Eating Owt: Lovely jumpers - shame about the food

SAVE for a few chips at the end, and for a diversionary dander along the byways and bridleways around Barningham, it has not - let's be honest - been a particularly good week.

Even the Edinburgh Woollen Mill offered little grist, though doubtless they sell lovely jumpers.

EWM began in 1946 as the Langholm Dyeing and Finishing Company, opened its first shop - in Edinburgh - in 1970 and now has getting on 300, employs 3,500 people and has an annual turnover topping £170m.

Truly a success story to dye for.

One of the shops is in Richmond, that splendidly situated North Yorkshire market town which seems never to cater for its potential.

Up front they sell everything from books to bonnets, chutney to checked shirts. Out the back is the Oak Room caf.

The menu was all right in an unadventurous kind of a way, the "specials board" offered haddock and chips or burger and chips. How special can you get?

Food's ordered at the counter but served at the table, customers given a number on a stick to carry back with them. Inexplicably, we were reminded of post-operative patients wandering morosely around hospital corridors, with only a drip stand for company.

The chap next to us, a member of what in the circumstances might be termed the tartan rug generation, forlornly toted number 13. It all seemed rather unfortunate. The leek and potato soup was actually very good - hot, abundant, plenty of flavour, than which nothing more might be asked. The Boss's fish and chips were a major disappointment, however. She thought the chips "rubbish", the fish devoid of both feature and flavour.

The chicken and bacon pannini (spellings vary) came with a few crisps and some greenery. Like the place itself it was wholly unexceptional, sadly run of the Mill.

IT was while The Boss had nipped out the back that Another Woman approached, accompanied at a short distance by her husband, who wore a surgical collar and had an attache case under his arm.

"People keep mistaking us for Jehovah's Witnesses," he said jovially, but whoever heard of a Jehovah's Witness in a surgical collar?

She was Mrs Sheila Hay, from Barningham. "Are you Mike Amos?" she enquired.

That they were in Richmond was to promote on behalf of Barningham Women's Institute a handsomely produced and delightfully illustrated book of walks, members' favourites, around that half-hidden vicinity.

"We're going to tell people that if they don't buy a book we'll take our clothes off," said Sheila, with a WI eye elsewhere.

Barningham hangs onto Teesdale, south of the A66. Nearby are Hardy Wife Wood and Cowclose Lane, Broad Mires, Eel Hill and even Scargill Castle, which sounds like it might have been transported brick by brick from Barnsley but has been there rather longer.

Three years ago, in fact, Durham County Council archaeologist Niall Hardie-Hammond bought the dilapidated building for his bride-to-be. "I thought she might have thought it a stupid wedding present, but she really liked it," he said.

The book leads gently past them all, carries an enthusiastic foreword by Barningham born gardener Geoffrey Smith, is available from Ottakar's and other bookshops or from Sheila Hay (01833 621320) or Sue Pritherick (01833 621320).

It's £6, the approximate price of a bowl of soup and a chicken and bacon pannini at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and may therefore be warmly recommended.

AN Edinburgh woollen miller using the word "canny" would probably infer tight fistedness; a North-East lad would mean "not bad".

"What fettle the day?"

"Why tha knaas, canny."

How Canney Hill came by its name is probably unconnected to either, but it's a little place a mile north-east of Bishop Auckland and at the Sportsman's Arms the menu cover includes dictionary definitions of both "menu" and of "satisfy" and "satisfactory".

Why satisfy? Why not excite, amaze or tantalise? Are we talking satisfactory as in canny, or satisfactory as in "comfortable", a medical term meaning not very well at all.

"Quite comfortable" means cancel the holiday.

We looked in with Mr Gordon Hampton - sportsman, entrepreneur and chairman of Shildon Football Club. It was still happy hour, 7.30 or so, Strongarm £1.46 a pint.

The Sportsman has been noted for its Strongarm since it was run by Tommy Niven, who was head lad at Denys Smith's stables, knew a great deal about horses and almost as much about keeping beer.

This time they had a bit of a meeting, decided that 7.30 wasn't too late to serve food and directed us to a restaurant where the menu ("list of food") was supplemented by several blackboards.

We both started with prawns nicoise, which came with bacon and a very tasty garlic and basil butter sauce. The problem was the prawns themselves, described on the menu as "plump" - an untruth in inverse proportion to the size of the shellfish.

"They're like something you get on the end of your pencil," said Gordon.

From one of the boards he followed with "rack and black" - lamb, black pudding - we with Italian chicken, wrapped in parma ham and filled (apparently) with buffalo mozzarella.

The vegetables arrived without serving spoons, the servers had vanished. We asked at the bar, bought two more pints, were refused permission to put drinks on the food bill, returned.

"Ah," we said, "serving spoons."

"You are only fifty per cent correct," said Gordon.

His lamb may have been last Spring's, or the one before that, the black pudding had faded a bit. The "Italian chicken" had also lost something in the translation and would have greatly have benefitted from a sauce, even mint sauce; whatever "buffalo mozzarella" might be, it appeared to be little in evidence.

The vegetables were soggy, overcooked and forgettable. The chips were OK but lukewarm. To make matters worse, Mr Hampton was sweating on the Shildon score, away to Peterlee Newtown.

Puddings were from the old school - bread and butter, Clementine, jam roly-poly, came with custard and were fine. The bill - without drinks, of course - was £32.

If it were satisfactory, it might only have been in the medical sense. If they were sportsmen, they'd only be semi-professional.

THOUGH the Petch's pies failed to materialize and though the host repeated some scurrilous observation of George Bernard Shaw's that a newspaper was an organ unable to tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of the world, Stokesley Rotary Club last Tuesday evening passed off very pleasantly.

They meet at the Blacksmiths Arms in Swainby, a lovely little village between the A19 and the Cleveland hills. The pub has a handsome fire, an exceptionally friendly landlady and a menu with more than 300 home made options, including something called "funky munky", which is banana wrapped in bacon and served with mustard sauce.

They're talking of trimming it; funky munky is an endangered species.

The Rotarians were offered roast beef and Yorkshires or salmon with a sweet chilli sauce, both accompanied by wonderful, chip shop style chips. Had a Petch's pie been served up with them, a newspaperman's paradise might finally have been regained.

...and finally, Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool seems intent on putting the poor bairns out of business, her 20 e-mailed jokes including "What do fish say when they hit a concrete wall?"

Dam.