Prawns less tasty than pigs shock

14st 0lb; 6.0 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,277; Gosforth.

Anyone who passed my house this morning would have heard the distinctive sound of heavy, rusty iron bolts being slammed into place to secure the stable, a couple of days after the horse wisely sugared off to somewhere much more interesting and attractive. Or, to put it another way, I spent a couple of hours creating a comprehensive back-up of all my computer files on the new, external hard drive I bought after lunch in Newcastle yesterday. This included all my surviving Outlook Express e-mail messages. It has been chilling to discover, over the last few days, how much useful information I had left sitting around in e-mails that I had failed to save anywhere outside my original and now vanished inbox. Any reader who is similarly careless would do well to consult the simple instructions at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670, and to follow them without delay. That was a public service announcement.

Another thing I can strongly recommend from direct personal experience is a pork pie from the Rothbury Home Bakery, which is not a sponsor of Bloke in the North. Not yet, at any rate, though I am open to offers. I bought one when I went to pick up my defunct desktop from the computer shop. Still warm from the oven (the pie, that is, not the Hewlett Packard), and simply served with rocket, a sliced tomato and some pickled onions, it made the most delicious lunch I have enjoyed for some time.

This afternoon I drove to Gosforth for a haircut, which may seem like a pretty ridiculous and environmentally unfriendly thing to do when Alnwick is little more than a quarter of the distance away, and contains a wholly implausible number of gents’ hairdressers, almost outnumbering the charity shops. But, in my defence, the bloke in Gosforth does do a cracking job and I previously had my hair cut in St James’s in London, a round trip of some 650 miles. So I am doing my bit for the future of the planet, much as if I had traded down from a holiday in the Caribbean to one in the Balearic Islands.

I headed back north up the A1 with the familiar feeling that all that was needed to make the day perfect was a pint of English ale and a packet of pork scratchings. Perhaps, on reflection, I am becoming a bit fixated on pig-based products. I considered a number of possible pubs where I might fulfil this dream, then concluded that I might as well just have the beer at home and pick up some pork scratchings from Sainsbury’s in Alnwick on the way. A fine theory, falling down because this particular branch proved not to sell the bloody things. I should have risen above my prejudice and gone to Morrison’s. As it was, I decided to buy some pistachio nuts as a substitute, until I reeled with exaggerated horror, like an extra in a Hammer film, on reading the calorie count on the bag. I ended up with prawn crackers. It was not the same.

Moral: do not shilly-shally like I did. Support your local boozer. You’ll be sorry when it’s gone. You know it makes sense.