What £250 buys you..

Today, I'm worth £40 an hour, woo hoo because that's what I'd have to had paid to have the flat professionally cleaned. Six hours of solid cleaning with only an egg custard and a few tiny shortbread biscuits to keep me going. I had help though thank goodness. I scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom with the aid of my electric toothbrush! It was a godsend for getting into all those little crevices and yes, before you ask, I did replace the head before I used it again.
Best bit of the day was looking through Alastair Sawday's book to find somewhere to eat on the way home. Who would have thought that there would be any gems within 1 mile of the motorway, let alone near Slough! We were running late so I chose the closest pub to the London end of the M4. Somewhere that served tasty food but not too posh to welcome two rather unkempt and not so sweet smelling guests. I'd managed to remember to bring another teeshirt to change into. Nick didn't. I can thoroughly recommend The Ostrich at Colnbrook. It's the 3rd oldest inn in England (allegedly!) and it's fab. The menu was more exciting than the usual and the food delicious and beautifully presented. It did get a bit hot in the bar but it had been a hot day and I'd been beavering away at dirt and grime for most of it.
A wander up to the loos and I came face to face with an oversized Ostrich at the top of the stairs. It's behind glass thankfully and very stuffed!


Here's a quote from wiki about Colnbrook and the Ostrich Inn... relieved we didn't stay the night now!

Mentioned in William the Conqueror's Domesday Book, Colnbrook is on the Colne Brook, a tributary to the river Colne, hence Colnbrook.[1] Coaching inns were the village's main industry. In 1106 the first one was founded by Milo Crispin, named The Hospice (now the Ostrich Inn). By 1577 Colnbrook had no fewer than ten coaching inns. Colnbrook's High Street was on the main London to Bath road and turn off point for Windsor and was used as a resting point for travellers.

One 17th century landlord, Jarman of the Ostrich Inn, installed a large trap door under the bed in the best bedroom located immediately above the inn's kitchen. The bed was fixed to the trap door and the mattress securely attached to the bedstead, so that when two retaining iron pins were removed from below in the small hours of the morning, the sleeping guest was neatly decanted into a boiling cauldron. In this way more than 60 of his richer guests were murdered silently and with no bloodshed. Their bodies were then disposed of in the Colne River. The murder of a wealthy clothier, Olde Cole, or Thomas of Reading, proved to be Jarman's undoing, in that they failed to get rid of Cole's horse, leading to their confessing. Jarman and his wife were hanged for robbery and murder.[2][3][4]The inn is reportedly haunted and has been subject to investigations by the Sussex Paranormal Research Group and Most Haunted.[5]