The De-Caff Debacle

It's not often that d goes ballistic in restaurants, and when she does, she's usually acting on my behalf, saying the things I'm altogether too bloody British to say. One day, if you're lucky and I'm bored, I'll tell you the story of the ladybug in the Spaghetti House bolognaise. This morning though, prior to hitting the Old Vic for Spacey and Shakespeare, we went for breakfast at what, to us, was a new place. Belushis, London Bridge.

The website had promised the 'best American Diner in London'. Having heard this kind of sentiment from many places that failed to live up to their own hype, we didn't hold our breath, but even so, I don't think we were prepared for the staggering aggression and stupidity we encountered.

Firstly, it turned out to be a sports bar - that's fine, be a sports bar if you can't afford the education to be a real restaurant. It was more the woman behind the bar that was the problem. We had to book our meal at the bar, and pay for it there, before taking a numbered wooden spoon downstairs to a grubby dark corner with torn seats, and a nasty whiff of the bathrooms.

We 'went large' on our breakfasts, and there, on the menu, it said 'free coffee with large breakfasts'.

Right, we said, we'll have the coffee, but can we get it de-caff?

You'd think we'd asked for aborted foetuses in bambi-tears. No! said the horrified bar-woman. We don't have de-caff - coffee without coffee, as I swear she called it. Alright, we said, what can we have in its place. NO! she said, no de-caff! We sighed, said we understood that, so what could we get instead? She pretended not to hear us, so we said it again. Then, in a new twist, she pretended not to understand us.

"Where does it say this?" she demanded. "About the coffee?!"
We sighed again - we'd pretty much moved on by now, but it was becoming a matter of principle.
"Here," we pointed out. "On your menu."
Personally, I was reflecting that I'd expected this whole de-caff thing to get me in trouble one day, but more on the grounds of pretension than because people had never heard of it, or questioned the existence of coffee of any kind.
She read the menu.
"Ach, I don't understand this," she spat.
"Can we just get a Coke and a pineapple juice?" we asked. She poured them for us sullenly, slapped our wooden spoon on the bar and turned her back on us. We slumped down to our darkened room, muttering about how you just can't get the staff these days.

About twenty minutes later, she turned up with our breakfasts, and her agenda on full.
"Listen," she said. "Why are you being like this about the coffee?"
"Seriously?" we asked. "Can we just drop it?"
"No!" she almost shouted at us. "I just don't understand you people, I told you we don't have the de-caff!!"
"Can we eat breakfast now?"
"But why?! Why are you being like this??!"

It was that second assertion that we were being unreasonable that seemed to break d's composure finally.
"Because you're being like you!" she said. "Look, can we see the manager?"
"No, I want to know..."
"Can we see the manager...please," said my girl, with the kind of emphasis that said "get me the manager now...if you like having kneecaps, you demented, psychotic, monomaniacal bitch".

"Oh sure, manager..." muttered the demented, psychotic monomaniacal bitch before fucking most assuredly off.

She came back another half an hour later, with a smile, to take our plates away.
"What, no manager?" said d.
"Oh yeah, sorry - my manager's not here today," she smirked, before, as it happened, fucking most assuredly off...again.
I needed to pee before we left. As it turned out, the faint whiff of bathroom was in fact the overpowering stench of bathroom once you dared go anywhere near them. They were about a degree and a half better than British railway platform toilets.

By the time I came out and walked back up the stairs, you could hear the respectful hush of d talking to the manager.

Yep, the manager who wasn't there today. He was. He was listening as d told him the story, with the psycho-bitch standing, denying every word. I turned up, nodded meaningfully. The bitch was just about to try and tear a strip off d, when d surprised her by...well, frankly by being American.
"Nono - this is my time now, you say nothing," she told the bitch, who, taken aback by not being able to browbeat her, said nothing.

We left, and the bitch followed us out.
"Just keep moving honey," I murmured, "she's behind us." We got on a bus before the mad bint threw sharp cutlery items at our retreating spines.

The upside of all this is that we discovered that sometimes, Prets are open.

I should explain that over here, there's a chain of cafes, called Pret A Manger. We've never, when we've been together, seen one that was a) open and b) selling anything edible.
This might sound glib, but it's actually become a running gag between the two of us.
"Oh look dear, there's a Pret."
"It's closed."

Except today, we found a Pret that was both open, and actually able to sell us things that were edible. It was a weird kind of revelation, and one with which I'm not sure we're ultimately comfortable. Only time will tell.

Spacey and Shakespeare were pretty much as you'd expect Spacey and Shakespeare to be - three and a half hours of mesmerising performance. There was some scenery-chewing, but there was also undoubtedly the best performance in the role of Buckingham that I've ever seen, and a highly memorable Richard.

Tomorrow, there's a day of doing buggerall and not going outside our door - because it's Sunday goddammit, and we don't have to do anything if we don't want to, so nehh!

Oh and for my fellow vampires, blood today was 4.8 - particularly weird, given that we actually had a fairly hefty Indian meal last night...
Have to wonder if this means I'm getting steadily less diabetic as this project continues.