All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or so the saying goes. With that in mind we decided to take a couple of days off and enjoy ourselves.
Friday was the third anniversary of our first in person date, after a couple of months of COVID mandated online dating. Unfortunately, it was also the only day we could get Ruth’s car into the garage for some much needed repairs so that limited our options somewhat.
To while away the time, we went to Hollywood Bowling in Bury for a couple of games of ten pin bowling. I’m not sure if it’s a case of rose tinted spectacles, but I’m sure I used to be better at bowling than I was this time around. Even so, it was good fun, and that was more
important than the score. I had my first ever original Bury Black Pudding from Chadwick’s on Bury Market, which, according to Ruth, is the original and the best and the only way to enjoy it is boiled with a dollop of mustard and I must admit it was very tasty.
While we were there we also spent some time shooting dinosaurs and zombies on the video games. Ruth also had her first ever air hockey experience. Sadly there’s no photographic evidence of this as it’s really too frantic a game to lend itself to selfies.
For a while now, I’ve been wanting to pay a visit to the Two Tubs as it is the only Bury venue in Matt Curtis’ book “Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars” that I hadn’t been to before. Obviously, a lunchtime pint was in order. The Two Tubs is an old school Thwaites wet led boozer. The beer was very decent. The ‘entertainment’ (provided free of charge by a punter sitting at the bar) was ‘interesting’. I
proved myself a total failure of a pub ticker by getting precisely no photos.
In the evening we went to a local Italian restaurant, Il Pepe Nero, where we had a delicious meal. I had a starter of Stromboli (a kind of rolled pizza that I had never heard of before) followed by a risotto with a three meat ragu, while Ruth opted for a steak with two sauces, because she just can’t choose, all washed down with a lovely bottle of Merlot.
