A meal to remember

I’m not much of a one for fancy restaurants, I can’t afford them, but now and then over the years, even I have enjoyed some excellent meals amid some remarkable surroundings.
I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that these meals are part of some glamorous or exotic life style; nothing could be further from the truth. Almost everything I do is done on a shoestring budget, but I will admit to being extraordinarily lucky to find myself in the right place at the right time.

I once had kofta, (a kind of kebab) with fresh salad and an enormous pot of proper English tea while sitting under a little parasol on the deck of a ship floating down the Nile. The river was about half a mile wide at this point. Native fishermen in beautiful traditional boats called felucca cruised slowly back and forth, their white sails, like the wings of the following ibis, were filled by the first stirrings of the early evening breeze. The far shore was a narrow sliver of sand against a dense tangle of green. A man watered his cattle, and naked children played, their cries and laughter carrying plainly across the water. You could have gone back in time for thousands of years, and that scene would have been exactly the same, I thought it was magical

There is a very small settlement somewhere in the American mid west called Annadarko. I had bacon, eggs, Canadian sausage, hash browns, pancakes with syrup and fresh coffee in a diner there one morning. Two grizzled old cowboys in dungarees and Stetsons conversed loudly: “Elmer, did your dawg ever tackle a bear?” “Nope” “Well mine did…Nah he’s all swelled up”.
I fell into conversation with these old guys, they told me I was Annadarko’s first ever tourist.

I had chicken and rice in Thailand. It was cooked by a girl who lived in a packing case.
I met her when she tugged at my sleeve to attract my attention, at first I thought she was a prostitute or a beggar, but as it turned out she was trying to return a 500 baht note that I had accidentally dropped. She worked as a waitress. What little money she earned was sent home to her village to help support her infant son and her parents. I was so impressed that she had returned the money that I told her that she could keep it, in return she cooked me the meal. We ate sitting cross-legged on the floor, overshadowed by the vast opulence of the magnificent kings palace, we spoke not a word of each other’s language, but we smiled and pointed. When we had finished, we bowed formally and parted. I will never see her again, but I will remember her always.

If you stand at the base of the great pyramid of Giza and look in one direction, you will see nothing but dessert. Thousands of square miles of nothing but rock and sand. Look in the other direction and you will, believe it or not, see a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop.
I stayed in a modest hotel in Cairo. On my first night there a guide sold Mrs Red and I a ticket which entitled us to join his tour the following day. The tour was excellent, but then he was showing us one of the Seven Wonders of the World, he didn’t have to work very hard.
Just as we were being rounded up in preparation for our return to the hotel, an Arab taxi driver sidled up to me and whispered, “Let me bring you out again tomorrow, I’ll show you something most visitors never see” Of course I asked a lot of questions and haggled over the price, but to cut a long story short, I ended up making a very good friend who became our private chauffer for the rest of our stay, at a cost of about £10 per day.
I can’t remember what time he collected us the following morning, but it was still dark when we arrived the pyramids. Our driver parked his ancient taxi by the side of the KFC and, although it was closed to the public at this time of the morning, when he knocked on the door it swung open and he beckoned us inside. We were shown to a table by the window, and a waiter brought hot coffee in small cups, and a bottle of Coke with two straws.
Dawn broke. Sunrise over the pyramids cannot be described, and I won’t try here. I can only say that for half an hour or so neither of us spoke a word, we were totally and utterly transfixed.
When we spilled out onto the pavement a little while later, the heat, dust and noise brought us back to reality like a slap in the face. I looked across at Mrs Red, was it a dream? Her breathless expression told me that it wasn’t.

I’ve had Schnitzel and apple strudel in the Donauturm, a revolving restaurant atop a huge tower in Vienna, had lunch with The Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth house, and tea with the Queen at Buckingham palace, but yesterday, I think, surpasses them all.

I rode my bike to Binley woods in Burbage, a distance of about four miles. When I arrived I made my way, as I’m prone to do, down one of the less well-travelled paths to where I knew there was a secluded clearing.
I have never been there in the spring, but I have to say I was totally astonished by the breathtaking beauty of the place. It was just like a scene from a child’s storybook. The trees were laden with blossom, and the ground was a sea of wild flowers. Bees hummed, butterflies flitted, and birds, which perched in plain sight and seemed not to fear me, sang for all they were worth.
I sat on a fallen log with my flask and a cheese and onion sandwich from my bag and I swear to you now, no one ever had a more enjoyable meal or ate in more wonderful surroundings.

I tried to photograph it with my phone camera, but it doesn’t do it justice.