Friday 3.

 

Leaving the church for the moment (I'll come back to it- promise- probably tomorrow) this - the sea- is the real reason most holiday makers come to Southwold.
Now I'm going to break with my usual habit and tell you about the one part of our day that we didn't enjoy much - our lunch. We'd agreed that as it was our day out we were going to have lunch at the Crown Hotel, which used to be the leading hotel in Southwold, and probably still is. It certainly considers itself so. It's a nice looking, generously built place, and we were welcomed by the head waiter, who assured us, on our asking if there was a table free? (we were a little late for lunch) that there were plenty of tables free (this, in a crowded seaside town, on a lovely day, should, I suppose, have warned us.) The service was excellent. I ordered a smoked haddock 'kedgeree risotto' (that name should have sounded alarms, too. Either it was kedgeree, or risotto, not both), Ann ordered a dressed Norfolk crab. When they eventually arrived, they were both bland and tasteless. The risotto was watery, more rice than anything, the smoked haddock was pale, and had obviously been frozen for a long time. Ann's crab,too, was tasteless and had, I think, been longer in a freezer than it had been in the sea. The problem was that there wasn't really anything wrong enough to recall the waiter, and pound the table about. So we ate it (it was quite inoffensive), paid up, and left. And shan't, of course, go back again. Pity. It dampened an otherwise lovely day out.
Must knock off now. More tomorrow, D.V. Good night all.