Eating Owt

Either that, our lunch companion might have added, or Mr Dowson was simply super-solicitous - and why not? - for his customers' enjoyment.

"We should start a sweep on how many times he asks if everything's all right," said Garry genially, and it was true that had the manager asked if the colour of the napkins were to our liking - of the chairs aesthetically arranged - it would not have been wholly surprising.

What the Chequers at Dalton-on-Tees has for some time needed, however, is a bit of care and attention. Whether or not he'd put a name to the face - he later denied it emphatically - it was good to see someone providing it.

Dalton-on-Tees is a very pleasant village five mile south of Darlington, where the river disports itself into a sort of fluvial Olga Korbutt before meandering on its way. The pub sign is testimony to its proximity - heard if not seen - to Croft motor racing circuit.

These past few years the pub has been owned by the Roseberry Group, who have several other places in County Durham. The recent past has been, well, chequered.

Barry Dowson has worked in several other pubs, is (blessedly) a member of the Campaign For Real Ale, owns a specialist paint shop in Darlington and has been asked by the owners to lick the old place into shape. Further paintpot puns may be applied to taste.

Though it remains on the market (£350,000, freehold) a much longer tenure is likely. "I'm enjoying myself," he says, which may be more than half the battle.

Three real ale pumps offered John Smith's, Theakston's and the excellent Daleside from Harrogate, the sensibly short lunchtime specials board embraced two courses for £5.95, three for £6.95.

In the firelit bar, the locals nudged and winked; in the lounge Mr Gibson uncoiled his 6ft 6in frame.

"Everything all right?" asked Mr Dowson. We hadn't even ordered.

Starters might have been spicy lentil soup, which we both enjoyed, avocado and prawn salad or something rather curiously called melon and fruit sorbet. It could be, of course, that the chef is simply the gourd-fearing sort.

The subsequent herb baked cod with a herb and cream sauce was exceptionally good - distinctive, full flavoured, plentiful, well presented - with abundant carefully cooked vegetables.

Garry similarly appreciated his butterfly chicken with a lemon sauce; steak and kidney pie was a third option.

It was at this point that Mr Dowson, perhaps by way of creating a diversion, wondered if we might be looking for Jim.

A lot of quite big people had apparently been looking for Jim, and not necessarily to wish him a contented Candlemas (which, as readers will know, fell last Friday). Jim wasn't around, anyway.

We finished with a cheesecake and a berry decorated gateau which may have been cash and carried but were many a layer better than most and, for an extra quid, a virtual giveaway.

A large pot of good coffee was included in the price, whether because it is the generous custom of the house or because the manager thought we'd come looking for Jim cannot with certainty be said, but the gentleman essayed a passable impression of amazement when - bill paid - identities officially were revealed.

The lunch was first class, the surroundings immaculate, the staff - let it be said - pleasantly attentive. Eating Owt encomiums rarely come higher than that but, as may never be said of the column, the chap deserves some recognition.

l The Chequers, Dalton-on-Tees, near Darlington (01325) 721213, suitable for the disabled. Lunch and dinner seven days a week, carte also available. It's probably all right on the night, an' all.

A few miles closer the source of the Tees stands the Carlbury Arms at Piercebridge: pleasant pub, readily replenished fire, three real ales.

A bowl of cream of leek soup, barely enough for a spuggie's plodge, was £2.95, chicken fillet in a mustard, cream and mushroom sauce £6.20.

Local radio played throughout - a way, perhaps, of sidestepping the Performing Rights Society, but a major irritation, nonetheless.

When the column is invited to be Home Secretary in the next hung parliament, we shall not only proscribe local commercial radio in public places but sanction the slow and symbolic evisceration of the gentleman - surely not Mike Elliott on an earner? - who every ten minutes announces "I love carpets, me."

At the Carlbury the assault was accompanied by the verbal equivalent of Black's Medical Dictionary, when even the anodyne observation that someone looked well was met with an internal examination of why the belief was unfounded.

They talked, almost all of them, of imminent appointments with specialists, of excess wind and wayward water and of putting cameras in places where a Box Brownie could never have been imagined.

About 2.40pm the radio broadcast an advert for a nursing home, and with details of the gerontological disorders for which it catered. Time marches on, no doubt, but the rest needs must be silence.

With the short note "This is what we pensioners look for", incidentally, a reader solves the mystery in last week's column of what - at Singapore Sam's in the MetroCentre - "Chinese New Year Bogof" could mean. It's also contained in a shopping feature in the Daily Express: Buy one, get one free.

Bogof, as it happens, is among the lures that recently have been tried to tempt diners into the Sutton Arms at Faceby, on the Cleveland Way between Stokesley and Osmotherley in North Yorkshire. We wrote rapturously of it last May - "a superb pub" - adding that the £7.50 three course weekday lunch was "one of civilisation's great bargains". It wasn't superb enough. Last weekend the Sutton stopped serving food. Though it will continue for the moment as a village pub, the future is uncertain.

"It's like a death in the family," reports Brian Sedgemore, recalling Ella Fitzgerald on the tapes and the Goon Show scripts replayed in the immaculately idionsyncratic loos.

The Sutton's owned by Geoff Burton, who also has the Blackwell Ox in nearby Carlton-in-Cleveland. "There are just too many places in this area competing with one another," he says. "I've tried all sorts to get people in, I really don't know what more I can do. We've had a meeting between my partners and the accountant and just can't sustain it any longer."

The position will be reviewed in a couple of months. Brian Sedgemore is not alone in fearing the worst.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we'd heard about the cat that won the milk drinking contest.

It lapped the field.

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