very nice scones, but the bread was exceptional - from the farm shop just below the Monument.


  • In the evening we went to see the Melrose Quartet at the Sage. The band seem to have adopted a new uniform of jeans and black tops (James Fagan had very snazzy red buttons): I don't think I've ever seen Nancy Kerr in anything other than bright print frocks, so this was a big contrast. The material was more familiar: in fact it was almost all familiar, which was great because I got to hear a lot of favourites, but ... It turns out that the band are working on a Christmas album - being Sheffield based, they get to sing the Yorkshire carols - so perhaps they felt that their new material is all a bit unseasonal.


  • Today we had a lunch date with J.; and visited the Roman fort at Binchester, since it is (almost) on the way.


  • Which gave the Bears an opportunity to admire J.'s house (and me and [personal profile] durham_rambler an opportunity to admire the latest changes). We, too, have made changes since the Bears' last visit, which was longer ago than I had realised: they hadn't seen the wet room in the downstairs bathroom, or the bookcases in the spare bedroom...
shewhomust: (bibendum)
This is another post composed incrementally. It was already overdue, and taking shape in my mind if not on the page, when a feature in last Saturday's Guardian provided the perfect opening. In the week's piece about unlikely house-shares; the teacher and the student (not currently in a teacher / student relationship):
He once said, "You've made my life so different. I'm learning so much." I thought, "What's he talking about, quantitative analysis?"

"No," he said. "Now I know what shiraz is."


Which is as good a way as any into a post about how the last third of March (yes, as I said, overdue) seems to have been awash with good wine.

Dinner at Finbarr's )

Gate-crashing the wine club )

Sunday lunch with claret )
shewhomust: (bibendum)
We did not, as we had hoped, manage to spend yesterday evening with some of the other family members who are here for the wedding. But we did make (text) contact with [personal profile] durham_rambler's brother (Father off the Bride), and learned from him that although we could not join them for dinner (they had not been able to book for a large party; it seems that Cornwall is really busy in August. Who knew?) we could deliver the wine to the bride who, with her team of assistants, was at the venue making it ready. So we drove, clinking, down to the fort, said hello and had a sneak preview, and drove away not clinking any more. hooray.

We ate at The View restaurant. This is not exactly the View:

The View


but very close: the restaurant is raised above the road, so that - from our inside table, at least - the view was not interrupted by foreground, just the straight line of the horizon between grey sea and grey sky. We both ate singed scallops, which were delicious: the sweetness of the barely-cooked flesh cut by the bitterness of the burnt edge, more sweetness from the accompanying vegetables, and the cream sauce lifted by a gentle zing of lemon. The staff were friendly and helpful, and made no difficulty about serving the crab risotto from the starter menu as a main course: it was delicious, and I was glad I had not been deterred from ordering it, but so rich that actually the starter portion would have made a satisfying main course, perhaps with a side salad. And then I might have managed the chocolate marquise for dessert, instead of going for the lighter, fresher lemon parfait (which was good, though maybe over-decorated with leaves and goji berries - the toasted hazelnuts worked well, and would have worked better without distractions). From a long wine list with several possibilities I chose a picpoul de pinet, cool, fresh, slightly salt, just what I hoped it would be.

We might have returned to the village to see who was at the pub, but it was nearly ten o' clock, so we came back to the hotel, and discovered a text saying that a couple had made other arrangements and there would, after all, be room for us at the family table. In other circumstances, I might have been sorry to have missed this, but as it was...

And now it's the big day: time to put on my party frock!
shewhomust: (bibendum)
David at the Creel takes a justified pride in his breakfasts, but this morning's was exceptional - and not just because we were honoured with inspection by the cat. The first course was crème de marrons de l'Ardèche topped with crème fraîche - not something I think of as a breakfast dish, but which I could happily eat at any hour of day or night (I feel about marrons the way some people feel about chocolate...). This was followed by bubble and squeak flambéed in Laphroig - a mixture of green vegetables ("Not leftovers!" David was very firm about this, though I have no problem with leftovers, especially if they can be induced to bubble and to squeak), sautéed potatoes and bacon. The bread, William told us, came from Westray. It was perfectly good granary sliced, but apparently special because bread from Westray only comes to Mainland once a week.

By now I had been in Orkney 36 hours, and not once been offered a bere bannock. I was beginning to wonder why, and this seemed an opportunity to ask. William seemed surprised: evidently he doesn't think of bannocks as central to Orcadian produce, but he thought that there was still one baker making them, at Harray. I've always bought them from Argo's bakery in Stromness, but this meant nothing to him.

It turns out that Argo's now have a branch in Kirkwall, where I bought one bere-meal and one wheaten bannock as part of our supplies for our self-catering stay on Rousay. Also a pair of runic socks from Judith Glue. And [personal profile] durham_rambler picked up a copy of the Folk Festival programme, and is trying to work out whether we can get to anything on Sunday, when we return to Mainland. Then we drove round to Tingwall, for the Rousay ferry.

While we waited, we checked the internet for directions to our cottage: 41 minutes, it told us, "mainly flat." I'm trying to upload the picture which shows why we found this so funny, but the internet is having one of its funny spells, so perhaps I'd better not wait, but try instead to see whether I can upload this.

ETA to illustrate what's funny about that "mainly flat":

Tingwall pier
shewhomust: (bibendum)
We dined last night at Sutor Creek, Cromarty's bijou fine restaurant (it claims a Michelin commendation of some kind, though I don't know exactly what...). We were booked in for eight o' clock, the earliest we could get because a group from the University of Aberdeen (who have a Field Station in the lighthouse) was also dining there. By the time we ordered, they had eaten all the potted shrimps and all the asparagus soup, but we outmanoeuvred this limitation, starting with a big bowl of olives (hidden on the pizza menu) - and we both went straight for the Shetland scallops as a main course. The olives were big and juicy (and a generous bowlful). The scallops were served with salsify, new potatoes and broccoli in place of the advertised asparagus (this may have been an improvement) in a light crab-flavoured sauce. There was a very acceptable bottle of viognier, and afterwards there was cheese for me and a lemon posset for [personal profile] durham_rambler.

And all the while we were enjoying this elegant cuisine, the staff were also keeping a steady flow of takeaway pizza out of the door. We remarked on this to our server: "Oh, yes, we do a lot of pizzas for the oil rigs." You don't make a success of a small town restaurant without being flexible: if there are oil rigs in the Firth, you make pizza.

Today the ferry (the Pentalina) didn't bring us into Saint Margaret's Hope until after eight, so as soon as we were installed at the Creel (now in new hands, and a B&B), we went round the corner to the Murray Arms. Scallops were on offer again - Orkney scallops this time, and with chips and salad - and again we agreed that we were not yet tired of scallops.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
shewhomust: (bibendum)
Today being my birthday, [personal profile] durham_rambler took me out to lunch in the very swish surroundings of Marco Pierre White's restaurant at the new Hotel Indigo - which is the building I think of as Old Shire Hall, and a very splendid building it is, too:

Old Shire Hall


Though not always quite as magnificent as it looked when illuminated for the Lumiere festival. It was built to house the County Council, but by the time I arrived in Durham it had become the University's admin. centre. Since they moved out it has been empty. Somewhere in the archives of this journal I'm sure there are accounts of visits during Heritage Open Days, and once for an art event which was showing short films in dusty and abandoned spaces... So I'm delighted to see the building back in use, and that was my main reason foe requesting this particular lunch venue.

The restaurant was - oh, well, it was fine. A bit corporate, a bit unexciting. We were handed the set lunch menu, and it's possible the à la carte would have been more inventive, but I doubt it. Anyway, I enjoyed my 'brandad' (that's what it said) of hot smoked salmon with blobs of chili mayonnaise and the laciest slice of sourdough toast, the roast chick was pleasant enough and the Pablo Old Vines Garnatxa was very nice indeed. I wasn't even tempted by the desserts.

Our route home led past the Oxfam bookshop - and when I say "past", you know I don't mean it. I picked up a Patrick O'Brian (though not, alas, one I will be getting to any time soon) anf Jennifer Niven's The Ice Master, the story of the voyage of the Karluk about which I have just read a graphic novel, Luke Healy's How to Survive in the North.
shewhomust: (bibendum)
I was offline on Sunday and Monday, with a weekend guest and celebrating [personal profile] durham_rambler's birthday; and then not posting because of catching up with work. That's only a few days, but it feels like longer.

Weekend guest was D., who offered to drive us wherever we wanted for a celebratory birthday lunch. Easier said than done, when the birthday falls on a Monday off-season, and several of our choices were not open until mid-week. Eventually, after poking around the internet for a while, [personal profile] durham_rambler declared that he'd like to try Whitworth Hall: a country house hotel with a deer park, somewhere we hadn't been before, a little drive away but not too far, and in the right direction for J. to meet us there...

It's not Whitworth Hall's fault that Monday was gray and rainy. We didn't feel any urge to stroll in the parkland, and while we still admired the deer (as much as you can admire brown animals miling about in a sea of mud), we were happy to do so through a window. And the food was fine - we'd guessed from the website that it wouldn't be exciting, and it wasn't, but it was fine.

The service and atmosphere, though, were another matter. I'll go with "inept". From the moment we arrived, and told the young woman on reception that we had booked for lunch: "If you'd just like to go through to the Brasserie, straight through those double doors and - um, is is left? or right?" and she left her desk to go and look. The Brasserie was unattended, so we seated ourselves. The young waiter, who turned up bearing coffee for the only other customers, and attended to us thereafter, was friendly and charming as he brought us clipboards with menus - a different combination of pages for each of us, although only the two pages which, to be fair, we all had in common, were actually on offer. On offer, that is, up to a point: one of the starters turned out not to be available, and neither of the wines I selected (one bottle, one glass). D. asked for a pepper grinder: "Oh, I'm sure I can get some from the chefs..." and indeed, a tiny dish of ground pepper was produced. Inevitably, once dessert had been served and declared acceptable (and the desserts were probably the best part of the meal, and we agreed, cynically, that they had probably been bought in) all the staff vanished, and it took us a while to find someone who was prepared to bring us coffee in the bar. It was very good coffee, too (which you may interpret as it was strong enough to please me...

Yesterday evening, eating mezze with S. at a couldn't-be-more-different restaurant, she asked how our lunch had been. We told her it was as well she wasn't there, because she would certainly have lost her temper. Whereas we were mostly amused. I wasn't convinced by D's argument that they clearly didn't have much demand for lunch - after all, if they weren't open, they could simply have told us so. But it wouldn't have made such a good story.

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