Snapping over a lack of crackling

It's a pub of which the column has fond memories, principally of Spennithorne Cricket Club's annual dinner a few years back when the top table was attended to - no, no, that's probably the wrong expression - by the most fetching of waitresses.

All waitresses should be fetching, it might be said - carrying, too - but this one remains, blonde and vivid, in the memory.

It is with regret on at least two fronts, therefore, that we are not quite able to share our reader's enthusiasm.

Finghall's just south of the main road through Wensleydale, a pleasant, wood smoky little village with, a few fields away, a 12th century "Plague church" alongside the stream.

Once church and village were alongside one another. The plague forced a move to higher ground, residents convinced that the water - not the rats - was the carrier.

The pub's very pleasant, too, coal fired and warm welcoming, though low beams and artful archways present an ever-present danger to those over six feet tall.

"You'll be lucky to leave here conscious," said The Boss, and without reference to the four hand pumps happily on display. The queen's head may have been Mary of Scotland's.

Four of us ate Sunday lunch - both the men, coincidentally, acquainted with Coronation Street scriptwriters.

It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to tease cobbled secrets from a Coronation Street scriptwriter. Suffice that if that wretched Richard doesn't find himself horse-whipped round Weatherfield, there may be questions in the House and leaders in the Telegraph.

In the restaurant, nice views to the North, the televisual theme was continued by a poster urging the folk of Ashfordly to vote for Oscar Blaketon - Heartbeaters will understand - and by the real life appearance of Mr Richard Whiteley, who lives nearby.

The restaurant was attractive, though not as cosy as the fireside, the service younger and less experienced - that mayn't be the right word, either - than of yore.

There were several roasts at £6.95, haddock, a vegetarian option and something else. We began with blue cheese and Stilton soup, pleasant but predictable, followed with roast pork and asked, as always, for crackling.

Whether it's because the oven's not hot enough, or because the pork's been cooked since eleven o'clock, or because all the chef knows about crackling is the Rose tinted song by Mr Neil Diamond we are unable to say, but its crafting seems almost extinct.

Whilst considering such matters, we were nonetheless reminded that one of Mr Diamond's less coruscating little numbers once topped a poll for the most damn fool lyric of all time:

I am I said, to no one there

And no one heard at all, not even the chair.

Neither the crackling nor an explanation for its absence were forthcoming - Jonny Edwards, where are you? - the pork was tasty but barely warm, the potatoes equally tepid, the other vegetables indifferent. The baked Alaska which followed may more accurately have been termed faked Alaska.

The others thought their lunch perfectly OK, the lightly battered haddock particularly appreciated.

It will be construed as curmudgeonly, therefore, to abuse a reader's trouble and to be critical of a hard working pub couple. So far as this column is concerned, however, if you serve a lukewarm lunch, you will receive a lukewarm review.

The previous Sunday we'd lunched at the Sutton Arms in Elton, this side of Stockton, where the menu includes 167 main course choices drawn from all arts and cartes.

There's Malaysian beef satay and Mexican seafood sweet chilli samba, Thai king prawns and Sri Lankan red pork curry, Burmese chicken curry, African meat karanga, Welsh rarebit - and there's good old English Sunday dinner.

The music machine even played Que Sera Sera, as it transported back to Two Way Family Favourites.

The Boss asked for stir fried vegetables. They came with mashed and roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding. "It's the sort of thing I used to give the boys the day before the supermarket run," she said.

We'd asked, again, for the pork. It was very tasty. We also asked for crackling, not only asked for it but described it, not only described it but could almost taste its head-spinning splendours.

Neither the crackling nor an explanation for its absence were forthcoming. (See above.) Que sera sera, as probably they used to say in Akritiri.

Durham railway station has a new coffee stall - espresso, cappuccino, mochaccino and other pseudo-Italian works of art. Decaffeinated is an extra 15p, adds the sign on the machine, "flavour" an additional 25p. Whatever can it mean?

Perusing a couple of weeks back the new Costa Coffee outlet at Ottakar's bookshop in Darlington, the column observed with some bafflement that the menu included tostatos.

It also puzzled Mr John Constable, late of the Butterknowle Brewery, who not only turned to his Italian dictionary - "tosto" simply means toasted - but found on the Internet an altogether different reference to Tostato.

"Whatever happens in the Aztec Stadium tomorrow," said The Observer on June 21 1970, "Pele and Tostato, Gerson, Rivelino, Jairzinho and the rest have demonstrated that the richest flowering of football's skill is still to be found in the southern latitudes."

It was a misprint; they meant Tostao - otherwise Eduardo Goncalves de Andrade - who had undergone an operation for a detached retina just days before the 1970 World Cup final and still played, as it were, a blinder in the memorable win over Italy.

Mr Constable, incidentally, has also discovered that the now ubiquitous paninis are from the Italian panino. In full, he says, it is panino gravido which literally means pregnant bread. This may not entirely be relevant.

The year's most unequivocally acclamatory review has been for Chapel Farm at Whaw, in Arkengarthdale - tea room now closed for the winter.

It was a visit we recalled the other night over a very pleasant fireside pint at the Punch Bowl in nearby Low Row - and with the hope that it had done them some good.

"It certainly did me some good," said the lady on the next table. "They got so busy as a result of your article that they gave me a job."

Sometimes the column works.

Cleveland CAMRA's newsletter reports on Lloyd's No 1 in Middlesbrough centre, J D Weatherspoon's amplified scion also due in Darlo next year. The food's good value, they say, the flat screen "excellent", the music at a reasonable level and the place elegantly laid out - "in summary, totally out of place in the Boro."

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why black cats hardly ever shave.

Because eight of ten cats prefer whiskas.

Published: 26/11/2002