Passing the time last Thursday morning between my weekly turn on Radio Scotland and lunch…
Here I am perched on a stool by the Chinese romance DVDs at the Charing Cross Library killing an hour before I meet my friend Janet for lunch, before spending the afternoon trying to find something to do before I attend some musical soiree at a church in Piccadilly which is something to do with The Guardian and VSO. Why is it that as a Londoner I can’t think of anything I’d really want to be doing in central London – one of the most exciting cities on earth – for a few hours whereas if I was abroad there would be dozens of exciting prospects. All I really want to be doing is updating my Facebook status and I can’t even manage that because there are no free unsecured networks I can log onto. It’s pathetic.
I shall tell you this instead. After previously moaning about Nigella Lawson serving food which took under four minutes to cook yesterday I was obviously punished by the kitchen gods for mocking a saint of theirs by being on the receiving end of an example of behaviour from the other side of the culinary coin. I remain fascinated how in the French café I lunched in, where I was literally the only customer, and where there were at least four members of staff that I could see, it took over half-an-hour to produce the croque monsieur I ordered and ten minutes more than that to show up the with the frites. Remember a croque monsieur is a ham and cheese sandwich fried in butter, then topped with béchamel (just what someone of my girth should be eating) and frites are small shards of potato cooked in fat. The sort of thing a French café can’t be astounded to be asked for, especially when you consider it’s on their menu. But the time it took to appear you’d think I’d asked them to bone a dozen ptarmigans blindfolded. With their hands tied behind their back. I wouldn’t have particularly minded – I’d only gone out for lunch to get out of the way of my cleaner (no I can’t do my own cleaning that would be ridiculous) – if the sweaty top-lipped South African maître d’ hadn’t refused to acknowledge that anything might be slightly wrong and obsequiously brushed away my queries.
I didn’t order a coffee (only because I needed to be in Camden for nine pm) but while he was checking with me for the second time that I didn’t want “anything hot to complete the meal” he unexpectedly became rather keen to explain what had gone wrong. Nothing as far as I can see. Apparently it had bugger all to do with ineptitude in the kitchen but rather the phone had rung once with an enquiry about a waiting job that had been advertised and someone else had brought in their cv. Talk about inundated. (God only knows what would chaos might ensue if there was more than one customer to serve.) Apparently most of the job applicants are “all those Africans who can’t even speak the Queen’s good English” - quelle horreur indeed – and lunch finished on the deeply unappetising note of a white South African doing impressions of black Africans asking for a job. I suspect this chap is always quick off the mark when it comes to an opportunity for one of these performances; it’s just a shame he can’t chivvy the kitchen along when it comes to sarnies.
