A
Day Out
By
Dominic Horton
It's
good to wake up naturally and to not have to set an alarm, pure
bliss. Wait a minute, it is 0934 hours, virtually half the day has
gone already, what a waste. And I am supposed to be going out today,
doing something wholesome and worthwhile and not doing what I did
yesterday, idling the day away drinking in the Flagon & Gorses
with my crony The Pirate, the vivacious landlord of the pub. But it
was Bank Holiday and you are allowed to, or even supposed to, go to
the pub on a holiday Monday, even if in reality few people seem to do
so these days. Right, settle down, don't panic Mr Mainwaring, just
get the things done you need to do: breakfast, get ready, pick
somewhere to go and egress the house: it's quite simple.
 |
The
portrait of the poor soul who resembles
the
Pirate from Harvington Hall.
|
I'd
better take one of those slices of bread out of the toaster and just
have the one, after all I am supposed to be shedding a few pounds and
I won't get to exercise today if I am going out. One round of toast
seems a bit of a sorry sight but thinking about it I do have a
yoghurt in the fridge that needs to be eaten and it qualifies as a
breakfast item, at least on the continent anyway. The yoghurt is six
days out of date, should I eat it? It might give me Salmonella and I
am supposed to have another internet date tomorrow night. What a
pathetic individual she will think I am if I have to cry off as a
result of eating an out of date economy Sainsbury's low fat yoghurt.
Oh to hell with it, let's take a gamble and live life dangerously; if
I tell my date about it she might actually find my reckless risk
taking a turn on.
A
bath or a shower? A tough decision. A bath seems a bit decadent on a
Tuesday given the detrimental effect it will have on my fuel bill but
if I have a shower I will most likely itch afterwards, like I
normally do. I feel irritable enough already today without being all
itchy, so a bath it is. And now for the luxury of drying myself down
with my new luxurious black bath towel I have invested in. This
won't do, I am covered all over in little black bits of fluff off the
towel, like an errant slave who has been tarred and feathered in the
American Deep South in the 18th Century. I am going to
have to go in the naffing shower now anyway. I should have paid the
extra to get a towel from M&S instead of going for the budget
option at Wilkos. At this rate it will be lunchtime before I get out
of the house.
 |
| From Harvington Hall: the baby torture contraption |
It's
lunchtime. I wish I wasn't such a ditherer, that last two hours
spent trawling the net trying to decide where to go was such a waste
of time. But at least my mind is made up now, Harvington Hall, a
16th Century Manor house with priest holes, not too far
away and there shouldn't be too many bothersome kids there either.
I wonder if the youth of today get excited about priest holes? I
doubt it very much. Prior to the restoration of the Catholic church,
when the King's magistrates tried to find the priests in their holes
it was like a grisly ecclesiastical game of ackee 1-2-3 but just with
higher stakes.
Now,
what shoes to wear. I had better not wear my red ones as there might
be school children around as it is the summer holidays and I could be
misconstrued as a paedophile. I'll plump for the brown brogues, they
might make me look like Mr Bean but at least I have no fear of being
harried by Operation Yew Tree. I should cut some sandwiches to
save me from having to spend a fiver odd on one in the overpriced
café but I should really skip lunch altogether in the spirit of
dieting, especially as I am going to the football later and will
mostly likely have a highly calorific burger. I'll take my own
bottle of tap water though, I'm not getting stung for £1.50 buying a
bottle of spring water at Harvington Hall. Watch the pennies and all
that.
There's
far less than a quarter of a tank of petrol in the car, should I stop
and refuel or will that be enough? I'm later starting out than I
wanted to be, so I think that I will risk it and I can use it during
my date tomorrow as another example that I live life on the edge.
Look, there's a Tesco Express. I'm famished, sod it I'm going to
stop and get a sandwich, I'll just go for one of those tasteless low
calorie ones, it is not even like eating really. That should do the
job, Tesco Light Choice prawn mayonnaise. But wait, there is a
discounted BLT there which is considerably cheaper. I can have a
sandwich I want for well under a pound or one I don't particularly
desire for nearly a quid more. It's got to be the BLT, sorry
waistline, I'll just have to forego cheese on my burger later. Even
when I resolutely start out with good intentions things often go pear
shaped, which is exactly the way my body shape will end up if I don't
change my dietary habits.
£8.50
seems a bit steep for entry to the Hall but I am here now so I might
as well bite the bullet and pay it and it does include a free guided
tour. But I can't be bothered with the tour as I have ostensibly
come here to get away from other people. The well signposted set
route round the house appeals to my logical and organised Virgo
nature, not that I believe in astrology, I think people of my
generation were put off it for life in the 1980's by Russell Grant
and his ridiculously garish sweaters.
 |
From
Harvington Hall: hog slaughter
(there must have been a more humane
and efficient method than tw*tting the
poor hog on the head with a
large mallet),
by request of Toby In-Tents.
|
I'm
in the third room of the house, taking my time looking at the
artefacts and reading all of the interesting information, and other
than the cashier on the way in I have not come across another human
being, this is brilliant, almost like a private viewing of the house.
What's that horrid noise? Oh no, it's the bellowing voice of the
tour guide and the sound of the collected feet of his brethren on the
wooden floor and they are moving menacingly towards me. I have been
so engrossed that the tour has almost caught me up. Now I am going
to have to rush to get away from them and move on before they get to
this room, which I have barely surveyed and it is the brewery as
well. This is like some bizarre fox hunt and I am the vulnerable
fox, ready to to be ripped apart and devoured. Well, we are in the
countryside I suppose and that is exactly the kind of thing they like
to get up to. Take a deep breath, have a sip of water and calm
down, they are only people. Oh, sh*t I have ran out of water, I'm
going to have to fork out for a bottle in the café now anyway as one
must remember that dehydration is a soldier’s worst enemy and life
of course is one long battle. If you enter a café at an historic
house as a minimum you have to buy a cup of tea and a buttered scone
otherwise the cashier takes a dim view and condemns you as a
cheapskate with a look of disapproving derision.
I
am valiantly trying to stay away from the pub but reminders of the
Pirate seem to be everywhere. In a room called Mr. Dodd's Library I
hazarded across a book entitled The Pirate by
Sir Walter Scott and now in the very next room a portrait of a person
who looks uncannily like the Pirate is inescapably starring at me; I
can't evade The Pirate even when I try to. In a room called the
Nursery (named as such for obvious reasons) there is a Tudor
contraption that was used to force babies to walk but it looks more
like an implement of torture. The child was put into a seat with
their legs dangling and they could walk along a confined walkway of
about three feet, supported as they go. It wouldn't surprise me if
the Pirate's forebears worked in the Nursery in the house in Tudor
times and that they devised the invention so that they could wedge
babies into it, before sneaking off to the brewery to get sozzled on
mead.
 |
| Harvington Hall: The Brewery |
Café
time. The waitress has told me to sit down and she will come over
and serve me. There's only one free table as the room is packed with
tea-supping coffin dodgers and they are all gawking at me. I feel
more like a hunted fox than ever. I need to get out of here, I'm
going to take my tray of refreshments outside to the deserted garden.
The good news is that the water was only £1.20 but what I saved on
the water I lost on the scone. It has suddenly become infeasibly
windy but there is no turning back now. The scone is enormous and I
know if I eat it I shouldn't have a burger later. But I can't not
eat it, given how much I paid for the damn thing. And the final
indignity is that my cup is half full and the coffee is only
lukewarm. But I can't raise the enthusiasm to take the drink back as
frankly I just want to get out of here as quickly as I can and anyway
complaining simply isn't the British way, we'll leave that to the
brash Americans.
There
is something extremely comforting about the voice of Dr Mark Porter
on BBC Radio 4's Inside Health on
the car stereo as I drive homeward. If I uncharacteristically push
the car to the speed limit I might just have time before going to the
football to hear the even more comforting sound of a pint being
poured in the Flagon & Gorses.
©
Dominic Horton, August 2014.
*
EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.
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