Malta 2006 - Day 13

At breakfast this morning the big bloke was next to me at the pastry counter.

“I’ll get the next bun,” I said.

What’s going on with the English language these days? Don’t you just hate it when you’re served in a shop or restaurant with the words ‘There you go’?

There I am in a restaurant waiting for dinner to be served. I’m pouring the wine for Pauline and practising deep breathing. “He might not say it dear,” says Pauline patting my hand. “I know, don’t go on about it,” I say biting my lip. Along comes two plates of dinner. “There you go,” says the waiter.

“Aaaaaaaaaaargh”.

I’d also include the ‘No problem’ business here as well. I say thank you to the waiter for bringing the dinner and he says, “No problem.”

I spend most of my time mentally jumping up and down shouting,

“Where do I go?”

“Just tell me, where do I go?”

“Did I ask whether it was a problem?”

Was a problem ever mentioned?”

Jesus Christ.

The accepted routine at meal times is to find yourself a laid up table and take it from there. This morning the waitress was busy as usual, bustling around re-laying tables as people left. Then a couple came in and with all the laid up tables around them, promptly sat down at one that wasn’t. Sitting there they arrogantly beckoned the waitress over and told her their table was a mess. She smiled sweetly and immediately stopped what she was doing and sorted the table out for them.

Now this little scenario perfectly illustrates why I am not cut out to work in any branch of the service industry. After being presented with half a dozen or so perfectly laid up tables, what did these people do? They said to hell with that, we’ll sit where we want even if it isn’t ready. If they’d clicked their fingers at me to sort it out they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“Er, excuse me? Are you pointing that grubby little fat finger at me? Do you think I’m over this end of the room working my arse off laying up tables just so you can ignore the generally accepted etiquette of finding yourselves a table that’s actually ready for you? Do you have any manners or is the notion of considering the feelings of others in public places so alien to you? Do you actually think you’re at home when you’re talking loudly on your mobile phone in a crowded area? Do you think you’re at home when you and your toe-curlingly awful kids are eating in restaurants with all of you barely able to hold a knife and fork properly let alone keep your mouths closed while you’re chewing? And don’t do that thing you do where you take huge gobfuls of food and immediately take a large swig of tea and drink it while still chewing all the food still stuffed in your gob while talking at the same time. You and your kids who have no table manners. All of you who don’t appear to know what a knife is for. All of you who eat everything with one fork and your fingers. All of you who seem to have no idea of the rudimentary skill of using a fork properly. All of you who attack your food with a fork using quick stabbing movements while anything escaping the fork is quickly picked up in the fingers of the other hand whether it’s chips, mashed potato or gravy. All of you who hold your spoon in a fist-like grip the way chimpanzees do although the chimps physically don’t have a choice, unlike you. And while we’re at it, how about a please or thank you. You have heard of those words have you? You have at some time in your pathetically isolated bubble of existence actually heard someone else use them have you? You people make me sick. With you there’s no give. It’s just take. You don’t give way on pavements, you take all the space you need and to hell with everyone else. You’re crass, stupid people and the gene pool is overflowing with the results of your breeding activities. You typify everything that’s so bad about this country and your thought processes are so limited you can’t even see it. Do you think we enjoy being covered in water while on our sun beds just because you feel the only way to get into the pool is by jumping in carrying six lilos, two rubber rings and a bloody inflatable six foot crocodile? Did I hear the word ‘take’ there? I certainly didn’t hear ‘give. You sit around wearing your all-inclusive wrist bands, drinking your pints of lager at 7 a.m., shouting at your kids instead of actually doing something about them and talking some mysterious bloody language called ‘Bigbrotherese’ which only you and your family and friends can understand. You don’t seem to read books. You take two hours to read the Sun’s bloody football pages and you can’t even do that without moving your lips. You and your bloody tattoos and piercings and track suit bottoms and conversation that isn’t conversation in the normal acceptance of the word but just a series of two or three word sentences grunted out with no discernable connection between the prior one and the subsequent one. You and your bloody takeaways and Love Island and a DVD for a good night in. You with your sour-faced daughters with their hooped earrings as big as Frisbees, their green tinged jewellery and teeth to match. You and the way you keep saying, “He went” or “They went” when you mean “He said” or “They said”. He went where? It doesn’t make any bloody sense. You and your aggressive attitudes to everything. Your “I know my rights” attitude, your “do or say that again and you’ll regret it” attitude, you and your “don’t blame me” attitude, you and your “it’s not my fault my kids demolished the pool table you should have provided a stronger one in the first place” attitude, you and your “I’m entitled to that” attitude, you and your “why shouldn’t I be a total pain in the arse to society, it’s a free country innit” attitude. You and your complete disregard for the common courtesies and little pleasantries that make life so bearable. You and your bloody wives who you insist on calling ‘babe’ all the time. You who serve me in shops and carry out lengthy conversations with the moron standing next to you as if I don’t exist. You who serve me in shops who can’t add up even the simplest of amounts, who can’t spell the word initiative let alone use it, who follow petty shop rules and regulations for no reason at all, you who know less about the product your selling than I do. You sales people who insist on using your preposterous pre-programmed sales patter which I know is crap and so do you. You people who ring me up at 9 p.m. and say you’re not selling anything. Oh, do I know you then? Are we going to have a bit of a social chit-chat to catch up on things since you last rang then? You people who tell me I’ve been speaking to Sharon and if I’ve got any problems to ask for Sharon next time and when I do, Sharon’s disappeared off the face of the earth. You people who tell me your first name as if I give a shit and then ask me “how may I help you?” You people who eventually serve me with a totally insincere “I’m sorry to keep you waitin’.” No you’re not. You people who come up to me in the street and ask me to sign your useless bloody petitions. You people who think Comic Relief is a jolly funny fun-filled day and enforced jollity for its own sake somehow does some good and then use emotional blackmail to play on people’s consciences by making them think they’re miserable uncharitable gits if they don’t contribute. You people who can’t give generously without telling the whole world about it. You so-called superstar actors who think making a film is hard work. “Oh filming is so tiring. I have to be in makeup by 6 a.m. and don’t finish until 9 a.m.” Excuse me. What are you actually doing that’s hard work for three hours? Sitting on your arse, that’s what. And then it’s on set doing fourteen hour days and of course we ordinary people have no idea of the stress involved in repeating the same two or three sentences over and over again until they come out right.

There’s your bloody clean table cloth.

There’s you bloody cutlery.

Have a nice bloody day.

There you bloody go.

No bloody problem.”

The big bloke told a very funny joke tonight in the bar. It was a play on words.

“I’ll get the next pun,” I said. 

TRUE LIFT STORY NO. 7

We were waiting for the lift on floor eight. The lift doors opened to reveal four old women blinking in puzzlement as to why the doors had actually opened. As I moved forward to get in they started to panic. “Don’t think you’ll get in this one,” said one of them with a nervous laugh. “No, it won’t go if you do,” said another. As they could see we weren’t taking a blind bit of notice of them the first woman said, “Oh well, if it screams it screams.”

Eh?

We got in and waited for the doors to close but instead of closing the overload alarm went off, “Mayday, Mayday, get out you fat bastards, get out quick.”

No it didn’t, it just emitted a high-pitched continuous beep. The four old women looked set to have heart attacks as they all shouted at once, “Told you, told you, it’s screamin’, it’s screamin’.”

What sort of world do these people inhabit? Then it suddenly occurred to me that our floor was the top floor of the hotel so why were there four paranoid old women who were so afraid of the screamin’ actually already in the lift up here in the first place? They’d probably got in on the first floor to go down to the ground, didn’t understand that an up arrow meant the lift was going up and so had to endure countless people trying to get in the lift from different floors while at every stop the screamin’ started. By the time they’d reached us on the eighth floor they were a huddled mass of gibbering wrecks.

The screamin’ had claimed another four victims doomed to spend eternity going up and down in screamin’ hell…….cue Vincent Price laugh….

The trouble with overload alarms is they’re not very imaginative are they? If you had a talking lift you’d think the least they could do was provide a talking alarm system. And not one that pansies about either. One that tells it like it is.

Beep – OK, the last person in has overloaded the lift but they’re obviously not the fattest bastard in here. That person knows who they are and should get out now. (10 second pause) Come on, if you don’t make a move soon the lift will plummet eight floors in three seconds flat and you’ll all end up twelve inches tall. (10 second pause) Look, I’ll make it easier for you. I’ll switch off all the lights and when they come back on I want to see you gone. Click. Click. Ah, that’s better, they’re gone.

Now it’s just the rest of us and it’s just coming up to midnight. Enjoy the ride…cue Vincent Price laugh again.

And now the screamin’ starts……..