The day that changed everything

Scraping the barrel ('scuse the pun!), you might think, to be posting a photo of a closed, lockdown-empty pub. This pub however, has a special place in my heart. It is the Malt (formerly Malt Shovel) in Harden, built around 1550 and at one time, apparently, serving as a courthouse and prison, where travelling judges came to hear cases. It has recently undergone an extensive refurbishment. 

It has always been a cosy place for a drink and a meal and it was here, back in 1982, that we came with my parents for lunch. I was heavily pregnant, about a week overdue in fact and getting very fed-up. I had back-ache and could only feel comfortable sitting ramrod straight on a bar stool. When the menu arrived, unaccountably, I chose egg and chips - something I'd never normally order. I did enjoy them too! With hindsight I should have known... but it was only later, after we'd been home for a couple of hours, that I realised in was in labour. By 8pm I was cuddling my newborn daughter. It's a good job I had those eggs and chips too, as that was the last meal I had until breakfast the following day, by which time I was ravenous! 

Whenever I pass the pub, that day comes back vividly into my mind. In fact the pub acts as a boundary place in my mind between 'all that went before' and 'all that has come after'. Quite appropriate, I suppose, for a building that sits beside a bridge at the point where a Roman road crossed over Harden Beck.