Thursday, March 12, 2009

Port out, starboard home Breakfast....

'....Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you....' [Zechariah 9:12]

Jacks Fletch’s Back ;O)

There are few things in life that can exceed a really good Breakfast. It’s virtually impossible (if you exclude anything glorious in the morning!), to beat a fine full English breakfast served piping hot to your table, complimented by a good French blended coffee to ease your awakening. This whilst you relax and peruse your chosen daily rag, which in my case is The Guardian. Obviously this does mean wasting half the time filtering through the twaddle written by various dungaree wearing lesbian social workers, trying to convince me that the only way to save the planet is to purchase eco-friendly ice cube bags and bio-degradable wessel poisons, but nevertheless a worthy publication I mostly sympathies with (who are you calling a Liberal Hippy! ;o) )

I mention breakfast, for last week while I was sitting down trying to enjoy a very mediocre, luke warm offering , accompanied by coffee that had been sitting on a hot plate just maybe an hour or four past it's best, in a hotel I’ve been spending a lot of time at recently (if you ever want to stay in Chichester I can recommend it, just not the sausages), when my attention was drawn abruptly away from a very interesting article about the influence the El’Neno effect is apparently having on blind migratory badgers, by a sudden and quite disturbing raised voice.

For whilst I’d been distracted by stories of sightless carnivorous mustelids, two of the hotels older (and I’m being very nice here), residents had managed, unobserved by myself, to amble into the restaurant and seat themselves not twenty feet away from me. Twenty feet is the important facet of that last sentence, for it might seem like a rather large distance for one table to be sat away from another in a restaurant, but fortunately for me, it appeared both the ‘olds’ were profoundly deaf! This indeed was opportune, for I do take pleasure in people watching and in this case people listening, and what followed was one of the most amusing conversations I’ve ever had the privilege to overhear.

So I’ll set the scene. The ‘olds’, husband and wife, frail, mid to late seventies, very well dressed, I mean who wears a cravat to breakfast? (I was just impressed he’d managed to tie it!), start to have a loud but very well spoken conversation about their plans for the day ahead (this mostly involved preparation for his various naps!). Now forget if you can that our ‘olds’ are constantly talking/shouting down to the waiting staff in that middle class fashion only gained by attending the right prep. school, what existed was something of a communication problem with the hotel staff. The two very efficient waitresses, as is so much the apparent need these days were of Eastern European nationality, but even so perfectly capable of probably better English than myself. Unfortunately what they lacked was just those slight nuances of understanding to fully comprehend the English landed gentry.

So that’s the scene, here’s the act. A single sentence that confirmed my every suspicion I’d ever had about the toffs in our society and the solitary reason why I now believe every member of the House of Lords should be taken out and shot! A moment of complete humiliation for those effected and of total embarrassment for the rest of us present, on par with witnessing English football hooligans running riot.

Oldman shouting at wife – “I suppose we have to put up with these young foreign girls these days because all ours own girls are at University!”

Laugh, I couldn’t help myself, it was carnage, there was bacon everywhere… Fortunately the 'olds' didn’t hear me…:o)

Hope you're all cool out there in Cyberland... :O)

Ciao Ciao
Confused From Cambridge
I Blog There4 I Am

26Comments:

Blogger gemmak said...

...but did they shop in John Lewis?? ;o)

7:49 am  
Blogger Sage said...

So funny, but so very very English...lol

9:18 am  
Blogger Mas. said...

chuckling here
(it seems so much like a scene from every hotel I've ever spent time in..)

M

9:58 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I want to know what Gemmaks reward is?.

10:16 am  
Blogger gemmak said...

Fabulous: So do I!!! ;o)

10:20 am  
Blogger Lisa said...

Hmmm... Perhaps these strange people follow you around.

10:24 am  
Blogger Daisy said...

I might have to start dressing for breakfast. I usually just eat in my furry pajamas.

10:30 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so then... what are we going to do about the blind migratory badgers?
also, should I throw out my dungarees?

10:41 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Annoyingly they are nearly always waitresses rather than waiters nowadays so one is no longer able to shout:

"You, boy, bring me my croquet mallet, I fancy a chukka or two before tiffin".

Ah, happy days.

p.s. The Guardian? Really?? You'll be telling me you listen to The Archers next... :-)

10:43 am  
Blogger Zed said...

Bloody furriners - I wish they'd stay out of Belgium ;)

10:54 am  
Blogger Kitty said...

Hee, that's a comment worthy of the Prince of tactless remarks himself.

Dressed for brekky!, almost make me ashamed to be sitting here in my nightie with my bowl of porridge.... almost.

10:58 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Um...hello! :D

11:07 am  
Blogger Jacques Hughes said...

You don't wear a cravat for breakfast? What kind of feckless, wandering mendicant are you sir?

There. Fixed that for you :)

11:10 am  
Blogger mainely stitching said...

I am shamelessly contributing toward jane's special reward ... while wickedly wondering just what that might be. ;)

11:14 am  
Blogger Dave said...

Don't you just love these peeps. They inhabit every Hotel I have ever stayed in..... York last December. Same scene[almost] old lady said loudly to husband.
' My buns are stale now...' cue sniggering from surrounding tables.... followed by outright laughter when he replied...
'Yes dear, I noticed ...'

Priceless..

11:30 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello, is Vic there?

11:33 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hysterical - that's my mum all over - she says this stuff that curls me up in embarrassment at the time but is hysterical looking back ... what about this one?
I gave my father a pampas grass plant as a birthday present once (he had asked for it) and she said loudly, in front of a load of my friends "oh how nice, you see a lot of those plants in the council estate"

rest my case!

11:47 am  
Blogger crpitt said...

GemmaK made me comment.

Curse you for mentioning breakfast and bacon.

12:17 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I shall have to suspend my "Olds" behaviour when down in Southern parts in the area of Fletch and you know who.

Well spotted and drawn!

12:51 pm  
Blogger Silverback said...

I never even knew you HAD a blog. Welcome back.

Yes I'm about ready for an "Ulster Fry" myself after 6 months of nasty streaky bacon and tasteless sausage patties here. Not every day I hasten to add.

And don't take the piss out of cravats. Mine keeps the sun off my follicly challenged head just fine !

12:57 pm  
Blogger Shephard said...

It all sounds veddy British, especially the badgers part. :)
~S

3:51 pm  
Blogger Jennytc said...

I'm still stuck on the Guardian. Do you have a beard and wear a duffle coat and sandals as well? ;)

6:54 pm  
Blogger Joan said...

My dear Fletch....were you per chance staying at "Fawlty Towers?"

You were probably in the scene where they fired Manuel and hired outside help. God help you man. Manuel knows his shit.

I'm hoping Jane's reward will not be just a romp in the hay, but something more substantial like perhaps .. a pony. Every girl should have a pony. Or an I Phone.

You will probably get lucky tonight without it, but if I know Jane, she might be over the moon with and I phone. You get my drift.

Carry on.

12:45 am  
Blogger Dale said...

I-phone. i-phone. Eye-bloody-phone.

6:12 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Welcome back, Fletch!

12:49 am  
Blogger Felicia the Geeky Blogger said...

Welcome Back!!!!

1:40 pm  

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