Saturday 23 March 2019

BCF Spring Conference; The Boathouse review

Today the Boaters' Christian Fellowship held a Spring Conference in All Saints' Church, Braunston.

46 members of the BCF and one guest listened to fellow member Rev Stephen Gardner share his thoughts on how, as Christians, we could respond to the difficult questions people ask us as we travel the waterways. And, no, these aren't the questions on pumpout v cassette or gas v gas-free. The sort of difficult questions people sometimes ask BCFers can be more along the lines of "Is my mother with Aunty Betty in heaven?" or "Why does God allow suffering?"

Stephen was difficult to photograph as he was constantly on the move as he guided us enthusiastically through his topic.


Afterwards 13 of us went to the Boathouse pub for a meal.

As I wrote yesterday, the Boathouse has changed, no longer offering "two for one" deals. The food was generally good: I had an excellent gammon steak with very good chips. Roasted tomatoes on the vine formed part of the garnish. Jan had the lasagne with vegetables instead of ciabatta, but she wasn't hugely impressed with the veg. The others on the table all seemed to enjoy their food. The service was good in that we didn't have to wait too long for the food to arrive, nor for puddings for those who ordered them. Overall I would say that it is an improvement on the pub's previous incarnation, even though it was a bit more expensive. The Hobgoblin was rather too cold, though (and pulled through the inevitable sparkler).

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Sparklers are not inevitable! I always (having taken a quick peek) ask for 'a pint of x with the sparkler off please'. Eight times out of ten they just do it. One time out of ten they won't know what I mean, but are fine once I (or their colleague) has explained. One time out of ten they'll give me a quizzical look, to which the killer response is 'I'm southern.' One time out of fifty they'll try to tell me why I'm wrong, to which the response is I may be wrong, but that's how I like it. And one time (sadly in my lovely local, to which I didn't return for six months thereafter) they got really snitty and, I swear, put extra hops in just to *make* me wrong. But it's nearly always worth asking them to take it off. Makes their job easier (and less wasteful) too. And for a southern beer like Hobgoblin - no excuse whatsoever!