Grumpy Old Woman Eats

You can't criticise Jamie Oliver. I believe it is against the law. He is a National Treasure; a champion for food, an ambassador of eating and because we all love food and treasure we love Jamie.

I've never eaten in a Jamie Oliver restaurant until yesterday. (I know! Where have I been?). He has five types of restaurant and one of those has been franchised, so that there are 42 Jamie's Italians over the country. I'm sure it won't be long before there are franchises for the diner and the British food restaurant as well; the man appears to be going for world domination.

Can I be honest? 

I've never really liked Jamie. Maybe because I am so much older and grumpier than him. His energy and chirpiness always got me down. Whenever he is on TV showing recipes I think they are unnessisarily complicated; I mean, who stuffs their Sunday Pork roast with higher welfare chicken livers and oysters? Stuffing is easy to make with onions, bread and herbs but for a Jamie recipe it always has to be sourdough bread, organic onions grown on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and ethically sourced sage that really, really wants to be picked. 

His television programmes put me off eating anything he cooked, as he seemed to be sniffing. No. Not just sniffing, hawking back great chunks of mucus and wiping his nose on his sleeve. He may not have done any of that but that was my impression.

Obviously, you have to admire the concept behind Fifteen and the work he is doing around children's nutrition and he is always such a happy chappy.

So, why was my experience of his restaurant, Barbacoa, such a difficult one?

We went there to celebrate meat-loving son's 18th birthday. We could because vegetarian daughter was at work. He loved it but the Grumpy Old Woman in me wasn't too happy. This is what she had to say:

1. Dead animal carcasses hanging in the window? Really? That's just tacky. I know it's a meat restaurant but, well, it's not the restaurant at the end of the Universe, we don't need to have a conversation with our cow before deciding to eat it.

2. How many stairs to get into the restaurant? Bouncers with headsets stopping people who haven't booked or who are early from going upstairs, even to the bar, is a bit pretentious.

3. Ooh. It's pretty. What a view. I like London.

4. Actually, this seat arrangement is only good if you don't like the people you are with. I could have a great conversation with St Paul's Cathedral. *looks at LSH, decides it's not so bad after all.

5. It's very dark in here. I can't see the menu. Oh well, I'll just have the smallest steak they've got.

6. Oh, here we go. Up selling waitresses. The special today is a kilogram of meat between two people. Only £60 per person.

7. My steak looks like a joint of beef that we would share between three for a Sunday roast. It's a square of meat, burnt on the outside and still alive on the inside. It's quite tough and I can't see it.

8. My chips are in a bucket. Why? Why does everyone think we like buckets? Luckily, my steak is on a decent sized plate. I had a scone on a small piece of slate the other day and I still haven't recovered. 

9. Conversation is difficult, with our seating positions, the dark and the clattering noise environment.

10. The waitress comes to ask me something. I can't hear her, so I ask if she has a torch. She brings me a sharper knife; it's terribly difficult to hear. It does help with the chunk of cow, though.

11. The LSH and boy have ribs but are surprised. Can you have ribs off the bone?

12. I hit upon a genius plan and used the torch on my phone.

13. Ordering pudding is so much easier.

14. Bacon in my son's Sundae seems to be taking the meat theme a little far. Luckily, there is no meat in my brownie. There's not much brownie in it though with just a small layer of brownie with a chocolate mousse on top. Yes, it's nice but I feel cheated.

15. I've started a trend. It's much lighter. Everyone has their phone torch on.

16. The bill has a donation to Jamie's charity to tackle childhood obesity included. That seems reasonable if not a little hypocritical, as I wonder how many calories I have just consumed.

Lonely Old Cat Lady

When you have been married for as long as we have the conversation sometimes turns to the thorny question of whether you would try to find someone else if you were no longer together. This is a discussion we seem to have had with greater frequency of late, probably because the Long Suffering Husband needs to fantasise about sharing his bed with a more energetic, less grumpy woman who actually sleeps.

We met at an open air disco after the town carnival and again at a friend's 16th Birthday party. I wore a ra-ra skirt and leg warmers (in different colours) and he wore a dark blue shirt with a thin white satin tie. We talked all evening about nothing exciting enough to remember and everything engrossing enough to make us feel as though we were the only two people. Some time later we went to the cinema and it was as easy as that. Now that we are old, it might not be quite so easy to meet someone.

"It's all about technology now," I explained to the LSH as we were walking the dog. "You won't be able to find someone if you never answer your mobile and don't learn how to text!" Listening to friends and colleagues it's clear that you need an online dating profile, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsap, Instagram, Tinder and most importantly, snapchat, so you can share pictures of your private parts. It's now illegal to have a relationship with someone unless you have seen a photo of their genitals and had lengthy 30 character chats with them. The LSH was beginning to get a little worried about ever finding someone else and so made me promise to let him die first, which is something that could be arranged if the World Cup telly hogging doesn't stop soon.

Man and dog watching football

I told him that I would have to write an honest dating profile, which probably wouldn't help me find someone. I wrote an honest dating profile for a recently divorced friend and although she says she loves it I suspect she won't be using it.

"You'll be alright, though," he said, "You don't need anyone." And while I agree with him the next sentence stung a little. "I can see you as one of those crazy old single women surrounded by books and cats."

By the time we got back from our walk I was still feeling misrepresented, so I indignantly told the children what he had said, expecting them to leap to my defence. However, an uncomfortably long pause was followed by an explanation of how it's only because I'm anti-social and really don't like people. No, no, they didn't mean that, it's just that they know I like to be on my own. It's not like it's a bad thing. 

It might be time to do something about this reputation I'm getting. It's time to start accepting invitations to things; to actually go for coffee rather than just keep saying, "we must go for coffee,", or actually drop round and see the new house, or actually go to the party rather than think of excuses. 

Yes, that's what I'll do, I'll be more sociable.

 A party invitation! How lovely! Jugs of Pimms and a fork buffet! Great! I'm there! .......... But Saturday night.....it'll be late....I'll have to leave my book at home....I don't even drink Pimms ......and who wants to eat forks?????

Better get myself a cat then - or could I have pigs instead?