Social whirl

Today we had a visit from the Moomins, Simon and Ann, who moor at Bill Fen. We had mulled wine (a special version with port and ginger wine to eke out the red left over from Christmas dinner) and buns from Jaspers bakery in Penkridge, followed by lunch at the Bridge. This pub is under new management again, and appears to be a Marstons house now, which I don't recall it being before. Sadly the Old Empire wasn't on, but that might have been a bit much at lunch, so I had Cocker Hoop. Despite being a Marstons pub, it isn't one of their chain eateries, and there was a new chef just in post. The prices were very reasonable with many main courses under £6 and the most expensive, the rump steak, at £8.90. We all agreed that it was pretty good too.

Moomin also very kindly listened to our noisy Victron and diagnosed a likely cause, told us how to get the dongle to work (by getting a later version of Ubuntu), and even downloaded for us, via his phone, the plug in we needed to play DVDs, so we then spent a happy hour this evening watching a couple of episodes of Porridge. This really does seem to have stood the test of time; I couldn't believe it was made in 1974. I appreciated things about it that I hadn't noticed first time around, like the wonderful architecture (I must look up where it was filmed), and the fact that Godber (I always had a soft spot for him; I wonder how many people can remember what they were doing when they heard that Richard Beckinsale had died? I was in a science lesson) was from the Black Country.