Emergency rations

9:41am Tuesday 3rd June 2008

Forced to abandon the original eating owt plans due to a power cut, the column was diverted to the Beefeater pub at Morton Park

THIS town's becoming National Gridlocked. The lights go out so often over Darlington, and even more often back home, it's starting to feel like the Blitz. The dodgem car effect is that the computers crash, too.

It happened again last Tuesday, the Echo's systems down for several hours, some of the workforce not so much down as damn-near suicidal.

It made for a difficult, disjointed day and for a late finish. The original Eating Owt venture necessarily abandoned, we headed instead to the Beefeater on the eastern outskirts of Darlo, what's now known as Morton Park. It was a case, perhaps, of fraught for your comfort.

A few years back, Morton Park was green fields, better known as Morton Palms because (it's supposed) one of the local farmers was called Morton and the other Palmer. It should thus not be confused with the magnificent Morton Tinmouth which sounds like a Scottish harmonica gang but which is, in fact, a few miles the other side of Darlington.

Morton Palms is now colonised by a private hospital, Morrison's, B&Q, sundry so-called business parks, a brick train, a Premier Inn hotel and, by its partner, Beefeater.

Latterly much changed, Beefeater - part of Whitbread - has been around since 1974, so long that ravens might fly should anything even happen. The chain, 141 links when last someone counted, is a survivor, nonetheless.

Shared with the hotel, the huge car park has vans from dredging companies to double glazers and a couple from a company called Rent-a-Jet, which proves not to be a rival to the latterly embattled British Airways but something to do with high pressure hoses.

The pub's huge, too, bigger yet since they abandoned the bairns' play area and extended the restaurant, instead. "I don't know why they did it," said a waitress, "but it's an awful lot quieter."

A representative selection, as might be expected of a Premier Inn, sat alone in the corners, reading paperbacks and awaiting bedtime. More melancholy yet, one or two others sat huddled at the tables outside, finding cold comfort from their cigarettes.

The bar had four hand pumps, all declared redundant. A little blackboard alternatively offered "Boddington's - new for summer". And you thought that summer was miserable enough already.

The literature promises "your own personal space," presumably to avoid sitting on someone's lap, but the place is attractively and comfortably furnished.

Waiting staff gathered round the till, reminiscent of a nurses' station in today's NHS, and even more so when a pleasant young lady announced that she was Nicola and that she'd be looking after us for the evening.

Much the same thing happened when last I was immured in Darlington Memorial, someone not only announcing that she was to be the "named nurse" but writing her name over the bed, lest the dreaded DVTs bring on amnesia, too.

Despite a six-day stay, it was another 18 months before I clapped eyes on her again, and that was buying fish in the covered market.

We saw rather more of Nicola and of her colleagues - bright, chatty, confident.

Had they, too, been charged with taking blood pressure, they'd probably have still found it too high - a condition not helped by a music machine at best irritating and at worst infuriating.

It sang of something called Psycho Bitch From Hell: even now, even in the age of brick trains and business parks, there may not be too many of those around Morton Park.

The Beefeater watchword is chargrilling, which generally isn't a bad idea, the menu long on steak. "Intense heat caramelises the natural sugars," says the bumph around the place.

As well as the Crime of Manchester, there were three summer specials on the food menu. The Boss immediately ordered two - "English" asparagus with "melted butter", presumably to differentiate it from half a pound of Lurpak plonked atop, and "yellowfin" tuna nicoise salad.

The asparagus was fresh, the butter duly melted, the nicoise salad came without eggs but was otherwise both pleasant and plentiful.

Koftas (£4.25) are a bit like minced lamb and mutton sausages, originally South African, served with a sour cream dip, half a titchy tomato and a few shards of faintly unpleasant lettuce.

They were okay, but didn't amount to much.

I'd followed with "pork and Pink lady sausage and mash served with a Pink Lady apple gravy" and, of course, Pink Lady should not be confused with Scarlet Woman. The sausages were fine but the gravy was so sweet it would have been better on a lollipop stick.

One of us finished with banoffee pie - The Boss thought that sickly sweet, too - the other with a sticky toffee and sultana pudding. Both were £3.95. The bill with a couple of drinks was £45.

It's hard to know what to conclude, to avoid damning with faint praise. There are very many worse places, but it's not what you'd call electrifying. Then again, Darlington often isn't.

■ The Beefeater, Morton Park, Darlington, meals all day, including daytime and evening set menus. To their great credit, Beefeater pubs are disabled friendly, and include Braille menus and induction loops for the hard of hearing.

SEVERAL thousand rail miles ago, the column mentioned that National Express - which had taken over the East Coast Main Line franchise - sold Piper's "Biggleswade sweet chilli" crisps. We wondered if it might be someone's idea of a joke.

It wasn't. "There's a good story behind it, all explained on the back of the packet," wrote Alan Price from Wardley, Gateshead. Again entrained, we resolved to read all about it and were disappointed. "We don't sell them any more, only Walker's," said the attendant.

We thought about it as the homeward train passed Biggleswade, hitherto best known as the home of Charles Penrose, who sang The Laughing Policeman. Sic transit gloria, mundi, as probably they say on the East Coast Main Line - and unless it's particularly fruity, the "excellent range of wines" doesn't "compliment"

the menu, either.

NO such teething troubles on the branch line from Darlington to Bishop Auckland, its added advantage that it stops at Heighington station - where Locomotion No 1 was fired and where the pub of that name still stands.

Tuesday to Thursday evenings, two main courses total £9 from a decent choice that includes braised beef and shallots, a new one.

The elder bairn had a giant Yorkshire pudding with sausages and things, his dad the steak and ale pie. Good chips, great value. Three well-kept real ales were pulled by a nice lass who was training to be an accountant and thus - unusually these days - knew what a VAT receipt constituted.

Who needs Biggleswade sweet chilli, anyway?

and finally

the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a froggy spy.

A croak and dagger agent, of course.