It was good to be back

IT was all so ‘England’ and I felt glad to be home

THE hotel’s promise of ‘A good night’s sleep or your money back’ having been fulfilled, I arrived in the restaurant ready for a full English.

Barring my way was the familiar lectern with a sign commanding me to ‘Wait to be seated’.  

No one was in attendance, although a staff member could be heard nearby, having a high level summit with a customer about world issues. 

The place was half empty, so ignoring the sign I selected my own table and deliberately avoiding it, plonked myself nearby and waited.

Sure enough a waitress appeared from nowhere and smilingly indicated the other table where she reseated me. It was the one I had originally selected. I am familiar with the way these people think.

Although I am perfectly able to recognise a grilled tomato and can identify a sausage at 100 metres, and had confirmed that I was a regular client, she was insistent on showing me to the servery to point out each individual item. 

I was enjoying my second pot of tea, when a lady from an adjacent table, informed her companion in a heavily accented voice, that her pancakes were cold. Then with her plate held before her and with a pout that Victoria Beckham would have been proud of, she hurried off to voice her discontent elsewhere.

Simultaneously a family arrived and with his timid wife and two cowed children not two feet from him, the husband bawled: “WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SIT? IN THE WINDOW OR OVER THERE?”  

This loud, one-sided debate went on for a full two minutes before they were shown to a table a good distance from me. Though unmercifully, still in the same hotel.

As I was leaving, two young men dressed in identical black entered, one of them wearing one of those action camera thingy’s strapped to his head. He thought he looked cool.

Actually he looked a dweeb.

It was all so ‘England’ and I felt glad to be home.