Clucky dip

NOT so much fallen on hard times as besieged on all sides by blood curdling, man-eating hordes of them, recent columns have represented what might be termed a cheap date.

To that list may be added June 16, last Tuesday lunchtime, the most inexpensive and most glorious of them all and no matter that the place was suffering a power failure. Powerless maybe; impotent never.

First rate food and drink, of which more shortly, cost £4.80 for two. Like the sea of fragrance and tranquility amid which they were enjoyed, a lot more of the best things in life were free.

Lazy Dayz is the little café attached to the garden centre at Houghall, on the A177 from Durham to Bowburn and next to the Pump Room restaurant.

The whole place is run by Brigid Press, who writes the Echo’s gardening column and is also a canny cricketer, and by Susan Howells, who does the baking and gets excited about the bird life, too.

The chaffinches, for example, are said particularly to be fond of her cheese scones and by no means alone in that. A young gentleman of 19 is said recently to have proposed holy wedlock to Susan, old enough to be his mother, solely on the basis of her cheese scones. She never did say if she’d accepted.

Then there are the woodpeckers, who fly down to eat peanut butter from a log. A peanut butter log was at once reminiscent of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where they had lemonade springs and (memory suggests) cigarette trees as well.

These days they’d have to come with a government health warning.

Sue, as bright and as chirpy as the birds she so clearly loves, reckoned that woodpeckers made a “chuck”

sound. I thought that was hens.

Chucky hens, anyway.

Lazy Dayz has hens of its own. So clearly are they top of the pecking order, so greatly at home on the range, it’s little wonder that – as Susan rather appropriately put it – they’re laid-back. Horizontal, more like.

“They just seem to produce eggs when they feel like it,” she said, but still scrambled egg on toast is just £1.50 and there are places which charge more than that for the toast.

There’s a cockerel which periodically reinforces who’s boss around there, a few banties – fresh banty eggs £2 a dozen – and an extraordinarily coiffed creature which upon enquiry proved to be a Polish mop-head.

“A randy little sod,” said Susan, which may not have been the ornithological term, but which left little to the imagination. That the place isn’t overrun by great phalanxes of Polish mop-heads is because they don’t have a broody hen, which in the circumstances (and at the present overtime rates) may be just as well.

The place had been recommended by Ray Price in Chester-le-Street, who’d been particularly keen on the daily-changing soup but at the time thought it wouldn’t be carrot and artichoke because he was fresh out of artichokes.

The short menu on the gate confirms that the soup, manifestly homemade, is £2. Sandwiches are £1 or £1.50, cakes and biscuits from 15p.

Ray, not given to cliches, supposed that the Victoria sponge (40p) was to die for. It’s a curious, uncomfortable and much overused phrase; besides, the Victoria sponge is positively life affirming.

We sat at picnic tables on the patio outside, denied soup and bacon sandwiches and things, but wholly happy, nonetheless. On the bird table two feet away a chaffinch, oblivious, enjoyed a late lunch of its own.

Susan came out for a chat; a woodpecker, exultant in its own long lunch break, winged down for another stab at the peanut butter tree. “I told you they chucked,” said Susan.

The Boss had a “delicious” egg mayonnaise sandwich, a delicacy on which she reckons herself an expert, and a fat rascal. It may not have been an utterly obese rascal, but there was still plenty about it, and not long out of the oven.

The ham sandwich was above average, mustard offered and not begged, a great quadrant of rhubarb pie sensational. There may never have been more golden or more delicious pastry (but see under Chesterle- Street Cricket Club, below) or more firm and fruity a filling. Cream optional.

It was helped down – still under a fiver, the lot, for two – with a can of cream soda made by the Scottish folk who use girders as raw ingredients.

The birds left us alone; maybe they don’t like rhubarb.

We chatted for ages before finally heading back down the A1 – not to the office, not strictly on gardening leave, but back home to do some writing from a recumbent deckchair out the back.

Lazy Dayz had been quite brilliant, and everything in the garden centre lovely.

■ The Lazy Dayz garden centre at Houghall, Durham, is open daily from 10am to 4pm.

AFTER so many years of lifeless tracks and sticky Smooth wickets, a real treat to look into Chester-le-Street CC’s ground in Ropery Lane and discover three hand pumps – Red Dust from Consett, Matfen Magic from Northumberland and London Pride, £1.75 a pint, all in fine vigour.

Chester was Durham CAMRA’s 2008 club of the year and hopes for a repeat. If Donna makes pies like she did for Brian Hunt’s testimonial bash, there’ll be awards for those, too. Pie in the sky? Ambrosial, anyway.

JOHN Oswell celebrates 25 years at the Tyneside Coffee Rooms in Newcastle by offering coffee at 1984 prices from June 25 to 28. The Coffee Rooms are part of the Tyneside Cinema in Pilgrim Street, recently part of the cinema’s £7m restoration.

John reckons to have had two million people pass through in that time. “I can’t believe where those 25 years have gone,” he says.

AGAIN acknowledging error, last week’s column explained the difference between “latter”

– the back marker of two – and “last”, which relates to more than two. It brings further flagellation from Martin Snape, in Durham.

We’d used the phrase “between us”, he says, when the context made it clear that more than two people were around the table. “It should, of course, have been ‘among’.”

There’s also a note from Tim Stahl, a long-time volunteer at the historic Tees Cottage pumping station in Darlington, who’s now been joined by a second Tim, a trainee tree surgeon.

Most just call them Old Tim and Young Tim, but there’s a less ageist way to differentiate. The newcomer is Tim Latter. “As I’ve been there 27 years,” says Mr Stahl, “Tim Former seems appropriate.”

ANOTHER complaint from Baz Munday in Coundon, but this time against the café which sold him mince and dumplings for £3. “When I got back to the bait hut I only had one dumpling. If the woman had asked for £3 and I’d only given her £1 there’d have been hell on. I’m thinking of suing.”

PAUL O’Hara, still winning accolades at the Bridge Inn at Whorlton – east of Barnard Castle – plans a novel fund raising wheeze to help cancer research. On August 30, he’ll be sticking half a dozen regular customers in the kitchen for the day, charged under supervision with preparing and serving a six-course meal to between 60-80 at night. Paul’s mother and another good friend have died from cancer this year. “The standards,” he promises, “will be high.”

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why they kept a loaf of bread in their Beano.

Because they like crummy jokes.