The prospects were good. Uncharacteristically for this wettest of Junes, the rain had held off most of the day. And the play, Much Ado About Nothing is being directed by Charlie Walker-Wise who produced such a splendid show last year in Twelfth Night, with John Challis (AKA Boycie) delivering a formidable Malvolio.

Ever a pair of wise virgins, Mr P and the LC carried in their battered old Barbours, but within the sturdy castle walls, it was a warmish evening, the clouds were high and unthreatening and the waxed jackets served as cushions.

As the audience come into the inner bailey, the simple, but versatile set by Anthony Lamble is peopled by members of the cast pottering about in the clothing and demeanour of Britain at the end of WW II. Land girls are lustily engaged in harvest, men in double-breasted suits eagerly await their soldiers’ return, the director having chosen to set it thus, rather than in Messina at the end of a 16^th century war.

A traditionalist  like Mr P has been inclined to lift eyebrows if not nostrils at ‘modern dress’ but he is coming round to the reality that more familiar clothing seems to make the 400 year old language more comprehensible, which, with a plot as convoluted as Much Ado’s, is not a bad thing.

Shakespeare’s comedies in any case are a bit of a puzzler, with all the ludicrous coming, goings and implausible confusions of a Whitehall Farce, or at best, an Ayckbourn rom-com, while in Much Ado the absurd misconceptions behind the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice – the ‘Why is he/she such an arse?’ when they both madly fancy one another is unreconstructed Mills & Boon.

But, as with all the Bard’s comedies, the iffiness of the plot is redeemed by the beauty and wit of the words – “Well, everyone can master a grief but he that has it.” – and Charlie W-W has made grand use of the text with the well cast, well rehearsed ensemble he has created. Especially strong is the spark between Mathew Douglas’s Benedick and Rachel Donovan’s Beatrice. He is played with great rambunctiousness , she with elegant acerbity.

Tim Woodward gives Leonato, Govenor of Messina strength and convincing gravitas, while the governor’s daughter, Hero shines in the hands of the lovely Ellie Beavan.  Wayne Cater’s Dogberry is an unexpected comic treat – unexpected only because Mr P hadn’t seen the actor before. Cater lends a great Welsh flavour to the wonderful malapropisms that Shakespeare gives him, and exited to some well-deserved bursts of spontaneous applause.

The LC (who is Mr P’s best guide in the visual arts) demands high standards in design. On the evidence of her smiling face and fluting laughter, she enjoyed her evening and she strongly approved of designer Anthony Lamble’s costumes and the way he has placed the stairs leading cleverly to an exit through a window in the castle wall, and the large willow tree beside them to house the innumerable eavesdroppers the plot requires.

As the darkness (but not dampness) came, lighting designer Peter Harrison’s skills became more apparent – especially with the lighting inside a castle window to give the effect of a full moon over the proceedings below and intensifying the image of Francine Watson-Coleman’s terrifically choreographed and uplifting finale – a fitting way to finish Charlie W-W’s second great production at Ludlow.

A quarter of a century ago, when Mr Pernickety was more lissom and  less pernickety, and en route on foot from Chepstow to Montgomery, he stopped to eat in the Granary and was struck, even then, by its cosily retro, alternative air.     Reviewing it 25 years on, Mr P felt it had changed very little. There lingers an expectation of interesting ways of cooking lentils, and staff wearing Indian bedspread dresses, imbued with the aroma of patchouli oil and home-grown ganja. They don’t of course – not any more – but it’s still a popular, unsophisticated eating house whose ambience and furnishings – junk shop chairs, recycled pews, coton plastifié tablecloths, art nouveau stained glass – match the quiet murmur of earnest conversations about literature, yoga and sore feet, along with the comforting aroma of herby lasagne.

Mr P, having  joined a meandering queue and ordered food for himself, his lovely companion  and her young son, settled on a pew in a state of contented nostalgia.  When the food arrived, however, it demonstrated to him that over the passage of time either his own gastronomic standards had risen, or the quality of the Granary’s cuisine had fallen.  His Chicken Pie (£9.95) had been flumped onto the plate with a small tump of desiccated carrots, all swimming in a Doldrums sea of mushroom gravy, which only added to the sogginess of the pastry and stirred unsought memories of school luncheons. The LC found her Bangers & Mash disappointing. In these days of the Championship sausage, she thought, thosed offered by the Granary were very pedestrian, easily overwhelmed by the mash and gravy. Our young consultant (who is 6 and honest) said his Spaghetti Bolognaise was good – as good as his mother’s (but not, he added, as good as Mr P’s.) His drink, apple juice by PJs, he judged “quite nice” – inadequate praise in the view of Mr P, who drinks apple juice by the gallon in periods of abstention and is now a connoisseur.

Puddings, which Mr P has sampled in the past and not found wanting, include apple tart, carrot cake, coffee cake, big fat scones stuffed with cream, and an extravagant meringue pudding that looks like a matrimonial gown in a Big, Fat Gypsy Wedding – one for a future visit. For, despite its shortcomings, the Granary’s unchanged, traditional persona will always flavour its menu with a strong dash of nostalgia sauce… which Mr P cannot resist.

The Granary, Broad Street, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5DB

Tel: 01497 820790 Opens 9.00-5.00; holiday times: 9.00 – 9.00

The production of Billy Bard’s Twelfth Night at Ludlow Castle this season is something not to be missed for it’s the most exciting and witty Shakespeare Show Mr P has ever had the good fortune to see. This could well be the directorial debut of a great new talent. Although Charlie Walker-Wise left RADA only six years ago, his impressively confident production is sophisticated, quick and fresh, and squeezes every drop of wit from the script.

Setting the play in Mallorca at the time of the Spanish Civil War somehow makes its rather dodgy plot less implausible to a 21^st Century audience than if it were in Tudor costume, and points up the consistency of man’s weaknesses.

Mr W-W’s casting has been inspired. Mr P and his companion could spot no weak link, no bad apple, no surreptitious under-achiever amongst the company. As in many of Will’s comedies, there is a gender bender agenda (which must have been especially confusing in the Globe of the old days when young chaps yet without Adam’s Apple played the female roles.) In this case, cross-dressing confusion is provided by Viola, out to seek acquaintance with the Duke Orsino (Mr P won’t try to explain the whole convoluted plot; it might bring on a mal-de-tete among his less cerebral readers), who spends 95% of the action as a young man servant to the Duke, oozing confidence and smart-arsery, called Cesario. She/he has some of the finest poetry in the play and it is delivered with thrilling clarity by Catherine Bailey (a former child actor who appeared with the RSC at the age of 15, and has done her time in East Enders and Holby City.)

Another inspired decision of Mr W-W’s has been to turn the rich, drunken twit Sir Andrew Aguecheek into a P G Wodehouse silly ass, in whose mouth Shakespeare’s wit is surprisingly apropos. He is played with butter-coloured hair and dazzling comedic skill by Paul Trussell, paired with a faultless Sir Toby Belch (Patrick Brennan).

Kirsty Besterman’s deeply mourning and finicky Countess Olivia combines well her haughtiness and vulnerability, while her servant, Maria (Lucia McAnespie) has a lovely Irish wildness to her.

As always in this play, the casting of Malvolio is key, and John Challis (AKA Boycie) is a great coup. Malvolio, Olivia’s steward is pompous, hubristic and ultimately ridiculous when the victim of a cruel trick. Challis is an old hand, with the experience of a former RSC and National Theatre player and the natural perfect timing to deliver some of the funniest scenes Shakespeare wrote.

Mister P cannot urge you strongly enough to see this ephemeral production, even if it means a long journey. And he would recommend a good light dinner beforehand at the Green Cafe by Dinham Bridge.

Twelfth Night at the Ludlow Festival runs until Saturday July 9^th.

But when he went there at the beginning of last year , Mr P found that things had changed. There was a new, lighter airiness to the place, the all-pervading musty smell of books that have known better days had somehow been dispelled; clearings had been created among the canyons of bookshelves where leather sofas, coffee tables and aspidistras had been placed so that customers can now peruse the old tomes in leisurely comfort. Mr P was naturally curious and not a little puzzled – the shop was providing what a retail analyst in Canary Wharf might call a “positive shopping experience” – which, until then, had been an unknown approach to selling books in Hay. All became clear when he discovered that Richard Booth, self-proclaimed King of Hay, has retrenched in his castle and sold his original shop to an American – a pocket dynamo and busy-bee called Elizabeth.

Inserting a pocket dynamo with exciting new ideas into an endroit as dozy as a Welsh Marches book town was bound to cause sparks and raise temperatures, along with a few hackles, and among its rivals, Richard Booth’s Bookshop under the new management has become known, with an undeserved hint of scathe, as “Starbucks”.

After this, having, very gently, re-aligned the noses of the traditional dust-and-must book wallahs of the town, Elizabeth set about the town’s restaurants and victuallers by using some of the ample space at the rear of her shop to open a café-restaurant. No doubt most other local eateries wanted to react to this newcomer with the same indignation they showed at Mr P’s not entirely glowing gastronomic review of the town.

A week after Richard Booth’s Bookshop Café opened, Mr P got wind of it, and he and the Lovely Companion pointed the aging Volvo westwards and headed for Hay. At first sight, the Café seems to be slotted into a narrow, corridor space, albeit all white painted stone walls with broad sky-lights and industrial enamelled lamps overhead. The walls are hung with Jean Miller’s vibrant paintings and small glades of aspidistra nestle in corners and ledges – an attractive, interesting corridor, at least.

As soon as Mr P and the LC were seated, a beaming waitress arrived with a carafe of tap water – a practice which always indicates the right attitude. A first glance at the day’s menu immediately conveyed that here was place that was not going to dig deep into the wallet. The most expensive main luncheon dish, from a choice of six, was “Char-grilled aubergine, goats curd, pomegranate, mint and faro salad”, all for £6.50.

Chef Julia Robson seems to have found ways of producing an exciting menu without paying over the odds for the ingredients – actually, any good chef could do it if they wanted – they usually just don’t.

To keep the appetite at bay, the waitress bought a basket of delicious rye bread with rape seed oil and sea salt to dip it in, while the LC chose a “Spinach and feta omelette with a herb salad” (£4.50), which she enjoyed but found a tad well done for her taste, although, she said, it had lovely light cheesy flavour.  Mr P opted for “Soused herring, apple, crème fraiche and duck fat toast” at £4.00, with which he found no fault, and could enjoy the counterpoint of all the separate tastes involved.  He also indulged himself with a bowl of perfect crunchy chips with a delicious aioli (£2).

Afterwards the “Quince and almond tart” waltzed past the LC’s demanding pastry test. The filling was light and the short-crust “melted in the mouth”. Mr P continued to stuff himself with Banana Bread, which was a little bulky but accompanied by peanut butter ice-cream – an unexpected transatlantic treat.

As well as the welcome tap water, Mr P and his companion enjoyed a bottle of Lou Tribe French cabernet-sauvignon/grenache, good quality and value at £12. With a couple of cups of excellent filter coffee and fine biscotti, the bill for a beautifully cooked and exciting lunch was £32.40.

Richard Booth’s Bookshop Café now offers the best food in Hay and undoubtedly the best value – perhaps  in Wales and Herefordshire too. Mr P urges you not to miss it next time you’re in the town and need a joyous lift.

Reviewed 20th November 2010

During this session, Mr P encountered a distinctive individual with a Welsh moniker, like most of the locals, who looked somehow different from his fellows. Short and squat, he had a flat face, high cheekbones and dark, narrow eyes which put Mr P in mind of a character called Glubb, who used regularly to appear in the comic strip adventures of Colonel Pewter in the News Chronicle of the early ‘60s. Glubb was a chap from the Neolithic period whom the Colonel had extracted from an iceberg and revived, in an early example of human cryogenic preservation.

Since the Celtic population had arrived in this patch less than four millennia ago – a fleeting moment in mankind’s story – Mr P had heard that there were still discernible traces of pre-Celtic people of a Neolithic type dotted around. And here was one of them, spouting implausible tales of heroic hunting in the ‘tween war years, while quaffing, and spilling quite a lot of his pint.

Since then, Mr P has revisited the Lion from time to time, on one occasion to be told that his Neolithic chum had been barred  from the place for ‘excesses‘, and on another to hear that he had gone to that great Long Barrow in the sky. Over these two decades, the Lion’s fortunes visibly slumped, almost incurably so after it was acquired by one of the more vicious PubCos, who despite this pub’s excellent setting, useful size, fine village and handy spot by a river crossing, imposed such impossible conditions on tenants that none could prosper, and it became a neglected,  sporadically flooded, down-at-heel hostelry dispensing gloom and bad ale.

Mr P was, therefore, delighted when eventually the place was bought by a local family who run the Radnor Hills Water Company nearby.       The new owners have now lavishly ‘restored’ the Lion. The lawns by the river have been re-laid, a wall built to keep out hostile floods, the building reroofed and the walls repainted a slightly puzzling shade of green, while the innards have been restored beyond recognition. Mr P admits to a twinge of disappointment on his first visit to the revived Lion to find that it now has the air of a Surrey gastro-pub. The main bar did not seem conducive to sessions of copious pints with locals, who are now corralled into an isolated, characterless little bar with its own entrance.

However, on his next visit, on a chilly evening, a large stove stuffed with monster logs belted out warmth; there were genuine locals gossiping at the bar, and Ludlow Best Bitter on offer at £2 a pint. This, Mr P thought, is more like it and tucked into a delicious hot sandwich of chicken breast and Wensleydale cheese. He resolved to come and sample a full meal.

Luncheon was arranged for a quieter week day, in the company of a local Distinguished Thespian and Ludlow’s Noble Grocer accompanied by their charming wives. While the sense that they had been whisked two hundred miles away to the Golf-and-Bentley Land of the Home Counties still remained, the party found it agreeable enough to be sitting in the light, high-ceilinged bar with the wood-burner glowing nearby, the air untainted by any unsuitable music.

They chose from the ‘Lounge Bar Menu’ which doesn’t differ much from that of the Restaurant, a more formal space with those upholstered high back chairs one sees everywhere.

The top of the menu offered what were billed as ‘Nibbles’ – a tricky term in Mr P’s view with its connotations of rodent activity – olives, bread and what-not for the unabashed fuller-figured.

The choice of starters and main courses was varied but not suspiciously long. The Distinguished Thesp  and his lovely spouse, as ever in concord, chose the same – Potted Crab and Brown Shrimp (£6) in miniature Kilner jars with chervil salad and saffron mayonnaise – which soon had the DT smacking his lips like Marcello Mastroianni in La Grande Bouffe.

Staying with the piscatorial theme, the women and the Noble Grocer opted for South Coast Hake in Wye Valley beer batter (£9.95), which again evoked enthusiastic praise for the tasty freshness of the fish, the lightness of the batter and sharp sweetness of the home-made tartar crème fraiche

Mr P, ploughing his own furrow, started with Gloucester Old Spot pork and apple rillette (£5.75), which was light and flavoursome, well set off by an apple and vanilla purée, while a small pot of cider jelly was a very pleasing first.

After this he ate a Rib-Eye of Rare-Breed Beef (£16.95), always well-hung from Wall’s of Ludlow, supported by a small cluster of roast wild mushrooms and marred only by a serving of over-fat chips, intended, no doubt, to appeal to the local demand for a full plate.

His thespian companion chose Pan Roasted Breast of Chicken and Barbecue Wing with a Sweetcorn Purée (£12.95). The two pieces of chicken gave a contrast of flavours, he said, no doubt reflecting the bird’s happy adolescence, roaming the hills, tugging up early worms.

The puddings which followed were works of visual as well as culinary art. Mr P’s Tatin of Apples & Cinnamon (£5.50) arrived in its own mini frying pan, deliciously set off by rum & raisin ice-cream and toffee crème fraiche. The DT had a pink tump of light pannacotta & raspberries (£5.50) which soon evoked a smile on his famously sardonic features.

Unusually among this gathering, not a great deal was drunk with luncheon. Mr P, still in Lentern abstention, drank only the owners’ Radnor Hills water, which had not far to travel, while two members of the party had a large glass of Pinot Grigio with which they seemed happy. In any event all wines are supplied by the generally reliable John Villar.

By the end of lunch, Mr P judged that the food at the Lion, while not ‘edgy’ or especially experimental was of a high standard and unquestionably enjoyable. For that, he can almost forgive some aspects 0f the over-restoration of the place and hopes that once the management have allowed the locals to bed into the main bar and give the place a bit of patina, and the odour of fresh paint has retreated, it will become mellow enough to accommodate a few long sessions of Ludlow Best and a discourse with the occasional Glubb.

Look out for Mr P’s extensive review of The Lion in Leintwardine in the next issue of Broadsheep.

              The Picasso then was sister to Dino’s in South Ken and the Gloucester Road and other spots in the Royal Borough, all imbued with the musky smell of English breakfast combined with Italian dinner, cigarette smoke and not very good drains. The Picasso, always a few degrees more sophisticated in clientele and ambience, seemed to have outlived its siblings, and less than a year ago, you might have thought it would never change, never die,

              However, last autumn to Mr P’s great distress, it appeared that the place was gone, boarded up, possibly – most pitiful demise – to become a Costa or Starbucks or another of the many horrid, tacky, style-less imported coffee shops that infest every High Street in the land.

              But, great joy! From the top of a No 22 bus last week, Mr P saw that Picasso is to rise again, reopening soon, billed on the window in quaint Anglo-Italian “everybodies favourite”. Of course, it won’t look or smell the same; it is clear that its new metamorphosis will be in shades of grey and (Picasso) blue, and post-modern minimalist chic. But better that, than a dead Picasso. And, it is to be hoped, the froth on the coffee will be just as thick, the waitresses still as engaging as they ever were.

This is not so. Keen followers of Mr P’s critical peregrinations will have noted that several reviews in recent times have been favourable, indeed, enthusiastic, for, even out here on the margins of civilization there are some truly supreme places to eat.

Regrettably, the Eardisland Tea Rooms is not one of them.

Sited in the undeniably picturesque Arrow-bank environs of Eardisland, this unprepossessing establishment has been set up, it seems, with the naked aim of preying on the captive charabanc-loads of older, less discerning tourists who are trundled around the villages of the “Black & White Trail”. Thus there is a steady flow of thirsty, uninformed punters who descend on the Eardisland Tea Rooms like gnus around a waterhole in time of drought.

The place is an undistinguished cottage of indeterminable age, which has sprouted a couple of cheap ‘conservatories’. In one of these the “Tea Rooms” are housed, opening into a shop that sells things elderly tourists are presumed to covet – jigsaws featuring rose-clad cottages, Shire Books about old cars, post-cards proclaiming stale aphorisms, pictures of domestic pets of sordidly whimsical countenance, a tea-towel illustrated with a Domestic Goddess c1952, and the words:

 “I always offer two dinner choices: 1) Take it 2) Leave it.”

- which seems pithily to precis the culinary aspirations of this highly unsatisfactory eating place.

Mr P is not a snob and understands there is a need for honest food made from basic ingredients which won’t dip too deep into a punters’ purse. A toasted slice of ordinary bread, thinly smeared with butter, beneath half a small tin of budget baked beans would have cost the Tea Rooms no more than 24p + a few moments in the microwave. Ping – and there it was, served up at £3.50, along with a small watery cup of Rombouts filter coffee (@ £1.60), followed by a very small, crunchy teacake with two pats of sour butter (@ £1.70) – a bill for two of £13.60, which, for a puny snack that a pensioner could have had at home for less than a quid, must leave customers feeling cheated and not very gruntled. But the proprietors of the Eardisland Tearooms have been doing what they do for over 25 years and must be aware that return visits are unlikely.

Mr P can recommend a visit to this place for no reason other than morbid curiosity.

The Eardisland Tea Rooms, Eardisland

Mr Pernickety’s rating: Unrateable.

Mr P is aware that this fine old place recently changed hands, and it seems the new proprietors have decided to make a few cost saving changes. Costs may indeed have been saved, but with the  reverse effect of lowering standards, thereby diminishing de Greys’ special appeal. Sugar is now supplied in beastly little paper tubes stuffed in a bowl on the table. It really would be worth the numerous attentive, faux “Nippies” asking  punters if sugar is required and bringing a bowl of lumps, as in the old days. The plain coffee (now called “Americano” – God knows why) is adequate, but comes in very small (cost saving) cups. The buns, as ever, are supreme, but the enjoyment of them is marred by overloud and unsuitable rock music. Mr P has often wondered why so many eating houses get the music wrong. In this case Bach, Mozart and recordings of the lighter classical repertoire would enhance the ambience enormously.

The waiting staff at de Greys have always been meticulously polite, and so they still are, however, when Mr P requested the loan of a ball-point pen with which to complete the crossword (the cryptic, of course, not the childrens’ one) in his daily paper, none could be spared and he had to walk across a slithering Broad Street to buy one. And, worse, when he came to settle his bill, despite the visible presence of six impeccable Nippies, he was told to take his bill up to the “bar” to pay.

NO, No, No, new Mr de Grey. Good old-fashioned standards of surroundings and service, along with well-produced meals, were what made the place special and provided what marketing people would call its USP. It would be a mistake to jettison these standards for the sake of a couple more percentage points on the bottom line. Besides, these changes could put the punters off and tip turnover the wrong way, and the few percent gained could turn out to be self-defeating.

While the proprietors are considering Mr P’s views, they might also think about giving the girls little lace “Nippy” caps to go with the black frocks and frilly white aprons. Nostalgia sauce goes a long way to improve a dish in a medieaval town like Ludlow.