A great time was had by all!

Started early (for us) with our guests having breakfast at 7.30 in the morning…which means up a 6am!

Finish off and get the bar ready and inflate the all important Bouncy Castle and get the barbie ready.  Easy Peazy….By lunch time people started to arrive.

The kids loved it.  Thankfully the rain stayed away.  At the end of the day we speculated that we could just collapse the castle with the kids inside.  Imagine; Bouncy castle complete with kids!

Of course it would not have been the same without the facepainting….camouflage your kid!

The Barbie got realy busy…..the little girl below was wondering why Dad had forgotton the ketchup….

Then in the evening with the kids in bed, we had the selection of the Jubilee queen and her attendants for Monday, then the Band started up!  “Sould” are a great local group with a ‘big band’ sound – they were liked by all.

All in all a great day – despite our wonderful British weather….

A week to go before one of the greatest events in our history and a great opportunity to chill out during a 4 day holiday!

We are starting on Saturday 2nd June by opening at 10am for brunch/barbie and having a bouncy castle to keep the kids happy while the parents have a couple of drinks and relax….

In the evening we have a great local band – “Sould”.  An eight or nine piece band with a great Sax sound playing hits fron now and then…

…and the Clyro committee will also be selecting the Jubilee carnival queen for Monday, when the community celebrations and the street party start in ernest!

Should be a good one!  See you there!

Dave

We’ve become increasingly amazed at the prices that are being quoted for lunches & dinners at (mostly ) pubs on boards outside as you drive past.

Probably the most amazing was at one of these big ‘chain’ pubs we went into a few weeks ago, that was offering a full Sunday Lunch for £4 and a bacon sandwich for breakfast for £1 – and that included a cup of tea!!

Now, we could not put a roast dinner on the table for £4, so we spoke to a local butcher who supplies us with some of our meat, to ask how you can possibly get meat that cheap. The meat is the major cost of a Sunday lunch (indeed, many other dishes we serve as well).

The beef we get is superb and together with gravy made from scratch, the remaining cost is a Yorkshire pudding and some fresh vegetables & roast potatoes which are comparatively cheap.

Now this butcher is fastidious with the accountability of meat & offal through the supply chain. For most of the meat we get he can tell us the farm & abattoir that it came from.

Anyway, it seems that some selected traders will sell off meat if it is too close to end of life, which in turn gets snapped up by some traders & shops (you’ve seen the offers I expect – batching up the Sunday joint with a couple of pounds of sausages and flogging it for a pittance) and some of the less picky ‘chains’ & independent pubs who buy, cook and flog it very quickly in high footfall areas.

So, they get cheap, almost-end-of-life meat, from dubious sources, and move it as quickly as possible.

I think I’ll give those cheap meal offers a miss – as you should – pay a few quid more, and go somewhere that takes pride in serving fresh local produce – as we do!