Back to the Blen

Last week we renewed our acquaintance with lunch at the Blenheim, having taken lunch outside there a fair bit during the various lockdowns. We even went so far as to book, using some kind of free standing booking operation which, I am pleased to say, they did service and I did get a confirmation email. But not as freestanding as I had thought, as I find this morning that they are part of the Heineken family. Which is not so terrible given that I used to have a relationship with the famous Newcastle Brown and that as a child I sampled the wares at a big Heineken brewery in Amsterdam. A place where, as I recall, lager was served warm and fairly flat, in the way of real beer.

We started by reflecting on the way that the valence of the word 'preservative' has changed in recent years. Once upon a time, preservatives were what you use to preserve stuff or things worth preserving, so you might have a life preserver hung on a post by a deep bit of river. Whereas now it has become a word of food abuse and foods like jam and kabanosi have to be kept in the refrigerator for lack of them. To think that, again as a child, a large part of the point of both foods was that they kept without needing that sort of special (energy consuming) attention.

We then admired various interesting gardens and plants along the way, particular on the stretch of Manor Green Road leading up to our Costcutter.

On into the Blenheim, where we took up residence under a double skinned roof, that is to say a large umbrella under an even larger tent. Service friendly enough, but a little slow and not terribly efficient. Work in progress. They managed, for example, to serve what we had intended as a spot of garlic bread for a starter, as a full size cheese on toast with our main. That is to say a layer of cheese on top of a ten inch pizza base: rather good as cheese on toast, but rather more of it than we were expecting.

That apart, I had, for a change, steak and chips. Chunky oven chips, realising too late that thin chips might have been freshly fried, in the way of McDonald's. Two rather curiously flavoured tomato halves, a large mushroom and a large dollop of some kind of buttery goo. The mushroom served as a repository for this last. Adequate.

BH took a Greek salad which involved a lot of small black olives and a very curious cut of salmon, again rather a lot of it in the context. A cut which was delivered in a lump but which appeared to have been sliced at some point in its life. I associated to the rather thin sliced ham sold by Sainsbury's and used concertina fashion by many fast food outlets to fill baguettes.

Wine from the Montford Estate: cheap and serviceable. I think we must have had it before, as I remember the bit at reference 2 about their having been potato farmers before they took to the bottle. Initially baffled by the vagaries of blog search, but run down to All Fools Day a little earlier in the year. See reference 3.

Altogether a pleasant, neighbourhood ambience, which you would not get from a more regular chain outlet. Slightly scruffy, slightly Heath Robinson - which was all to the good. With a reasonable weekday, lunchtime trade, if not that great for a warm and (fairly) sunny bank holiday. And the array of outdoor pot plants was in good form. Plus, something for the animal rights people to get in a lather about in the back bar. Plus a glimpse of the day's platinum fly past in the form of two large aeroplanes, very low in the west. At a guess, something old and logistics flavoured going in to land.

Someone thought the airfield in question was at Fairoak Lane, the rich persons' ghetto which runs west from Malden Rushett, but investigation this morning turns up Fairoaks Aiport at Chobham of reference 4. During the war an aircraft repair and pilot training establishment.

And so home. Picking up this fashion statement about garden walls on the way. Someone must be paying attention to one of those reality gardening programs on telly. We shall see if it catches on. Will it be kept pressure washed, or will the owners allow the growth of moss, lichen and so forth? What you eventually get if you let nature take its course. And, I dare say, if you wait long enough, bigger stuff.

References

Reference 1: https://www.useyourlocal.com/. 'Useyourlocal Limited was formed in March 2008 in partnership with Scottish & Newcastle Plc, then the UK’s biggest brewer. In April 2008, we became part of Heineken, Europe’s largest brewer, following their acquisition of S&N'.

Reference 2: https://montfordestate.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/all-fools-day.html.

Reference 4: https://fairoaksairport.uk/.