Press - The Northern Echo 29/09/09

Nurses no longer insert a rectal thermometer into the appropriate orifice, they pop it there. Have you noticed?

The same goes for saline drips, and procedures more fearful yet. “I’ll just pop this into your thoracic artery.”

Waitresses feel the same need to continue a running description of all that they do, in which every tenth word is “pop”. Plates are popped down, not laid; drinks are popped on the bill. It is populism gone mad.

The waitress in the Black Horse at Kirkby Fleetham was like that, and since she (and her colleagues) were very nice, it must not be supposed a criticism.

She was also just 4ft 10in tall, which at the sign of the Black Horse may be a considerable advantage, though before working there she may have been over 6ft.

Kirkby Fleetham’s east of the A1 between Scotch Corner and Leeming Bar, the Black Horse recently taken over by the Harrogate-based company which also now has the celebrated Black Bull at Moulton, a few miles north.

Among many recent landlords was David Morrison, perhaps better known as the cricket wicket-keeper with hands like a relief map of the Nile Delta. Among many recent chefs was Didier de Ville, the scarlet pimpernel of North-East gastronomy, but since he’s been everywhere that’s only to be expected.

The place has been impressively and quirkily transformed, an attempt to retain the village pub atmosphere evident in very inexpensive bar snacks and in the blackboard seeking to recruit darts team members.

Nominees include Dave Morrison, aforesaid, beneath which is written the name Dave Moron. Since Morrison’s a top bloke, they are clearly no relation.

What they haven’t been able to achieve, presumably lest the ceiling fall about everyone’s ears, is the removal of the low-flying beams in the bar – an ever-present danger for anyone over 6ft tall.

There are more pubs than this one – the Durham Ox at Crayke, the Old Horn at Spennithorne, the Cow Tail above Crook – at which similarly I have been felled like a giant sequoia.

It’s what’s called making an impression.

At the Black Horse they’ve stuck what appear to be tins from the cricket scoreboard along the length of the beam. The asinine “Duck or grouse”

remains.

We went for Sunday lunch – two courses £12.95, three £15.95 – with local county councillor Carl Les and Suzanne, his partner. Carl’s gearing up for the Tory party conference in Manchester, a venue which may preclude the usual pre-conference photo call of plodging, beach cricket or re-enacting King Canute. “They’ll probably dive into Salford Quays,” said Carl.

More relevantly, he’s also owner of the Lodge at Leeming, on the A1, and has recently participated in a BBC blog suggesting that in these straitened times the Great North Road may not be so great after all.

He greatly knows his stuff, though, knows how to equate quality with value and thus was much taken by the place and by its swish restaurant. On a lovely afternoon, others ate outside.

Sensibly short, the Sunday lunch menu offers four choices in each section.

There are also four real ales – good on them – including a couple from the excellent Copper Dragon brewery in Skipton.

The emphasis, as Carl had suggested, was on local sourcing and quality ingredients. Paul Waugh, the chef, trained at Seaham Hall but could still have benefited from an hour with my late mother-in-law on how to make a buoyant Yorkshire pudding. A lone blemish.

Chicken liver parfait, light and well blended, came with sourdough toast and grape chutney. Roast beef rump, properly pink as requested, was accompanied by goose fat-roasted potatoes, good veg and that substantial Yorkshire pudding.

Carl, ever the pragmatist, noted that the condiments were in open dishes. “What if someone sneezes?”

he said.

Other starters included vine tomato soup and red mullet. Mains might have been roast chicken or a vegetarian dish that began with poached hens’ eggs. Little surprising, only the quality.

Four puddings, too: lemon tart, “very sweet” rice pudding, a cheese board and an ice cream sundae that really was sundae best, a silly thing richly redolent of childhood treats.

All four of us thoroughly enjoyed the experience, the bill with drinks £75. We’ll return – but for the moment, off we pop.

Small and large plates of à la carte dishes; kids’ menu. Under-fives eat free. Fine for the disabled.

LAST week’s column noted some acerbic comments by Head of Steam pub chain boss Tony Brookes – made at the launch in Durham of Camra’s 2010 Good Beer Guide – about the Wetherspoon’s pub group.

“The cuckoo in the licensed trade nest,” was among the more kind.

It was almost coincidental that, the following morning, we breakfasted at the WT Stead, the Wetherspoon’s pub next to this office in Darlington, and fell to reading the company magazine.

The Bishops’ Mill in Durham has won one of the city’s Best Bar None awards. The Punch Bowl in York has been named pub of the season – by Camra.

Stead’s full breakfast is £3.89, and really wasn’t much to crow about.

Luke-warm, formulaic, heavy on the digestion. From tomorrow, says the magazine, there’ll be optional black pudding.

The mighty Arsenal came up mute on the television and thus spoke for themselves. The day was off to a good start after all.

FOR much the same reason – the lady of this house once again absent without leave – an itinerant tray of fish and chips (£4.40) from the Golden Chippy in Ferryhill market place. Lovely, succulent, lightly battered cod; beautifully cooked chips and lots of both. First rate.

A TOE in the water at the Black Swan in Ravenstonedale, between Kirkby Stephen and the M6, last week’s column scurrilously wondered how the nearby Scandal Beck came by its titillating name.

Paddy Burton and Phil Atkinson both have theories. Stephen Howarth in Sadberge also points out that Primrose Coaches, which ran that way to Blackpool, now operates as Classic Coaches of Annfield Plain.

Paddy, from Sunniside above Crook, supposes that it means “short valley” – from the Old Norse skannr (short) and the Germanic dal (valley) – as, of course, in dale.

There’s also an Anglo-Saxon possibility, meaning beautiful scene.

Ravenstonedale’s charms notwithstanding, Paddy prefers the first.

Phil, Witton Park lad now in Canada, also posits two theories. One’s the Old French scandale – meaning snare or stumbling block and itself from Latin or Greek – and the other’s Viking. It’s amazing what you learn: verily a school for Scandal.

BENEATH the headline “Bum note”, and after confusing “crotchet” and “crochet”, we carried seven days ago an illustration of the musical note, supplied by a reader. Les Wilson and Neil Gargett point out that the note was a semi-quaver, worth only a quarter of a crotchet. “Full marks for spelling but, sadly, none for pictorial representation,” says Les.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what happened when the cat swallowed a 10p piece.

There was money in the kitty, of course.