IT may not be said that these are green fingers, especially since the Unfortunate Affair with the Lawn Mower.

It is one thing to cut the cable, quite another to pick up the live end in an attempt to discover what's wrong with it.

"Unwise," they said at the burns unit in Middlesbrough General - they probably said a great deal else, and not necessarily clinical - but it was a pretty good way of getting out of cutting the grass.

Other than the heavy duty stuff - filling the Christmas tree bucket with soil, that sort of thing - we have spent precious little time in the garden since that cut-off point in 1985 and none at all buying seeds.

It was a bit of a surprise, therefore, to be recommended to Horn's garden centre in Shotton Colliery, near Peterlee, and to discover that they didn't just sell plant food.

Rae Black in Durham had enjoyed the main course, loved the home-made jam roly-poly, considered the whole experience "real grub."

We went with the Rev Tom Thubron, retired former Vicar of Wheatley and of Gilesgate in Durham. Tom, dear old friend, came with his rucksack, his social conscience, his hair splitter and a verbal warning from his lady wife.

"Don't say anything, he'll quote you," Diane had counselled. A Trappist lunch loomed large.

The Ivy Caf is new, Horn's garden centre has grown apace. George Horn, the founder, is a 75-year-old former miner - "got out the first chance I got" - who became a prison officer and landscape gardener before beginning his own business.

The land on which the centre now flourishes was a pig and poultry farm which he bought for £14,500 28 years ago, initially as storage, and spent two years cleaning up. "You've never seen anything like it in your life," he says.

He lives in a bungalow on the site, works every day, invites visitors to walk around his own magnificent gardens. Most of his nine children are involved in that or associated companies making garden sheds and things; his picture hangs, benevolently, on the caf wall.

Outside is a sort of millionaires' row of Wendy houses, prices from £199.

The caf has bits of greenery, a traditional English menu, breakfast from 9am, friendly staff, radio and a carvery. The column doesn't much care for carveries, but this one was a cut above.

Tom, vow of silence long broken, was anxious also to enthuse about the bikers' caf in Westgate Road, Newcastle - "not rough, but ready."

He has three motor bikes, travels Europe on them, is already booked into this year's Isle of Man TT though perhaps happily, since he is 70 next, not as a competitor.

We ate identically, vegetable soup (£1.95) and lamb dinner (£4.75.) In Shotton and similarly well brought up places they still have dinner at dinner time and tea at half past five. The soup was fine, the lamb full of flavour, the roast potatoes very good and the Yorkshires terrific.

The roly-ploy, alas, was a bruiser which failed to punch its weight. Early doors there's jam or treacle, but only the treacle remained and only the rump end - if a treacle roly-poly may have such an anatomy - of that.

A treacle detector would have struggled to register, a treacle miner ascended empty handed in the cage. Tom wistfully recalled happy days in Seaham Harbour, when his mother made wondrous jam roly-poly in a vest.

We didn't ask why.

This one, however, had reached the end of its shift, a roly-poly melancholy.

The Boss having been in warmer climes, we left without buying anything for the garden. There've been enough shocks in that good acre already.

STILL floribundant, we also lunched last week at Peter Barratt's garden centre at Gosforth Park, near Newcastle racecourse.

The restaurant is called Caf Jardin - there's another at the centre in Stockton - and if asked whether everything in the Jardin were lovely, we would reluctantly have to conclude that it wasn't.

The caf is at the bottom of the garden centre, past thermal long johns, Valentine's Day cards and socks with your name on, so long as it's monosyllabic.

The Rev Leo Osborn, also in attendance, bought a candle the size of a watering can on the post-Christmas sale. He burns them, apparently, at both ends.

The restaurant is large and vaguely rustic, amiable assistants clothed all in green (ho-ho). Food is ordered at the counter, brought to the table.

Leo, chairman of the Newcastle Methodist district, clutched his omnipresent Filofax. He could never be a minister without portfolio.

Lunchtime dishes include English favourites and more exotic efforts - tortilla wraps, for example, like Mexican Magic and New Orleans Original.

Bottled beers were said to be exotic and unusual, but could be found in any ethnic restaurant. Leo drank Fentimann's ginger beer, which he loves but only in moderation, read from the label something about Fentimann's Fearsome Fermentations.

He also ordered Brie wedges with coleslaw and a lemon chicken tortilla wrap, suggested that the starter was better than the main course -a Methodist euphemism meaning that neither was much cop - and explained, when pushed, that they were bland.

The column's tomato soup was hot and tasty, the only problem that the taste was predominantly of cheese.

We followed with steak and wild mushroom pie. Leaving aside the question of what makes a mushroom wild, and how Peter Barratt's would define a tame or domesticated mushroom, the wretched thing came with a puff pastry topping as big as an upturned bath tin.

What is it with such puff and nonsense, we wondered aloud? Why do chefs seemingly vie with one another to produce the most bloated pastry, like pumped up contestants at Mister Middridge? Has the precise art of short pastry making been consumed by such absurd and inelegant vanity?

Leo drank his ginger beer and meditated, silently.

Apart from making a mess on the table, the pastry collapsed quite pathetically into the insubstantial S&M below. The vegetables, broccoli particularly, had been left out in the rain.

For 18 months there's been a press release in the file about the catering at Caf Jardin being managed by a chap with top level experience in the acclaimed "21" restaurant group, which helped win the MBE for Terry Leybourne.

Doubtless he will soon bring his expertise to bear. Growing pains, that's all.

SPEAKING about good Methodists and about Members of the British Empire, an e-mail from Coun Brian Myers - honoured at New Year - reminds us of Wear Valley CAMRA's beer festival, at Bishop Auckland Town Hall from tomorrow evening until Saturday.

The festival features 24 real ales from UK small brewers - Priorswell Porter, Lincolnshire Legend, Wee Murdoch and Luddite Stout among them. In the evening there's food and live music, too.

We shall be joining Coun Myers on Thursday evening, when it would be good to see other old friends from the Bishop area. Details on www.wearvalleycamra.co.uk

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what a caterpillar does on New Year's Day.

Turns over a new leaf, of course.

Published: 11/02/2003