Mood music

HAD we hung onto the 1956 Topper annual - Mickey the Monkey, Beryl the Peril, Big Fat Boko and his crow, Koko - it would now be selling for around £300 on an Internet auction site.

It would also be possible to recall the instructive little feature about the secret symbols used by tramps, a sort of gentlemen of the road code, to indicate which houses were welcoming and at which to beware of the dog.

The signs would be chalked on the gate post, apparently, and our house - in Croft-on-Tees in the 1980s - must have had five stars, two rosettes and a recommendation from Les Routiers.

There was a tramp - an old style peripatetic but by no means a fragrant vagrant - who'd call every three months or so, be offered tea and cheese sandwiches and, perhaps appreciating what no best friend could tell him, would in all weathers stay outside and voraciously eat them.

The bairns eagerly anticipated his visits, the little one especially. Perhaps they'd remembered tramps from a book at bedtime, when William - just William - wanted nothing more than to be one, and if not a tramp then a pirate chief.

Whatever happened to them? It seems quite sad, really, but they might never pass this way again.

We mention all this - lest minds be wandering, too - because of an encounter within five seconds of walking through the door at The Carpenters Arms in Felixkirk, shortly after 1pm.

"It's Mr and Mrs Amos," said the chap perched on the Queen of Hearts bar stool, "the covert operation's blown."

Before we could say "Who the hell are you, then?" he revealed that he'd been among many who viewed the Croft house in 1988, when it was advertised as the Tardis and sold without commission within minutes.

It brought back memories of our tramp. In a lost childhood sort of a way, we miss him.

Felixkirk's three miles north-east of Thirsk, the lovely little church ministered unto these past 20 years by the Rev Patrick Reginald Andrew Reid Hoare, known to all concerned as Toddy.

There are gardening magazines on the back pew, the old water powered organ bellows in a glass case, and there is a sad old tomb in the graveyard with the inscription:

Twenty years I was a maid

One year I was a wife

Eighteen hours a mother

And then departed life.

The Carpenters, a short walk away, has been run these past three years by Karen Bumby, formerly general manager at the celebrated Crab and Lobster, on the other side of Thirsk.

It's a hugely civilised country pub, described in the 2004 Good Pub Guide as "warmly inviting" and with a coal fire at one end as if to reinforce the testimonial.

There's a well kept real ale selection, an inventive and carefully cooked menu, a talkative Welsh waitress and a happily informal atmosphere.

They exclude dogs, rightly, ask walkers to remove boots, understandably, and have a clean air certificate, laudably.

So why in the name of Pan do they allow piped music to pollute the place? It's not particularly loud, but it's incessant and intolerable.

They were the sort of songs known generally as standards. Had they piped it into the gents - which, blessed brief respite, they had not - it would have been bog standards, and no more acceptable for that.

We recall many years ago so greatly berating the bandit at the Fox and Hounds in Carthorpe, near Bedale - another long time Good Pub Guide entry - that the Fitzgeralds finally decided that the village wasn't big enough for both of them.

Similarly, the music machine should have pride of place on the nearest Guy Fawkes pyre, a bonfire of the inanities.

Thus accompanied, we started either side with "chunky fish soup" and with baked queen scallops with lemon, garlic and gruyere.

The soup came with little pots of grated gruyere, croutons and aioli - you know, garlic mayonnaise - though what the point of the aioli we couldn't quite decide. The soup itself was delicious.

On the other side of the fire sat two delightful old ladies with Hinge and Bracket accents, talking about the previous evening's television.

"Delia was cooking toad in the hole," the more elderly observed. "One's never made toad in the hole."

A part overheard conversation also embraced the Duchess of Kent - "not this one, her mother-in-law" - and Princess Margaret, both of whom "did it." Did what, for heaven's sake? Robert Robinson would have fun asking that one.

The Boss followed with salmon fishcakes from a section of the menu - good idea, this - from which dishes could be ordered as starter or main course. "Jolly nice," she said, as if in harmony with the old ladies. The steak, ale and mushroom pie, filled aromatically and abundantly, came with very good chips.

We finished with what chefs like to call assiette of desserts - Chambers Dictionary has no truck with the word - smaller portions of six puddings like a lovely chocolate marquise, creme brulee and a vividly piquant lemon tart. The coffee was strong and admirable.

The bill with a couple of drinks was £54, the Boss having eaten from the menu's upper echelons, which admittedly is a tidy sum for lunch.

Though perhaps not as mightily grateful as the old tramp after his tea and sandwiches, it was an entirely happy couple who took, once again, to the road.

l The Carpenters Arms, Felixkirk, Thirsk (01845) 537369. Restaurant and bar food, including sandwiches, seven lunchtimes and evenings. Two course Sunday lunch £11.50, three courses £14.50. Three course "jazz supper", October 30, £21.50. No problem for the disabled.

NEW Good Pub Guide, old favourites - many of them, anyway. Newcomers in the "Lucky Dip" section include the Harbour of Refuge on Hartlepool Headland ("good local fish"), the Langdon Beck Hotel at the top of Teesdale ("wonderful views from dining room with good food choice") and the Old Station at Tow Law ("enjoyable food including bargain Sunday lunch.")

The whole thing embraces more than 1,000 pages and remains indispensable for the nomadic. Ebury Press, £14 99.

EARLY doors in Stockton, we sought breakfast possibilities. "It's either the Swallow or McDonald's," they said, and thus by-passed the Drop-in Caf. It's at the town end of Norton Road, open from 5.15am. This was 8am and several of the customers looked like they'd been there for the duration.

Made with hot milk which formed a skin on top, the coffee was horrid to the point of horripilation - a long word which means making the hair stand on end. The breakfast itself was altogether better.

There were two big sausages, half a pound of bacon, fried egg, mushrooms, beans, black pudding and - get this - five roast potatoes, all artfully arrayed and perhaps a staple in Stockton.

It was robust and entirely enjoyable, £3.30 with the coffee, but next time, we'll try the tea.

OFF the wall as ever, last week's column on Bistro 21 in Durham wondered why they hung chairs above the stove. "We saw it done at the shakers' museum in New York state, it leaves more room on the floor for shaking," reports Martin Snape, also in Durham.

Impressed, his son has adopted a similar system in his smallish house. "The shakers," adds Martin a little mysteriously, "had lots of good ideas about furniture."

THE same column wondered what "baba ganouj" might be, prompting the ever helpful John Constable in Butterknowle to a lengthy list of blended ingredients, starting with aubergines. "It usually looks like an unpleasant grey mush," says John. (Not in Bistro 21, of course.)

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew a chicken's favourite type of car.

A hatch-back, of course.

Published: 21/10/2003