With a wait the length of a football match for an (admittedly good) three course Sunday lunch, visitors to a Barnard Castle pub might be advised to have a hearty breakfast before setting off.

WITH the suggestion that the column seemed to be "scratching around" of late, a well meaning gentleman in Heighington rang to suggest Sunday lunch at the Red Well in Barnard Castle.

We went at the next opportunity; the reaction the only thing that wasn't delayed.

We arrived at 1.10pm, well-read Sunday tabloids scattered on the bar. The News of the World said there'd been 750,000 on the Peace March, the Mail on Sunday 1.5m and the Sunday Mirror two million.

Who's counting? The real ale was off, pump clips turned (for shame?) to the wall. Kingslodge, who own the Red Well and attractive places like the Uplands Hotel at Crook, may be losing their enthusiasm for it, which would be a great pity. Boddington's, the alternative, is not (shall we say) to everyone's taste.

We'd booked, the only remaining tables in the bar where Crystal Palace v Leeds United was just kicking off on television. The younger son, a bairn with a sore head after celebrating Arsenal's march to the FA Cup quarter-finals the previous evening, was also in attendance.

Main course is £5.95, two or three courses £7.95. We ordered at much the same time as the match kicked off.

Starters arrived 15 minutes later: piping hot vegetable soup, melon pearls, a "bacon and mushroom cassoulet" which had The Boss quoting the well known lines from Samuel Wilberforce: If I were a cassowary On the plain of Timbuctoo, I would eat a missionary Cassock, bands and hymn book, too.

Main courses embraced the usual roasts, plus a vegetable stir fry with sweet chilli sauce and pasta with smoked salmon cream sauce.

Though neither the pub nor the waiting staff seemed greatly busy, the main courses took at least another half an hour. If not necessarily a missionary (cassock, bands and hymn books too) it would have been possible to eat half a horse.

With the exception of a rather limpid Yorkshire pudding - the size, shape and approximate consistency of a baseball mitt - the food was good going on cracking. Vegetables were, in every respect, first rate.

We ordered puddings, and waited. If they thought the delay would be reason to order another pint of Mr Boddington's abominable beer, they might have waited until hell froze over first.

There was white chocolate or rum and raisin torte and three or four other things. Suffice to say that both we and the Crystal Palace referee were looking at our watches before they arrived.

"Shouldn't be long," said the waitress, buttonholed after 40 minutes, though without word of apology or explanation.

By the time puddings finally arrived they'd had half time, full time, stoppage time, injury time and nose wiping time and the Red Well was very definitely on borrowed time.

Most of them are youngsters and for that you make big allowances - but for a Sunday lunch from a short menu, puddings probably sitting in the kitchen with a sign saying "Eat me" on the plate, it was wholly unacceptable.

Laurel and tardy, a good lunch spoiled. Not up to scratch at all.

LAST week's note on the ghastly Lacuna Lounge next to Durham bus station unwittingly trod where others had been before. The previous week, though we'd missed it, the Echo reported a police application to have the licence revoked, though it's barely been open five minutes.

Chief Inspector Laz Szomoru said that police had been "unhappy over a number of issues" since the bar opened but is lucky because he'd never had the bacon sandwich.

The place remains open pending appeal.

THAT little dissertation through Durham also included a technophobic reference to an "Internet and Lan Gaming cafZ" at the end of Framwelgate Bridge. John Briggs now forwards a list of requisites provided by the British Lan Gaming Society which includes spare clothes, headphones and money - "required for the essentials of any Lan gaming party, pizza, fags and booze." It'll never take the place of three card brag,.

BY no means for the first time, we are also grateful to the eagle-eyed Janet Murrell in Durham. Janet sends a flyer from the Three Tuns Hotel in Durham: "Choose from a selection of hot main courses and tempting deserts." As she observes, decorated with tiny palm trees, no doubt.

ANOTHER reader recommendation: Ray Price e-mailed to suggest a visit to Middleton-in-Teesdale and a cafZ called "something like Colston and Colston."

Outside, said Ray, there were bay trees with fairy lights, inside were chapel chairs with little school slates stuck in the back where the hymn books used to be and ("I kid you not") soups like haggis or black pudding. The owner, added Ray, seemed a bit of a lad, too.

Since the place wasn't called Colston and Colston at all, it was impossible to check opening hours. We went on Thursday lunchtime, nonetheless. Cornforth and Cornforth was closed, a small notice on the door advising "Chien mechant" which is French for dangerous dog.

Perhaps it was a poodle.

The two little bow windows were filled with stripped pine, probably home made, gadgetry, a woolly cardigan, another slate which advertised bed and breakfast with "everything for a comfortable night" but not with a menu.

Nothing could be glimpsed of the quirks of gastronomic fate nor even the chapel chairs which lie within; it could almost have been a film set from an earlier age.

Middleton-in-Teesdale's excellent fish shop was also closed, as it is every Thursday. The Kings Head Bistro ceased serving "casual customers" last September - they come no more casual than this one - a little cafZ called Sue's seemed to have a trip in and didn't have a table.

Finally we lunched at the Country Style Tearoom, an adjunct to a bakery selling home made cakes like peach melbas, date slices and cream horns. Good vegetable soup, perfectly pleasant egg and bacon bap but still unanswered questions - more reports, please - about the idiosyncratic Cornforth and Cornforth.

And why didn't the French dog bark?

SINCE last week's column included a telephone recommendation from a chap in Iran for pub food in Darlington, a Newcastle United supporting friend asks us to announce that The Talk of the Toon - his bar in Pattaya, Thailand - is on the market for a million baht.

"The signed Newcastle United shirt on the wall is worth that alone," insists John, who lives near Consett.

The bar includes kitchen, mezzanine floor, roof garden and five bedrooms. Anyone with a million bath at hand can get more details from johnthetalkofthetoon.com ...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what angry rodents send each other at Christmas.

Cross mouse cards, of course.

Published: 25/02/2003