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It being the time of year for that sort of thing, tomorrow night is my work Christmas party. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason, the people that plan these things have decided to take us to this. Bearing in mind my recent run of bad restaurant experiences, and the fact that categorically the worst meal out I have had this year (and one of the worst meals I’ve ever had, for that matter) was on our company holiday in Lisbon back in October, I took the liberty of checking out some of the reviews. It’s not looking good–here’s a selection:

– “This place is wrong, on so many levels.”
– “Awful. Dreadful. Very Very bad. Don’t go. And if someone has booked it for you – don’t turn up. Honestly.”
– “…even if you think ‘well its as much as you can eat and drink for £40 all in’ – It is not worth it.”
– “I have never been anywhere so awful… The unlimited beer and wine was foul.”
– “This was the worst evening out I have ever had in my life. Everything was poor. The staff attitude, the music, the food and the drink, all were poor.”
– “We were served a peculiar meal, which included potatoes, a vegetable discovered by the Elizabethans.”

Even the small number of positive reviews don’t fill me with confidence: one of them describes it as a “tacky touristy place”, and another suggests that “if you want fancy [you should] bugger off to All Bar One”, (which of course we all know to be the epitome of fine dining).

So I find myself with something of a dilemma: should I go? Will it be so bad, it’s good? Should I just go so that I can write about it? Anyone?

Yesterday, Sal and I joined Rob and Claire for an afternoon of Indie fun in Hammersmith at XFM’s Christmas charity gig, the Winter Wonderland, in aid of Shelter. After a few drinks, and a roast lunch, in the Old Ship by the river, we strolled over to the venue just after 5, in time to catch the first band, the winners of the breakfast show’s “School Rock” competition. They were only allowed to play the one song (the dubious cover of No Doubt’s Don’t Speak that had won them the competition), and were quickly ushered off to be replaced by the first of the evening’s “surprise” guests, Pete Docherty. I was really looking forward to this, as I have only ever seen The Libertines fronted by Carl Barat, but unfortunately just as The Libertines are nothing without Pete, so Pete is nothing without them: he stumbled onto the stage clearly somewhat the worse for wear, and began his set by complaining that “they” wouldn’t let the rest of his band play and threatening to start a sit down protest on stage. When he finally got round to playing some music, he massacred a few verses of Time For Heroes (previously one of my favourite Libertines songs) on his acoustic guitar, and tried to dive into the crowd before returning to the stage to half-heartedly go through the motions of Kilimanjaro (joined by the rest of Babyshambles, who had obviously been allowed onto the stage in an attempt to rescue proceedings). Shortly after that he announced to the crowd that they were off to a bar on the Holloway Road, adding: “it’s free to get in” (this to 5,000 people who had paid £20 to attend a Sunday afternoon charity gig that hadn’t started properly yet). With that has was forcibly removed from the stage by a roadie as things were rearranged for the first proper band, The Departure. Unfortunately they were a bit rubbish, and we (Sal) spent most of their set discussing how well endowed the singer appeared to be. I still think it was down to some kind of sock-based padding, but there you go.

Next up was the second “surprise” guest, Tim Wheeler from Ash (according to Christian O’Connell, he was playing on his own because the rest of the band “don’t care about the homeless”). Unlike the drug addled future of rock, Tim knows how to please a crowd, and did so by playing Shining Light and Girl From Mars, which still sounds fantastic even after all these years.

At this point things start to get a bit hazy, and I can’t quite remember the order the bands were on (I’m sorry, but we did get to the pub at 2…), but we definitely saw Kasabian and The Zutons, and they were both great–the latter proving to be much better than the poor man’s Coral I’d always thought them to be (if you’ll forgive the lazy regional stereotyping). The highlight of the night for me came next (after a brief stand-up set from the poor man’s Martin Wickenden, Jimmy Carr). Their singer might be a bit of an idiot, and Golden Touch their best song by miles, but Razorlight were fantastic, almost stealing the show from anthemic Britpop casualties Embrace, although Embrace did have giant balloons and fake snow, so probably a close call.

What a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

Such a shame. We were really looking for a furnished parking space…

Well, it was this, actually, and it inspired me to make this:

(sorry)

I’d like to be able to report that my inability to begin Christmas shopping on Saturday was a result of my passionate support for international Buy Nothing Day, but sadly the reality was the rather more prosaic combination of laziness and hangover, following what might be termed “a big night out” on Friday. Not that there was anything particularly blog-worthy about that particular evening, but I feel bound to mention it if only to demonstrate that I’m not quite the miserable sod these pages might imply: in between drinks on both Friday and Saturday evenings, we went out for meals where the service was flawless. Further, I didn’t at any point need to start an argument with anyone or refuse to pay part of the bill. Apparently, in answer to my question below, no, it isn’t actually that difficult to provide decent restaurant service.

On Monday, Sal surprised me with tickets to see Southport’s finest, Gomez, play what was apparently their 122nd and final gig of 2004. Somehow we had ended up seeing 3 of those 2004 gigs (the others being at the Hammersmith Apollo, and Glastonbury), but it was still an entertaining way to spend an evening. The band were clearly in a celebratory mood too, and at the end, following a raucous Whippin’ Picadilly, they hugged and came to the front of the stage to take a bow together. Nice to see that, despite the curse of the Mercury Prize* and their slightly waning popularity, even after seven years they still seem to be enjoying things.

* The link provides a fairly accurate description of the fortunes of the various Mercury Prize winners, but unfortunately refers to Gomez’s “native Sheffield”. That would be Southport, mate (sure, Ian Ball went to university in Sheffield, where he met Ben Ottewell, the only band member not from Southport, but even he isn’t from Sheffield originally).

Last night Sal and I were both struck by a sudden desire for some good fish, so we met after work outside the tube at Angel and wandered down to the lovely looking fish restaurant just down St John’s Street that we had passed a number of times and always intended to visit: The Fish Shop on St John’s Street. Unfortunately, we encountered yet more shabby service, and this time we didn’t even get as far as ordering anything.

It started when the waiter seated us in the corner of an almost completely empty restaurant, and brought us just the one menu between us. When I asked for another one, he looked rather surprised at the idea that we might both went to choose something, but eventually went off and came back with a slightly soggy menu he found on another table.

Then he appeared with some bread and butter. Although I didn’t notice anything, Sal spotted a big black curly hair on top of it, so she called him back over and asked if we could have another one. A few minutes later he returned with the same helping of butter, still containing the hair, and now with the bonus addition of two large fingerprints. Nice.

So I called him back over and pointed this out, at which point he started arguing with me:

“There’s no hair in there”
“Yes there is–look! [I point to the hair] It also has two large fingerprints on it now”

And with that he rolls his eyes at me, snatches the butter, and heads off to the kitchen in a huff. I don’t know if we were being totally unreasonable in our crazy wish to be treated politely and given food not containing parts of the waiter’s body, but by this point we didn’t really feel like eating there, so we loudly complained to the manager and stormed out. Presumably The Fish Shop on St John’s Street makes a nice living fleecing the pre-theatre crowd on their way to nearby Sadler’s Wells, but we weren’t impressed. Instead we went up the road to The Slaughtered Lamb, an excellent pub just further into the city with an extensive fish menu, (and they even sell bottles of the excellent Coopers beer) and had gorgeous fish and chips for a third of what we might have paid in the Hairiest Restaurant in Islington.

Seriously, basic standards of service. Are they really that difficult?

Just a quick one to say that I have finally got round to starting to read Bill Bryson’s excellent A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I was actually bought as a birthday present last year. Anyway, it is very good and I can’t believe it has taken me so long to get round to cracking the spine. I mention it here, though, because I was wondering if I’m the only person to have noticed something missing from the front cover?

Go on, take a close look… map of the world anyone? Big gaping empty space just north of France?

I saw a classic example of the rules of rock in effect this week. There’s a pretty standard trick that bands tend to pull when arranging tours. The logic goes something along the lines that, if you can probably fill a venue three times, you book it for just two nights, thus ensuring that demand for tickets comfortably outstrips supply. To create even more demand, and galvanise your fans into getting in quick for tickets, even though you have booked two nights at the venue, you only announce one to begin with, and then announce a second extra show when the first one sells out, “due to unprecedented demand” (that being the type of unprecedented demand that you knew about all along, although presumably you expect your fans to think that a series of frantic phone calls have suddenly made special late arrangements to squeeze another date in, and the venue just happens to be free…).

The other day we booked a couple of tickets to see a band next year, and I was rather amused to see that, although the band’s website only mentioned the one show (describing it as a “one off, not to be missed show”, no less), and ticketmaster were dutifully only selling tickets for the one night, someone had forgotten to mention this to the venue, who were selling tickets for a mysterious second night, something the band’s management themselves apparently didn’t even know about. So we booked our tickets for the second date, and sure enough, a couple of days later there it is on the band’s website: “Due to this phenomenal demand, the band have added a second night… Tickets go on sale tomorrow…” Well, that was a stroke of luck, then, wasn’t it.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a new (and actually effective) anti-piracy measure: the dodgy copy of the new U2 album that I’ve been listening to for the last couple of weeks has just started to disintegrate: it started by just skipping, but then I took the disc out of the machine and noticed some really funny blotches on the non playing side of the disc. I tried rubbing them gently to get them off, only to discover that that had the effect of rubbing right through the disc, so you can now see through to the other side. Funnily enough it doesn’t play at all now. I suspect it may be something along these lines, although I’m not sure what a CD eating fungus that thrives in “sultry weather conditions” is doing over here in cold, wintery London…

Earlier in the week Sal and I happened to watch a new BBC show about food that raised an interesting question: what does it take for British people to complain in a restaurant. The show addressed this in the way that TV tends to do these days, by throwing hidden cameras at the question, and sending the two presenters undercover to provide shockingly poor service to a couple of tables of unsuspecting punters, who, predictably, accepted it all without making a fuss. Taking the show’s point that if you don’t complain, restaurant service will never get any better, we both resolved to be more assertive in future. I don’t think we were expecting to put this into practice quite so soon, but sure enough, last night provided the perfect opportunity.

We were heading out for drinks with our friends over in Notting Hill, and stopped beforehand for a quiet meal at a Thai restaurant on the corner of Westbourne Grove. The food was excellent, but the service was pitched at the usual shabby standard that is pretty commonplace in the UK: the wine was opened away from the table, for example (and, for that matter, was poured directly without us being asked if we’d like to test it), a request for a glass of iced water returned a glass of lukewarm water poured from a jug sitting out on the counter (with no ice), and my soup spoon was removed from the bowl as it was cleared away and returned to the place setting so that I could use it to serve out one of the main courses that we were sharing. All of which is pretty standard for eating out in London, and not something that would have moved me to bother complaining, were it not for what happened when the main courses arrived: The waitress put down our two main courses and our bowl of rice, and immediately whisked away the lid from the bowl, leaving us with a large bowl of rice going cold on our table as we started eating. So Sal attracted someone’s attention, and politely asked if it might be possible to have the lid back. Ours had already gone back to the kitchen, but a lid was duly found and no less than the restaurant’s owner brought it over to our table. Before we were trusted with it, however, she said this:

“You have to be very careful with this lid, because if it is left like this [holds lid upside down] and it falls on the ground and breaks, it’s gonna cost you ten pounds”

“Er, Ok…” Sal and I said, looking at each other, trying to remember if either of us had ever eaten in a restaurant before where the owner didn’t think we could be trusted with crockery. When we had finished eating, I resolved that I would have a quiet word to suggest, gently and politely, that this might not be an entirely appropriate way to talk to your customers. And so, emboldened by the Dutch courage brought on by a few glasses of white wine, that is what I did. If she had been prepared to take this on board I would have been perfectly happy, but her response was to start arguing with me, telling me how they had had many of their precious lids broken, and they didn’t have many left now, and they had to tell us what would happen if we broke it. I felt like saying (but didn’t) that what she had said had in fact had the opposite effect–it had made us feel like letting the lid fall on the floor deliberately and then refusing to pay for it just to annoy her, but instead I tried to point out that it felt a bit like we were about five years old and not to be trusted with the best china, but she just got even more argumentative, telling me that I had to be more broad-minded, and at one point saying rather sarcastically “yes, I know the customer is always right… so you can tell me off, but I can’t tell you off…?” [Er, well, yes, exactly: that’s how the customer relationship works–that’s my point]

So with that, I said that if that was her attitude then I would like to have the service charge taken off the bill, thank you very much, whereupon she snatched the bill out of my hands and took it off to the till muttering to herself and her staff. She was still muttering as we left the restaurant.