A very pleasant day. Once mum had made her way back from Jeni’s, cousin Anthony drove over from Ruislip and picked us up to drive us to the Harte and Magpies, near Coleshill. The drive was beautiful but a bit treacherous in places – the ride down First Avenue was particularly disconcerting, not helped by the sight of a car at the bottom which had evidently lost control on its way down and smashed its front end in. But we made it to the pub, which I had been to previously, but is now under control of the team behind the phenomenal Royal Standard of England, in Forty Green.
Fittingly, the atmosphere, food and drink were all of an extremely high standard, admittedly with prices to match. I was particularly taken with the Chiltern Ale – it’s nice to drink a local beer on tap, although I must say I did eye Anthony’s bottle of Marston’s Owd Rodger with a bit of envy. Fortunately however, this morning I had taken receipt of a case of the stuff.
The meal was gorgeous, and it was good to catch up with mum and Anthony. The pub’s beautiful setting, augmented by the recent snow, was capped off with a pretty sunset through the trees.
Mum said that the meal was by way of a ‘well done’ to me for my recent exploits in Manchester – at university, with Manchester Daily Photo, on BBC radio, and so forth. She tells me she is very proud of me. This is immensely gratifying to hear.
Tuned into Radio One for about the fifth time this decade to see who was Christmas number one. Inexplicable feeling of relief as some oik from X Factor was knocked into second place by none other than Rage Against The Machine. The whole campaign to get them there has been a bit of a farce – a joke which got a bit out of hand. The economics and ‘meaning’ behind it fall apart – I can understand dethroning the un-Christmas-y Cowell-spawned pop factory, but surely it should be replaced by something… Christmas-y? And the whole scheme simply served to line Sony Music’s pockets a little more than usual for this time of year.
But the fact is, it’s been a result for… If not democracy, then people power. 2009 has seen a whole host of these such events (Trafigura et al), led mostly by ‘social networking’ (communication, really), and it’s a mostly positive glimpse of the future of humanity. Baby steps, though. For now, we can simply revel in the immature joy that a cool song from our youth has achieved wider airplay than anyone had hoped.
The evening, then, was spent, full from the gorgeous Sunday dinner of sausages and mashed potatoes, in front of the telly with the likes of James May messing around with Lego, Top Gear, and the sumptuous Cranford. How had I not seen Cranford before? Either way, it was a sublime period drama, set in the 1840s, with tonight’s episode telling the story of the approach of the railway. A stellar cast, nice attention to historical detail – and some laughs too. A really lovely period piece to sink into on a Sunday night. It’s a bit of a cliché, but this is just one of the kinds of things the BBC does so well. And long may it continue to do so.
