There are plenty more fish in the sea

Critics tumble over one another to spruce their superlatives and to spangle it with stars; the rest of the world queues patiently down the steps, out along the Quayside and half way to Sandsend in order at last to enter Elysium.

It may therefore be the most popularly perceived treason since the little boy looked at the king and wondered what happened to his trousers, but we don't think it's all that good.

The word "that" should probably be in italics, or black capitals or something to indicate a qualifying round. It's good - of course it is, and the staff are brilliant - but is there something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, of received wisdom, about the Magpie Caf?

Two for joy, we went on April 1, a cheery waitress called Margaret essaying a passable impression of How Horatius Kept the Bridge at the head of the well trod steps. Whilst waiting, you can read about Magpie teddy bears, and cheese boards, and things.

It was 1.55pm. Much later in the year, or earlier in the day, and there mightn't have been a table until tatie picking week.

On the next one, an angry and absurdly impressionable woman had so wholly swallowed one of the tabloids' April Fool spoofs - something to do with a £3 congestion charge for pedestrians - that she couldn't hit her mouth with her food.

On another table they were discussing public conveniences in Wigan and how the Magpie compared favourably to Harry Ramsden's.

The Whitby Gazette had a rather clever April 1 story - clever as these things go, anyway - about the swing bridge being replaced by a £1.5m tunnel which would be named "Le Tunnel" to appease the flipping French.

If not quite so breathtaking as the 199 steps on the other side of the harbour, the Magpie's are vertiginous and those to the loos even more so. Whilst clearly impractical for wheelchairs, it is nonetheless remarkable how many struggle up on sticks and, subsequently invigorated, seem to take up their bed and walk.

Everywhere is clean and cheerful, decorated with water colours, nick-nacks and numerous certificates of commendation - some more than others, it might reasonably be said, worth the paper upon which they are purple printed.

As well as an old style slot machine, the gents has a series of cartoons combining food with famous folk - Okra Winfrey, Elvis Parsley, Bread Pitt.

The menu is lengthy and inventive, mostly but not exclusively fishy. The food is attractively presented in generous portions.

It's the cod and chips for which the Magpie is chiefly celebrated, however, which many would rate above the ancient abbey or wonderful church as Whitby's greatest attraction, which comes in three sizes - No 1, No 2 and No 3 - and which may have launched many a childish joke.

We began with the crab and salmon parcel - tangy, vivid - she with a Caesar salad which looked anaemic but tasted fine. She followed with the Magpie Trio, sole, salmon and scallops, which would also have been pretty good had it not been doing the 100m freestyle in butter.

We had the cod and chips, the piscine piece de resistance, No 2 uniform They were all right, and damn the faint praise.

The flesh was fresh and firm, the batter better perhaps 20 minutes earlier and better still in many a side-street chip shop. The chips weren't hot enough or handsome enough or (as they say in Northern parts) anything over at all. Two courses plus a single glass of wine cost £33.

Still they will come, of course, as relentless as the flood tide at Ruswarp; still wait their chance like seagulls for a trawlerman's tea break. Still they will hurl heresy, write rantingly, demand that the minority voter be disenfranchised (and preferably with a red hot poker).

It doesn't much matter. If that's the high-flying Magpie, there are plenty more fish in the sea.

PROBABLY 100 miles up the coast, the opposite extreme of the column's bibulous bailiwick, an elderly walker sat in the corner of the Jolly Fisherman at Craster, reading a book by the new Archbishop of Canterbury and dangling a small key over each area of his lunch.

First the soup, then the bread bun, finally the crab sandwich. What on earth was he up to?

Did he expect to find magnetic North, or to divine the sex of the soup, or remember where he'd left the front door? Explanations, reasonable or risible, would equally be welcomed. Either way, he left the bread bun. Bad vibrations, probably.

Craster is in north Northumberland - a tiny harbour, a smoking kipper company, a church properly dedicated to St Peter the Fisherman and, in both directions, coastal walks so perfect and so utterly invigorating that The Boss owned that it was the sort of thing of which she dreamed, when conducting consumer tests on cling film.

The Jolly Fisherman, 158 years a pub and still in mourning suit for Vaux Brewery, is almost equally idyllic. Up a few steps, a picture window lounge overlooks a stormy sea. Like beds in an ironmaster's doss house, the seats are seldom cold.

The menu is simple, snacks mainly, and the wiser for it. Between two we ordered crab and whisky soup, tomato and basil soup, kipper pate, rounds of crab and of fresh salmon sandwiches and a bowl of chips described as "Like mother used to make them." It was a perfect lunch, around £15 the lot.

The crab sandwiches are rightly celebrated, the chips - whilst probably emanating from Like Mother Used To Make Them plc, a wholly owned Bird's Eye subsidiary on a 1,000 acre industrial estate in Reykjavik - were exceptionally good.

The Boss thought the kipper pate very kippery, the sort of epicurean insight we have come to expect after all these years on the road.

There was a blazing fire, friendly staff, immaculately kept Timothy Taylor's Landlord or, untested, Courage Directors. The walker with the key decisions had clearly had a message: he caught the half past two bus home.

STILL on holiday two weeks ago, we looked into the always agreeable Farmers Arms at Muker, top end of Swaledale, where the specials board included Christmas pudding and a feller walked into the bar and was told he'd won a bottle in the Yuletide draw. It's what's called time standing still.

BACK at the seaside, the flag waving Captain Cook at Staithes, North Yorkshire, plans a major beer festival to celebrate St George's Day.

For the next two weekends, a dozen changing English real ales will be available - including St George's Ale, Dragon Slayer and White Knight - with four during the week.

Landlord Trevor Readman promises even more on St George's Day, if demand dictates.

Meanwhile back at the patriotic Britannia in Darlington, we hear of free roast beef on the night of April 23.

WHY "spaghetti" westerns, we asked two weeks ago. Several readers agree that it's from a sequence of Clint Eastwood films, beginning in 1964 with A Fistful of Dollars, produced in Italy by Sergio Leone. Cheaper that way, apparently.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a ghoul with a 160 IQ.

Frank Einstein, of course.

Published: 15/04/2003