promising

If you like good beer and good food, or even just good beer, the centre of Chester can be a bit of a desert. You can head up a couple of sidestreets to the Albion Inn where the food is hearty and the ale real, although there seems to have been a falling off in quality of late, leading, perhaps, to their being dropped from the Good Beer Guide 2009. You can head to the Falcon or the Boot if you like Sam Smiths beer which is certainly good value. Duttons in Godstall Lane has real ale as well as a good wine list but the food is disappointing. A little further out the Fat Cat usually has a nice pint of something, but none of these come close to the beer and food Mecca that is The Old Harkers Arms (link on the right there>>) which is a good 10 to 15 minutes walk/yomp/stagger from the city centre.

Until, possibly, now.

The local Spitting Feathers Brewery have opened a brewery tap pub called, appropriately enough, the Brewery Tap in the historic and beautiful Gamul House, former home to La Taverna restaurant on Lower Bridge street, right in the thick of things. While the passing of La Taverna is definitely mourned, this pub is as welcome as a big glass of fresh orange juice the morning after. Six of us went to eat and drink there last night and had a whale of a time.

The main hall of Gamul House which is medieval, is now a welcoming bar where the excellent range of Spitting Feathers and guest beers can be quaffed. There's a smaller room off to the right where the noise level is a bit lower and everything has been decorated in a relaxed fashion paying homage to the age and style of the building. We soon settled in, drank a couple of pints and drooled over the menus - including a big board of specials high up on the double height wall. A bit of paper and pen were found and yours truly took on the task of ordering the starters and mains which turned out to be an error of judgement as it all went a bit awry at this point. The menu turned out to be not very well written in that we couldn't tell what accompanied each main dish and therefore didn't know what extra side orders to have. Most of the daily special dishes we ordered were not available because they had run out (fair enough) but they had not been taken off the board as no-one could reach it. And it was unclear what were supposed to be sandwiches and what "light bites".

Anyway. We ordered. And we did have to wait quite a while (more beer!) but the food, when it arrived, was excellent. Deep fried Cheshire Goats cheese was heavenly. Robin loved his garlic mushrooms on toast. John appreciated the generous portion of soup although the deep fried parsnip crisps on the top were still at deep-fried temperature. The only problem was the "devil sauce". This was the name we gave to the viscous cadmium yellow goo drizzled over the picked beetroot accompanying my goats cheese and also, apparently, forming the dressing for the "Caesar salad" that two people had. It appeared to be made of equal quantities of cheese and chilli and not in a good way. It was horrible, and hence the Caesar salads were nothing of the kind. Lettuce, parmesan, anchovies, garlic, worcester sauce, eggs are what you need for this dish - it's a classic and should not be messed with.

We were a little apprehensive after this, but the main courses made up for it. Two steaks were perfectly cooked and cod with leeks and mustard was excellent. My lamb burger was so good, I've forgotten what the other two people had! Whatever it was, was excellent also. The bill (for food only) came to £103 (or £105, we weren't quite sure) or about £18/head for 2 courses. We declined the offer of free coffee and told our waitress, who was having the evening from hell, clearly, to stop apologising!

It was the general opinion that all the right ingredients are here for a fabulous pub (with the exception of the devil sauce); a good range of great beers, very good food and exceptionally helpful and polite staff. The organisation needs tweaking, but that's not surprising for a pub that's only been open four weeks or so. We will be back. Often. Very often.....

(but get rid of the devil sauce, PLEASE!)

boogie

Another bit of a hiatus caused by; having a horrendous cold/flu thingy which took ages to get rid of and hurting my back planting bulbs and not being able to get better because of the cold/flu thing which meant lying down a lot. Which is not good for backs. And some other stuff. But, hurrah, hurrah, all is better now and we can look forward to the Christmas-type festivities which will very quickly be followed by birthday celebrations as some of the people I know will be saying goodbye to their 30s in January including Robin. And Anonymous (!). And someone else we won't mention.

As a beginning to all this merriment, eight of us went to the Mill Hotel for a "dinner dance", i.e. mass catering and disco. With crackers and hats. The food was on the poor side of average, the DJ (who these days just sits in front of a computer, hardly moving, what a cop out!) was useless, but we all* had a brilliant time and danced a lot and sang along and felt very hoarse and achy the next day. Christastic.





*well, six of us

eggs

Found on the horsetail (equisetum hyemale) in our pond. Any ideas what might have laid them? Scale - the dark bands on the stem are about 15 mm apart.

crap

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth all the trouble and expense to filter tap water before drinking it and whether it might not, in fact, be worse for your health if that de-chemicalised water sits around growing bugs. And then, some weeks this happens.

large

Robin and I had a conversation on Saturday that went something like this:

Me: I've bought more stamps by the way, so we have stamps now.
Him: Good.
Me: I got a book each of 1st and 2nd class and a couple of large stamps of each as well.
Him: Large stamps?
Me: For large letters, you know, bigger than A5.
Him: You need bigger stamps for bigger letters?
Me: Yes - since about, I dunno, a year and a half ago.
Him: Really?
Me: Yes, don't you remember they changed it all and starting charging for bigger things?
Him: So the stamps are bigger?
Me: Yes, and they have "Large" written on them.
Him: *look of unbelief*
Me: (gesturing) Yes! Anything that's bigger than A5, so A4 or whatever, you have to pay more for the size as well as the weight. So you have to put a large stamp on them.
Him: So how much does it cost?
Me: I don't know! I just bought a load of stamps and it was about 10 quid.
Him: But I never send big letters!
Me: But you might want to! And it might be something really important that needs to go in a A4 envelope and if you don't put the right stamp on it it'll be delayed and the person the other end will have to pay more!
Him: But in that case I'd just put two stamps on.
Me: But you wouldn't have 'cause you didn't even remember they'd started charging for bigger letters! (jumping up and down now) And anyway, you'd be paying more if you put two stamps on!
Him: How much more?
Me: I don't know! I don't know how much stamps cost! I've got the receipt somewhere....
Him: Oh, God, it doesn't matter! I don't care 'cause I don't have to buy them anyway!
Me: *speechless*
(Exit one party to the kitchen to prepare dinner).

unrecycling

more the engrish!

Those wonderful people at Icanhascheezeburger (link on right>>) have done it again with a sub site dedicated to unfortunate translations. This one made me think - "if only life were that simple" - as I spend yet another Friday morning sorting the rubbish for collection into pink bags (plastic & metal), green bags (paper, card, textile and carrier bags), white bag (glass & batteries), brown wheelie bin (garden waste) and black bags (unrecycling!).

A big thank you to Chester City Council for providing such an interesting pastime to make my day brighter.

garden

Been meaning to take some pix of my garden but have been deterred by the bl**dy awful weather and the general failure and scruffiness of the garden thereof. But today I had to rush in for my camera to take this little guy's photo as it was the first time I had seen one in the new pond rather than constantly disturbing them while weeding.

The pond is not doing too badly considering we only dug it 10 weeks ago, the plants are settling in and the water is slowly clearing. Hopefully the six pond snails we imported from J's pond will do their bit and get all the algae eaten. The water beetle that came in with one of the plants is still buzzing up and down and a myriad of tiny funnel shaped things have appeared. Small insects hover over the surface and I was delighted to see a female pied flycatcher dart across several times to feed on these one day although it seems she was just passing through as I haven't seen her since.

Wildlife in general has done super well this year as far as I can tell; there have been loads more butterflies around than in past years (Chester seems to be a bit of a desert for them) and the blackbirds have had so many young that it's like a mob when they all visit. The blackbirds and house sparrows love the pond as well and fight over who gets to bath in the shallow end. This hoverfly is enjoying the asters as well as numerous bumble bees that have been ponderously buzzing their way round all summer.

Unfortunately the wildlife has done rather too well in the veg bed where the slugs and snails have eaten absolutely everything except the rocket, one lettuce, the garlic and tomatoes. And although the tomatoes are growing well there is too much rain and not enough sun so they all taste of mush. The garlic is super, but by the time half of it had been dug up by cat (mine!) there was hardly any to eat before saving enough to plant this year. Grr!

With all the rain the new bed I dug last June has gone bananas again and is a jungle rather than the tall but delicate screen I had envisaged and will have to be heavily edited again this autumn.

So that's my garden this rainy, dull summer. No honey bees, never did get the earth pizza oven built (although the dustbin full of clay is ready and waiting), too much rain, not enough sun. But it's been fun, mostly. Looking forward to the next instalment....