The Chequers, Watlington, Oxfordshire

 

Jeremy Irons lives in Watlington but I don’t know which house. They seem nice enough and from the conversation I eavesdropped at the Chequers they are priced to be quite nice. Two vulgar, 30-something hausfrau’s downed most of a second or third bottle of wine talking too loudly about what different neighbours had their piles on the market for and what amenities justified the outrageous asking sums.

 

 

The bar itself looks wonderful in the main, with the old timbers and low doorways and ceilings you’d expect. We we on the sunnier back porch which reminded me a lot of the sort of south Georgia back porches that lead out to a riverside yard or down to a lake. Nostalgia, huh? The thoughts reminded me that we were off to see a restored print of Cinema Paradiso that evening (which, in turn, reminded me that most of the idyllic sites of my youth are now populated with just the sort of nouvelles riches bitches at table X, over there).

You can’t go home again.