THIS column was born to be mild, the gastronomic equivalent of Walter the Softy. There are vindaloos and rogan joshes, biryanis, dansaks and healthy tikkas and, hiding somewhere in a distant corner of the menu lest someone kick sand in their face there are dishes, usually Malaysian, marked "very mild".

Were "Malayan chicken" a piece of music it would be prefixed pp - pretty puny, probably. Were it in a Marvel comic it would be Clark Kent before the phone box, and were it a newborn baby, it would at once be rushed to an incubator.

It's what we enjoy, nonetheless, and at the Spice Garden in Darlington they not only cook up a particularly high quality version but offer extra banana, an' all.

What's that phrase about crushing a grape?

The Spice Garden's opposite the Civic Theatre in Parkgate, an evermore cosmopolitan restaurant thoroughfare on the regular route between office and railway station. Kharim, the owner, will periodically stick his head around the door, enquire en passant why we've not been there for so long, promise something special at 24 hours notice.

We didn't give any notice at all. It was Tuesday evening, 8.30pm, and the end of a vertiginous day. We dined alone in every sense, for much of the time no other customers in the well ordered restaurant. Eavesdroppers' Anonymous would have loved it.

Friends who'd enjoyed the happy hour reckoned it quiet that evening, too, though the phone rang constantly with take away orders. Last Tuesday it rang just three times, and two of the callers appeared transparently to be selling double-glazing.

Unaccompanied but not unencumbered, we carried a biscuit tin marked McVitie's Victoria Assortment, containing not custard creams but a collectors' cornucopia of pre-war cigarette cards, the intention to do some homework for the Backtrack column.

Set by set they unfolded alluringly - Kings of Speed, Popular Cricketers, Great Footballers of 1928 with hob- nailed names like Charlie Wilson, Joe Smith and Bert Denyer.

There were Soccer Stars from Godfrey Phillips, more Football Favourites from Carreras, Cricket Caricatures by Rip and an Australian speedway rider christened Arthur Wilkinson but known inevitably as Bluey - "on account of the Australian word for red-haired."

Do Aussies (see below) really call redheads Blue, and if so is there any other reason than perversity?

Soon food began arriving, overflowed the table for one, rather got in the way of the nostalgia, and of the fag cards.

We began with bhuna prawn on puri - "medium spiced"; there's bold - turned down the thermostat to the gently cooked and subtly sauced Malaysian chicken with a garlic nan half the size of the Joddrell Bank reflector and a side dish of brinjal bhaji, aubergine curry.

The menu - so old it was held together with sticky tape - also offered something styled "new, mouth-watering dishes" and a little five-minute homily on the basics of sub-continental cuisine. "A work of art," it said.

Without exception it was very good; it was also far too much.

Another six breezed in; Kharim didn't. The waiters buzzed attentively but failed (disappointingly) to enquire what was with the biscuit tin, or the farrago of fag cards.

The bill with coffee and a couple of beers reached £23. The restaurant may strongly be recommended; dinner for one mildly not.

HALF a century after it began by recommending lunch at the Garrick Hotel for 5/6d, the Good Food Guide is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Rationing was still in force in 1951, choice limited to dishes like eel soup, jugged hare and steak and kidney pudding.

Now a three-course meal with wine at a top London restaurant might cost £100, though the Guide's principles of anonymous inspections and no advertising remain.

"You can corrupt one man, or a couple. You cannot bribe an army," said Raymond Postgate, the founder.

They have sent a free copy of the anniversary issue, nonetheless, and there will be more of that next week.

AUSTRALIA is a land of spiders - venomous, poisonous and simply seriously anti-social. The brown spider is reckoned a particularly nasty piece of work, whilst the female funnel web - altogether deadlier than the male and given to letting the poor little beggar have his wicked way and then eating him just when he reckons life's not so bad after all - has a habit of sleeping inside people's shoes.

The female funnel web takes particularly unkindly to being disturbed. It's why so many Australians wear sandals.

It was Sunday lunch - a very good Sunday lunch - at the Black Horse in Old Cornsay, and whilst not the usual topic of conversation on such occasions, we were with the Rev Peter Davis, newly installed as Vicar of Tow Law, Satley and Stanley Hill Top.

Like the funnel web spider, Peter is Australian and has already got the fire on. Unlike the funnel web, he is good company.

Since the Black Horse is a cask beer oasis in those parts - Landlord, Jennings Cumberland, London Pride and Tetley's - we also introduced him to the first couple of chapters of Larn Yersel Real Ale.

Whilst the spirit was doubtless willing, the stomach was weak. He drank Caffreys, instead. "Australians wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else," said the vicar (or words, it must be admitted, to that effect.)

The London Pride had, in any case, become a little misplaced.

Old Cornsay is four miles east of Tow Law and not to be confused with New Cornsay (should it exist) and Cornsay Colliery, which certainly does.

We lunched early, particularly impressed with the soup - home-made broccoli and Stilton or chicken broth - the crackling and the welcome. Peter also reckoned that in Australia, the fruit machines subsidise the menu, so that two courses might be 90p.

The Black Horse remains essentially English, however - three or four roasts, desserts like lemon curd sponge or rice pudding, convivial atmosphere - and a bit pricier, too. Lunch for two around £20, without drinks.

What with one thing and another, it was six o'clock before we reached home. A tangled web, as probably they say Down Under.

BARELY five minutes after he took over the Arden Arms at Atley Hill - near Scorton, in North Yorkshire - Adrian Barrett is shortlisted in both "Pub chef of the year" and "Dessert pub of the year" in the 2002 Pub Food awards.

His previous place - the Hack and Spade at Whashton, near Richmond - won last year's Food Pub title under his control.

In 12 categories, the region has just one other short list nomination - the Hare at Scawton, near the top of Sutton Bank, is also in the final four of "Dessert pub" and may be where the smart money is.

They've all a while to wait. The awards will be presented at the London Hilton on February 4, 2002.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you make solid gold soup with.

Twenty two carrots, of course.

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