Lou's Mid-Month Musings: It always comes in threes...The Wilford Curse

They say that bad things always come in threes, and it's true that the last three social occasions I've attempted have all gone wrong in some way or another. I don't mean they've been complete wash-outs, but the Wilford Curse has certainly struck on all three occasions.

1. Mrs Warren's Profession

My friend, B, and I went to see a live streaming of Mrs Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw at our local cinema about a fortnight ago. It starred the wonderful Imelda Staunton and her equally wonderful daughter Bessie Carter in the central roles of mother and daughter, and was streamed from a performance during the recent National Theatre production of the play.

B and I had planned to meet at her house and go in one car to the cinema. She assured me it began at 7.30, but to be safe asked me to get to her house by 6.50 so that we had ample time to arrive in a relaxed manner [ie, so we could buy ice-cream before the performance started]. 

Typically, I set off late - I'm always trying to fit in tasks like writing this column or doing prep for my teaching or writing reviews  of other people's work, between other tasks, and time often runs away with me. It was a Thursday evening, and as I drove frantically to B's house, I became increasingly stressed. I don't like driving when it's dark these days as I have cataracts in both eyes [they are invisible to the naked eye but still affect my vision] which make the lights of oncoming cars seem extremely bright and diffused. Also, between B's house and mine, there were FOUR traffic-light-controlled roadworks, and inevitably the lights were on red each time I approached them. I kept thinking 'I'll be there soon, and I can get into B's much more comfortable car and let her drive from there, so just a bit further...'. 

By the time I reached her house, I was extremely tense - my shoulders were stiff, my neck was beginning to hurt, and I was sweating as if I'd jogged the whole way. B was outside, on the pavement, which was unusual, and - as I emerged shakily from my car - she walked towards me and asked if we could go in my car as she had a very bad headache, which she'd had all day...

My heart sank. B does loads of the driving for our social events, and it was certainly my turn, but I felt so shaky and anxious that I was dreading the rest of the journey. I rarely drive into Rotherham these days and I had heard that the layout of the roads had changed. Anyway, I pulled myself together and we set off. B had to guide me part of the route, and I kept getting in the wrong lanes. I felt like I was driving too fast [though I think B felt I was going too slow as she's a much more 'assertive' driver than me], and I felt like I was making minor mistakes all the time. We did arrive at 7.20, however, in good time for the performance [we thought], and B's headache had gone off to some extent, probably due to the release of adrenaline as her fight or flight mechanism kicked in during the journey! Especially when I kept bouncing over speed humps and down potholes...

As we had ten minutes to spare [we thought], we decided to buy ice creams. One of my scoops was bright blue but tasted like raspberry and had tiny fish-shaped jellies in it, which was a novelty. As we entered the specific cinema in which the play was being screened, B said 'They'll be showing trailers for twenty minutes before the film comes on', but she was wrong. Inside, the auditorium was very dark and the play was obviously half-way through. It turned out it started at seven, not seven thirty, and they don't have trailers on before live- streamed plays. 

The cinema had a discount for couples, for some reason, so B had booked the tickets as if we were a couple, and that might be why our allocated seats were on the back row. So we had to climb up lots of steps in the dark, both carrying ice-creams, and feel for our seats with our hands. I immediately realised I had spilled virtually a whole scoop of ice cream down my front, and, when the lights finally came up, B discovered that she had done the same. So we walked out of the cinema trying to fasten our coats to hide the huge ice-cream stains across our breasts. Matters were made worse when I accidentally caught the seat-recliner button and my legs were suddenly lifted from the floor, making me let out a small yelp. I'd forgotten the cinema has reclining seats and I thought my chair was collapsing.

Though we'd missed the first half-hour of the play, we'd seen enough to judge it a good production, well-acted and full of sly discussions about contemporary social issues. The only odd note was the weird group of characters in their underwear or possibly Victorian night attire who kept appearing on stage for no apparent reason - I think they were meant to represent poverty-stricken women forced into prostitution by desperation, but it wasn't wholly clear. 

Unfortunately, I have now reached the age where I can't watch anything without trying to work out who the actors are and what else they've been in. This particular mental illness seems to kick-in around sixty. P and I spend most of every TV programme we watch trying to work out where we've seen the protagonist before - it used to irritate me when my mum or P's parents did this, but it appears to be an inevitable stage of growing older. I spent a lot of time during Mrs Warren's Profession being distracted by trying to decide whether one of the actors was Star Trek's Alexander Siddig [it wasn't - and, in retrospect, the actor didn't actually look much like him at all, even after I added several decades of ageing since Deep Space Nine aired] and which of the Glenister acting brothers was playing one of the roles [it was Robert]. I also spent quite some time firstly trying to work out who one of the other actors was, then realising it was the actor who plays Mr Molesley in Downton Abbey, the final film of which we had seen in the same cinema only a few weeks earlier, and who also turned up in the BBC series Riot Women recently, playing a pompous neighbour, a role he was born to play. I found out later that he's called Kevin Doyle and was also in Happy Valley and The Lakes. 

So, when you add that to our tardy arrival, and the fact I nodded off twice [the seats at Arc cinemas are really comfy - if only theatre seats were the same], I probably only saw about fifteen minutes of the actual play.

I was slightly less erratic when I drove home. I think the nap and the snack had calmed me down. Outside her house, B invited me in for coffee, which I declined on the grounds that it had been a nice date but we all know what 'coming in for coffee' means, and her husband was asleep upstairs. Also, P had texted me twice to ask when I'd be home as he'd prepared some food for me. But the main reason I turned down her offer to come inside, have a drink and sit on a comfy settee, was that I knew that we'd be talking half the night. The last time that happened, I lost the power of speech and B ended up spending the night at my house, though my mega-snoring prevented her getting much sleep [narrated in a previous post]. 

Two hours later, sitting in the car, we finally stopped talking. I might as well have just gone in, after all. B got out of the car and I drove home to try to pacify P.

2. Dobbies Garden Centre

At half-term, P drove me over to Stockport to meet my friend, D. I usually drive myself but I have recently lost my confidence driving [see above], and feel like I might accidentally drive off the Woodhead Pass into the reservoir, so P kindly offered to take me. 

We picked D up from her house and she suggested we go to a local Dobbies garden centre for lunch - P went to a nearby pub to have his lunch and do some marking. The reason I give you this information is to explain that we were dropped off at the garden centre, and had no way of going elsewhere without ringing P.

What we had foolishly failed to anticipate was that, it being half-term and Dobbies having a free kids' play area, the cafe was absolutely heaving with customers. The system was to get a table and then queue up to order the food, giving the staff the table number. D and I walked round the whole cafe but couldn't find a free table, though there were tables outside. We couldn't go elsewhere as we didn't have a car and neither of us wanted to disturb P who was probably, by this time, settled at a table, ordering his lunch and embarking on his marking. It wasn't the sort of place from where you could walk elsewhere in search of a cafe with a free table. So we decided we'd have to sit outside - it wasn't raining and was quite mild though there was a strong wind.

We got into the horrendously long queue for food, without realising at that moment that we needed a table number. Astonishingly, they actually did cheese and tomato sandwiches [I have bemoaned the fact that nowhere seems to make cheese and tomato sandwiches these days, elsewhere in this blog] so I cheered up considerably. Then D spotted some people leaving a table near the counter so she grabbed it, leaving me to order the food. She yelled to me that our table was number seven.

The queue to be served was excruciatingly slow because, as I realised several minutes into the wait, another - shorter - queue was forming at the till, in the opposite direction - this was a queue of people wishing to get their money back as they'd been waiting so long. A little middle-aged man in big glasses and a green apron was announcing to anyone who would listen that he was the General Manager and encouraging these people to form a separate queue to get their refunds. 

The woman on the till, who was very pleasant and deserves a medal, was attempting to serve this extra queue while also taking orders from the established queue. The woman in front of me in my queue had ordered three cappuccinos from the server behind the counter, who appeared to be just serving drinks, Food orders had to go through the poor woman on the till. This meant that the coffees that had been made by this server were going cold while we all waited for people in the other queue to get their refunds. At the till, the woman with the cold coffees asked if she could have three fresh coffees as the others were lukewarm at best by now, so this caused more delay. 

Anyway, I finally ordered our food, gave the table number, and was informed apologetically and with a great deal of embarrassment by the nice woman on the till that it would be 'at least an hour and probably two' before the food arrived. It was around one o'clock by this time, but I figured that D and I would be chatting all afternoon anyway so it didn't seem such a big deal. Back at the table, I told D how long the food would be and we both agreed that it was ridiculous - and then, like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben, the little man in big glasses and a green apron suddenly appeared and announced he was the General Manager. I felt like advising him not to keep admitting this as he was likely to get lynched, the way things were going. 

'You are right, it is ridiculous,' he said. 'We just didn't expect to be this busy and we don't have enough staff.' 

No, a school holiday and a free kids' play area - who'd have thought it would be this busy? I stopped myself mentioning that several people in the queue had told me it was often like this on school and Bank holidays. I wonder why they keep going there? D says the cakes are lovely, but to be honest I thought they looked dry and unappetising [I was wrong however as we discovered later].

Anyway, D and I settled down for a good chinwag, and when an hour and a half had passed, D went to the till to enquire after our food. She returned saying they were going to check. A couple of minutes later, the little man in big glasses and a green apron arrived at our table and sat down.

'I'm the General Manager,' he told us again. 

'We know,' we said. 

'I've got bad news,' he said. 'I'm afraid we couldn't find you.' 

'What do you mean?' I asked. 

'Well, the waitress tried to find you but she couldn't find your table.' 

'So, where is our food now?' asked D. 

'We've thrown it away,' he said. 'You didn't give your table number.' 

'I definitely did,' I said, feeling the red mist descend. I had low blood sugar and hadn't eaten all day.

The General Manager looked at me nervously. 'You can get yourselves some cake - on us, of course,' he said. 

'But why can't you just go and make us our sandwiches now?' I asked. 

'We've turned off all the appliances. We have to turn them off at a certain time.' 

'But you don't need appliances to make a cheese and tomato sandwich!' 

'The kitchen's shut now. The chef has gone home.' 

I found this difficult to believe and he obviously noticed as he hurriedly added: 'If you save your receipt, next time you're in here you can get all the things you ordered today for free.'  

'I won't be coming back here - I live in Yorkshire. And we can't go anywhere else as we have no car until my husband picks us up. Anywhere, nowhere else will be open now. We've been waiting two hours!' 

'Well, you can have what you want from the cake stand for free...' 

'And drinks too,' I insisted. 'No one wants cake without a drink.'

'Yes, whatever you want.' 

Unfortunately, I didn't really fancy the cake but I had the last almond croissant on the cake table and it was, if I'm honest, very pleasant. D had some nice-looking cake that she said tasted good. We had another coffee and were mildly pacified. 

But we were both affected by simmering outrage, and we told each other we wouldn't be going back there to re-order what we'd ordered today in order to get it free. I wanted my money back.

I scuttled across the room to where the little man in the big glasses was talking to a waitress and looking as if he was close to tears.

'I won't be coming back here, so can I just get my money back?' I asked.

'Yes, if that's what you want.' He looked like, if I'd pushed harder, we might have got two tickets for Wembley and the use of his mobile home in Filey for the weekend,  so I must have been looking very fierce. That's what low blood sugar can do to you.

'The General Manager told us we could a full refund,' I told the nice woman at the till. 'Because we never got our food.'

'What, even the drinks?'

'That's what he said,' I lied.

So, in one way, this was a satisfactory ending, but in another it was outrageous. We had a quick look at the overpriced tat in the actual garden centre, then rang P to come and collect us.

As we left the cafe, I noticed that our table was actually Number One, not Number Seven. It was in that fancy script that adds a little dash thingy on top which could make it look like a seven if you only gave it a cursory glance. And the fact that it was the table closest to the counter meant that, logically, it would have been at the start or the end of the table numbers, not number seven. But I don't blame D - she was stressed, and the place was loud and crowded and chaotic. It was an easy mistake to make.

And, let's face it, if there is an easy mistake to make, we'll make it.

3. Merlin

My third chaotic social event involves my friend B again, though this time she wasn't actually present. We'd bought tickets ages ago for a matinee performance of a Northern Ballet production called Merlin at the Lyceum in Sheffield, but B had selfishly caught a virus and was unable to attend. She was moaning on about having to get antibiotics as it was exacerbating her asthma blah blah blah...

Of course, I'm only joking. She was in fact very poorly and not moaning at all, even though it meant she had to miss a show she was looking forward to. You'll be glad to know she's on her way to a full recovery now.

Anyway, P agreed to go instead. He isn't exactly a ballet fan, but he can tolerate it, and at times really enjoy it, and - as he always says -  'Who doesn't like watching pretty girls in flimsy clothing performing mind-boggling dance moves?'. It did mean that he had to rearrange his own social calendar that day, however, as he was supposed to be meeting a friend for lunch. 

P drove us to Sheffield but absent-mindedly went the same route he uses for work, which was at least ten minutes longer than the route I'd have taken. This meant we had to run to get to the theatre. When we arrived, they did the usual bag-checking [they've recently added an extra layer: you have to cross your heart that you aren't carrying peanuts anywhere on your person]. Then we both needed the toilet, which is down a long flight of stairs. I was sitting inside a cubicle when a stern voice over the tannoy announced that the ballet was beginning in 'three minutes'.

We rushed to our seat, in the middle of row Q in the stalls, feeling hot and sweaty, and having to scramble past half the row of mostly elderly audience members, tripping over their bags, hitting them in the face with my shoulder bag and our coats, and apologising all the way.

We sat down. The lights stayed on. We bemoaned the fact that we hadn't had time to buy a programme. The lights stayed on. I expressed a mild curiosity about why two people who looked like stage managers kept running backwards and forwards into and out of a concealed door in one of the boxes. Philip tried to explain the Arthurian legend extremely quickly to me before the lights went down. The lights stayed on. I turned off my phone and tried to persuade P to turn his off, but he claimed it wouldn't disturb anyone and he couldn't get it out of his pocket easily. The lights stayed on.

'Surely it's been longer than three minutes since we were in the toilets?' I said, eventually. 'What time is it?'

'Don't know. Can't get my phone out of my pocket.'

'Haven't you got your watch on?'

'I forgot.'

'Bloody hell, P!'

Several elderly women near us tutted quietly.

'Well, you haven't got yours, have you?'

In the end, I looked over the shoulder of the lady in front who was looking at her phone and saw it was 2:13. The performance was due to start at 2.00. 

At 2.30, they announced they had been having a technical difficulty which had now been resolved, so the performance was about to begin. Five minutes after that, it did so.

It has to be said that the ballet was wonderful. B sadly missed a great show. The sets and costumes were magical. The scene where the undersea gods and goddesses danced was enchanting. The ballerina who played Morgan La Fey was superb. The dancer who played Merlin himself was brilliant. Best of all, they had puppet hounds and a puppet dragon!

Nevertheless, I still couldn't make out what was happening most of the time. 

At the interval, we managed to get a programme and discovered that Northern Ballet had taken a degree of artistic license with the narrative, so P's synopsis had been misleading. The second half was easier to follow.

We also bought ice-creams in the interval [I blame B for this - she's an ice-cream addict and has led me astray. I never used to eat or drink in auditoriums], though my mint choc chip one tasted like Colgate Whitening toothpaste and was utterly disgusting [though it cleared out my sinuses].

I returned to our seats before Philip during the interval but went down the wrong row, TWICE. I also went down the correct row twice as I failed to recognise my own coat. Fellow audience members, seeing that I was obviously a certified moron, tried to help, though some were clearly annoyed by my meanderings. I heard the tut I'd heard earlier when I swore, which actually helped me locate my seat in the end.

I had booked a restaurant, Grazie on Leopold Street, for after the matinee performance. I booked this specifically because B had once mentioned she fancied going there, so it was a pity she didn't get to try it out. I had seen a YouTube video in which a young man ate there and reviewed it in glowing terms. It is owned by a Puglian family and they make their own pasta. As the play began half an hour late, it finished late too and the restaurant wasn't quite where I thought it was, so we arrived sweaty and breathless. It was one of those days.

The menu had a whole page devoted to different shapes of pasta. There were tiny pictures of the pasta, followed by a generic description of it, and then a specific description of how Grazie served it. There were very few of the types of pasta with which most people here are familiar, such as penne, rigatoni, spaghetti, linguine, farfalle, etc. Most of the pasta shapes were new to me. They did have ravioli, however, and the generic description said something like 'Small parcels, stuffed with various fillings, and usually served with a sauce or broth'. Below that, it said 'Squid ink, filled with [and then there followed what seemed like a very extensive list of ingredients]'. I was fascinated to see how they could fit all these things inside a ravioli, but it didn't seem obvious to me how Grazie's ravioli was served. Did it come with a sauce or a broth? Was the squid ink in the pasta or served as a sauce? The waiter spoke very little English and, when asked what kind of sauce or broth the ravioli came with, he simply read out [badly] what it said on the menu like a five year old reading to his teacher. I'm not sure why he thought that having an Italian man who spoke very little English read out a few sentences he could barely pronounce, when I was perfectly capable of reading it myself, and had already done so, would help. 

Anyway, I decided to go for it, despite the fact that it cost more than £25. P's basic ragu sauce with some sort of frilly pasta ribbons cost about £19, and that was definitely something I often cook at home. We both felt the prices were high - it was only pasta, after all. Yes, it was homemade, but is that really so much better than the stuff you can buy for a couple of quid in Aldi? And the portions were small. There were five ravioli in my dish. 

The squid ink had been put into the pasta itself so the ravioli were black, and sitting in what seemed to be both a sauce and a broth. It is difficult to say what flavour the sauce was except that the first two mouthfuls were almost unbearably salty. I was on the verge of psyching myself up to complain when suddenly the excessive saltiness seemed to transform into deliciousness. It was as magical as the ballet had been. I couldn't taste any of the plethora of ingredients the menu claimed were stuffed into each ravioli, or in the sauce/broth, but it was actually one of the nicest pasta dishes I've ever eaten. P enjoyed his too, but said he thought it was over-priced for what it was. We each had a glass of the house red - I asked for a small one and P asked for a medium, which was confirmed by the receipt, but when the glasses arrived they were exactly the same size with the same amount of wine in each - we don't know whether we got a bit extra or a bit less, but each glass had a different price despite being identical in volume.

We finally got home and decided that, by our standards, it had been a good day out.

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We had a more successful social event during the half-term break - one of our bi-annual Feasts with The Master. This time it took place at Shire Oak Manor and I was cooking a French Feast. I served Ardennes pate, confit de canard with dauphinoise potatoes, and cherry clafoutis. We drank too much French wine while listening to a medley of French popular music, and watched past episodes of Would I Lie To You? until late in the evening. This is how 'old people' party, apparently.  

P looking extraordinarily camp

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