Thursday and I found myself in London with the best part of four hours to go before I needed to be where I needed to be.

Walking out of Euston I took my bearings in the rain and worked out that Clerkenwell was within easy walking distance and there was good food to be had all in good time.

And if I was within walking distance of Clerkenwell then that meant I was within striking distance of Morito and so I set off to trudge through the rain, bag on my back.

I got there about 12.30, so just about right for lunch, and it wasn’t too busy so there was room for to sit at the bar.

Sat on the awkward stool and despite the bad fitting suit I could feel some of the cares of the day slipping away. I even asked for water instead of beer – at least for a while.

I set myself a spending limit and then prowled through the menu to see how I could fit into it. Three plates would do.

So I started with a pinchos – Gilda –a cocktail stick skewering a green olive, a pickled green chilli, a green olive and a sliver on anchovy. After the two hours on a train the clean hard hot taste of it exploded in the mouth. I asked for another and a small glass of beer.

Next – salt cod croquettes – about the length of my middle finger and as thick as a thick sausage with a slather of garlic mayonnaise on the side. At first they were almost too hot to pick up but then to finish I was running my finger through the mayonnaise.

Then – chicken wings – there were half a dozen of them on a small terracotta plate slathered in harrisa. There was a taste about them I couldn’t quite place so I asked. Transpired they had been brined with a mixture of bay leaves and rosemary. All of which sounded like the start of a good idea. As I ate then red oil ran through my fingers and almost got so far as to stain my white shirt.

It was with some reluctance that I pulled myself away from the stool and made my way back into the rain and an talk on the strictures of Back to the Future and a Restrictive Covenant but before doing so I bought another bright orange tea-towel to take back home.

A few hours late I had a quick ten minutes to slip into The Euston Tap and take a pint of fine IPA to settle the  mind down for the travel back home.