I rose early this morning and went out straight away for a walk. The forecast had indicated a dry morning with heavy rain in the afternoon.
The absolutely correct weather prediction meant that the planned walk before the pub lunch never took place. Every time we have organised a walk followed by a bite to eat at a pub the walk has been cancelled. A coincidence or what?
Maggi and I set off for Sear Green the location of The Jolly Cricketers in good time as I thought I knew the way. My mental map of Buckinghamshire needs to be revised. We didn’t follow the satnav and arrived over 5 minutes late and everyone else had already sat down at the table and had ordered drinks.
As I sat down Matt said, don’t you own an iron, presumably referring to my creased clothing. For one so beautifully attired as him I shrugged it off as a personal insult for which I couldn’t give a damn. We continued the conversation as usual as if he hadn’t said anything. As usual the table split into men on one side and women on the other. I sat at one end and didn’t ever speak to Helen or Fiona. This came about for two reasons. The girls generally talk together and secondly the pub was extremely loud, particularly the table that sat behind me. I felt particularly sorrow for Mark as he is now wearing hearing aids and the background noise just gets amplified with along with the conversation.
The boys all ordered the beef Sunday Roast while the girls ordered the chicken sunday roast. I had to ask for a sharper knife as the meat lacked tenderness. The gravy flooded the plate and needed to be much hotter and the yorkshire pudding had gone crusty because it was probably cooked several hours before and just re-heated for our benefit. Maybe we just had what remained because we didn’t eat until after 4 o’clock. The Jones and Rileys had been there in November when we were away and had said how good the food had been. As a result I felt let down after I had expected a decent meal.
While at the pub we discussed recent television series we had watch and they both advocated Archie, the bio pic of Cary Grant. When we arrived home we decided to watch it. ITVX streams the programme which means we have to suffer the adverts. We watched two episodes and while it told a story that I did not know both of us only found it mildly entertaining and detested the intervening adverts.