Tea rooms I have known

I read something recently which began by complaining about the current conditions at a tea-room in Edensor (near Chatsworth House in Derbyshire), which was apparently enforcing the Covid regulations in a draconian manner.  I haven't been to this place so I don't know whether or not it's true. However, the comment then spiralled into what I can only say struck me as being a hysterical rant about how the government is planning on changing our DNA or something via mandatory flu vaccinations - I couldn't really follow the argument, as I was too busy staring open-mouthed at the computer screen unable to process the nonsense I was reading.  

I bet every pandemic, war and other state of national emergency has made a proportion of every population give in to their paranoid delusions, borne of fear and anger, so I'm not blaming these people.  However, it's a pity that the internet gives them such an opportunity to pass on their often ill-informed views, thereby infecting others. 

Anyway, I'm not here to argue with such conspiracy theorists.  There might be some truth in what they say - I've noticed that their rants do often tend to begin with some truthful observation, anyway.  In this case, it was the fact that some places of business are taking their Covid precautions a bit too far and rendering what should be a pleasurable experience into quite the opposite.  I noticed this soon after lockdown ended and tearooms and restaurants opened up again. There was certainly a perfectly understandable over-response by some places. And circumstances like we're currently experiencing tend to bring out the jobsworth in many people, sadly.  

And it is sad, because tea rooms and restaurants which do make their customers feel unwelcome, which tell people off for not wearing masks or not queuing in a socially-distanced way, are going to lose custom and go out of business.  Which would mean that jobs will be lost, and favourite places will vanish.

But this sort of behaviour hasn't been my experience, except perhaps right at the start of the new precautionary regulations. I have been in several teashops and restaurants since lockdown ended and I have found them generally to be handling things well, particularly since they got over the initial shock and calmed down:

The Station Tearoom in Hassop, Derbyshire - we visited here soon after lockdown ended and it was our first foray into a tea room since back in February.  It was a bit weird, admittedly. Most people were sitting outside though you could go inside, which we did as it looked like rain. It was freezing inside however, much colder than outside. It was as if they had actually turned the temperature down in order to freeze the coronavirus out of us. We had to give our name and telephone number to the girl in the kiosk-type place, the first time we'd ever done this, and it did feel intrusive that first time (though it has become the new normal now), before we went inside, and we had to order our food there. The food, which was ironically the best we'd ever eaten there (it is a place we have visited a lot over the past few years), was delivered to our table by a waitress.  Inside, there were only a couple of other tables being used and all the decorations had been removed - combined with the sub-arctic temperature, and the high prices, it was a rather bleak experience, I have to admit.  But this was soon after lockdown ended and it might have improved by now.  Hope so, as we used to love it here.

https://www.hassopstation.co.uk/

Wentworth Garden Centre, Wentworth, South Yorkshire - This is our local Garden Centre, and during lockdown they had built a new restaurant to add to their already massive and relatively new tearoom and their outdoor cafe. Did someone say that such businesses were on their knees? Well, this place isn't. I think it must be run by the Devil himself because I have known it all my life and it just gets better and bigger and more successful all the time. Yes, there have been very short queues on our visits since lockdown and you have to leave your name and telephone number at the door. Yes, there is a bottle of hand-sanitizer in the entrance to the lovely new Bothy restaurant, but no one forces people to use it. Yes, the staff on the door wear visors, but waiting staff inside don't wear masks or visors. Yes, there is one way in and another out, but this actually helps the flow of traffic.  The food is exactly the same as it was, the prices possibly slightly higher than they were, the staff as pleasant as always, and though the tables are pushed further apart, there is a lot of space so it is unlikely you'll not get a table.

http://www.wentworthgardencentre.co.uk/

Rob Royd farm shop and restaurant, Worsborough, Barnsley - another of our pre-lockdown favourites. You have to wear face masks in the farm shop, though the staff don't, and I haven't worn one on either of our recent visits as I have just been walking through to the cafe. No one has challenged me.  You don't have to wear a mask in the cafe and neither do the staff.  Tables are set a good distance apart but don't look much different to previously. Food is the same (though they did seem to have run out of quite a lot on our last visit). It isn't cheap but it never has been. The staff are friendly and service not much slower than previously.  The staff in the farm shop are even friendlier and the butcher's counter has some excellent meat. 

https://www.robroydfarmshop.co.uk/

Waggon and Horses, Oxspring, Barnsley - This is a pub-restaurant where we have eaten for years. The tables are spaced out more than they were and each has its own bottle of hand-sanitiser.  Staff don't wear masks, but clean the tables and chairs between each service.  The place's usual warm atmosphere is still there - service was slow, but it often is, and they had a lot of new staff (something I've noticed everywhere). The food was the same as it always was, prices much the same.

http://thewaggon-oxspring.co.uk/

Beatson House restaurant, Cawthorne, Barnsley - Another of our favourites, this is our restaurant of choice for mine or my partner's birthday.  The staff were extremely pleasant. They have a new system where you enter at the front and leave at the back.  The menu is reduced and written on boards on the wall so you don't have to handle a physical menu (though they are available if you want them).  Tables are set far apart. The food was still as great as ever, service a bit slower - the poor staff have a steep staircase up which to carry the ubiquitous massive heavy white plates that seem to be a feature of all restaurants these days (when they aren't serving food on slates, wooden boards, raffia place mats or bits of driftwood - one good outcome of the Covid crisis is the way restaurants have dropped this nonsense as it is unhygienic).  We had a lovely evening here.

https://www.beatsonhouse.co.uk/

Cintra's Cafe, Hathersage, Derbyshire - garden seating, well-spaced tables with umbrellas, each table and its chairs sanitised between services. Staff wear masks or visors. Food average, but pleasant. Friendly. One-way system for entering and exiting, but no barking at customers or frog-marching them to their table. Don't know what they'll do now the cooler weather is here, however.

https://www.cintrastearooms.co.uk/

The Cheshire Cheese, Hope, near Castleton, Derbyshire - long wait at door to be shown a table though place was virtually empty.  Very young staff who were jolly and cheerful and friendly but incredibly slow - I mean, slow like a glacier!  They also got one of our orders wrong. Food was fine and well-priced, and pub is one of those picturesque country places that are difficult to dislike. 

http://thecheshirecheeseinn.co.uk/

Eve Kitchen, Doughnut shop on Sharrow Vale Road, Sheffield - you can't go into the cafe any more (or you couldn't when we went) so you buy the doughnuts from a kiosk in the wall, but they taste as fantastic as ever. Quite literally the best doughnuts I've ever eaten. My partner doesn't like doughnuts much but even he loves the ones they make here. Definitely not for people on a diet. Since I learned my blood sugar was a tad high and I had to cut down on such things as doughnuts, I have dreams about the one filled with chocolate and peanut butter ganache. 

http://www.evekitchen.co.uk/handmade-doughnuts/

The Hoof and Hide Cafe, Yummy Yorkshire Ice-cream, Denby Dale, Kirklees - despite the lockdown in Kirklees, the place has been heaving as always on our two recent visits. It is quite expensive but it always was. They have temporarily changed the ice-cream parlour so it now part of the cafe in order to space the tables out better.  There was quite a long queue and we had to wait a while, but this place is always busy when we've been.  They are using a separate outbuilding to sell their fab ice-creams, and serving their usual cafe menu in the main building. Staff wiped down tables and chairs between services. The food varies in quality, and isn't cheap, but at its best it is pretty damn good. Friendly staff and they are trying to keep it friendly and welcoming while also keeping people safe.

https://www.yummyyorkshire.co.uk/

Poem published today on Foxglove Journal

Check out my poem on:

https://foxglovejournal.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/as-she-waits-for-news-of-her-son-louise-wilford/

What I've learned recently: The journey can be better than the destination!

 

The perils of leaving home

I have a confession.  Once, during a more stringent phase of the lockdown, we pushed the rules to breaking point.  Remember when we were allowed to drive for longer journeys to get exercise, as long as the journeys weren't longer than the exercise?  Well, we drove the half-hour journey from our house up into the hills above Ringinglow in Derbyshire.  I had been coping with lockdown well, but I have a history of anxiety and I was beginning to get a little edgy and feeling that the black dog was lurking at the end of the garden path, so P thought that getting a change of scenery would help calm me down.

We took some sandwiches and a flask because the rules at that time said you could stop for food while exercising.  But in fact, we parked the car in a layby and just ate our food.  We thought we might take a walk afterwards, but I have been having problems with my back and I knew I couldn't actually go hiking for miles over the hills.  There was only one other car anywhere in sight, parked like us in a layby. It contained an Asian couple with three young kids in the back, and it was several hundred feet away from us.

There were cyclists going past, and, as everyone knows, cyclists - at least when they're wearing lycra and pedalling up hills - always have the apparently godgiven right to be as self-righteous as they choose.  One bloke rode past our car and started yelling abuse at us.  He was also gesturing with his hands as if to say 'Unbelievable!  Do these people not realise they are endangering both themselves and others?' (but with more expletives).  I wished I had had the forethought to bring a pop-up sign saying 'Do you realise that frothing at the mouth while riding a bike without a mask and yelling abuse at harmless strangers is much more likely to spread the virus than eating a sandwich inside your own car with the windows wound up?'.  He then moved on to vent his ire on the family in the other car, which incensed me even more than his yelling at us as I kept thinking how scared the children, who were very young, must have been.

Shaken up by this incident we decided to return home without having a walk.  As we drove down the hill we were passed by a police van, presumably heading off to set the dogs on the other car...

I can understand the argument that using our car increases the risk of a breakdown or accident which would be a drain on the NHS and put Green Flag workers in unnecessary risk of infection, but our car is regularly serviced, reliable, had new tyres and a full tank of petrol, and we are careful drivers, There were few cars on the roads anyway.  And there was no way we were otherwise spreading the virus.  We had been in self isolation about five weeks by then.  I can also appreciate that if beauty spots were filled up with visitors, social distancing would be difficult, and that rules are meant to be obeyed. But we hadn't broken any rules except that we didn't do the exercise we intended to do, and that was because of the abusive cyclist.

While my natural instincts are always to break rules, I am also sensible enough to want to be a good citizen during a pandemic.  We had gone out to the hills in order to try to head off a simmering mental health issue, but in fact the abusive cyclist made me feel like I never wanted to leave the house again.  I have always disliked the smugness of the lycra brigade.  I have no problem with people riding bikes in their normal clothing for fun or to get to work. I even think that cycling is a good way to get fit and save the planet. I don't even mind actual athletes who are training for events.  I would never want to prevent any cyclist from cycling round the British countryside and on the British streets (as long as they follow the rules of the road which they often don't).  But I have known many incredibly sanctimonious men (they are usually men) who think that owning an expensive bike and wearing a skintight yellow jumpsuit and a pointy helmet entitles them to feel superior to everyone else.  Apparently, they are single-handedly saving the planet and still have time to yell abuse at young children and middle aged couples.  I know that this ghastly cretin who screamed at us up on the hills almost certainly spent time that evening tweeting about how 'fucking unbelievable it is that there were TWO cars parked on the hill with their occupants eating sandwiches!'.  But we weren't breaking the rules at that time, and we certainly weren't spreading coronavirus. Whereas he was riding round, sweating profusely, spitting and coughing as he screeched, spreading his bodily fluids over the innocent countryside, while dressed in an outfit that made him look like a banana.  I think that should be against the rules, myself.

The only thing worse than a Covidiot is a self-righteous, judgemental tit on a bike.

Anyway, to move onto a funnier subject, you should have seen me walking through the woods near my house last week.  As I mentioned above, I've been having a problem with my back, but I didn't realise how bad it was until I was in the middle of the wood.  The forest near our house climbs up a steepish hill, and going down this hill seemed to trigger my back pain, which shot up from an Ibuprofen-dampened three to an excruciating ten.  There was nowhere to sit, except large rocks and fallen trees. I was shuffling along so slowly that I was being outpaced by a bright green caterpillar on the path beside me.  We were quite a distance from the road, and I was beginning to panic because I was in such pain I felt I might not make it down the hill.  With P's assistance, and after a ludicrously long time, I did make it to the Heritage Centre car park where I half collapsed on a low wall while P jogged home to get the car.

As I sat there, feeling pointless, several very elderly men with their equally elderly dogs, an old woman with a walking stick, a young woman in flipflops and with her ankle bandaged, and a toddler on a scooter, passed me, heading cheerfully home as if taking a walk in the wood was the easiest thing in in the world.  Self-satisfied gits.

Writing Cue...

Look very closely at something.

I mean, REALLY close, so you can see the grain, the pores, the stains, and the flaws.

What you look at is up to you.  It might be your garden fence, a piece of flaking plaster, a leaf, your own hand, an emery board, a lump of cheese....whatever takes your fancy.

The trick is to look close and for a long time.  Let your mind begin to see the shapes and textures and colours as abstract things, then maybe as concrete things - the way a cloud can suddenly look like a dog carrying a stick, once you're in the right frame of mind.  Let your mind wander but remain tethered to the object you're examining.  

Write a poem.  Whatever comes into your head.  It might be several different poems. It might end up miles from where it began. It might shoot off in different directions.  Just let your imagination go.

What I've been reading...

Crow Investigations series by Sarah Painter


I first came across this series when the first book, The Night Raven,  was recommended to me on my Kindle. I liked the title so I downloaded it, but I had a strange reluctance to actually read it.  I did read the first page and it didn't really grab me, and at the time I had lots of other things I had to read so it remained unread on my Kindle for a long time.  Then, one evening, I suddenly decided to give it a serious try, and I'm glad I did as I found myself quickly immersed in the world Painter creates.  I read the second and third book in the series straight after each other, and I have pre-ordered the fourth one. They are pictured in order below:


           


The novels have some similarities to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series in that they are set in an alternative but recognisable contemporary London, feature a detective (this time a woman, Lydia Crow, who is a private investigator), and involve magic and the supernatural.  I always like books set in London, a city I love, particularly when the writer clearly knows the place very well.  Aaronovitch's London is probably more vivid than Painter's version, but the Crow Investigations series definitely captures the place, 

Her imaginative twist on the urban detective genre is to have her protagonist, Lydia Crow, a member of the powerful Crow family, based in Camberwell.  Painter's London is divided between four magical families, The Crows (led by the formidable Uncle Charlie), The Foxes (led by Tristan Fox, whose son, Paul, used to be Lydia's secret squeeze), The Silvers (led by Alejandro Silver, whose barrister daughter is seriously upset by one of Lydia's investigations) and The Pearls.  So far, we haven't learnt much about the Pearls except that they are excellent salespeople - I assume we will learn more in Book Four.  Each family has particular magical gifts, though I think that the silver tongues of the Silvers are probably a bit close to the persuasive skills of the Pearls, though we will see how this plays out.  The Foxes are, like their namesake, cunning, independent, secretive, dangerous, and have a potent physical and sexual charm.  The Crows are historically the most powerful family, though the powers of all the families have been waning in recent decades.

In the first book, Lydia searches for her cousin Maddy who turns out (spoiler alert) to be not only more powerful than Lydia expected but also psychotic.  The second novel focuses on the Silvers and their involvement in several murders. The third begins with Lydia's discovery of the body of a member of the Fox clan in an unused underground station.  Each novel bleeds into the next, though they just about manage to remain self-contained stories.  

A real strength of the series is Painter's ability to create tension.  The scene near the beginning of the first book where Lydia is almost thrown off her rooftop balcony is terrifying and beautifully paced, for instance.  Lydia is an interesting, feisty heroine.  Brought up in the suburbs outside the main influence of her peculiar extended family, she is at first unaware of her own magical potential, thinking her only power is to recognise whether another person is a member of one of the four magical families.  However, we see her discovering new skills as the narrative progresses, and her courage is inspiring.  Her relationship with the good-looking Police Detective, Fleet, is also well-portrayed (though I found it odd that there seemed to be no reference to the fact he is black until halfway through book three - was his ethnicity an afterthought or a deliberate obfuscation?).  Uncle Charlie is a particularly vivid character, and Painter creates an atmosphere of mystery, conflict and suspense - one puzzle is solved only to introduce another, one problem sorted only to lead to a further complication.  The mystery of Lydia's ghost assistant's back-story is an excellent hook, though I'm ready for an explanation now.

Painter writes confidently and well, and is in control of her material.  There is sufficient originality to keep the reader interested, though I did feel that some of the plot climaxes were a little underwhelming.  Part of this is that investigations are sometimes puzzled out by reverting to Fleet using his police contacts or by other people telling Lydia things - I have felt that, despite my being fully engaged in earlier parts of each novel, the resolutions of the mysteries have pushed me as the reader away from the centre of the action.  This is mainly because Painter sticks to what can realistically be achieved by a PI, only using Lydia's magical abilities occasionally. As the books progress, this improves - in Book Three there is a good sequence where Lydia makes use of her friendly ghost to solve one mystery.  It would be satisfying to big up more of the minor characters, particularly Angel, the woman who runs Uncle Charlie's cafe below Lydia's flat,  

Overall, however, this is a readable and entertaining new series that I would definitely recommend. 

You can find Sarah Painter at: 

                            https://www.sarah-painter.com/     

RATING:

Crow Investigations series

****

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

Writing Prompt

Write a story or poem set in a supermarket.

RECIPE: Easy Meat and Potato pie

Easy Meat and Potato Pie



Ingredients:

one pack of chopped up stewing steak
one large carrot, peeled and diced
one large onion, peeled and sliced
one small stick of lettuce, washed and finely diced
one large potato, peeled and diced (larger chunks than other veg)
one knorr rich beef stock pot (or equivalent stock cube)
a glass of red wine (plus another to keep you company while you cook)
a generous spoonful of redcurrant jelly (optional)
a pinch of herb salt
pepper
a few shakes of smoked paprika if you fancy it
squirt of brown sauce
olive oil
cornflour
bay leaf
ready-made frozen shortcrust pastry, defrosted
egg yolk for painting on top of pastry

Method:

1. Brown the meat in a casserole dish suitable for using on hob. Set meat aside.
2. Fry veg in olive oil in casserole dish until beginning to soften.  Return meat to casserole dish and stir to mix stuff together.
3. Add stock pot, herb salt, jelly, paprika, brown sauce, a generous dessertspoon of cornflour, and stir well. Add wine. Stir well.
4. Barely cover with hot water from kettle. Add a bayleaf. Cover and cook in oven on a low heat (160 on a fan oven) for about an hour, until meat is tender. The gravy should have thickened. If not, mix some more cornflour with cold water and add a little to the stew after it has cooled slightly, stirring well.
5. Set aside until cold. Then tip into a pie dish.
6. Roll out pastry.  Cover top of pie, paint with egg yolk and cut two or three inch-long air vents in top.  Cook in oven at 180 (fan oven) until pastry is cooked.

Alternatives:

• use different vegetables.
• use different flavourings - different spices, herbs, chilli, garlic, tomato puree
• use rough puff pastry