Actually, apart from the excitements in the Swan's car park, the weekend was mostly taken up with feasting.
We went with Barb and Greg to a hidden pub, out in the wilds of the countryside near Warminster. The Cross Keys. A pretty little pub which I am not sure I could ever find again - it was hard enough finding it with Barb and Greg in tow, and they'd been before. There are chickens in the gardens and a Bassett hound in the bar, accompanied by a 12 month old Bassett Cocker cross. There are naked cricketers in the loo, a heron in the fish pond and a very amiable landlord overseeing it all. It was a good evening. Would suggest we try and find it again, except that the chickens, dogs and landlord are all off to go exploring Mainland Europe for the next 12 months. Still, maybe the new landlord will be amiable and have interesting things for us to play with. We shall send Barb and Greg on a reconnaissance mission after the new person has had time to settle in.
On Sunday we collected Gwen and meandered out to Whitely for lunch with Jeanette, Matthew, Rebecca and Evie. I've been trying to think when we last saw them and, according to my diary, it was after Christmas LAST YEAR!!!!!!! No wonder Evie had grown so much!!!!! Really must go more often. And not just because Jeanette makes magnificent cottage pies, and they ply me with wine and there are young people for me to tickle (although all these things are true :-D) I think we might have worn Gwen out though, with all the excitement of playing with Evie and trying to hear what we were all saying without benefit of her hearing aid (the batteries had gone flat and she couldn't get new ones without her New Battery Pass thingy, which she had forgotten to take with her).
Back at The Swan, we had a lovely supper. And I caused some level of confusion when, in a moment of inattentiveness, I asked if I might have a short black. I knew as soon as I asked for it that that was wrong. And simply couldn't draw to the front of my memory what it should have been called. So I drank my small, long black coffee with the addition of a little of the very delicious brandy that Carl had put The Builder's way. Next time I shall try very hard to remember to ask for an espresso. Not sure where the "short black" came from. I haven't been in Australia *that* recently!
Monday found us munching on steak and chips in the Wheatsheaf in Romsey before heading home. A fitting finale for a magnificent weekend of feasting.
As well as feasting, we have mooched around in the New Forest, visited the Lyburn cheesery, discovered that the New Forest Farm Shop has vanished without trace (unusual for a farm shop to go under), admired ponies, cows and piggies, got held up in an incredible traffic snarl between Stoford and Wilton (usually takes 5 minutes or so; took 40 minutes on Monday - an hour to get from the Swan to Waitrose, which is usually about 15 minutes), had a quick explore of Romsey, drunk a very little wine, and generally had a merry time.
SHU is closed today, so we will almost certainly mootle out for lunch somewhere today. And I have the rest of the week off :-)
Not a bad life, really.
You'll find all the pictures for the weekend here, if you missed the photo link of the Tarrant Hinton blog
No comments:
Post a Comment