Numbers game

Following reference 1, back in early July, I finally got around to having a go at the new numbers game last week, in the course of a trip around Jubilee Way. It started off auspiciously enough with 'A1 GRX' or something of that sort and by the end of the trip I had got to 12 going on 13. My impression was that numbers in the ranges 1-20 and 60-69 were common enough, while other numbers were much rarer, at least on UK plates. I wondered whether the rule was that anything that could be a number like the letters 'I' or 'O' was a number? No doubt Wikipedia could tell me all about these matters, but I have not yet had a chance to take a look.

Passed two washers at junctions, both of them seen before. One day I will pass one of them when it is convenient to pick it up.

Followed up these exertions with our weekly trip to the Blenheim, where just one gazebo had survived, with half of it available. The other half being taken by a small party of young men (with a van, naturally) relaxing after a hard day's work. Some of them may have been smoking and they were certainly talking quite loudly, quite robustly. But just a bit of banter, nothing aggressive about them. A spot of nostalgia for me. Almost the Blenheim of old.

On the meal front, the portion controller had been at work and the supplies of fruit and vegetables in the Pimm's was a bit slack. As were the portions of chips - although quite enough for BH. With BH's fish very nattily perched on a couple of her chips.

My burger was underdone. Not a problem in that meat is generally clean enough these days, but I still prefer my burgers to be firm rather than soft. One of the young men explained that he really disliked underdone burgers as they made the buns soggy. While the lady who was serving us, possibly the manageress, explained that she liked her burgers cremated. She certainly knew her trade, how to talk the customers back into a good frame of mind.

It looked as if the portion controller had been at work on my brownie too, before handing over to the apprentice to squirt the chocolate sauce. But I carp, it tasted fine and contained quite enough calories to be going on with.

Jameson's and Teacher's still missing, so I settled for Bell's to keep me going while BH drank her tea.

During the proceedings, an older customer joined our side of the beer garden. Once he had been served, he proceeded to complain at some length to someone or other over his mobile phone about something going wrong with his bus pass. Which made me think that I would not do well as a call centre operator; I would not have the patience, the (always) friendly and helpful manner needed.

No delivery lorries for Costcutter on this occasion. No marrows either.

The barmaid thought it would be OK if we picked one of the ripe runner beans from one of the planters. Now preserved against our own attempt at potted runner beans next year. Will we remember to water them enough?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-new-to-me-game-for-long-car-journeys.html.