photo lovingly yoinked from and © 2001 Red Snapper Photography
I spent the Christmas of 1984 and 1986 with my parents in Bainbridge, North Yorkshire at the Rose & Crown, a 500-year old hotel with lots of history, lots of drafts, and nary a plumb line in the place “and it totally wigs me out that I can link to it”. It was a beautiful way to spend Christmas. The hotel sat on the common in Bainbridge, and was also the village pub. The locals were very friendly and eager to buy a drink “contrary to the stereotype of Yorkshiremen: and possibly because my presence in the bar as a hotel guest allowed the staff to ignore licensing hours and stay open as late as they liked”. The hotel was very cold, but I think I prefer that to today’s not-very-Christmasy 64 degrees. Cold, after all, is the reason for fireplaces and whisky and big wooly sweaters, all of which help me get into the spirit of Christmas.
The Rose & Crown was full of people from the UK and US, and we gathered by the fireplace in the residents’ lounge at night. I came in on Christmas Eve to find that all the chairs were taken. One Englishman in his 70s saw me and leapt to his feet, and insisted I take his chair. “Keep in mind that I was 20.” I politely refused. He continued to insist. “I’m perfectly happy to sit on the floor” he intoned in the slow, deliberate drone of the office bore. “I often sit on the floor at home. You can ask my wife” He pressed it to the point where the only polite thing for me was to accept his offer. You can imagine the looks I got from other guests who came into the lounge afterward and saw me sitting cozily in an armchair while an arthritic senior citizen sat on the floor at my feet.
We ate “and drank” incredibly well while we were there. I especially remember a rack of local lamb encrusted with rosemary, which I will attempt to recreate for Christmas dinner 2003, but I don’t expect it to match up. Breakfast was a wonder as well: local eggs and local sausages and local toast with local homemade orange marmalade. One morning a large glob of marmalade fell off my toast and landed on my eggs and sausage. And it was good. I put another spoonful of marmalade on my sausage, and it was good, too. Then I realized that, no matter how good it is, you can’t just go around putting marmalade on everything. I became a man that day.
Bainbridge is in Wensleydale, home of the eponymous local cheese “which gets a prominent mention in the Python cheese shop sketch” and not far from the home of James Herriot, who kept office hours for fans of his books as well as for sick animals. We were on our way to see him “which required us to traverse the Buttertubs Pass” when a tractor blocking our lane caused us to suddenly and inadvertently make the acquaintance of John Allen of Hawes, and later an old couple who let us sit in their parlor while we awaited the police and tow truck. “Out of the blue the man announced, “We’ve been on the QE 2“” We were driven back to the Rose & Crown by Constable Jefferson, who maintained a steady 90 mph in his miniscule Ford panda car, much to the dismay of all of us who had recently been in a road accident. When we returned to the pub, my mother thought rightly that a brandy would be in order, to warm her up and calm her nerves “and her nose, which we didn’t know at the time was broken”. The bartender supplied her with a Courvoisier VS, which to this day she considers the finest brandy to be had.
One night the hotel staff took me on a pub crawl of Wensleydale. When we returned, the hotel was locked for the night. One of the cooks climbed in through the kitchen window and opened the back door. He then asked, “Did you see me go through that window? I was as graceful as a Thompson’s gazelle” Not just a gazelle: a Thompson’s gazelle.
On Christmas Day we ate our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and popped our Christmas crackers and put on the silly hats, then watched the Queen’s address and went for a walk. As we stepped out of the hotel onto the village green and saw the inhabitants of Bainbridge stepping out of their front doors, we imagined our Christmas was more or less the same as 80 percent of the population of Great Britain. And it was pretty darn good.
Happy Christmas, everyone.