A bit early for a working lunch perhaps, but if it’s good enough for Inspector Morse — a frequenter of the Turf Tavern, Oxford, in both the novels and the TV series — it’s good enough for me, and indeed for this gentleman. One thing about Oxford is that you do really feel the whole city centre, at this time of year at least, is engaged in some form of intellectual pursuit. The environment is wholly conducive to it.
Life becomes increasingly homogenised, and every egg you buy from the shop now seems to be brown. But Clare gets eggs from someone she works with, who has a farm in Calderdale, one of those where you risk running over truly free-range chickens if you drive past, and she doesn’t add dye to their feed to get the desired level of brownness. I love the gentle blue colour of this one, and pure white is also often seen. (And brown too, as you see with the other one.)
“I don’t care what my lot are doing. You’re eating. They’re not. I’m going to stare at you for a while.”
As being made by the guy on the “Dosa” stall in St. George’s Square, Hebden Bridge, this lunchtime. I did eat my lunch out today, although not here. Although this is a little out of focus, I like the mixture of colours and textures on this shot.
As this blog cycles (seemingly endlessly) around the calendar there are certain fixed points, and 26th October is one of them — Clare’s birthday. Here she is celebrating it with lunch in the White Lion — her parents, my in-laws, unseen to the left. Happy happies to her: I shall demur from reporting the exact number, but it’s several years fewer than me, anyway.
Do I spend too much time in bars and cafés? Maybe it’s whatever Mediterranean genes I have in me. I was working, honest. This is a photowhack — the only picture I took today.
Witnessed in the Miners’ Arms, Garforth, near Leeds, this lunchtime. They did eventually arrive in person to consume their lunches; which if they were as good as ours were, were worth the wait (mild, unsolicited advertising).
And so ends July 2021, a month of refreshing normality, and the last complete calendar month before this blog reaches the end of its tenth year, on 25th August.
‘Twas the day of the annual family gathering at my parents’. Perhaps one of these days soon my Mum will allow someone else to take on the principal role at such events, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Regardless of anything else that has ever happened on any of my trips to the Middle East — I have never come away complaining about the food in any way. In my opinion — the nicest cuisine in the world…
The liquid refreshment has arrived, at least. A slightly late lunch…. but it’s nice to be on a weekend away. These two factors explain C’s look of contentment.
Being 42 