Welcome to October. Sunshine all day. Thank goodness Pascal and head chef Garry are back from their holidays. The last couple of weeks without them caused the first well deserved complaints for 2009 and I am glad to report that they have solved the problems.

Santosh arrived from The Oberoi in Jaipur and Charlton house Somerset (where he played cricket for the county on his days off) He is helping Pascal with the running of the restaurant adding a bit of that Oberoi polish to the service. I get told off if I interfere.

The Times lunch voucher promotion was a great success. I grumbled about it for the first week until got the hang of what was expected. Now I am working on an autumn lunch voucher, friendly menu, for all our guests...that means I will have to remember to change the menus on the web. Check it!

We got a good report in the 2010 Good Food Guide and Good Hotel Guide and Hardens. Those are genuine guides. The customers write the reports and we are not able to buy a place there or say how wonderful we are..

The sheep in the photograph will not appear on the menu. Well perhaps as boiled mutton with caper sauce in a few years time when it is not so sweet. Meanwhile it comes to work every day eating fallen leaves on the lawn.