Eating Owt

As readers will doubtless be aware, it is from the Latin "hibernare", meaning to winter, and has etymological association with Hibernian, which is all Irish.

The Romans, apparently, found the Emerald Isle a little on the chilly side.

We played these word games over lunch last Tuesday, The Boss occupying - as usual - an entirely opposite corner. Hibs and hers, as it were.

Last wintry week, at any rate, we spent a couple of days in semi-hibernation. Rome called it hiberniculum, winter quarters. Modern Britain calls it working from home.

The badger, memory suggests, led a similar sort of existence in The Wind in the Willows, though from time to time disturbed - the feeling is familiar - by people pulling the bell rope and wanting something. So much for a good day's sleep.

Dear old Ratty would have said "Bother", sculled out from the bank and continued messing about on the river. Badger would have said something pretty forceful, had not young feelings been spared by the kindly Kenneth Grahame.

By Tuesday the snow had failed fully to materialise, though it sat on distant hilltops surrounding the A66 Motel like the Apache awaiting a smoke signal. "It's like Christmas, isn't it," said the friendly barmaid. "You're always being told it's coming, but it never seems to arrive."

The Motel, eight miles west of Scotch Corner, has been owned by the Hall family for 35 years or more. Time may have stood still. "The only things that appear 21st century are the modern appointments in the en-suite letting rooms," says the brochure.

On the wall by the bar there's even one of those spoof government directives about how to save fuel in the home, produced during the Winter of Discontent. You know the sort of thing - go to bed but hot water bottles banned, burn a fire so long as it's not coal, oil, gas or electricity.

"Try to die early," it ends. "This can be done by starvation and will help Mr Heath to win the next election."

Outside, the thermometer read minus one. Was it Beecham's Powders which were supposed to work when one degree under? Do they still make them? The Boss adopted the non-combatant position, claiming to have a headache.

The furnishings are agreeable in an old fashioned sort of a way, Bob Dylan and Don McLean sing from the music machine, the bar meal menu contains not a single item that mightn't have been there when the Motel became hospitality Hall.

If it's a sanctuary to the 1970s, of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was a pretty good place to live.

We had steak pie, accompanied by gravy in a boat the size and shape of the quinquireme of Nineveh - without the sails, of course - and good chips. The Boss had chestnut, leek and mushroom pie from the vegetarian blackboard and thought it very tasty.

The fresh fruit salad qualified in every respect; the jam sponge was really jam and sponge, the marriage never having been consummated.

There were jolly hunting prints, a nice pint of Lancaster Bomber from Thwaites Brewery in Blackburn and, ahead of the plough, a dry run home.

DAY two in the hiberniculum and the snow had finally arrived, though in an apologetic sort of way as if to say that it couldn't understand what all the fuss had been about. Well it might.

We again ventured along Route 66, stopped at the Fox Hall Inn and were glad of it. For a trunk road calling off point, it accomplishes the not inconsiderable feat of remaining a comfortable, convivial and characterful pub and not somewhere where the world wipes its feet on the way out.

There's a magnificent fire - it's gas up at the Motel - bare-boarded bar, lengthy blackboard menu, no smoking area, Black Sheep bitter, vulpine artefacts and another friendly barmaid.

What there weren't were customers, though there'd been any amount on New Year's Day when surrounding villages suffered a power cut and the locals blew in on the stroke of opening, like a blizzard with a clocking-in card.

There was a cod, £7.50, of the sort which menus now like to call a whale and which anorexic restaurant reviewers term the piece of cod which passeth all understanding.

Had it been a whale, they might not just have found Jonah alive and well inside but planning a bar mitzvah for the bairns; had the large plate been the back of a lorry, they'd had to have tied a rag around the overhanging bit. Someone, preferably the Department of Transport, may be able to explain what good a bit of rag is supposed to do in the dark. Or, come to that, in the daylight.

The batter was crisp, the flesh firm, and while the poor fish clearly hadn't just paid in at Dogger Bank it was a substantial improvement on many. The chips weren't as good as the Motel's.

The Boss had a red Thai curry, red and green seemingly to exchange favour like culinary traffic lights. It was unexceptional, though perfectly OK. Neither of us had a pudding.

The nice barmaid had said that among the benefits of the coal fire was that it encouraged people to stay a while longer. We had another pint, she a coffee, then headed back eastward to sleep on it.

LIKE the A66, Route 66 ran east to west, 2,448 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles through eight states and three time zones.

Some called it The Mother Road, others America's Main Street. In 1960 it became the title of a television series which lasted 118 episodes, the two young heroes driving a Corvette, attracting trouble and young ladies, surviving.

You got your kicks on Route 66.

Long sidetracked, the Route was decommissioned in 1985, replaced by Interstate Highways. All of those were dual carriageway, at least. Only the English equivalent remains so singularly out of date.

TEMPERATURE rising by Thursday, up and off to Newcastle for a quick bite in the Hotspur, opposite Haymarket bus station and offering eight real ales. The Courage Directors was excellent.

Food, promised the blackboard, was "really good". It really wasn't.

A hot smoky bacon baguette with lettuce and tomato was of such haphazard, jerry-built construction that it might have come from the set of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. The "baguette" was a microwaved old bun, the bacon bitty, the tomato flaccid, the diced lettuce spilling all over plate, table and floor.

Most of it was left. Thaw point? Undoubtedly.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why the orange went to the doctor's.

Because it wasn't peeling well.

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