Meals By Torchlight

I’d liked to have got a cycle in today but the forecast wasn’t pleasant and for once it turns out to be correct. It would have been quite exciting on the bike I guess, in a wet and windy sort of way.

L is at home with the boys today and fills her morning by upsetting Daughter by sending her fifteen emails all containing links to jobs. Daughter prefers to do her own job hunting.

Although it just goes to show that there are plenty of jobs out there now that other students are finishing their courses and heading off to other pastures. So snap them up if you’re in Sheffield and looking for part time work because I’m sure they won’t be available for long. In fact they’ve probably gone already.

Daughter is actually coming home today and we’re all meeting L’s folks in Derby for a meal. I book her on the 12:05 train but at 2:30 she’s about to get in the shower... students.

So it ends up with L meeting her straight off the train and hot footing it over to Derby with her luggage, which they have to do on the slow bus because we’re poor and we’re not paying the Red Arrow's inflated prices just because they won’t honour the all day tickets at rush hour. Actually they originally get the wrong slow bus, but in the right direction, and do a seamless change at Beeston Bus Station.

Meanwhile there’s me twiddling my thumbs waiting for them in Derby. I opt to kill a bit of time by staying later at work and then amble round town a bit rather than go straight to the pub. I end up there eventually and have a pint of Liverpool Stout in the Silk Mill, which has a touch of River Mersey about it.

Just before they arrive, I move up to the Royal Standard where their Stout is much more my style, liquid tarmac.

We then get another bus over to the Mallard Beefeater, which wouldn’t have been our choice for a meal out but the menu doesn’t actually look too bad. That is when we were able to see it. By the time we ask to order a second drink, it is done by torchlight and when I visit the Gents, it is by kind courtesy of the chap at the urinal next to me and the glow from his mobile phone. Cosy.

You see the power failed on them and after several frantic calls to whomever, they eventually admitted defeat. It’s Friday night of course, so the whole department of whomever would have been down the pub in ‘not our problem Guv’ mode anyway.

So we leave after getting all our drinks complimentary and L’s brother chauffeurs us all up to another pub, the Argosy. Which is a real step down in class from somewhere that wasn't even half way up the staircase in the first place.

The menu is a struggle, as there was really nothing on it that I thought was safe to risk, except perhaps the lasagne so I had that. You can't go far wrong with lasagne. Can you?

It arrived looking like they’d had a real battle to get it out of the plastic microwavable tray and the lasagne had lost, badly. It’s not often you go in a ‘restaurant’ and feel sorry for the food.

Anyhow, it was a pleasant enough evening of socialisation, if you forget about the food, and we did also get a lift back to the bus station, which made the journey home one bus easier. 

(Friday 24^th May)