pumpkinstrokemarrow

Then off on my morning constitutional, paying a visit to the 'Spring Tavern', at least to the outside of it, it being a bit early for alcohol. Last passed on 1st January. This former pick up joint which used to host the odd skirmish, is now at the gastro. end of pub grub and the shiny new pub sign tells me, inter alia, that there is a rôtisserie in the kitchen and that there are crustacea on the menu. Pub grub gets more pretentious by the minute. For once Wikipedia lets me down and does not spell rôtisserie with an "ô". Does this provide me with an opportunity to make my first wiki-edit?

Coming round on the second lap, took in Chertsey Lane on the old Manor Hospital site where I found that the council had been pruning some of the young trees. Not a bad time of year, and not a bad idea to shape them up a bit. But very clumsily executed with branches being cut off several inches from their parent stem, leaving unsightly and unhealthy horns. From which one deduces that whatever contractor was hired to do the work did not use people who knew too much about pruning trees.

Pushing on towards Southfields Park, the large pollard London Plane has acquired its surrounding spring pond, complete with three ducks. How long will the pond last? One would not of thought that the tree would care about being waterlogged for months at a time but it looks OK for the present.

Back home, decided that the 'Spring Tavern' was not for us and settled for the 'Shy Horse' on the Leatherhead Road. A place modern enough to have Doombar behind the bar and worm eaten wooden beams stuck to the ceiling. Quite decent bread, oil and olives to start. The three different main courses came on three different shapes of shiny white plate: large round mark 1, large round mark 2 and oblong. The waitress seemed to think that the allocation of dish to plate was more or less random. I think they may have the same system at the Tooting Wetherspoons where one also sees the odd oblong or square plate. We all have to move with the times. Menu was more interesting than some and I have learned that you can have confit of pig as well as confit of duck. The chef explained that this meant stewing the piece of pig in its own fat: the resultant flesh was firm but tasty. Noting in passing that although it had been listed as one of the three specials of the day, it seemed a bit unlikely that it had been cooked that day; presumably boil in the bag like everything else. But satisfactory, nonetheless. The rest of the food was satisfactory too, leaving aside the rather firm 'new' potatoes.

Out of one of the windows one could see a farmed field. We thought that this must be one of the very few pubs in Epsom where this was possible. Downs possibly but not farmed fields.

Seem to be reading more fiction at the moment, this week even going so far as to read one of BH's books - 'The curious incident of the dog in the night time' by Mark Haddon, an easy-read fictional first person narrative of an autistic boy. This one was good at mathematics and had all kinds of strange likes and dislikes. He had, for example, a problem with yellow food and carried red food colouring just in case he was stuck. Very bad with strange people and strange situations. Not very good with people generally. All in all a very difficult person to be responsible for. Not at all sure that I could be.