PERHAPS these are the days of wine and Roses, as Messrs Cadbury's would wish to remind us, perhaps of mistletoe and wine, as in the Gospel according to St Cliff.

There are at least ten good reasons, nonetheless, why wine is rarely an accompaniment to the Eating Owt column, the first that real men don't drink anything that doesn't sit, comely and comfortably, in a pint pot.

Others include that I know nothing whatever about the stuff, and that those who profess to appear usually to be talking through their corks, especially when they've had a few. (The same, it should be said, applies to a lot of real ale enthusiasts).

We mention it now because in the handsomely civilised dining room of the Morritt Arms Hotel at Greta Bridge - almost alongside the A66, near Barnard Castle - there's a little blackboard offering aphorisms about wine.

Louis Pasteur, who should have stayed with the Milk Marketing Board, is said to have observed that there was more philosophy in a glass of wine than in all the books ever written.

Ernest Hemingway, who is also supposed to have coined the phrase about the earth moving - and not necessarily seismically - is up there with the suggestion that wine is the most civilised thing in the world.

There was a quote on the board from Basil Fawlty, too: "How nice to meet someone who knows about wine. Most of my customers don't know the difference between a claret and a Bordeaux."

The Boss had to explain that one, of course.

The Morritt was a 17th century farmhouse, became an overnight stop for the London to Carlisle coach, was enthusiastically mentioned by Charles Dickens and by Sir Walter Scott. Barbara and Peter Johnson bought the hotel in 1994, recent improvements including the £250,000 spent on the Garden Room out the back, though the greater summer attraction may be the gardens themselves and, in winter, the wonderful, fire-lit bar in which hang originals by Gilroy, painter of the Guinness toucans. (Gilroy was, indeed, there.)

We'd booked for Sunday lunch, £17.50 a head, the place discreetly decorated for Christmas and with apron-clad bar lads pushing round wheely bins full of logs, so as regularly to replenish the fires.

The music machine played one of the perennial compilations called By Far the Greatest Christmas Hits Since Moses Was in a Basket (or some such) until When A Child is Born was for some reason strangled at birth and replaced by St Clifford.

A straw poll, either side of the table, concluded that Mistletoe and Wine is probably the most nauseating Christmas song of all time.

The best may be Joy To the World, though the Pogues is irresistibly catchy and, in younger days, there was simply nothing in all that glad season to beat singing "Yea Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning" at ten past midnight at St John's in Shildon.

The Boss, it transpired, also has a soft spot for I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In, a reflection of her lifelong love of the sea.

From four or five choices in each section, we began with a fairly frugal smoked chicken Caesar salad. The anchovies, however vestigial, served only as a reminder that it is the most curious pairing.

She had a nicely worked salmon terrine, better still had the bread been up to much.

It's in its meat, however, that the Morritt excels. The pork with sage and onion stuffing and an apple and sultana compote was succulent, tender, properly fatty and full of flavour. Good crackling, too.

The Boss not only greatly enjoyed her beef, but finished a complete Yorkshire pudding for the first time in memory. It was reminiscent of the saying attributed to Mr W C Fields, that he liked children but couldn't eat a whole one.

The vegetables were perfectly good, traditional even. Was it unfair to suppose that they could have been a little more adventurous?

There was also a perennial debate about where to put the apostrophe in "goats cheese" - we still can't agree - and on what the Morritt means by a "local's cheese board."

We finished with a wonderfully moist sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch ice cream and butterscotch sauce, she with a raspberry cheesecake that was manifestly home made and may have been the best this year.

Thereafter we again returned to the twilit lounge, took coffee by the fire, wondered what to buy the boys' uncle for Christmas that couldn't be placed between the lips and set alight. The whole thing had been washed down by what apparently were a couple of very pleasant glasses of Merlot on one side and by two pints of Black Sheep on the other.

It's as the Good Book reminds us, you don't put new wine into old bottles, do you?

THE office day having started, unusually, at 7am, we adjourned for a 9.30 breakfast to the William Stead, the pub across the road.

It was to have been Café Bamber, newish in the Cornmill shopping centre, but though the place was busy enough, the breakfast seemed not to be what the English call full.

Stead's, who do a tasty sausage, was ticking over well enough, too. What may be called early doors. Traditionalists and others will be relieved to learn, however, that every one of them was drinking coffee.

AFTER months of closure and refurbishment, the Otter and Fish at Hurworth, near Darlington, has reopened, almost unrecognisably. It's all very posh. Otter and Fish out of water, there's no longer a dart board. The doms lads will be pushed to get a hand, either, though there's a little bar to the side where Sky TV, much the vogue, offers mute points.

The menu is understandably similar to that at the Beeswing in East Cowton, a few miles to the south, where head chef Jonathan Edwards also withstands the heat. We went for an office Christmas lunch, the editor disappointed that cod and chips wasn't on the menu, though there was seared tuna, and stuff.

I had black pudding in a Stilton and horseradish sauce - in truth it was more like a swimming pool - followed by omelette Arnold Bennett, with smoked haddock.

It was the only choice from the "bar meals" menu, the column being characteristically cheap to run. Main courses from the carte, between £12-£16, included pork Rossini. He was probably a mate of Arnold Bennett's.

The music proved so eclectic, a long word meaning (on this occasion) irritating, that the gaffer and I struck up a Simon and Garfunkel duet by way of counter-attraction. His PA even remembered a joke about Simon and half-uncle.

It's Christmas, innit? The sound of silence comes later.

... and finally, the bairns pulled a few early crackers to offer the following for Boxing Day:

What athlete is warmest at Christmas? A long jumper.

Why don't skeletons fight one another? They don't have the guts.

Why was Santa's little helper depressed? Because he had low elf-esteem.

The column returns on January 9.