There I was, up north in a strange town for two days a week, living in a motorway Travelodge all by myself with my time my own until showtime. As I was in the area for my readings of A Christmas Carol it seemed quite fitting that I should take my evening meals at the above cafe on Front Street in Chester-le-Street. In the absence of a cafe named after A Christmas Carol this was the next best thing. 

My routine during these shows was to travel on Thursday by train from Nottingham to Durham (amazingly I had no major issues with the train journeys, I usually shy away from rail travel due to its unreliability) and dropping everything off at the hotel before a quick freshen up and making my way to the Beamish Museum. On getting back to the hotel I would prepare a pasta in a pot 'meal' (two actually, one isn't big enough) as I appeared to be staying in the only motorway service station hotel that closed everything down at ten o'clock at night. With this feast and a cup of tea I would call home before watching Eastenders online. I had taken my laptop with me for this purpose and of course to try and do some work and attempt to keep a handle on my emails. It's all very well doing some Internet stuff on the phone but it will never replace the ease of a computer, so I set up a makeshift office in the hotel room. On a Friday morning I would wander to the nearby newsagent (not part of the services but through a hole in a fence that led to a residential area, this was such a well known hole in the fence that bus and taxi drivers knew exactly what I meant) for a pint of milk and cigarettes before going to the services Burger King for something to eat, yes it's a healthy lifestyle on the road. 

While I didn't do much on a Friday daytime aside from potter around in my room, I made the effort to venture into to town prior to the shows in order to break the monotony, which is where I found this cafe. Not only was it named after a Dickens character, but on the walls were further paintings depicting characters from the books of the man himself. 

The food and the service are both excellent in this establishment, I even took my sister, niece and nephew in there for lunch one Friday. My only disappointment was that the Dickens theme began and ended with the name and the paintings on the wall. Deep down I wanted the staff to be wearing Victorian outfits (I had by now been playing at Beamish for too long) and I wanted the food to be named in a Dickensian way. I don't mean gruel on the menu, but Fezziwigg's fish fingers and chips, Mr Bumble's bacon sandwiches, Mrs Lupin's lasagna and other witty themed dishes that I can't think of now would have been nice.

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