New Years Eve 2007

This morning was all about the last minute (essential?) things like cheddar cheese, lard, mixed chillies, a gammon joint, mixed spice, bicarbonate of soda, beer (for Bryan), preserved ginger, tea bags, ginger marmalade. And there I was thinking that you could buy all this stuff in France. One of us is losing it and it ain't me mes braves.

AJ, my friend from way back and one of the most entertaining people you will ever meet, invited us to spend New Years eve with him, Holly, Chris and Annie at Chow's in Westerham, Kent. We both love good Chinese food and we know this will be good. What more could you want, good friends, good food and a good laugh.

Funny hats were the order of the day! Photos from the top, AJ impersonating a Scottish gentleman, David Chow our fabulous host, Holly and Annie, Jan (she's the one with a chicken on her head) and moi (wearing an elegant handmade mandarin jacket plus mafia hat?), Chris and Annie Hiawatha.

Harrogate to Sevenoaks

It was sad leaving mum this morning. She loves to spoil us and we love the attention. She gets no younger, so leaving her, and the trip back home is always poignant.

The long drive south is Jan's opportunity to listen to Radio 4 and in particular (because it's Sunday) to catch up with The Archers. I like Radio 4 but I can pass on The Archers, particularly when one of the characters in today's programme was called Coriander. What pretentious nonsense. Anyway, as we tuned in, the preceding programme hadn't finished, a programme on church bell ringing. Only Radio 4 could get away with that!

Nothing more clearly demonstrates the difference between French and English 'eating out' than the short walk from our car in St Albans (a brief stop on route). We had a choice of English, Italian, North African, Asian and Chinese restaurants, and all of good quality. We chose Carluccio's, the sensible place to eat Italian food at a reasonable price. We topped up with a few gifts at his front of house deli and headed on to the sixth bed of our stay.

The Sportsman's Arms

There I was, being quietly self satisfied, smug almost, because I've got my spam down to a hand full each day when BAM I got 790 messages overnight yesterday and over a hundred last night. They're very busy n'est pas?

The Sportsman’s Arms, Wath-in-Nidderdale, Pateley Bridge, HG3 5PP, 01423 711306, is a great pub. Arguably the best I’ve ever eaten in (the Royal Oak in Yattendon, Berkshire, is right up there too) but they wouldn’t take a reservation.

“We opena 12 of de clock, so no problema. Coma a long.” I suspect he wasn't English. As we pulled into the car park just after 12.00, it was packed with Mercs, BMWs and the like. My face dropped because it had taken 30 minutes to get there in driving rain. I ran inside and grabbed the last table.

They serve Black Sheep Ale, the food choice is good, and they will let you taste the wine before you buy. What more could you want?

Jan’s sausage and mash, mum’s spinach stuffed chicken was perfectly cooked as was my very tender rib-eye steak. Add to this rice pudding, an outstanding summer pudding and my roasted plums with mascarpone.

All this was washed down with a Finca Antigua, 2005 Tempranillo from La Mancha.

This place needs no advertising, it’s in the middle of nowhere, it was permanently full and serves excellent food. Highly recommended.

The best place on earth to live

Who needs broadband? Whilst we are at my mum's I am using dial up. Obviously a little slow but not bad. Still effective.

The postman delivered a parcel from Italy this morning. Pia, my mum’s sister, had sent a food parcel, a food parcel containing lots of Italian Christmas goodies. Two types of olives, cartellate (a fried pastry made with wine, shaped and covered in a cooked wine syrup), taralli (a semi sweet dry biscuit), a packet of amaretti biscuits, a large jar of home preserved artichokes hearts and a container of home made chocolates. Mum was genuinely pleased. For her it was a Christmas trip down culinary memory lane.

Harrogate is a great town and even Jan, a confirmed southern softy, says that she could happily live there. It has such a good feel. As you drive over The Stray and into town you notice that all the bus shelters still have their glass walls intact. There is no graffiti, nobody would dare. If you drop a piece of litter here you get flogged to within an inch of your life. No softy, pinko, do gooders here my friends. People behave themselves. OK, so I’m kidding, but it’s a great place to live. Recommended.

Jan is great with my mum, but I get very short tempered over silly little incidents and I admit I shouldn’t. Even after all this time I get very exasperated. For two days I’ve been waiting for mum to reply to our offer to take her out for lunch tomorrow. We’re sitting outside WH Smith waiting for Jan and out of the blue mum said, “OK, let’s go to the Sportsman’s Arms for lunch.”
“Hallelujah,” I said, “It’s only taken you a day to make up your mind.”
Mum said, “But you didn’t ask me in the right way. You have to be more emphatic and tell me that we’re going and not ask me if I want to go”
“What! It’s my fault that you can’t accept a genuine invitation? When we arrived yesterday you said that you had a houseful of food so I was being sensitive to that.”
Silence. I had steam coming out of my ears and mum sits in indignant self righteous silence.

St Albans to Harrogate

This morning we headed north to see my mum and sleep in the fifth bed of our trip. I couldn’t believe the amount of traffic. The M1 was solid for three lanes all the way to Nottingham where I got my first pint of Directors bitter. It was worth the wait. Nottingham to Belper, (the last stop on the way), then back onto the still busy motorway up to Harrogate. When I were a lad, the road north, after the Birmingham turnoff (I used to go out with her!), was always much less congested. Not now mes braves, it’s very, very busy all the way.

This links nicely to my new toy, Tom Tom. The more I use it the more I like it. It’s programmed to always choose the fastest route and, on the recent trip to Brighton, it chose back roads to James’ house that were new to us and which was altogether much quicker. And there I was thinking I knew everything! Driving up the M1 towards Leeds, and subsequently Harrogate, it directed us off onto the M18 and then up the A1M. Why it didn’t continue to take us up the M1 I couldn’t fathom, but there you go. So far the satnav has improved our knowledge and helped calm our nerves. A good buy and recommended.

Mum (above right with Jan a couple of years back) was, of course, waiting for us with food. With typical Italian hospitality she tried (and succeeded) to stuff some focaccia down us at 17.15. Now I’m not sure about you, but red wine and bread at a quarter past five in the afternoon is fairly easy to resist, but my mother is not. Refusal can offend. Through Italian eyes, we both looked malnourished and in need of building up. This will be a tasty but challenging few days! Rock on!

Christmas 2007

We've now been two days in St Albans hosted by Tim and Sue. There were 15 people around the table on 25th and 17 today, the 26th. The food was superb and I think we got the wine right.

This morning we all headed off to the ice rink in the town centre. The brave sat and drank hot drinks (you never know what germs lurk inside) and the foolish went on the ice. Being one of the brave ones, I nearly burnt my mouth on a hot chocolate (you're such a big brave bunny! - Ed) whilst others came back with minor cuts and bruises. We all like to live dangerously!

Tim and Sue have been fabulous hosts but I'm sure they will be glad to see the back of all of us tomorrow. Thanks guys!

Santa will visit tonight

This was the first time as grandparents that we had watched Maisie wrap presents, put them under the tree, take them away and then excitedly put them back again. Later she got a drink (a grand reserve Rioja), garlic cheese on crackers (how times have changed) and a carrot for the reindeer and put them near the fireplace for Father Christmas. She was so excited. Great fun.

Christ the car wash

After all the recent fuss about calling a teddy bear Mohamed, look at what I saw yesterday as we were following this star on our way down to Brighton. If you can't name a teddy after a Muslim prophet what about naming a car wash after a Christian one?

Talking about Christians (what a link!), a Happy and Peaceful Christmas to one and all.

A pheasant plucker

I realised that Hinxworth was posh when a huge Lexus saloon pulled up outside the house this morning and delivered the newspapers. The regular 'paperboy' was away on a caribbean cruise so one of the village's poor people had offered to stand in.


Proof , if ever proof was needed, that Harry is a pheasant plucker. Just before we left for Brighton I caught Harry 'in the act'. Most people have a bacon sandwich or gruel for breakfast. In Hinxworth you pluck and roast pheasant! I'd show you a picture except someone very dear to me left the bloody camera somewhere!

Really rare

Bar and Geoff came round for dinner last night, which has become a bit of a Christmas tradition. Gill and Bar are Jan's friends from when they were all eleven. Without wanting to labour the point, that's a bloody long time. (You like to live dangerously - Ed.) Anyway, Gill, amongst other delicious things, cooked a fabulous Beef Wellington for dinner. I noticed that Geoff was tucking in and I asked him how rare he liked his meat.


He said, "Oh, really rare."


I said, "How would you describe that?"


He said, " You know, cut off its horns, wipe its arse and throw it on the plate!"

Ocado

So we're driving up the A1 yesterday afternoon and I noticed a Waitrose food delivery van operated by Ocado (what a stupid name) but what grabbed my attention was what was printed on the side and in particular the tag line. Get a load of this:

Ocado

working in partnership with Waitrose

delivering with devotion

'DELIVERING WITH DEVOTION', what an unconvincing and stupid tag line! I bet they paid a fortune for some firm to come up with that.

I woke this morning at 09.15 after a really good nights sleep, despite sinking several (OK multiple) pints of Abbots Ale in the Three Horseshoes last night. An excellent night with Gill and Harry and several of their friends.

Laon to Hinxworth

For some reason I slept really badly last night so we were up and out earlier than planned. After I'd scraped the ice from the car windows I asked Jan for a drink of water. The water bottle was solid and a quick check of the outside temperature showed it was -8C. Ooh err. I didn't expect it to get so cold overnight and the boot was full of wine. We had offered to bring wine back for relatives, wine that had been bought in summer (yes I know that I probably shouldn't have done it). Whilst I could laugh it off if it was mine, reporting that we had managed to turn their stuff into iced lollies was going to take some guts. It also occurred to me that Jan would be better at it than me. Funny how many thoughts go through your head in a short space of time when you're under pressure. Anyway, off we went expecting to hear shattering glass at any moment. It didn't happen, we had got lucky. Good guys 1, the rest of the world nil.

The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful despite the fact that I kept falling asleep at the wheel (just kidding), but so much for breaking the journey and taking a rest. When we got to Hinxworth I was shattered, unlike the bottles!

Home to Laon

Today was the first day of our eight bed trip to the UK. The outside daytime temperature was very cold on the journey from the south to the north. Apart from when we left the south, the temperature varied between -1 C and -6 C. Through the middle of France, between Beaune and Reims, it was very cloudy and the trees were covered in thick ice. They had obviously been that way for some time. It made me appreciate our regular daytime temperatures of 8 C with bright sunny days at home. We arrived in good time at the Ibis hotel in Laon and were suitably impressed. The room was small but, for a change, the bed was large. Probably 6 feet wide, which is what we are used to. Excellent. Despite the fact that I favoured some junk food Jan steered us towards the restaurant. It was good without being memorable, a grill more than a restaurant. With a room charge of 47 euros per night this place represents good value for money. Recommended.

Boot camp

With the wine finally chosen for Christams (I've often wondered what a post would look like with all the typos left in, so this is it. I rather like Christams!) we now have no excuse for our little winetasting sessions. Not that bwe've evver needed an excuse in the past.

It was off to 'boot camp' for the dogs this afternoon. They are getting far too soft or, more to the point, we're getting soft (in the head). Each and every time we sit down to watch television the pesky dogs try to sit on our laps. We let them do it occasionally which is a big mistake because they have started to see it as a right and it has become a nuisance. They need toughening up a bit so a couple of weeks in kennels will sort them out (hmnnn, not sure about that one - Ed).