Who gets to choose, me or someone else?

Recently I went for a meal out in a restaurant with a small group of people. There were six of us. The restaurant was somewhat better than the usual pub style and I was very happy to be able to go. Beloved and I often went out for a meal and occasionally we treated ourselves to a fancier, classier place. Since he's been gone that's happened less and less for me, so an opportunity for a smart meal out is something I enjoy.

One of my fellow diners was new to me, that is to say I knew them but had never been to a restaurant with them. 

I was sitting at one end of the table and the waitress came to me first to take my order; I gave it and chose a glass of wine to go with the meal. It honestly never occurred to me to wait and see what everybody else was having, as we were all going to pay for our meals and drinks ourselves.

Gradually I became aware that ordering took the others rather a long time and there was much discussion as to what everybody should have and which wine to choose. And the new-to-me person decided that they should choose the wine and buy a bottle rather than for everybody to have a glass of their own preference.

As I had already ordered this did not apply to me and I kept quiet. The waitress had gone and promised to be back once the table was ready to order.

Eventually the discussion ended and the meals plus a bottle of wine were duly ordered. Embarrassment over, for now.

The meal was good and we had a pleasant evening with everybody happy to talk and laugh.

Until it was time to pay up. Again my bill was relatively easy and straightforward. I paid, added my tip and awaited events. 

There was now a great need for debate on how to pay; should everybody pay for their own meal and share the cost of the wine, or add up the cost of the total bills and wine; one person would pay by card; they would then get out their calculator and work out how much everybody's share came to. That also meant that everybody would have to have the exact amount of cash in their wallet to reimburse.

The waitress had disappeared once more and I was embarrassed all over again. Eventually they sorted it out somehow, I am not sure how they did it in the end. I went to the bathroom.

What would you have done? Waited and consulted everybody else?  I get to go out so rarely nowadays that I feel entitled to choose my own meal and drink. I also heartily dislike the kerfuffle arising when it comes to paying. I eat and drink what I like and pay for it myself.  

Right? Or bad manners?

Paula

Roughly once a month Paula and I meet for supper and a glass of wine in the White Horse. We book a small table in the pub window which seats two comfortably and four at a squeeze and spend several hours chatting nonstop until we’ve set the world and our small corner of it to rights. Paula has been widowed for several years more than me, she is also a good number of years older and wiser. In spite of her great age she has a permanent twinkle in her eye, she enjoys her life and has no intention of giving in to old age. In our rural world clothes are of little importance really, but Paula always makes an effort, uses make up and has beautifully kept nails. Compared to her I am scruffy.

Provision for old age is high on the agenda in our talk. Both of us own our homes and both receive an old age state pension. We also have additional occupational pensions; maybe Paula’s is worth more than mine as she has been a teacher for many decades and teachers’ pensions in the old days were generous. What I am actually saying is that, things staying as they are, neither of us needs worry about putting food on the table. And yet, we worry.

The funny thing is that Paula worries about the distant future. Her usually so jolly face turns serious. “But what if house prices fall when things get bad with Brexit?" she asks. It seems she has worked out how many years the value of her house would safely see her through the cost of residential care. “So, if in a few years’ time I have to go into a home and my house is worth less than now I could only  afford to have care for five or six years.” Paula sees nothing but penury ahead. Although she spends money on holidays she certainly doesn’t spend freely. Apparently her accountant has asked when she intends to spend a bit more, reminding her that she can’t take it with her. And yet, Paula worries. Paula is in her early 90s and fit mentally and physically so there’s no immediate prospect of her having to go into a care home. (If I could be like her I’d happily live into my early 90s too.) The average lifespan in a care home in the UK is between 1 and 3 years. Therefore, ‘in a few years’ time’ plus several years in residential / nursing care would bring her close to the end 90s. True, none of us knows what lies ahead but I think that her house, pensions and savings will probably see her to her end comfortably. When I tease her and ask how long she plans to go on for she laughs ruefully and admits that she’s both over-ambitious and over-careful.

Here’s a question which exercises me too:

do you splurge or do you hoard ?
do you live every day as if it is your last or do you save your money on the chance you’ll live twenty more years ?


PS: yes, I know this is strictly a first world problem and a very nice one to have. So please don’t remind me of the millions of people who have a hard time putting regular meals on the table and would only be too glad to worry about an old age they may never see. That’s a problem I cannot solve.

"Have A Nice Day Out”,

my friend said. "Enjoy yourself, stop worrying, I’ll look after Millie for the day." The man who arranges such things in Valley’s End had promised a rip-roaring time at the Malvern Theatre for Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rough Crossing’, a play to make us laugh until we peed ourselves.

I took him at his word, booked the trip, paid an exorbitant amount of money up front for coach and ticket and looked forward to the entertainment. Except the nice day out turned into an (almost) unmitigated disaster.

It started as I left in the morning on the way to the bus stop, about 15 minutes walk away from the house. It was blowing a gale, with driving rain. All the way there my umbrella turned itself inside out, every few steps I had to stop and right it. No matter how I held it, into the wind, against the wind, sideways on, the damn thing flapped and creaked and dripped. By the time I got to the bus stop I was drenched, trouser legs sodden from the back of my knees to the hems. Did I say it was also bitterly cold? A little chap walking by on the other side of the road as I was struggling laughed happily. “A bit wet today, isn’t it?” Hahaha. Sadist.

Some of my fellow theatregoers assembled at the bus stop shivered but others were made of sterner stuff. The shelter would normally accommodate six or seven people but a man in a motorised buggy, who had been the sort who feels “entitled” long before he became slightly disabled, assumed that everyone else would gladly leave the shelter to him and stay exposed to the elements. I didn’t, I had been the first to arrive, and I stayed perched on my little seat. Make of that what you will.

The bus arrived and we climbed on board. Luckily, the heating was on and gradually, during the two hour journey, my clothes dried on me. When we got to Malvern the rain had stopped. The mass exodus from the bus duly effected, a large knot of people formed on the pavement, everybody was making arrangements for the hour before lunch and where to have it. Didn’t they have time during the two hour journey to do that? I needed the loo and made for the theatre, shouting to a couple of friends that I would meet them at ‘The Italian’ in an hour’s time, wanting to visit a posh supermarket first to buy some of their famous ‘cook’s ingredients’ to take home to my back-of-beyond-village where such things are only dreamt of, never available.

Of course, I bought too much, now being burdened with an extra load of groceries, my large handbag (purse), my wet umbrella. True, I can’t blame anyone else for this oversight. I am still not a good walker, still limping when I’m tired or when the effort of walking straight and upright gets too much. I no longer use a cane, though. Malvern is a hilly town, I frequently had to stop on the way to the restaurant to catch my breath and straighten up. Gosh, I am an old crock!

The next two hours were a pleasure, I enjoyed my Tagliatelle Bolognese and we all had a couple of glasses of wine, not something we usually do at lunchtime. Everybody got merry, greatly helped by the waiters who flung their ‘per favores’, their ‘pregos’ and ‘grazies’, their ‘signoras’ and signores’ around with wild abandon, who burst into song while sinuously weaving  and undulating between the tables and made much of their giant pepper mills. I bet they were from Roumania really.

Finally it was time to go to the theatre and take our seats, having left coat and groceries at the cloakroom. Stoppard can be a bit of an acquired taste but he has written some really good stuff. Sadly, ‘Rough Crossing’ is far from good, it has the thinnest of plots:

Two famous playwrights, one jealous composer, an unorthodox waiter, and a mistimed lifeboat drill… let the sharp Atlantic winds turn to gales of hysterical laughter as our colourful characters become tantalisingly tangled in a Stoppardian string of absurd events…

If only. The Art Deco set looked splendid and promised much. The moment the actors appeared the promise evaporated and within the first ten minutes several of our coach party were sound asleep. The sound was bad, the dialogue barely distinguishable, the action messy and incomprehensible. The cast (all fairly recognisable TV actors)was lacklustre and seemed tired and bored. We were all disappointed and two of my friends decided they’d had enough and left at the interval, as did several of the others. I had nowhere to go and, in any case, couldn’t face lugging my groceries around, so I stayed to the bitter end. The action perked up for the last ten minutes but by then I’d given up on the play and was simply waiting to be released from captivity. All I wanted was to get on the bus and go home.

But my trials for the day weren’t over. I couldn’t swear to it but I may have, in fact, actually peed myself, even if for quite another reason as the one promised. When I came out of the loo right at the end, before climbing back aboard the coach, I felt a dampish kind of warmth spread over my belly. Yes, the front of my trousers was wet. I had been hovering over the toilet bowl, being loath to sit on the seat which appeared a touch insalubrious. But I had also been sprayed with warm water as I washed my hands afterwards. Enough to cause a damp patch in my trousers? We will never know. Suffice to say that I kept my coat on the whole journey back to Valley’s End and the first thing I did back home was to take a quick shower.