Sunday

Sunday wears a crown, and has a golden beard and a ring.
Sunday sings his psalms, and laughs and jokes,
and teaches his lessons in a booming voice.
And all creatures sleep in the peace of the earth,
and the earth in Sunday’s hand. *

I like this poem, particularly the last two lines; true, the mystical aspect of it is of less importance to me than to the poet, but the image and feelings he conjures up go right to the heart of my own Sunday self.

For as long as Beloved and I have been together I have made our Sundays stand out. The only exceptions have been the Sundays when he had a Sunday engagement, an afternoon concert, say, in some spa town, or at summer festivals. Moonlighting at weekends. If I went along we’d usually have a quick pizza between rehearsal and concert, which was all that was on offer in places like Tunbridge Wells or Brighton. Things might have changed a bit since then.

Until we met and moved in together, Sundays were nothing special to Beloved. Many English people use Sunday for d-i-y jobs, shopping trips, household chores. During my years of single-parenting and a full-time job I did as much as I could on Saturdays and always attempted to keep Sundays free; admittedly, mainly to recover from the past week and recharge batteries for the week following. There was a lot of solitary putting up of feet, involving listening to music and reading. The kids were old enough to amuse themselves and happy doing it. All three of us enjoyed solitude. except at Sunday dinner, which was a far more elaborate meal than weekday ones.

In my years with Beloved I have kept up the custom of making our Sunday meal special. Three courses with wine are the minimum requirements. Not that I do all the cooking, I might buy something at the delicatessen’s, certainly the starter, and sometimes the pudding too. But we sit and eat at leisure, savouring the food, sipping a glass of something pleasant, and talking. Talking is the main ingredient. it’s almost as if sitting at table fires up neurons and loosens the tongue. We are never at a loss for topics, even now. We might start by remarking on the weather: “Isn’t it still today, not a leaf stirring”/ or: "Heavens, just listen to that rain pounding the glass roof (of the conservatory)”. Then there are compliments about the food and, after careful sipping of the wine, a remark about how pleasant it all is. We'll mention what we did during the week, recall people we met, a play we saw, maybe a lecture we attended. Because it’s Sunday and Sundays are for being kind, I keep criticism to a minimum. Beloved is always kind, even on weekdays. Until we reach politics, current affairs and the deplorable state of beastly humanity, as evidenced by scores of examples daily. We never have to look far. We might not always agree on the causes or the strategies of amelioration; the debate could even get quite heated. It’s amazing how (mildly) reactionary I have become with age, when I was accused, for most of my life, of being “your textbook bleeding heart liberal’.

In this fashion we spend a good two hours being friends and enjoying each other, until Millie nags me into getting up and feeding her. She has her second meal of the day at 3pm on the dot and woe betide me if I forget. So I don’t. Usually.

And after that? Like the creatures in the poem we “sleep in the peace of the earth”. The wine might have had something to do with that.






*Eliseo Diego
1920-1994

transl. from the Spanish by J.M.Cohen

The Weather Outside is Frightful . . . .

with skies of unrelieved grey; wet and grey and muddy underfoot. As if Christmas on its own weren’t bad enough. However, I survived, as I hoped I would.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, it was a toned down English version, an English Christmas without the paper hats and streamers; without the family rows, and bored kids; without endless hours of television. Even without a turkey. Dear kind friends took pity on us and gave us a Christmas dinner of roast goose instead. All very civilised, with good conversation and enough goodwill to solve half the ills of our planet. Sadly, nobody takes notice of sensible, kindly, friendly and peace-loving folk like us.

Christmas is usually a difficult time for me. It’s the time when I’m most aware of being in voluntary exile. The Christmases of my childhood were slow and modest and contemplative ones, festive, with an unchanging order of events, lasting for at least three day, including Holy Night (Christmas Eve in the UK), Christmas Day and the second day of Christmas (Boxing day here). Nowadays, I do my best to forget, ignore, avoid all old-country-ways but all it takes is a sliver of Silent Night sung by a children’s choir on German TV and a secret tear rolls down my face. Ah well, there’s sentiment for you.

We had promised ourselves that we would finally broach our very small collection of decent French reds which we bought many years ago from a proper French dealer in the Loire region. "After all, we don't know what next year will bring; will we still be around to drink it?” We use this phrase rather a lot now. I chose this Gigondas from 2002 to start us off, entirely suitable to go with roast beef on Boxing Day. Beloved took the bottle between his knees and operated on the cork, which promptly crumbled and broke off halfway through uncorking. I had a go and broke the remaining bits of cork. I’d managed to poke a hole through though and laboriously and very slowly emptied the bottle into a plastic jug by means of a paper towel lined funnel. From there it went equally slowly into a glass jug.

And what do you know, it was still drinkable. Not that either of us knows what a 14 yr old Gigondas, chateau-bottled, tastes like before it’s messed around by a pair of rank amateurs. Cheers.

TV was an acceptable part of the festivities too; we watched the final, very final and very stickily sweet  two-hour-long episode of Downton Abbey. All’s well that ends well with not a dry eye in the house. Even the below-stairs lot gets paired off. Most of Doctor Who passed me by, the tremendous noise irritated me; Then there’s the Dickensian, a rather messy soup of most of Dickens’ novels which goes on for twenty half-hour-long episodes (will I stay the course?) and Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’, a stylish adaptation to my mind. I like a bit of mindless murder and mayhem, particularly when it’s done in muted colours, bristling moustaches and kind elderly gentlemen being sweet to damsels in distress.

But the best thing about Christmas, as in so many Decembers of our gradually warming climate, are the snowdrops, bravely poking out from the muddy ground. Harbingers of spring? Or foolhardy little treats just waiting to be nipped by frost and covered by snow?

Sore Throats and Optimists

Purely as a lesson in optimism, brave little Periwinkle, I am willing to leave you be;  all you need is a sheltered wall to warm your leaves and support your tendrils, and out pops a pretty blue flower to justify your existence. Gardeners don’t usually welcome you, your habit of throwing out runners left, right and centre, aiming at total domination of large tracts of garden soil cause us to confine you to wild areas where nothing else will grow, where you can fight for survival with ivy, dead nettle, bugle and sweet woodruff.

Aren’t these common  names delightful? Names which have been bestowed on the plants by country people, wise women and herbalists; names which instantly conjure up an image, or tell you the purpose of a plant.

The Almanac says “Guard your Health and allay Disorders caused by New Year Celebrations.” Good advice which I didn’t heed. Beloved brought a cold home from a party and, although I avoided him as much as possible, he insisted on sharing it with me.

Fly Physic, Sloth and Venery,

Avoid all Baths most carefully. 

Avoiding all Physic and Venery didn’t help; Sloth was forced upon me by the soreness of throat and chest. Baths were a necessary evil, but even they have been  kept to a minimum recently. 

John Hollybush, The Homish Apothecary of 1561 says, 

“Many there are whom the head whirleth so sore, that he thinketh the earth turneth upside down. The same also has pain in the eye, and he weeneth that a sort of flies do fly before his eyes. Those may be healed in this wise: they may drink no strong drinks nor wine, without it be very well allayed with much water.”

Yes, he describes the symptoms admirably, but I don’t like his cure. I think I shall stick with wine and drink the water separately. 

The Extraordinary Dandelion

"Has there ever been a year for dandelions like this year?”
Standing in the kitchen, after his walk with the dog, he looks wistful, undecided.

Gathering and preparing dandelions for wine-making is labour-intensive;
dandelion heads must be plucked when in full bloom,
preferably late in the morning or early in the afternoon,
and always on a dry and sunny day.
Leave it too late and the flowers will be half-closed and difficult to handle.
Make sure that every trace of stem is removed,
and also remove as many as possible of the green sepals that enclose the yellow petals.
If you don’t, your wine will be bitter.
Kitchen scissors are the tool of choice.

He has decided, he will make dandelion wine,
the first in many years.

Be warned, however.
A strong bladder and digestive system are essential if you want to come away unscathed.
The dandelion’s other names are:

Jack-piss-the-bed,
Pissy beds,
Pittley beds,
Tiddle-beds,
Wet-the-bed,
Dog’s posy,
Old man’s clock,
Peasant’s clock,
Swine’s snout,

the seeds are known as:

Fairies,
Parachutes,
Sugar eaters.

 

Dandelions mean carpets of golden-yellow flowers, jagged green leaves (the dent de lion - lion’s tooth) and clouds of featherweight seeds blowing in the wind. Albrecht Duerer saw the appeal even of the closed and withering flower-heads and included them in his extraordinary close-up portrait, painted in 1503, of a square foot of meadowland, "Das Grosse Rasenstueck". Shakespeare included the plant in the elegy in Cymbeline : “Golden girls and lads all must / As chimney sweepers come to dust.” Keats imagined “The soft rustle of a maiden’s gown/ Fanning away the dandelion’s down.”

Children still blow dandelion down from the round dandelion clocks - the ‘chimney sweepers’ - to ‘tell the time’. The number of blows needed to remove all the seeds gives the hour. if you can catch one on the wing. you can make a wish.

Lastly, dandelions appear more and more on menus; the traditional French dish Pissenlit au Lard has fried bacon scraps (lardons) and croutons served on a bed of dandelion salad; dandelion leaves can be found in ordinary pub salads. There’s dandelion pasta,  pickled dandelions, and stir-fried dandelion.

In spite of all the above I have spent a good part of today’s gardening gouging out dandelions in my flower beds. Lesser celandine and dandelions are this gardener’s greatest enemies, no matter how highly tradition values them.



Tess Kincaid used Jamie Wyeth’s image
`’Lighthouse Dandelions” for her prompt
MAG 169.

This post is loosely connected.

O Joy !

You might ask what’s changed since yesterday : weatherwise it’s all the same. In fact we’ve had more snow today and the going is getting tougher. 

But, and it’s a major BUT,  there’s been contact with the outside world. The postman called for the first time since last Thursday, bringing me some of the books I ordered last week. He struggled up the 200 metres of the drive on foot (we’ve never actually measured it, but 200 m seems to be the consensus in this house). The podiatrist came too. we spent more time chatting about weather conditions than anything else. She visits many houses in this very rural area and tells a tale or two about the average English person’s fascination with all things weather related. It seems I am an apt pupil.

Comfort food brought pleasure too, mashed potatoes with Cumberland sausages and frozen peas. An excellent lunch, quick and easy to prepare, with enough zing in the sausages to tickle the tastebuds.
The groceries were delivered, which is a major worry off my mind; we were down to the last three portions of Millie’s food, not a comfortable thought.
The lady driver helped us transport the delivery to the house from the road. She too didn’t want to risk the drive but very kindly took hold of a large and heavy plastic box and pulled it up by means of stout string Beloved had tied round the rim.
I was pushing the wheelbarrow and Beloved carried plastic bags filled with lighter stuff.

A lot of dissatisfaction with the status quo - any status quo - for me derives from lack of control over daily life. Frustration overwhelms me and suddenly it feels like the world is 'ganging up on me’. Not a rational reaction at all, I know.

Beloved was becoming quite depressed himself when he saw me turning listless so we had a rummage in the wine racks and he came up with two very elderly bottles, the remnants of a once proud collection. There are other single examples of the noble vintner’s art left from years gone by, but these two will do to begin with. A Chateau des Graviers, cru artisan Margaux from 1999 and a Hering Gewuerztraminer grand cru Kirchberg de Barr from 2002. Both bottles are covered in dust and cobwebs. When we bought them and their fellows they probably cost only half of what they would go for now. We kept them for a special occasion and more or less forgot about them. I am very glad the weather turned me into a moaning minnie.

What I need now is for the snow to settle in for the duration, or at least for as long as there are bottles remaining which need urgent attention. Cheers!

Rain Didn't Stop Indoor Entertainment Either

It was reasonably dry yesterday and Beloved and I took ourselves off for Sunday lunch. We followed a previously admired chef and his wife to their new restaurant in an old pub, the Plough Inn at Wistanstow; whereas their previous hostelry was small and intimate, this pub is large and featureless, modernised out of all recognition. The food was mediocre. Why do English pubs insist on serving 'roast meat and two veg' on Sundays? And if you call yourself a 'dining pub' shouldn't you at least get such simple fare right? Come on, British Pub Lovers, complain! It was Father's Day, the place was busy; perhaps we were the only guests not entirely happy with the food on offer.

Continuing the pleasures detailed in the previous post I can
report that invitations to two supper parties last week provided us with food vastly superior to the Plough Inn and many other pubs. Both parties were given by single people and, coincidentally, we were joint guests with the same couple at both.  Contrary to the delightful Jane and Lance Hattat's experience, we here at Valley's End try to provide food which is entirely edible for our guests; in fact, if cooking is a problem for any reason, the host might serve a meal partly prepared by a professional and finished off  in his or her kitchen. We too reassure each other that we get together primarily for the company, rather than the food, but if these dread words are uttered at your party, you know you have failed miserably.

Andrew had invited us to dinner 'at 7.30 for 8'. I've overlooked such instructions in the past and gone for 7.45, to be on the (guessed at) safe side. This time I actually looked up Debrett's Guide to Correct Behaviour for Every Sphere of Social And Business Life, which has been sitting, more or less ignored, on my shelves for many years. And lo and behold, I did the right thing all along: 7.45 is a good time to arrive for dinner at 8. No host, including myself, has ever managed to get people away from the pre-dinner drinks sofa and to the table for the exact start of the first course; it is best to allow for another 30 minutes cooking time. Another good thing is to feed people small appetisers to mop up the alcohol, or else the start of dinner might be messier than you anticipated. You can always cut down on quantity of the individual servings later.

So what makes a good dinner party? Andrew is an excellent host, one of my favourites; his food is delicious: we had a crusted crown of lamb as a main course.  If all is well, food is actually a topic of conversation and wine labels and vintages are much admired too. "Who is your merchant?" is by no means an indiscreet question round here. However, I'd agree with Jane and Lance that the chosen company is the main ingredient for a successful evening.  You need at least one easy talker to start proceedings, in this case our Welsh Professor of History certainly was the one. He was there again at Pauline's party a few nights later, but as there were three great talkers and arguers among her guests, the evening was extremely lively. Beloved threw a concerned glance in my direction once, but I was not the only one who made his eyebrows rise. I believe that Pauline had had help preparing the food; it wasn't mentioned, of course, but we enjoyed it no less than had she cooked all of it herself, possibly more so. A stuffed salmon isn't the easiest dish to cook to perfection.

Both Andrew and Pauline are lavish dispensers of good wine, which helps to lighten inhibitions, not that the assembled guests had any to start with. As always, discussion was free and easy, not everyone agreed with everything said and it was wonderful to argue late into the night. At Pauline's, another guest and I re-fought the feminist wars of the 70s. Sue and I can never agree on modern women's attitude to feminism. Sue believes young women today to be as involved as we were, whereas I think that these women have long lost their appetite for the scrum and hanker for a life of docile domesticity. Perhaps we're both wrong and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Literature never fails to come up, there are too many graduates of Eng. Lit. in this crowd. As Bloomsday was near, James Joyce was mentioned, and it transpired that only one person in six had read the whole of Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, and this person was Beloved, who has no formal higher education other than the study of music at the Guildhall in London. The longer people go to university and the more degrees they amass, the narrower becomes their field of interest. (Yes? Discuss)

I expect social life will quieten down for a bit now. Everybody is working towards the Open Gardens weekend at the end of June and holiday season is upon us too. If I get bored, I shall have to get out my cookery bibles and consult my diary.

The Woes Of Spring

If the waist band pinches, don't get rid of the trousers, get rid of the inches.

I wish I would listen to myself sometimes. I keep having all these brilliant ideas; do I put them into practice? Stupid question.

I've just had some pasta for lunch - lethal - , and what's even worse, a strip of chocolate for pudding.  It's been a long and boring winter, spent mainly in an easy chair, reading, or in front of my computer, either composing my magnum opus, or doing whatever we think we're doing in the blogoverse.  Even the dog's been in on the conspiracy to fatten me up: he's getting too old and arthritic for long walks and, after half an hour struggling through the mud, he looks at me as if to say, thanks for coming out, but how about going back now? He's very polite that way. There are the ramblers, peramblers and amblers (true, all three groups exist in Valley's End), but I can't see myself stumbling along and remaining civilised and sociable at the same time.

I have a large walk-in wardrobe, well, actually it is a long, slopey-ceilinged space under the roof, running along a massive bedroom, with two wide double doors. The lady who built this house was keen on providing her loving sons and daughters and their assorted children with enough space upstairs to keep them there during visits, while she was free to indulge her passion for bossing the village around downstairs. It made a mess of the house, but gave me enough room to keep my vast collection of shoes and clothes, saved for decades, most of it on the off-chance that the time will come, when a) the stuff becomes fashionable again, and b) that I'll actually be able to get into it at such time. Only about 20% of the clothes hanging on the rails fit me easily, all the rest is surplus to current requirements. Five kilos would do it, but where am I going to get the willpower to shed five kilos? The situation is depressing enough to make me reach for another strip of chocolate.

Chocolate and wine have been my solace ever since I've allowed myself to be locked away in the depths of inaccessible countryside. For heaven's sake, this is practically Wales! Chocolate is absolutely essential to my survival. As chocolate is also addictive, I cannot be blamed for my cravings. Or so I thought until very recently, when some misguided scientists, in the name of the advancement of human misery, proved conclusively, that chocolate is no more addictive than a cup of tea. It seems that the bit of the brain which lights up when you eat a piece of chocolate, also lights up, in exactly the same way, when you are THINKING about eating a piece of chocolate. If ever there was a research project which should have been stifled at birth, it is this.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. In my distant catholic past, priests and nuns at school made sure that we didn't indulge ourselves. I was a sickly child, so I was allowed protein in the form of meat, but sweets were forbidden on pain of eternal hell fire and brimstone baths. A lot of people hang their need for a reducing diet on the Lent hook, maybe I could join them. On the other hand, the compost heaps need turning and there's a lot of work coming up in the garden. But I am NOT going to keep anybody informed about my success or otherwise. Should I, however, in some future post, mention that I am looking forward to a clothes-shopping-expedition, you may draw your own conclusions. Either way, of course.

Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Green

"Of course," said my friend Penelope, "they would both insist on coming to us at Christmas. They both had sisters they could have visited, but no, it had to be us."

Penny rang this morning for a chat and we decided she should come to tea this afternoon. She was a bit lonely, her husband died last year. The weather has been so uninspiring for days that nobody, who didn't have to, has felt like setting foot outside, dog walkers being the exception. The valley can get awfully depressing at times. Somehow we had got to talking about drink and drinking to excess; not that we do, but one man in the village has just drunk himself to death and another appears to be on the brink of doing the same.

"Talking of gin and orange", Penny continued, "I used to enjoy the occasional snifter." And then she told a little story.

"Before we had the girls, both mothers came to us for Christmas. My mother was divorced, and Bill's mother was a widow. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Green didn't like each other at all; not that they had any proper falling out, they never rowed, but it was patently obvious that they couldn't abide each other. They arrived on Christmas Eve and left again on Boxing Day evening, neither leaving the field before the other. On top of it, they were both nearly tee-total, a drink might have livened up proceedings a little. By the time Christmas dinner was served, you could cut the air with a cheese knife." Penny took a sip of her tea, unlaced. "Bill and I were pretty desperate. These two women spoilt every one of our Christmases. We enjoyed a drink, but didn't feel able to drink in front of two grimly disapproving ladies. Then we had an idea: Bill half filled a jug with gin, added orange juice and put it into the fridge. Now and then, he'd ask the ladies to excuse him, he'd have to go and make sure the boiler, which ran on coal, had enough fuel to keep going. I'd follow him, explaining that the oven needed checking, and find Bill in the kitchen, two glasses on the table, pouring gin-and-orange. Mrs Brown and Mrs Green were none the wiser and we had fortified ourselves enough to carry on."

"Good for you," I said, "but why do you call them Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Green? One was your mother and the other your mother-in-law. Didn't you use first names?" "Oh no, never," Penny said. "Mrs. Brown didn't like me and she would never have permitted me to use her name. And Bill called my mother, with whom he got on extremely well, Mrs. Green, always Mrs. Green." I was curious. "What happened when the girls came along?" I asked. "O, then they became Granny and Nana respectively, we all called them Granny and Nana."

An Ordinary Saturday at Valley's End.

On this misty, frosty Saturday morning the sun finally came out at about eleven and the twigs on the laburnum and amelanchier were still clothed in their festive winter finery. I'd hate a garden without trees and shrubs, what would I have to look at in winter?

I've been trying to do my income tax return online this morning - late as usual - but also as usual, the HMRC website refused me entry, insisting that 'You Have Not Been Granted Access To This Site' when I typed in my own reference numbers. That means that I'll be sitting at the end of a telephone line on Monday, listening to some godawful canned music and waiting for one of their operatives to become free. I shall do my returns on paper again in future, if they let me.

I'm feeling a little merry. I have said it before, morning drinking doesn't agree with me. We had an invitation to a pre-lunch drinks party and, although I always go to these things with the firm intention to stick to orange juice, I rarely follow my own instructions. The host greeted me by saying he had a lovely Sancerre for me to try and I was lost. I did the Sancerre fully justice, with only a few bites to mop up the juices. Which meant, that for me at least, the party became very enjoyable. I'd hate you to think that I overdo my appreciation of the grape, but I can tell the difference between plonk and a drink worth having. And if it's worth having, I'll have it.

There were several writers of non-fiction present at the party, a historian and a biologist as well as a biographer; feeling uninhibited I button-holed them and asked their opinion on the best process to get the work of writing done. The consensus was "Concentration", "Discipline", "Ruthlessness vis-a-vis Distraction" and "A Quiet And Private Working Area". "Regular Working Hours, No Matter What", also came up. Considering, that between them, these people, all men and therefore free from  Cyril Connolly's "pram in the hall" being a sombre enemy of good art, have a couple of dozen books to their names, I rather trust their method. I may not have a pram in the hall but I do have a household to run. The only fiction writer present, who also writes poetry, is more like me: maybe there's time today or maybe there'll be time tomorrow. But then, the only books he's published were non-fiction English and poetry text books, his literary efforts languish in the drawers of his study.

Having had all this stimulation in the morning, I felt like a long sit-down after a very late lunch. To that end I treated myself to a couple of hours with the second part of the Larsson Millennium trilogy. I absolutely love what I've read so far. I've mentioned the books to people whose opinion I respect;  one said he disliked the violence, somebody else said they found the long, descriptive passages off-putting,  another fiction writer couldn't find an explanation for the runaway success the trilogy has had, because it is actually quite a demanding read, meticulously researched, needing concentration and an interest in journalism, big business and corruption in high places. Not the usual thriller fare, in other words. I love thrillers, solving the puzzle along with the writer is a relaxing exercise. Larsson doesn't give much away, his story unfolds in ever greater circles, drawing in more and more characters, increasing the suspense and making me afraid for the safety of threatened protagonists.

I'm reading this as if I were listening to the ominous sound of distant drum beats getting closer and closer.

The evening shall be rounded off with last week's episode of Sherlock Holmes, with Benedict Cumberbatch. An evening in front of the box. Everybody who has seen it says it's great. I am looking forward to another treat.

Absolutely my kind of an ordinary Saturday.

My World - Bishop's Castle.

A few miles from Valley's End lies undisturbed  and peaceful the small, friendly town of Bishop's Castle with fewer than 2000 inhabitants, probably including cats and dogs. 

In the early medieval period a number of 'planned' towns were established in South Shropshire, based around Norman strongholds and earlier settlements or religious sites. Bishop's Castle is a good example of this development: its settlement pattern, laid down around 1280, remains remarkably intact to the present day.

Today this sleepy little town has neither castle - except for a few ruins - nor bishops, although it once had both. The Saxon lord Egwin Shakehead sold the land to the Bishops of Hereford who promptly built themselves a castle, hence the name of the 'modern' town.

The pace of the town is as unhurried now as it has ever been, the very steep High Street originally lead from the castle in the upper town to the church at the bottom end. It has a variety of small family-run shops and dwellings, with  many interesting facades, ranging in age and period from a medieval half-timbered cottage with dormer windows, through Elizabethan dwellings, also black and white, to handsome Georgian houses in mellow brick as well as solid Victorian buildings.

The House On Crutches, now the Town Museum

Yarborough House, stuffed to the rafters with second hand books, old vinyl records and CDs.

It also has a coffee shop where you can study your purchases and possibly decide to buy a few more of each. Jock, the owner is an excellent wood turner, I have one of his huge plates crafted from elm wood.

The people of Bishop's Castle have a whacky sense of humour. Many houses have 'interestingly' painted facades, like the spotty one next door to the fish and chip shop.

Another of the fashionable attractions of Bishop's Castle is a shrine for 'real ale' enthusiasts, the Three Tuns Inn and Brewery at the very top end of the town on Salop Street, a pub with an unpretentious frontage but with its own brewery next door.

The Three Tuns Brewery produces excellent ales, the 'Cleric's Cure' among them which is served in the pub, together with a few hearty dishes from the menu.

The Three Tuns' brewing licence was first issued in 1642. Part of the present brewery is of 17th Century origin, which would make it the oldest working brewery in Britain.









This is just one small town nestling in the South Shropshire Hills.
I'm enjoying this series, it gives me an opportunity to appreciate the peaceful rural world I live in. It is so easy to become blind to the beauties surrounding us on our home ground, my thanks to the people at
That's My World who gave me the idea to look again more closely.

Some Advice on Sensible Drinking

MAGPIE TALES No. 61

Drink to forget is wrong, the more you drink, the more you will remember.

It's best to drink with meals, before, and after.  Delectable food with wine, each enhance the other.

Drink to remember,  drink at leisure, let your soul float on the wings of wine, and conversation explore the meaning of the universe.

Let there be two of you, drink to each other and let the wine take you to lovers' shore.

I like it best to drink my wine in happy company, when friends meet in convivial mood around a table, where we can sit into the night,  discuss and solve the questions no one else can answer.

But do not  drink alone and do not drink to wash away your sadness;  stop before the swarm of bees in your head drowns out the sound of silence and always put down your glass when you are angry or ashamed.


In Vino Veritas,
that is, to speak truth in these days, one has to be drunk first.