Indigone

11:25am Tuesday 5th August 2008

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Perhaps because there is nothing much to write home about, the column keeps close to base

THE Reverend Tom Thubron has been a good friend for 40 years, the relationship almost always put to the test on those rare occasions that he gets his name in the paper. As befits a Guardian reader and Seaham Harbour lad, Tom’s a sensitive soul.

Whether the entente cordiale will more greatly be strained by the latest popular print excursion or by an exceedingly ordinary lunch for which we paid £63 remains yet to be discovered, but the phrase about long spoon and devil comes to mind.

Tom was a merchant seaman, trained to become a priest, served a curacy at St John’s in Shildon – happy days – and then spent 11 years as a missionary in Bangladesh (a clue there) before returning to England.

He was vicar of Wheatley Hill, a former pit village in east Durham, moved on to St Giles’ church in the city and upon retirement bought the redundant and fairly decrepit Wheatley Hill vicarage, the one he had to come back for.

Now pushing 75, he keeps three motor bikes in top gear, is studying for a fine arts degree at Sunderland University and still energetically leads services.

The other day he even preached at something called the Audacious Faith church, a congregation predominantly serving the African community over a wide area and which has taken over the former Methodist chapel in Wheatley Hill.

Tom gave the fundamental Africans 45 minutes worth of liberal theology before departing for a motor bike rally. Audacious, or what?

It was in connection with the degree, however – “all a bit arty-farty,”

said Tom, though that’s perhaps only to be expected – that he forsook two wheels last Thursday in order to catch the 213 bus to Darlington.

(That it was such a boneshaker proved more of a surprise.) He’s completed a lovely little book, part of the course and largely a photographic essay, to mark the centenary of the old vicarage, built in 1908 for £350.

I’ve written a characteristically discursive foreword – in an unfair world, journalists are discursive and clergymen long-winded – recalling the ugly vegetable show in Wheatley Hill Old Scouts’ Hut, being barred from the dog track by the late Norman Fannon – almost everyone was barred from Wheatley Hill dogs at one time or another – and extolling Tom and his wife, Diane.

“Few parsonage houses,” it says, “can have been more lovingly transformed, more cared for or more happy.”

The university thought the project worth no more than what academics (and junior trainspotters) call a 2:2.

Dammit, the foreword alone is worth better than that.

We lunched at Café Indigo, newish in Bondgate, Darlington, but with outlets already familiar in urban Teesside and as far into the sticks as Stanghow – which, memory suggests, is stranded somewhere beyond Saltburn.

The Darlington premises have had several recent restaurant incarnations, most of them short-lived and none seemingly successful.

The now-inevitable menu rubric talks of the best cooking not needing to rely on hot spicing “but rather on the use of subtle, often fragrant, herbs and spices.” Many of the dishes are described as “mild”. A synonym might be unexciting, a North- East synonym moderate.

Probably it didn’t help that service was inexperienced, that orders seemed to be lost in the translation, that three main courses arrived when only two were ordered or that the place was all but empty.

The waiter was Bangladeshi, delighted when Tom essayed a little of his mother tongue. “I’m not just a pretty face,” said Tom.

The music was both unusual and unnecessary. At one point we thought the machine was going to break into Jingle Bells.

Tom started with palak pakora, a “lightly spiced spinach and onion savoury”. I had kakra, shredded crab meat, which will never replace a good crab butty (or even a half-decent one).

After that, things blur into mediocrity.

Tom had the chicken massala, reckoned that he’d tasted nothing like it in Bangladesh – hardly surprisingly, it was invented for the British market. I had nawabi, also chicken, also mild, also unmemorable.

Goodness knows what the third dish was. The spinach and potato and ladies’ fingers side dishes were stewed, strained and insipid, the naan barely lukewarm, the hot towels colder than that and possibly from the same oven. The bill included four bottles of beer, but remained nowhere near the sort of lunch for which you’d want to pay £63 – less Indigo, more duck egg blue.

Asked how things had been, Tom – who still had the return 213 to endure – tried a few more words in Bangladeshi. In any language, it was nowt ower.

COFFEE shops open all the time in Darlington, a town high on caffeine. Houndgate Café Gallery, recommended by Maureen Stephenson, is among the latest to percolate through. It proved very pleasant.

The ground floor café, air-conditioned and roomy, has a popular outside area, too. The Rolling Stones played on the music machine, a Bob Dylan exhibition – Dylan, it may be remembered, was only LIKE a Rolling Stone – hung on the walls. Several of the day’s newspapers were in a rack.

The Guardian was virginal, the Echo well thumbed. The sales people must have mixed feelings about these things. We were recognised at once, a bit hard not to be in Darlington – either that or there’s a similarly handsome devil called Mike.

The menu runs from breakfast (full English, vegetarian, pancakes) through to early evening specials like beer-battered pollock, goats’ cheese tart and nachos grande.

I had an abundant smoked salmon and prawn sandwich – fine but for the predictably tasteless prawns – and for an extra £1.95 a bowl of good chips, “hand cut,” it said.

Ice cream included cinnamon and orange, white chocolate and something forgotten. Good, genial service.

With a waisted bottle of Coke (£2.10, must have been the ice), the bill reached £13.95. The upstairs gallery is an awful lot more expensive than that.

Up and down, dear old Mick and friends were still rolling along. Satisfaction?

Oh aye.

SINCE Bishop Auckland isn’t exactly stowed out with good pubs, it should be recorded that we spent a couple of very agreeable hours in The Pollards Inn in Etherley Lane – five hand pumps, several seasonal newcomers, all withstanding the heat.

The pub’s named after Sir Richard Pollard who, so legend has it, slew the giant boar which terrorised the area around Bishop in much the same way that the Lambton Worm caused sleepless nights around Chester-le-Street.

Though we didn’t eat, the food’s recommended both on websites and by regulars of our acquaintance. The pub’s well kept, the staff friendly, the atmosphere convivial. Another visit shortly.

...and finally, the bairns – topical as ever – wondered if we heard that you can now watch origami on television from the Beijing Olympics. It’s only available, however, on pay-per-view.