I did not have time to make a close examination, but I think that we had a clear glass panel in front. Then the black twigs which do not burn behind that. Then the flickering flames behind them. There was also a modest amount of smoke or steam to be seen. I assumed that it was some kind of gas fire, but I suppose there are other possibilities. Is it all just a cunning computer monitor?
The occasion was our taking advantage of some half price coupons in the local free paper, coupons which meant that we had two cooked breakfasts for £6.94. Four cooked items for me, seven cooked items for BH, toast, one of those short baguettes you bake up from frozen (with which to make up my sausage sandwiches) and tea. Sausages good, bacon average.
Friendly staff, spacious cafeteria. A large shed which manages to disguise the fact by the use of hefty, laminated wooden beams holding up the roof. Various semi-rustic ornaments hanging on the walls. They are clearly trying to muscle in between the Assembly Rooms (Wetherspoon's) on the right and Polesden Lacey (National Trust) on the left. With a car park to trump the former and distance to travel to trump the latter. With, I imagine, a couple of hundred seats altogether, including the dog friendly area. With the coupons, a very reasonable proposition indeed. Although it should be said that I would not want such a breakfast very often these days.
The clientèle included a squad of police men and women who told us it was the best café in the area as far as they were concerned. Which was just as well as it seems that the Metropolitan Police have closed all the canteens they used to run in police stations. It also seems that police persons working from patrol cars have no access to desk space or any other kind of space at police stations and are expected to do the necessary from their cars, using their handheld computers in place of real ones. They were cheerful enough about it, but it sounded to me as if the cuts have gone a bit too far for comfort, even if they were gilding the lily a bit, as it were. We also wondered about getting physical with the bad guys, with all the stuff they have strapped around their waists these days.
Walked back along the western section of the newish cycle track between Malden Rushett and Epsom, paid for by some deal between the council and some developer and pushed for by some gang of well-meaning ecos. Probably non-smoking, teetotal vegetarians as well. No cyclists on the track, but there was a knot of them coming the other way, somewhere between 10 and 20 of them, very firmly on the road and causing some inconvenience to other road users - not that I blame them particularly as I am not very keen on cycle tracks either and much prefer to use the road, as I have done for the last sixty years. To which rant I add two qualifications. First, I have finally been pushed onto the cycle tracks springing up in central London, like that running up the western side of Farringdon Road. Second, cyclists can be a right pain when one is driving on country roads on a Sunday.
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