Oh dear!

Carol, our gardener arrived this morning. She was in tears. Her daughter have told Carol & her husband that she & her daughter, their grand-daughter, are moving south next month. She’s devastateed & worried how her daughter, who is bi-polar, is going to manage without their support. She is daily round their house & Carol often ends up looking after the grandchild.  Oh dear!

Yesterday we did get out to Scorton. The Barn turned out to be not what we expected. I can’t see us bothering to go again. It was a pleasing gift shop, with a plant area & a pleasing café. It was lovely to sit out in the sun, next to an artificially grass-edged pool having a drink. Afterwards we visited the village church – small & very Victorian.

On the way home we stopped for a meal at QSF (Quite Simply French) a French restaurant on St George’s Quay, in Lancaster, alongside the river Lune.

The food was ample & on the whole good. However, we were disappointed in that so much of the food had been anglisized, losing its Frenchness. The baguette with it, though, was some of the best French bread we’ve ever had in this country.

I enjoyed my smoked prawn appetiser, while the Fox had his mushroom soup with brie in it. I then had the Coq au Vin. The chicken was very tender but there was very little flavour of red wine & what peas were doing in it was beyond me. The Fox meanwhile had Pork Confit with cassoulet, to find the pork was dried out, the crackling so tough he couldn’t eat it.

We looked at the dessert menu. As I commented to the French waitress, I would have been tempted by Tarte Tatin, Tarte au Citron or Tarte aux Fraises, but Chocolate Brownies, no. She tended to agree. However, for commercial reasons they had to make the compromises to make the sales. Oh dear!

Would we go again? I’m not sure. I am sure that waitress would have welcomed us with open arms as we were clearly anglophiles. We’d even ordered our food with a French accent, a sure give away. I think she appreciated having people in who really appreciated what good French food could be.

Whatever else it made a pleasant change. It was good to spend time together doing something different, having a bit of an English holiday for the day.