The Raleigh Country

There is a book, The Raleigh Country, by R F Delderfield, the famous East Devon author and long-time columnist in Devon Life magazine back in the 1960s and 1970s. In this book, he claims to have coined the phrase 'Raleigh Country'. Anyway, it is a great description for an area of East Devon centred around the birthplace of the famous explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. Like 'Hardy Country', 'Bronte Country', Wessex, etc., etc., the 'Raleigh Country' has a great historical resonance and the area itself has a distinguished character all its own.

In the middle is Woodbury Common, a 100 square mile area of heathland, something that most tourists don't even consider, they past East Devon on the A3052 or the motorways. Yet is is full of beautiful, unspoilt villages like Yettington, East Budleigh, Otterton, and so forth. (well, Otterton is the other side of the River Otter, of course, and nothing to do with Woodbury Common).

There are numerous, sublime old country pubs, like the Maltsters Arms and White Hart Inn in Woodbury, the Digger's Rest in Woodbury Salterton, Rolle Arms and the Sir Walter Raleigh in East Budleigh, not to mention the several pubs to be found in Budleigh Salterton.

There are actually about 7 commons to be found in the area known as Woodbury Common: Colaton Raleigh Common to the east, Aylesbeare to the north, Dalditch Common, among others. The whole are was formerly part of the Rolle Estates (based at Bicton Park) but is now managed by Clinton Devon Estates, some sort of charitable offshoot of the original Rolle Estate.

Otterton and Ladram Bay

If you continue, from Woodbury, over the common to the crossroads, Four Firs, you get a splendid view of the heathland with Woodbury Castle overlooking the entire landscape. Then, on to Yettington across the heath, past the entrance to Bicton Arena, all through some beautiful and varied East Devon countryside.

East Budleigh with its new Walter Raleigh statue and the pub named after him, then on to Otterton including crossing the old railway line and station, evidently owned by a train enthusiast. Otterton Mill for a coffee and then another mile to Ladram Bay via the enormous holiday camp.

Spar convenience store, Fore Street, Budleigh Salterton

There is no better place to end an 18 mile bike ride to Budleigh Salterton than with a 79p cup of Tetley tea, self-service, in this superb convenience store in the high street of Budleigh Salterton.

BOOK: Bikie, a love affair with the racing bicycle. Charlie Woods (Mainstream, 2001)

This is a brilliant, fascinating little paperback about a man's teenage cycling days and the sheer enjoyment and exhiliration to be had from racing bikes.

Charlie Woods was born in about 1938 and he recounts his upbringing in west London (around Acton or somewhere) and his days of cycling with his friends and, later, a cycling club. They went all over the place, up to the Chilterns on races - he calls them 'roars' - and down to Brighton.

Of course, they all used a proper "racing" bike; this means a mens racing cycle as opposed to the awful "mountain bikes" you see so much of these days. Mountain bikes are for... fucking mountains, not cycling on roads. If only all of these adults who buy mountain bikes realised how much easier their little journeys would be if they bought a proper fucking racing bike.

It's like asking someone about to embark on a journey up the M1 motorway to the north: what would you prefer? An Aston Martin or a tractor? Would you drive up the M1 in a tractor? A mountain bike is for cycling across fields, cross country on rough, unpaved tracks and open countryside. NOT for cycling around town.

I cycled down to Budleigh Salterton at the weekend, as usual, and on my Claude Butler San Remo racing bike it was effortless. Indeed, the person I went with was on a mountain bike and I constantly had to stop every five minutes to wait for them to catch up.

Anyway, Charlie Woods is a very skilled, accomplished writer. Bikie is very philosophical in its treatment of cycling; he sees it as a sort of zen past-time, one where the repetitive motion of turning pedals with one's feet and legs is entrancing, leading to a higher consciousness. And he is right. Absolutely. I experience it every time on my long (35 miles) trips to the coast and back.

Cheltenham Festival

Today the fantatic Cheltenham Festival starts. Four days of superb racing, featuring the finest jockeys and horses to be found in Europe. The crowds are enormous (probably 100,000 plus) and the atmosphere must be electric. I'll only be sampling the atmosphere in Ladbrokes or Corals in Exeter, of course, but so what. I'll have my little wager (preparing to lose about £20), but the entertainment is superb.

Today's big race:

SMURFIT KAPPA CHAMPION HURDLE CHALLENGE TROPHY (Grade 1) (Class 1) £360,000 added 2m 110yds.

This 2m 1/2 furlong race should be won by either Tony McCoy on Straw Bear, or Ruby Walsh on Brave Inca. I prefer Brave Inca.

Brave Inca it is.

Salterton Arms, Chapel Street, Budleigh Salterton

Friday, 9 March 2007.

This pub in Chapel Street, Budleigh Salterton, is a splendid example of what Punch Taverns can achieve when they go the whole hog and refurbish an entire pub from scratch. They did the same for the Queen Victoria pub in Tudor Street, Exeter, about two years ago.

Despite being a few yards up a little-used side street in Budleigh Salterton, the Salterton Arms should achieve great success in this small, genteel seaside town. The pub is still just a few yards from the famous Steamer Steps, found at the end of Rolle Road (a cul-de-sac), which lead down from the clifftop to the pebble beach and tea kiosk with the white plastic tables and chairs outside.

Outside, the Salterton Arms has the appearance of a small, semi-detached house, complete with bay windows and dressed in a sort of light olive paint. Step inside and the interior is splendid: stone flooring, fire places, comfortable wooden furniture and couple of large leather sofas. The bar is shiney and new and there is a fine selection of real ale - Pedigree, Wadsworth and, of course, Otter ale (this being the head of the estuary of the River Otter, the opposite end from Otter's brewery at Luppitt, the source of the famous river).

Today, I cycled all the way from Exeter to Budleigh Salterton and the main intention is fitness and enjoying the fine countryside along the way. So I have a cup of tea, delivered in bespoke 'Salterton Arms' white crockery, complete with a little jug of milk. Superb. And fairly reasonably priced at £1.50. Later, a cuppicino, £2.25 (rather expensive).

The Salterton Arms is a gem, and ideal for a summer visit.

Book: Maxed Out - hard times, easy credit. James Scurlock (2006)

Scurlock has written a fascinating account of the new religion of the 21st century - credit.

We live in a credit- obsessed society, full of voracious consumers, all created by the rampant advertising and soliciting of the banks and credit card companies.

In the old days, when my mum worked at Lloyds Bank and, before that, Midland Bank back in the 1960s, banks hated lending ordinary customers money. Loans were for companies and big businesses. People just didn't have personal loans and lived within their means.

To work in a bank, in the old days, you had to be good at basic arithmetic and perhaps have a vocation in banking, accounting, etc. Now, according to Scurlock, it is a positive disadvantage to have such qualities; banks want salespeople, not bankers. They want clerks who can smile like morons while they pester every customer into taking out a loan and taking on more debt. That's how the banks make their money. Banks make money through consumers taking on debt, not saving money.

I was in debt to the the tune of about £12,000 until about 4 years ago when I said to myself, fuck it, I've had enough, forget the whole thing. I simply stopped paying. Immoral, you say? Well, I was a saver with Britannia building society ten years ago until they sent me about 40 letters begging me to take out a loan. In the end I caved in, taking out a £5,000 personal loan (immediately £6,000 debt, even if I'd paid it back after one month). They talked me into it so they can fuck off. I actually kept up the monthly payments until I'd repaid about £2,500 so they should think themselves lucky.

Same with the credit cards, which both arrived through the post, totally unsolicited. As Scurlock says, where is the health warning with credit/debt??

On teletext, just yesterday, the UK banks are reported to have made £38 BILLION this last year. What a joke... hope the housing market collapses!!

Atlas Single Bed with Bewley Single Firm Mattress, From Argos

My latest delivery from Argos - just £134.99 plus £4.95 delivery - turned out fine but, of course, that's forgetting the awfulness of flat pack, self-assembly furniture.

It comes in one 7ft long narrow but heavy (22.5 kg) box with, of course, the 'firm' mattress separate. That amounts to about 30 separate pieces of metal and about 80 screws and nuts and bolts. By initial estimate, that means about 3 hours work, assuming you can work out how the hell to assemble it all. What a fucking nightmare.

Actually, the assembly was quite straightforward, taking less time than I thought, mainly due to the excellent 1 sheet, 4 page assembly document. It's very well written indeed, having several structure maps and very simple text stating what goes where.

The end result seems to look fine, but its assemblance is twidly, the headboard having about 7 pieces alone. One metal tubular bar, in particular, simply didn't fit into the right hole. That had to be abandoned but, luckily, didn't affect the overall structure (which was lucky, being part of the foot, lower headboard).

In the end, it is perfectly rigid as a single bed, with a built-in headboard. The bed can be handled like normal furniture without wobbling around. The mattress - the Bewley 'Firm' mattress - is only one up from the cheapest, but is springy and comfortable.

A fine product.

Book: The Memorial to the Missing on the Somme - Gavin Stamp (Profile, 2006)

This is a fascinating book about the famous Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval on the old Somme battlefield in northern France. Written by architect Gavin Stamp, it is illustrated with some fine photos of the memorial under construction back in the early 1930s and some of the influences that went into its design.

Lutyens, of course, designed the Cenotaph in London, back in 1919/20. I'm quite proud of myself in that, after a little attempt at my own analysis/deconstruction of the famous slab of white Portland stone in Whitehall - shown in a photograph in this book - I was able to make a pretty accurate account of what its design meant (before reading on further).

The Cenotaph pylon is actually a series of telescopic slabs of stone - Portland memorial stone, as it were - that are designed to be projected right up into the heavens, with, of course, the stone tomb/sarcophagus of the Unknown Warrior at its zenith, sent up to his rightful place with God. According to Stamp, the stone blocks are actually slightly curved, so that they would meet at about 901 ft. How's that for a bit of amateur semiotics?

Stamp covers the entire background to the Memorial to the Missing, with chapters covering the career and background of Lutyens; Memorials to the Missing around the world (of which there are very few, since mass slaughter didn't start until the 20th century); the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Thiepval and the Somme itself in the British psyche, as it were; and a number of other matters.

Lutyens was a central figure in the new Commonwealth War Graves Commission and it was at his insistence every cemetery should be almost entirely secular. This meant that the famous tombstones had no cross, crescent or any sort of religious symbolism in their shape, but were in fact just a plain slab of white Portland stone. Many stones bore the famous epitaph A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR, KNOWN UNTO GOD. Of Lutyens, that says it all, really: pure class.

The cemeteries are absolutely beautiful, flowering little gardens, manicured better than a concert pianist's fingernails. Little gardens of England amidst the terrible, haunting loneliness of the abandoned battlefields.

Gavin Stamp goes into some detail about the design of the Thiepval Memorial itself, which is a lot more complex than at first seems. Lutyens seemed to be a bit of a neo-Classicist and the design is simple local red bricks (of the kind found in the reconstructed nearby town of Albert, now a sort of Alamo for Britain) faced with white Portland stone for the many (about 72,000) names of the Missing (whose number include a certain J Murray of the 38th Welch Regiment, Cardiff Pals, who died on 7th July attacking Mametz Wood).

One theory is that the Thiepval Memorial is influenced, architecturally, by the nearby Basillica in nearby Albert, the symbolic church with the leaning virgin. They certainly look the same, yet Stamp says this is impossible since Lutyens's design was originally for St Quentin, about 50 miles away.

Anyway, the book is fantastic and well worth reading.

Bennetts Fish and Chip Shop, Weymouth

Thursday, 4 January 2007.

Simply the best fish and chips of all time, cooked to order, by the old harbour, Weymouth. Freshly fried cod, due to the off season, and chips with salt and vinegar.

All this after the Jurassic Coast X53 bus from Exeter to Weymouth. The return journey is driven by a psychopathic bus driver who acts like he' s on a race track, even above cliffs on the Abbotsbury road.

Book: Escape Artist - Life in the Saddle, Matt Seaton (4th Estate, 2002)

After watching the DVD, I set out for a day's extensive cycling, my first in several months. Down to Budleigh Salterton, from Exeter, via Clyst St Mary, Woodbury Salterton, Woodbury, Woodmanton, Lower and Higher Mallocks and on to Budleigh Salterton over Woodbury Common via Dalditch.

There is nothing quite like a long, exhausting ride on a racing bike, reaching speeds of up to 38 mph (as measured by the cycle computer). Perhaps a little lunch at the Cafe Budleigh, £6.50 for roast beef on a Sunday.

Then the old railway line cycle track to Exmouth via Littleham, through dense pine woodland and open countryside right down into the town centre. Train back to Exeter for just £2.90 single though windows that are thick with mud.

Book: Rinkagate - The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe (Bloomsbury, 1996). Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose

This is a sensational, brilliantly written account of the rise and fall of Jeremy Thorpe, the lying homosexual ex-leader of the Liberal Party. Freeman is the main author although Penrose was the who broke the story - Watergate-style - with his colleague, Roger Courtiour, both originally at the Sunday Times Insight team.

It reads like a John le Carre thriller which is particularly apt since, in le Carre's A Perfect Spy, the haunting father figure Ricky Pym was a Liberal Party candidate in the old-fashioned West Country back in the immediate post-war years. Le Carre must've taken inspiration from the Thorpe/Rinkagate affair as the similarities are too great and Perfect Spy was not written until the 1980s.

Jeremy Thorpe was a brilliant, inspirational leader for the moribund Liberal Party when he joined them in the early 1950s, straight from Oxford. Before that, he had been to school at Eton, hence the hidden, murky homosexual past.

He gained favour in the North Devon local party (centred on Barnstaple and Bideford - the two river towns of the Taw and the Torridge) and became their candidate in the elections of 1955 and 1959, the latter seeing him elected. He eventually replaced Jo Grimond upon the latter's retirement and was a star of the House of Commons, delivering sensational results to the Liberal Party, whose overall, national vote climbed from just 750,000 to over 6 million in the 1974 elections. However, Thorpe had a secret life.

One of the truly great characters of this story is Thorpe's parliamentary colleague, womaniser, conman and bankrupt, Peter Bessell. He was MP for Bodmin at the same time as Thorpe was in his pomp and sort of cheated Thorpe into confiding in him, or so Freeman says. He is an amazing person to hear about, a sort of Ricky Pym.

You can't entirely blame Thorpe: it was not legal until 1967 so he couldn't let anyone know.

Thorpe's feud with Norman Scott was to destroy him in the end, aided by a few years of blunders. I've heard stories about this bloke Scott hanging around Exeter, just 20 miles from where he lives in Throwleigh, near Okehampton.

Great book, fascinating read.

Cafe @ 36 Cowick Street

The thing that's noticeable about this little cafe in St Thomas - fitted into what used to be a narrow shop-front - is the art nouveau typeface and lettering of the nameplate above the front door and window. You don't expect that in St Thomas, one of the more drab districts of Exeter, on the western side of the River Exe.

It is like injecting a tiny little piece of Paris into St Thomas, not Paris Street in the city centre where you might expect. Light, sky blue nameplate with gold lettering, all in that characteristic style of the Paris Metro. You half expect some ornate, leafy entrance arch, too.

Cafe @ 36 Cowick Street has been in operation for about six months, I would guess. Today, flush with two thousand pounds of HA money, I decide to try out the place. It is expensive.

I enter and am greeted by a black and white, chequered and tiled floor. There are a few dark brown tables and chairs running down the length of the shop, about 20 ft long. And some interesting jazz music.

The menu is the usual cafe stuff: toasted, Panini sandwiches, various fillings (£3.25); BLT; various breakfast dishes, crispy bacon, etc; tea (£1); the usual twenty varieties of coffee you get these days. I go for my usual tea; cake is £2.20 for a slice of iced Victoria sponge. A bit pricey. Burts Crisps (made in Totnes, or Ashburton, or somewhere in south Devon).

They have a newspaper (the Independent), which is refreshing, certainly for reading about the great Sunday of football for Chelsea.

Book: Own Goal - How Corruption, Egotism and Greed is Destroying Football - Simon Freeman (1999)

This is a fascinating book, a sort of non-fiction Fever Pitch which contains one journalist's views on how football is bouyant in the year 2000 but may well land up bankrupt in another few years.

Freeman is an ex-journalist on several serious newspapers - including the Sunday Times Insight team in the 1980s - who has some interesting things to say. Basically, the greed of £30,000 A week players (£100,000 by 2005) will destroy the game. Clubs like Freeman's boyhood Brighton & Hove Albion will become extinct.

It all makes sense, until you look at the game in 2006 which has been salvaged by multi-billionaires like Abrmovich and the new takeovers at West Ham, Liverpool (both by private billionaires) and Man Utd (thankfully by a relatively poor American who has put the scum £500m into debt - may they sink quickly!).

Freeman is right, though. I'm getting fed up with watching over-rated players on £100,000 a week. That includes the whole lot, even including Chelsea players (my club): Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Drogba, Henry; they are all vastly over-rated. You hear all the type - "England the best team in the world" before the 2006 World Cup, then turn out to be total rubbish - and watch these prima donnas on tv, live every week and they are always rubbish.

An excellent book by an author who also wrote a book about Rinkagate, the 1976 scandal that saw the downfall of North Devon MP Jeremy Thorpe.

Well worth reading.

Sidwell Cycles

The Claud Butler San Remo racing bike - cost £320 - has been parked in the flat for bloody four months now, despite my five efforts to fix the puncture.

I've bought and ruined about five new inner tubes, all at about £4.49 from Halfords. Cheaper than they used to be but annoying when you keep buying one after another. Unfortunately, the bike has narrow, 700x25 tyres which are virtually impossible to fix using a puncture repair kit. The patch simply will not adhere to the tube.

Similarly, the narrowness of the tyre seems to make it very difficult to fit to the wheel, meaning it's impossible to do so without levering (with a spoon or fork) very hard thereby ruining the new inner tube.

So, now it's along to Sidwell Cycles (140 Sidwell Street, Exeter) to get them to fix it. Then I'll be back on the road (hopefully).

Indeed, this is where I actually bought the bike, back in July, five months ago. The bloke in the shop - the proprietor? - welcomes me (not by name, unlike old Turley in Rusthall), and gets an assistant/mechanic from out the back to see to me.

They do a new type of puncture-resistant inner tube called "Slime", but Sidwell Cycles don't appear to have any. I settle for a normal, simple new inner tube which I know will puncture in no time.

Collect the bike on Thursday.

The Elderly Gentleman Outside Exeter Cathedral

"It's a beautiful cathedral, isn't it?"

On the way home, I'd stopped outside the Clarence Hotel, on the newly-cobbled pavement and turning circle by St Martin's Church.

This was the sort of everyday chance encounter with a stranger that you get used to as you get older. When you're a teenager you only ever speak to other teenagers (except relatives, of course). However, age and the cold chill of early evening November loneliness make a person more amenable to a nice chat with just about anyone.

I agreed with the bloke and then realised that he was almost unique - he was from a Britain of about 50 years ago, like the major in the Ealing film, The Ladykillers, only he was a retired doctor and not a major, like Cecil Parker.

He was well-tailored in what could have been Austin Reed: grey suit (though no waistcoat); red tie and white shirt; traditional gentleman's overcoat. With thinning grey hair, probably aged about 70.

He spoke in an exquisite accent, consumately well-spoken, almost to a Brian Sewell level yet more natural. He'd been a doctor at Moorfields and Barts in London and then moved to Exeter 40 years ago, presumably when still a young man.

In the early evening, late November darkness (around 5pm) he obviously thought I was a lot younger than I am, recommending I emigrate to "Australia, Canada or New Zealand". His brother had done so many years ago (Edmonton, Canada) and he would now recommend anyone to emigrate.

He had to go, but: "Remember you met a gentleman in Exeter and he said emigrate to Adelaide". I will. This man - despite a successful medical career and the trappings of career success - obviously laments not doing so himself.

On the other hand, he left by declaring Exeter to be "the finest city in the world". The late W. G. Hoskins would be proud of this incomer to the city of Exeter.

The Heart of the Game - Jimmy Greaves (Time Warner, 2005)

This amazing book is only £6.99 in paperback and it has Jimmy Greaves going on a fascinating discourse of football - why it is so popular, the history of the game, the different clubs, and the rich heritage of the game.

This book must be bought, something I realised after about 30 minutes of browsing through it in Waterstones, Roman Gate, Exeter.

The new, modernised Waterstone's bookstore is awful and I prefer the old layout. The new Costa coffee cafe at the High Street end of the shop is too noisy and the atmosphere is more of a cafe than a nice, quiet bookshop. The floorspace is obviously much larger, since they've taken away some partitions that previously divided up the place (on the site of the old ABC cinema, demolished in about 1989).

Anyway, the Jimmy Greaves book is a revelation. Is he a great, intelligent writer or has it been ghost-written? I wonder. It opens with an anecdote about the Spurs team the in a hotel in Leicester the night before a match back in the 1960s. The Spurs skipper, Danny Blanchflower, gives a Plato-esque exposition on why the game is so popular. Fascinating.

Dawlish off season

I hired from Exeter Library a copy of the brilliant 1987, John le Carre tv series A Perfect Spy. My mission today is a very simple one: to visit Dawlish and locate the 'bed and breakfast/guest house' which was run by Mrs Dubber (Peggy Ashcroft) and in which Pym stayed when he was on the run from the Jack Brotherhood and the secret service.

First Great Western has admittedly done a fantatic job in introducing many, many very cheap "Cheap Day Returns" in the Western region. Today, on the automatic ticket machine in the small lobby of Exeter St David's station, I punch in "Dawlish" and find that it's only £3 return.

Alas, the train itself is not a Network South East, London Waterloo-Paignton train (or an Inter City 125 with decent, traditional style carriages) but a 2 car diesel unit (DMU) which is filthy. This is the same sort that operates on the Barnstaple route with all its splendid scenery. Yet, it obviously hasn't been cleaned for a long time and the windows are barely transparent.

In the tv series A Perfect Spy, Magnus Pym (the brilliant Peter Egan) gets the night-sleeper train to Exeter and then he's seen arriving in Dawlish on one of those red, double-decker 1980s vintage Devon General buses. Curiously - in what counts as film/tv licence - his bus arrives from the Torquay direction.

Pym gets off right by the central birdlife lakes in the middle of town and walks onto the beach, the one where he used to play football with his father, the notorious Ricky Pym (played by the late Ray McInally).

He then walks up towards the western end of the promenade where he finds the bed and breakfast run by Mrs Dubber. Easy enough. Job done.

In the station itself, there a curious cafe called Geronimo's, a sort of Red Indian-themed little cafe specialising in All Day Breakfasts, etc. I partook of the All Day Breakfast - very nice indeed, only £2.99 (plus £1 for a pot of tea), sort of bacon, hash browns, fried egg, baked beans, mushrooms, etc. Geronimo's itself, as to be expected from the name, is full of all sorts of American Indian memorabilia such as bows and arrows, models of chiefs, most of it authentic and all for sale.

Dawlish itself is a delightfuly, surprisingly big town that reaches some way back up the valley of the tiny stream - "Dawlish water"? It's full of Regency villas on its western slopes, many let out for long-term holiday accommodation.

Apart from that, the only notable thing to happen was when I was walking along the high street, towards the library, eating an ice cream cone (with flake) that I'd bought a few minutes before. There was a strange scratch and whack around my head from behind and before I knew it my ice cream had gone, whisked away by a fucking cheeky seagull that just swooped down and stole it. The sheer nerve of it.

Sandra's Cafe, Paris Street bus station, Exeter

Sandra's has been at this site for at least 5 years as far as I can remember, integrated into the very structure of the awful, 1970s bus station at the side of Paris Street.

It is an ultra-modernist bus station, very functional yet always cold and grubby, long, cantilivered concrete roof beams projecting a good 30 feet onto the bus bays themselves and over the chewing gummed, shattered paving stoned floor. The local routes start at the western end, places like Newton St Cyres, Crediton, Chagford. As you go towards the other end, the destinations become further away, from Sidmouth and Lyme Regis, to the Jurassic Coast and then London and other places around whole of Britain.

There are various vending machines scattered around and lots of - about 25 - bus bays, each guarded by steel railings all painted yellow.

Paris Street bus station is also built on a rather steep slope so that it has two decks, one for the arrivals and departures at the top and one below for parking.

At the western, Paris Street end may be found Sandra's cafe, itself split over two decks. There is an upper, bus level entrance and a lower, pavement/street entrance. Yet, the interior is all on just one floor, not even a mezzanine level which could have been incorporated due to the 15 feet interior.

The staff wear yellow and red overalls, each with the Sandra's logo and apparantly women (mostly under 30, I'd say). There is one long counter running almost the entire length of the room, about 30 feet, a long steel tray rack at the front. These back onto the food counter which accommodates a whole series of see-through plastic/perspex food cupboards, each containing standard, non-fancy fare like scones, pies, cakes, crisps and so forth.

Behind is the kitchen, its smell of onions, baked pies, chips, eggs, ommlettes and so forth wafting through the place. You would imagine this to be an ideal, velvet, moulded case for the cliched greasy spoon; you would not be wrong. However, there is a certain charm about this place, not least the prices, which are very reasonable.

The walls are adored by several enormous murals, some, if I remember, showing exotic places around the world (not the sort you would reach directly from Exeter bus station - on the other hand, you might get a coach to Heathrow or Victoria and actually go on to see these places). Fruit machines cover the lower sections of wall.

The clientele are almost entirely old and poor. Lots of shabby people, the sort you would expect to find on Rab C Nesbitt - can they all be travellers/passengers? My theory is that they are here because they like it and probably not even going anywhere.

I would say, overall, the staff are polite and hard-working and offer some perfectly adequate food. In summer, you could even enjoy your drink and meal on the patio outside! (Watching the buses and cars and fumes travelling along Paris Street). Then again, why not the Honiton Inn, opposite?

Film: Joyeux Noel (Christian Carion, France 2005)

This is an incredibly well-scripted, fascinating and deeply emotional film about the Christmas Day, 1914 truce between the French and Scottish on the one side and the Germans on the other. It is based on historical events, only available due to a few letters that survive to this day.

The plot/script is superb, with each side having characters and developments that all come to fruition at the scene of the truce itself. The causality is brilliant. There is also a clever device of switching between English, French and German with various subtitles depending on the country where you bought the DVD. It helps suture the plot and the audience into the day's events.

There are the two brothers from the Scottish highlands, one played by Stephen Robertson, who leave for the war in a regiment headed by the brilliant Alex Ferns, formerly of EastEnders of all things. Ferns played the bad guy, Trevor, in that awful soap series, yet here plays a tough yet reasonable commander.

There is, on the German side, the lieutenant and the tenor, the latter from Berlin, not really in the army at all, yet sent over on Christmas Eve to cheer them all up. There is even a strange cameo appearance from Ian Richardson, of all people, as a war-mad militaristic Bishop who after the even makes a terrifying speech urging the Allies to kill as many Germans as they can and to give up any fraternisation (again, based on real-life events and a speech in Westminster Abbey at the time).

They fight each other, friends and brothers are killed, but on Christmas Eve (the first of the war) they've all had enough and settle in for the night. The German singer starts singing and then the whole affair starts, carried along by the great motif of music. The Scots start playing their bagpipes, eventually matching the famous German song Silent Night with their own equally enigmatic and talismanic Auld Langsyne. It has to be heard to be appreciated.

On the DVD, the special features section has an interview with the director, Christian Carion, who is himself from Cambrai, one of the most iconic battle scenes of World War I. He explains various parts of the film but I would also recommend the audio commentary (just toggle the Audio button 2 or 3 times on the remote). Carion explains how most of the plot is based on true events, even the arrest of the cat, Felix/Nestor for high treason.

If I ever get a cat I shall name it Felix or Nestor in honour of this great film.