On Christmas Day, Ruth and I conspired to go out on Thursday and NOT New Year's Eve. Because we're Sensible Ladies. Sensible Ladies wear coats when it's cold. Sensible Ladies wear proper shoes to ward off the awful offal of old snow. Sensible Ladies are sensible.
And this Sensible Lady turned out to be a Party Pooper.
It was a great plan. Get out of Durham. Go to Low Fell. Meet up with four other Sensible Ladies. Eat food, Indian preferably. Make fun of Insensible Chicks. Then drinky afterward. Possibly more making fun of Insensible Chicks because, really, their attire is most inappropriate for the weather we're having.
In my perspective, and also based on what I was told, Low Fell is a suburb of Gateshead which is a satellite of Newcastle upon Tyne. It was hilly. It has three or four stoplights. Compared to my little village's one stoplight, Low Fell is cosmopolitan; it has a Boots (akin to Walgreen's) and a Greggs (chain bakery).
Pre-game: We arrive in Low Fell early, so we stop in at the local for a glass of red for Ruth. I stuck with a half-pint, just to be sociable. I don't think I'm ever going to get used to the cultural difference between Americans and the British when it comes to paying... Ruth bought my half pint of John Smith's before I knew it. Even so, it's nice but dangerous...what if I don't buy a drink for Ruth later on (which I didn't)? I just know I'm going to get labeled 'cheapskate'.
Ruth tells me a little about the women who'll be joining us at the restaurant next door: Ruth, her friend from high school I've met already, is a geneticist working for the NHS. Kath has two children and a chef/husband. Angie's got kids too, works for Barclay's, and is quite loud.
This is what I'm told in addition to several other details, but this is the gist of it.
Objective: Eat Indian food.
Mission was accomplished. I met the friends from back in Ruth's day (high school). They were a really nice bunch of gals. But they could put wine away like it was on sale and on fire. I'm no longer the young, vibrant, stupid kid I used to be. And that's okay. Took me that night to finally figure it out. They kept buying bottles and I'm thinking, "Great, I'm going to be paying for a whole bottle of wine." I had two glasses the whole night spent at the restaurant... This isn't really interesting...it's only what I remember...we're talking about near four hours of conversation in a dialect that I sometimes have difficulty hearing properly. Here's the beginning of Party Pooper: I ordered a glass of water. And then another. Don't worry. It gets funnier in that sad way if you know how I roll.
So I'm eating Aloo Chop, Pathia Lamb and naan bread. The Aloo Chop were like latkes but in pod form. Pathia is sort of smooth, no real vegetable chunks but appears tomato based with a hint of coconut. I got a lot of weird looks (read: raised eyebrows) for not ordering Pillau Rice with my meal. Eh... I know what I like and how I like to eat it. I don't need the big shiny plate that replaces my starter plate. Just give me the metal bowl with the Pathia and I'm good. But since rice was ordered, the others used their plates...forcing me to do likewise. Of course I have to use table manners! This isn't the takeaway.
I've said before that Indian restaurants are the Mexican restaurants of England. Here's the proof: pappadoms. They come with chutneys and other sauces. They're rather large and crispy, so you break off pieces and dip them in the chutney. How is this not similar to tortilla chips, queso, and salsa? Cauliflower is to Indian cuisine as corn is to Mexican cuisine. How's that for AP training?
I get full fairly quickly. So do the others. There's discussion about how sitting up straight allows one to eat more, gravity helping matters. We all sit a bit straighter and keep eating because we now have more room! YES!
I didn't do a lot of talking at dinner. Mainly I listened. Wherever there was a point I could contribute, I did... but for the most part, what can a person say in a conversation that is mainly reminiscing about an 18th birthday celebration in which one of the people at the table went on-stage at the bar and lifted her skirts to show off her navel piercing? Or about how in high school who was the baddest because they would skip their class to go sit in another class and wait for that teacher to notice? {this was mildly irritating}
I don't mind being the listener in a conversation that I have no real connection to. I do mind topic choice, however. If I'd had my druthers, things could have been more cerebral. Having said that, I did get a little bit more of a grasp of British adolescent girl behavior as of fifteen years ago. And I did get to be present at a gathering of friends, who graciously explained the more obscure references to their past.
And the headache began slowly, steadily spreading from my inner right eye, moving above my eyebrows and into my ears. The pulsing Christmas lights hurt my eyes even while not looking at them. I couldn't drink enough water and both times I asked for a refill, I only irritated our sullen waiter further.
It was time to pay the bill. I get out my card, the others all get out cash and decide to each pay £25. Now, I'm irritated because I feel like I've got to do the same. My portion was only £21 and it is mean to not contribute that extra £4 but that service sucked. You don't have to tip here the way you do at home. You tip if you think they did a good job. My experience with all Indian restaurants here is that the waiters really don't want to wait on you, that it is something so beneath them, they only deign to work there. And so, with eight eyes watching me try to do arithmetic on two glasses of wine (yup, total lightweight) and a snooty waiter who isn't at all helpful, I cave and have him put £25 on my card. What else could I have done? Every one else put cash on the table.
I kept the equilibrium from upsetting. And I've got 'when in Rome...' cycling in my thoughts. I'm not upset that this is how things are done, I'm ticked off at myself for caring about and yes, for letting myself feel pressured to do what everyone else did. I think two naans never made it to the table, but we still got charged for it. That ticks me off too.
None of that helped my headache. Getting out of the restaurant and into the cold, crisp air didn't help. The short walk from the restaurant to the Beaconfield, aka the Beak, didn't help.
I upped to the bar. I ordered a Diet Coke, felt like a caffeine headache. I sat down to a table with glasses and two bottles of wine, one snuck out from the restaurant, the other purchased new at the Beak. Somehow, at the end of the night, I ended up with the bottle from the restaurant tucked in my bag. It's in my fridge now. It's a French white. I remember saying I didn't want it as Kath was shoving it into my bag.
The bartender rang the 'last call' twice and after the second ringing, we left the Beak. Ruth's husband Brian picked us up and after dropping Angie and Kath off near their houses, we got on the A1 and headed home. The next 20 minutes, I have no memory of, mainly because I fell asleep. I wake up as Brian is pulling up alongside the curb in front of my house.
Hugged Ruth goodbye...she and her friends are huggers. They each hugged me when they said goodbye. It took me a humongous amount of time to hug my friends back home and that was after I knew them a good while. Some of them I haven't hugged yet. I may never. And here I am hugging women I didn't know five hours earlier? Good times with the Sensible Ladies. This Sensible Lady turned Party Pooper staggered into the house, threw on pajamas and demanded cosseting. Oh yes, definitely good times.
***
Happy New Year to you. I hope you had a great time, if you care for that sort of thing. I found out that I don't care for such things, like staying awake and partying until the New Year shows up. I'd rather eat watermelon and sit in a folding chair, watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Maybe I'll come up with a festive activity for New Year's that doesn't involve having to be oriented around a clock but I still get to interact with people in some meaningful and entertaining manner.
I hope you have a great year and other sentimental claptrap.
