The Blue Bell, York

I am hanging my head in disgrace (whilst trying to watch Graham Bell climb Mont Blanc on some new BBC2 programme about trying to kill yourself, which is something of a challenge. Hanging my head and watching telly I mean, Mont Blanc looks like a piece of piste.)

The reason for my shame (mollified it has to be said by chuckling quietly at my piste pun) is that I just said to Mozz, "have I even been to a pub recently?" whilst struggling to think what I could contribute here for the first time in an old age.

I mean, I have been to a pub recently. I went to one behind Oxford St yesterday but only to recover from shopping for wedding shoes - I don't even know what it was called. But I drank St Austell's Tribue which was very nice. And last Saturday I had a couple of pleasnat pints (Doom Bar) at the Manor Arms off Clapham High St with Katherine and the Saturday before at the Old Sergeant on Garratt Lane (London SW18).

But these are all pubs I've been to many times, what happened to my Search for the Perfect Pub? I have to cast my mind back as far as November for some genuine discovery work.

We spent a weekend in York - me, Mozz and the Hunts - us girls having got our men a drive in some fast car or other at Elvington Airfield (the one where Richard Hammond nearly lost his head) for their birthday / wedding anniversary. And I had my eye on exploring a few olde pubs...

Unfortunately the only one I can remember now is the Blue Bell on Fossgate, but what a special memory it is.  A Teensy weensy, hokey pokey, holy grail for ale. That's it, that's my review. Partly because I'm hugely distracted by the presenters of High Altitude dancing with death on very high mountains, partly because some pubs are beyond analysis -  you just have to enjoy them in the moment. And that is my perfect pub. Not the Blue Bell, not necessarily - for a start it's in a city centre surrounded by a wobbling mass of tourists, chavs and students - but a pub that defies explanation. It just is.

And I think I might have seen such a pub on telly recently, specifically the marvellous new series 'Oz and James Drink to Britain'. This is televisual heaven for me and Mozz, he loves cars, I love pubs. Oz Clarke and James May drive around Britain in a Rolls Royce Cornische convertible checking out different pubs and ales - it literally couldn't be more perfect.

Anyway, on epsiode one they visited The Tan Hill Inn high atop the Yorkshire Dales. It was on the edge of the middle of nowhere, had sheep walking around inside the pub and looked like a place where time stands still, in fact time and space don't exist. The pub just is.

And boy do I want to go.

Right now though I just want to go to bed, Mozz has turned over to what I call a bang bang movie, not in the blonde triple D, subtitled sense, but in the loud gunfire, fake looking aliens, lots of indecipherable shouting sense. Not very calming basically so I think I'll leave him to it... (I think it's X Men in case anyone was wondering and yes, there's a joke about Ex Men in there somewhere but I'm not that cruel).

N'night O' faithful few!