Postcard from Norfolk – more fine dining
The cutlery may be silver, the plateware the finest china and the food locally sourced, humanely killed (the vegetables anyway, there’s no way to humanly kill an animal, at the end of the day it’s a bloke, a mallet and beast that has the great misfortune to taste good in a cranberry sauce), lovingly cooked and impeccably served, the wine may be fine and the company finer but, at the end of the day, if you have annoying fellow diners, dining out can be a trial. This is because it’s hard to eat food while grinding your teeth and hard to maintain a conversation about the films of Ingrid Pitt while three tables away, somebody is behaving annoyingly and your mental processing is filled to capacity with thoughts of taking your steak knife and showing those poofs in the kitchen a thing or two about carving.
Usually I don’t notice annoying diners, that’s because I am, invariably the loudest and drunkest person in the room and I happen to think that I’m hilarious and, until somebody actually throws a roll at me to shut me up, I’ll maintain that delusion. There are exceptions of course, people on mobile ‘phones are just…perplexing. Why would you be on the mobile ‘phone in a restaurant, unless it’s to call the Environmental Health and actually try to get the place closed down before the desert course which you suspect contains out of date cream in its seafood surprise, the surprise being the use of seafood in a desert course.
Of course there are children, a perennial hazard in restaurants, unless you are a middle class family and are happy to let them get enough booze down their throats to result in their hanging limp from their highchairs for the majority of the meal.
More of a hazard are boozy adults who don’t normally drink and get a bit frisky and loud. Normally this is not a problem in the environment of, say, a Yates’s Wine Lodge, Wetherspoon’s pub or boozah. At Moreston Hall the night we were dining there however, it was quite a different story, as an entire dining room slowly became aware of a woman’s voice getting louder and louder. Actually, not even all that loud, it’s just that everyone around her, in an effect rippling out, either stopped talking or lowered their voice and so the effect was more pronounced.
The reason for this is that ‘Pinkie’, as she referred to herself constantly in the third person, was regaling all at her table with a graphic description of heer going to get a bikini wax. Now I know that they wax surf boards but I had no idea that one should also wax swimwear. Like re-waxing a Barbour jacket I supposed to maintain a waterproof exterior.
No.
In the space of a few horrified minutes I learned much more about bikini waxes than anyone, and I mean anyone, should. As did everyone else in the room. Top marks to Pinkie’s husband though, he obviously reasoned like lightening that asking his wife to lower her voice could cause a cheerful but loud woman who had decided that the dominant taste of the evening should be gin to either be angry or burst into tears. Pinkie, like her story, ran her course and normal conversation resumed. Apart from the mental scarring (and the rash on Pinkie’s mimsy), no damage done.
Next evening at French’s fish and chip shop, at Wells-Next-the-Sea, all the action was outside, with the wind blowing tourists along the front. Even the stiff onshore breeze couldn’t wipe the smiles off the windsurfers who came in for hot cups of tea (no tea tastes like the tea served at fish and chip shops, except for layby café tea). Even if he did flip open his mobile ‘phone and talk loudly, he could be forgiven as we had seen him and his friends earlier in the day providing great entertainment by zipping over the surface of the sea, then falling in an explosion of spray when trying to turn. As he said into his mobile ‘mate, you missed the sail of the century!’.
Usually I don’t notice annoying diners, that’s because I am, invariably the loudest and drunkest person in the room and I happen to think that I’m hilarious and, until somebody actually throws a roll at me to shut me up, I’ll maintain that delusion. There are exceptions of course, people on mobile ‘phones are just…perplexing. Why would you be on the mobile ‘phone in a restaurant, unless it’s to call the Environmental Health and actually try to get the place closed down before the desert course which you suspect contains out of date cream in its seafood surprise, the surprise being the use of seafood in a desert course.
Of course there are children, a perennial hazard in restaurants, unless you are a middle class family and are happy to let them get enough booze down their throats to result in their hanging limp from their highchairs for the majority of the meal.
More of a hazard are boozy adults who don’t normally drink and get a bit frisky and loud. Normally this is not a problem in the environment of, say, a Yates’s Wine Lodge, Wetherspoon’s pub or boozah. At Moreston Hall the night we were dining there however, it was quite a different story, as an entire dining room slowly became aware of a woman’s voice getting louder and louder. Actually, not even all that loud, it’s just that everyone around her, in an effect rippling out, either stopped talking or lowered their voice and so the effect was more pronounced.
The reason for this is that ‘Pinkie’, as she referred to herself constantly in the third person, was regaling all at her table with a graphic description of heer going to get a bikini wax. Now I know that they wax surf boards but I had no idea that one should also wax swimwear. Like re-waxing a Barbour jacket I supposed to maintain a waterproof exterior.
No.
In the space of a few horrified minutes I learned much more about bikini waxes than anyone, and I mean anyone, should. As did everyone else in the room. Top marks to Pinkie’s husband though, he obviously reasoned like lightening that asking his wife to lower her voice could cause a cheerful but loud woman who had decided that the dominant taste of the evening should be gin to either be angry or burst into tears. Pinkie, like her story, ran her course and normal conversation resumed. Apart from the mental scarring (and the rash on Pinkie’s mimsy), no damage done.
Next evening at French’s fish and chip shop, at Wells-Next-the-Sea, all the action was outside, with the wind blowing tourists along the front. Even the stiff onshore breeze couldn’t wipe the smiles off the windsurfers who came in for hot cups of tea (no tea tastes like the tea served at fish and chip shops, except for layby café tea). Even if he did flip open his mobile ‘phone and talk loudly, he could be forgiven as we had seen him and his friends earlier in the day providing great entertainment by zipping over the surface of the sea, then falling in an explosion of spray when trying to turn. As he said into his mobile ‘mate, you missed the sail of the century!’.
1 Comments:
i'm surprised you didnt get ddrunk enough to tell her to shut her mouth! that's disgusting.
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