Decline and fall
In the week I was personally involved and witnessed 2 mishaps in restaurants.
The first on Monday evening was a meeting at a private dining room of a club in St James of the Dictator’s Club, a group of industrialists who fund raise money for charity. There was some concern from our Chairman, whose company manufactures glass beads for the eyes of teddy bears, that any intruder or malevolent would regard our activities as out of kilter with today’s PC society. My view was that whilst we needed to be more careful than in the past and no longer have our large banquet style dinner with hostesses which in the past has become a “lad’s night out” we do raise significant amounts for charity. After I made my point I ate a game crisp served to garnish my calves liver and bacon, a particle of which lodged in my gullet inducing a coughing fit. Our chairman speedily practised the Heimlich manoeuvre to free the airways but I can tell you Tickler thought he was popping his clogs.
The second happened yesterday over lunch. Every year our Editor likes us to meet our web designer to see if we are in sync. We all contribute copy to The Rust but how the software operates and what new things we might be doing are foreign to us. So we convened at a low key restaurant in Seaford to avoid too any industrial espionage from snoopers anxious to copycat. The fare was well cooked but basic but to my surprise as we expected a lunchtime restaurant in Seaford by the sea to be deserted it was packed to the gunnels. Indeed we only got the last table. One of our sports staff – I will spare his blushes by not revealing his name – was recounting at some length a tale about a team of imaginary South Americans for whom he played park football. I must confess he lost me but he stood up to illustrate how their anthem Theme for a Common Man was observed . He failed to notice a step and keel hauled backwards casting consternation and chaos in equal measure. I was able to see that startled look just before fall when the person knows something dreadful is about to happen. Fortunately the person was totally unharmed and soon back to the table resuming his story.
Perhaps the funniest such incident involved my godson Jamie. At the Jetty restaurant, which has a number of steps, he failed to notice one and shot like a human cannonball to the other side of the restaurant some 20 feet away spreadeagled like a starfish at the foot of a table. In the immortal words of Fred Astaire in Nothing‘s Impossible he ‘stood himself up, dusted himself down and started all over again.”
All of these are capped by an Irish psychiatrist I know. At the top of a staircase of a restaurant he “took off ’ and literally glided through the air, making a perfect landing with no injury sustained, on top of a table.
