Down to breakfast and it’s all very empty. Probably due to it being a changeover day and the fact that the local market is just down the road. Both breakfast and dinner are buffet style but dinner is more formal. Men are requested to wear trousers and shirts, instead of just turning up in their underpants presumably, but women can wear whatever they bloody well like. Is that fair? Of course not. What’s the world coming to?
Anyway, breakfast is much more informal. Instead of being shown to a table by Placido you just wander in and find one for yourself. The dining hall is a big area, masses of tables and splitting the area in two is the buffet table running the full length of the hall.
This morning we walked in, found ourselves a table and I got lost.
Well not totally lost.
I knew I was in the dining room.
But after I’d got my breakfast and made my way back to our table I suddenly realised I had no bloody idea where our table was. I suddenly stopped walking in the direction I was going and thought, hang on, where’s our table? Normally there’s a point of reference like for example, one of us already sitting there but this time nothing. I knew we’d come in and turned right….. I think ….but it didn’t look familiar. I have a really bad sense of direction at the best of times but I’ve never got lost in a dining room before. I decided to walk round the buffet tables a few times, casually pretending to look at the food with one eye while looking for our table out of the other eye. This did nothing for my sense of direction because by looking in two directions at once just blurred my vision until suddenly I bumped into Pauline coming at me from the opposite direction. “Going back to the table?” I said. And I followed her back.
And do you know it was nowhere near where I thought it was.
Bloody hell is this a sign of the onset of Alzheimer’s?
And do you know it was nowhere near where I thought it was.
Bloody hell is this a sign of the onset of Alzheimer’s?
And do you know it was nowhere near where I thought it was.
Bloody hell is this a sign of the onset of Alzheimers?
Tonight at dinner it’s ‘Chinese Night’, can’t wait can you? Can you?.....can you?........can you?..........can you?...........(cue wavy picture and dreamy music).
As we approached the dining room I was really looking forward to ‘Chinese Night’ after all it had to be better than ‘American Night’ and ‘Gala Night’ hadn’t it?
We walked up the steps to the dining room and the door opened on well oiled hinges with a strange wheezing, creaking sound revealing a strange old Chinese manservant who stood there wheezing and creaking. “Chop chop, John,” I said, displaying my linguistic talent and cool British way of dealing with Johnny Foreigner, “Me b’long gleat white land England. Much velly pleased see you b’long you him hotel head waiter, chop chop.”
“If you will be so good as to follow me sir,” the old man said and led us to our table in a strange room.
We seated ourselves on low mysterious chairs. I knew immediately that the whole hotel must be filled with half-naked Chinese, trained exponents in the murderous art of thuggee, creeping silently along every corridor on bare brown feet. I listened carefully. Absolute silence. That must be them creeping along the corridors. An evil draught of icy air made me shiver. I noticed that it came from a previously unnoticed door behind me which had swung open on well oiled hinges. “You may approach the buffet now sir,” said the old Chinese manservant. Clenching my teeth I strode across the room, seized the handle of the carved teak door opposite and turned it. The door slid open on well oiled hinges.
The scene that met my gaze was forever afterwards imprinted indelibly on my memory.
At a raised dais at the end of the dining room stood a heavy buffet table of dark wood. On it lay an intricate arrangement of bubbling retorts and glass beakers interconnected with gleaming spirals in which mysterious liquids bubbled and hissed. Behind, dimly visible was a tall gaunt figure with a long gaunt face surrounded by a huge domed skull. I felt myself irresistibly drawn towards the magnetic presence of this amazing doctor who at this moment seemed utterly engrossed in some deep metaphysical problem with the buffet as he held up to the dying rays of the evening sun a long thin test tube half filled with some golden liquid. With infinite Oriental patience, the doctor poured two drops of another liquid into the first. The doctor’s green eyes glowed with interest and I started back in fear as the golden tinted liquid changed as if by some awful magic, into a rich turquoise.
My ears, tuned by terror to hypersensitive pitch, caught the doctor’s low, murmuring words.
“Ah so. The rum punch is ready.”
An involuntary cry escaped from my lips causing the doctor to turn his baleful gaze on my shivery form. “Ah yes, what can I do for you Mr….. Er?”
It was clear to me that I had to do something, and quickly. Flattening myself against a wall from where I could clearly survey all corners of the room I drew from my hip pocket a dinner plate and pointed it at my deadly opponent,
“Your evil game is up Dr. Fu Manchu,” I cried, “One false move and you go to join your worthless ancestors. The whole hotel is surrounded.” I was bluffing but it was my only chance of escaping alive. “Every bush for a quarter of a mile conceals an armed uniformed constable of the London Force. Every road is blocked by felled oak and birch trees. The ports are being watched. The Army has been alerted and the Navy, as always, is ready. Whatever foul scheme is fermenting in that inscrutable Asiatic mind has been foiled I can assure you. At last the Western world is safe from you and your devilish yellow peril. What have you got to say to that Dr. Fu Manchu?”
The tall Chinese doctor eyed me intently. Then, before I could make a move to prevent him, he pressed a button on his buffet table. I swung round as a door opened on well oiled hinges. But too late.
My dinner plate was plucked from my hand by a large woman disguised as Emmathethomsonrep who seized me, pushed me into a chair and held me in an iron grip.
“Well done Emma,” the tall doctor said, “be careful, he’s violent.”
Reaching for the telephone he dialled a number and said, “Hello police? This is Placido Domingo, head waiter at the Hotel Picafort Park. Send someone quickly please, a guest has gone berserk.”
Emmathethethomsonrep asked, “How did he manage to get in?”
Placido shrugged his shoulders, “Simple,” he said, “we let him in. This is Friday. I thought he was the man who came to oil the hinges”.
All of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my shin where Pauline had kicked me under the table. “Wake up,” she said, “stop day dreaming, the waitress is waiting for our drinks order.”
I recovered my composure and sat back in my chair still shaking. I looked towards the entrance and there, standing by the door was the comforting figure of Placedo showing guests to the wrong tables as usual. He was wearing his latest comedy outfit of a Chinese Mandarin, basically a pair of collarless black pyjamas.
Everything’s all right with the world after all, it was all a dream.
As we left the dining room, Placedo sidled up to me and out of the corner of his mouth he whispered, “You can oil the hinges tomorrow.”
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