The perfect English day

Yesterday, on the door of the Holly Bush pub, I noticed a sign which read that they served breakfast and coffee in the mornings. This morning, having been to guitar, Mirinda suggested we pop along and have some. What a brilliant idea.

The fact that it was a stunning day helped a bit but, sitting on the verandah enjoying eggs Benedict and a latte is pretty close to heaven in my book. Even Day-z was given a couple of treats by the Mistress of the House. The perfect start to a day…especially when it’s 11am.

Holly Bush eggs for breaky

Brunch over, we popped into Farnham, forgetting that it was duck race day. We only wanted some chops and a grill pan. (The Orangery is pretty good but the two things it is deficient in are a grill pan and lids for the saucepans. The grill pan is now sorted but, seriously, who ever heard of a set of saucepans without lids? And if they came with lids, where are they? There’s not a lot you can do with a saucepan lid apart from put it on top of a saucepan. Anyway, there’s now a grill pan on the Orangery but the missing saucepan lids remain a mystery.) Still, we were late enough so getting a car space wasn’t that difficult. Well, it was at first but then Mirinda gave up trying to park in the Maltings carpark and it all just fell into place.

Having purchased everything we needed (given I was doing the shopping meant we only bought things we needed) we had a bit of a wander through the crowds in Gostrey Meadow which Mirinda claimed were not crowds at all but merely small pockets of people being happy. Strictly speaking, she was right, given the crowds I’d encountered on my month in the City, this was nothing at all.

Mirinda by the Wey in Gostrey Meadow

We then walked a massive circle around Farnham, bought an OS map at Waterstone’s then returned to Sidney via St Andrews. If I needed any convincing to stay in Farnham, today would have swung it. Of course, I need absolutely no convincing and today merely underlined why. Farnham is wonderful. It has it’s problems but I’d really not want to live anywhere else. Not for a while, anyway. Never say never, after all.

Sidney then drove us to the Farm Shop just down the road from our holiday cottage where I stocked up on the necessaries for making lamb chops, mashed potatoes, peas and Gazza-gravy. As it turned out, apart from saucepan lids, I really could have done with a decent cooker. The grill in the one we have is so slow, it could be the fridge. A right pain. I mean I could use plates for saucepan lids but there’s not much you can do to get a grill going, especially when the coils are frozen solid.

But that was to come. We’d only been back with enough time for a much needed coffee before Mirinda suggested we go for a walk. She decided we’d wander around unchartered (by us) bits of Shortfield Common and see what led us where.

First we had to walk passed the local cricket team and the gentle thwack of leather on willow as they played in the first match of the new season.

Frensham first XI

We then walked up a narrow sunken track then down another on the other side of a ploughed field. At the bottom we came across, what appeared to be, a ruined chapel of some denomination. It looked rather forlorn but made me feel a lot better about the mess that is our house at the moment.

We then walked up a very steep track, beside a field full of cows who were sitting down one moment than suddenly going mad because one of two calves started running around. It was like sudden mayhem that lasted for about 30 seconds. Then the cows all stopped and stood in place. Very odd.

We made our gradual way back to the Holly Bush pub where we had a delicious pint of TEA (me) and Sweden’s best cider (Mirinda) at the same table where we enjoyed breakfast. It was all pretty idyllic really. There were small groups of people, sitting on hay bales, petting dogs, sipping drinks responsibly.

Back at the cottage we eventually enjoyed some lamb chops – the gravy was very good, anyway – before watching the very close snooker World Championship semi-final between Neil Robertson and Mark Selby. Neither of them gave an inch. It was a fight to the last ball. Even Mirinda was a bit excited.

Selby won, Mirinda went to bed, and I wrote my blog.

What a perfect day it has been.

Note: I just realised that today, back in 2010, I wrote about the snooker World Championship final which Neil Robertson won (the first Aussie to do so). Reading it again, made it all come back. Pity Selby beat him…although Selby deserved the win.