shewhomust | Lunch at Old Shire Hall

Today being my birthday,

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:

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.