Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

Coffee Break

It's been a long time since my last post. It all seemed to be going well when I wrote Survivor Guilt.

 

I was working entirely from home rather than half and half and I had Fridays off as my firm moved to a four-day week. Like many others, I had such plans: improve my foreign languages; crack on with the novel I have started three times and am yet to finish the first chapter; all those home improvements. Out of these, the last has had the most success but even that has been restricted to organising rather than doing.

 

One of the reasons for so few posts is that most of mine are about incidents in life and not going out much for eighteen months puts a damper on that but I also have an interest in language and this post was spurred on as I queued for coffee after taking our dogs for a walk (to be fair my wife takes them and I provide moral support and buy the refreshments afterwards).

 

As I was waiting to be served I noticed their sign read Cappucino. I have found out after many false starts that no one wants their spelling mistakes pointed out, it should be Cappuccino (mnemonic think two CuPs of coffee to match the two central Ps and Cs).

 

However, what started me wondering was that I knew there is a type of monkey called a Capuchin and I knew there was a religious order called the Capuchins

- so how were these three related and which came first?

 

The word cappuccio meant a hooded cape of a type favoured by monks and worn by many orders including the Camaldolese. The diminutive, meaning a small-hooded cape, is cappuccino.

The actual Capuchin friars were founded as a splinter faction of The Franciscans in 1525 when Matteo da Bascio and others decided that the Franciscans, founded over three hundred years previously by Francis of Assisi, had strayed too far from their founder's way especially in matters of simplicity and discipline. They were given shelter by the Camaldolese and started to wear the same garments and took their popular name from the hooded cape.

 

Next came the monkeys which inhabit south and central America. They were named after the friars because of their colouring. I couldn't find out exactly when the monkeys were named but it appears to be sometime after their discovery (by Europeans that is...) in the early sixteenth century given that the Capuchin friars weren't well-known until later.

 

Finally comes the coffee drink. It was also named after the friars in the seventeenth century but was a different drink from one we know today. It took a couple of hundred years, at least, to settle down into what you will get when you order one now. Whether or not the idea of the monkey also influenced the name is not known for sure but it seems likely.

 

 

So now you know - to sum up, it was Capuchin friars, Capuchin Monkeys and then the coffee and don't forget - it's caPPuCCino.

Breakfast Is Served

I stay in hotels quite a lot, both for business travel and when I'm playing at a bridge event. I usually have the traditional breakfast, i.e. the full English, and am quite critical of the hotel if they fail to come up to my standards. So for all you hotel managers out their, if you want to keep on my good side here's how you are marked.

1. Firstly there's the process of being seated, I don't expect to be kept waiting in a queue if I have already booked in for breakfast, nor do I want someone telling me I am not on the list. I realise there are peaks and troughs with people arriving but don't keep the whole queue waiting because one person has forgotten their room number.
2. Obviously, the table should be clean and I like to be offered tea or coffee shortly after arriving, a choice of teas is welcome, woe betide you if you don't have my favourite (Earl Grey). Toast is also better from the kitchen rather than those machines that are invariably set to loop around once for underdone, twice for burnt. I also expect a choice of breads not just white sliced.
3. A good selection of cold drinks and, for those who procure the glasses, please don't scour the internet for the tiniest vessels available just because you think people will drink less. I've seen larger shot glasses than what some hotels have on offer. (Pro tip: keep a pint glass from the bar when you retire for the evening, it's useful for those hangover preventing water drinks at bedtime and you get proper volume of fruit juice.)
4. A good choice of cold items, cereals, fruit, yoghurts, cheese, pastries etc. I'm not a great devourer of these but the good lady wife is.
5. For the main event, I expect heated plates, they don't have to be too hot to handle but at least not cold, a good choice of traditional foods, black pudding being a particular favourite but at least sausages, bacon, beans, tomato, mushrooms and a form of potato, usually hash browns. I personally don't eat eggs but there should at least be a choice of fried and scrambled. Bonus marks for more unusual items such as red pudding or choices of sausages.
6. The hot food should also be relatively fresh, I don't want something that's sat under the heat lamp for hours. Nor do I expect to be greeted by a plate with one miserable sausage on offer and have to hunt for staff to replenish it.
7. Friendly staff, I'm sorry you're working at this time on a weekend but that's not my fault.

A good establishment should be scoring at least 7 out of 10 although a couple I stayed at recently only got about 5. The best Breakfast I have had in the UK was at the Hilton in Paddington which scored 9+. It was expensive though, this was a few years back and even then it cost about £25. If you happen to be in Islington and fancy a satisfying meal that's great value for money then you can't beat the Hope Workers' Cafe on the Holloway Road. It's good for lunch too!

Bon appétit!

 

One of Those Nights

It hadn't been a great day at work, constantly busy yet seemingly nothing to show for it at the end of the day - perhaps this should have been a portent. I had arranged to meet some friends at the Prince of Wales pub in Highgate Village for the Tuesday night pub quiz.

It's held to be one of the toughest pub quizzes going and our team of four hadn't been for a few weeks so we were out of practice too. The evening ends with a jackpot question which is financed by buying tickets. The winner of the raffle has a go at answering - if they fail there is a second draw with a new question then possibly a third. If no correct answer then it rolls over to the next week. The questions are obscure so jackpots are commonly £500 or more.

Anyway, back to the journey there by bus, the 271 on Holloway Road. Despite the message board, promising its imminent arrival, four 43s went past before it arrived and I boarded. I don't know the charitable way to describe the passenger blocking the aisle. He didn't seem drunk but was singing away to all those that wanted to listen, and those who didn't. He was leaning on a cane which was odd as there were plenty of seats. So I sat near the front and just did the British thing, I ignored him.

After a few stops, he asked the driver if the bus was going to X, I didn't catch where, but the driver told him no, he needed the Y which was due shortly. I gathered from the driver's tone that this wasn't the first time he'd asked.

So at the next stop, he dutifully got off the back door, circled the bus shelter a couple of times, and then joined the queue to get on again! He then asked the driver if the bus was going to his desired destination. This question received a rather curt response and, eventually, he got off and we were on our way again.

Which meant I arrived later than planned, still in time but the team captain was at the bar ordering food and drinks, so I added my request, they serve good Thai cuisine, and sat down. It became apparent that the barman, who looked about fourteen, was struggling somewhat with the order, which wasn't that complicated as there were only four of us and the menu is not extensive. 

However, it was soon sorted, or so we thought, and we prepared for the first round. Just as it was starting the food began to arrive and there seemed to be a lot of it, an awful lot of it, and slowly it dawned on us. When writing the order down the captain had helpfully included the number shown on the menu, e.g. 4 - spare ribs. In hindsight, he should have made it clearer and explained it better, but the barman had taken that to mean four portions of ribs.

After the fifth plate of squid appeared and the table was covered in dishes it was decided to halt the flow of food and consolidate. This all took a while and then the manager organised a refund, I think the team came out ahead as some food was not returned. This reduced the bill by about thirty-five pounds though, another reason the captain might have wondered if the order was correct.

All this kerfuffle meant we missed the main question reading and is our excuse for a pathetic score that round.

We were trailing for some time, managing to climb up somewhat after a good last round.

So how about the £500 jackpot question - fancy your chances? It was one of the easier ones but still no cake walk.

The three highest capitals in the world are all in South America, the fourth is in Africa, what is it?

And my personal highlight that impressed the team?

What figure of speech do the following phrases exemplify?

That's a nice set of wheels!

How much bread did that cost?

All hands on deck!

Our team was one of the few to get the correct answer - synecdoche - commonly the use of a part of something for the whole or vice versa, but can be other things as shown by bread for money.

 And the highest capital city in Africa - Addis Ababa - the capital of Ethiopia - if you got it right consider coming next Tuesday.

 

Blind Date

I'll start this embarrassing tale by stating that I suffer from a mild form of prosopagnosia, if you don't know what that is read on, it will become clearer.

A week or so ago I received a call from someone I hadn't seen in over ten years who said they were back in London and did I fancy a drink? Not wishing to appear rude I agreed and we decided on a suitable establishment.

Now I'm certainly not the same as I was when we last met, definitely heavier, greyer and more weathered would be a polite description, but two children and an insatiable work ethic can take it out of you :)

So I was trying to picture how this chap would look if he had followed a similar trend. My mental picture of him was not helped by my prosopagnosia, which is often called face-blindness. I have difficulty recognising people especially if they are not in their usual location or wearing a different style to what I'm used to seeing them in. For example I spent the first half of Black Mass wondering when Johnny Depp was going to appear.

So I reached the pub on time aware of the fact that my friend was usually late but, surprisingly, he was waiting in a far corner and I waved to catch his eye and he dutifully waved back. I walked across and greeted him with I never thought you'd arrive first to which he replied I thought I'd surprise you and this is when I took in how he looked. I was shocked and slightly upset, instead of ageing he looked younger than before, he still had the same moustache and beard but the hair was still black and he seemed to have spent the last few years visiting the gym every day, he was muscular and in perfect shape. He seemed very happy to see me (a fact which cheered me up much later when I thought about it) and asked what I was drinking and it was then that I realised - it wasn't my friend - now what to do? It was obvious he was on a blind date of some description and I must have been close to what he was expecting (poor sod), but what to say? I thought it best just to spit it out. I'm sorry, I think I've made a mistake, you're not X, are you? Fortunately he did not possess the same name as my friend or the farce could have continued for much longer. I wished him a pleasant evening and wandered back to a table some distance away where, twenty minutes later, the real McCoy turned up, two stone heaver and much greyer than when I had last seen him - thank goodness for that.

 

Coincidence, I Don't Think So

Before we recently moved offices there was a Wetherspoon's pub nearby which I used to frequent a couple of times a week after work. I liked the idea of a pub that was no frills, good choice of inexpensive beer and no TV, but the original aim of the chain seems to have deteriorated into a place that caters to the How fast can I get drunk cheaply? brigade.

There were two of us and for our last round I went to the bar and ordered a dark rum and coke and a whisky and soda, no ice please, this was a busy night shortly before Christmas and I had had to wait over ten minutes to be served. The first attempt by the barman was a whisky and coke and I pointed out his error politely. He threw the drink away and started to fill a glass with ice, I told him we didn't want it. The third attempt had him reaching for the Bacardi, a white rum, and I pointed out that he'd now made three mistakes for a two drink order. he wasn't happy and spoke to the manager who asked me to explain the problem. I politely pointed out how three times the relatively simple order was wrong. The manager's attitude was typical of many places, if I didn't like it I could leave. so we did, and never returned.

Last week I visited another Wetherspoon's with my dad, we arrived just before 11:45 for lunch. The menu offered breakfast though and that sounded fine so after we had queued for some time we ordered two, or tried to. The lady on duty, the only person serving in a huge place, proudly informed us that it was too late as it was one minute past twelve, and wouldn't budge despite our protestations about when we had actually arrived. She tried to mollify us by saying the lunch special was a lovely steak and ale pie, so I ordered one, only to be told a minute later that it was off. So the lunch special was sold out before lunch had even started...

There was news of Wetherspoon's in the media lately, they are closing 33 pubs across the UK, eight of which are in London - coincidence, I don't think so.

Give Me the Office Any Day

Our company, Kaplan, does try to do things for the community. It supports many charities but lately they felt they needed to do more locally and staff were told that could do at least two days volunteering each year. It’s often difficult to take this sort of time off working in a support department like IT. The work still needs doing and this means that either you do it your own time or those left behind have to work harder. For this reason we avoided the challenge but recently decided to bite the bullet. Six of us decided to work the first shift at the Whitechapel Mission in London’s East End.

So, we arrived at Whitechapel at 05:30 and were given our instructions by Lilija, who is a permanent member of staff there. We were going to be preparing and cooking the food, distributing toiletries and hot drinks, serving breakfasts and then tidying up. The homeless can also request clothing and there was also the chance for them to charge their mobile phones, they can’t pinch the office electricity like most of us do, so this is really a great facility. A mobile isn’t a luxury item with the lifestyles they have. It all seemed very complicated with lots to remember but I kept thinking - there’s a new volunteer team very day, how hard can it be?

Well it was physically hard work but not mentally taxing, I was on sausage, bacon and burger duties, cooking about 200 of the first, about 100 rashers of the second, and a couple of dozen burgers. All in all these took about an hour to cook and, although I’m sure they were all edible, I don’t expect a Michelin star will be heading my way any time soon – no one said my compliments to the chef. Others were serving hot drinks and helping with toiletry distribution (for which there is no charge) whilst my boss, head of a large IT department, got to grips with the highly technical process of toasting bread, some 200 slices, using a machine that came with no F1 key. Others were buttering bread and frying what seemed like 150 eggs as well as heating up mushrooms, baked beans and tomatoes. At eight o’clock we began to serve the breakfasts. There are three set meals costing from 50p to £1 but most customers ordered à la carte and we had to use those mental arithmetic skills we all claim to have but so rarely have to prove. I can now calculate that two sausages, two eggs, a rasher of bacon with beans mushrooms, hash browns and six pieces of toast comes to 75p, or 70p to you sir. I was pleasantly surprised with the general demeanour and politeness of the people we were serving. In truth I’d expected some very rough characters but everyone I served was pleasant, if sometimes a little fussy. At one stage, after one person had sent back three eggs as not being cooked to his liking – in the end I just asked him to choose his own from the cooking tray – he requested baked beans, I politely asked how many and he replied 32, and then humorously commented that I’d given him 42 when I dished them out. This process lasted almost two hours and we served something like 180 people although I didn’t have time to count - this was a somewhat slow day, it can be as high as 300. It was hard but enjoyable and made a change from wrestling with the intricacies of Microsoft created software.

At ten o’clock the shutter came down and it was time for the real work, getting the kitchen spotless for the next day and cleaning the eating area. This took some ninety minutes at the end of which we were all regretting having to go to our normal jobs. Some did though, fortunately my conference call with the US was cancelled and I spent the afternoon working from home and trying not to doze off, somewhat unsuccessfully I might add.

I can’t begin to say how amazed I was at the permanent staff there as well as Lilija we were looked after by Ramesh and Sue, the manager as well as three or four others. They all work incredibly hard and I'm sure it’s not the best paid job in London.

At the end I felt like I do after a long session at the gym, very tired but extremely glad I’d done it.

The mission itself is grateful to receive donations, both cash and such items as clothes and disposable razors, there’s a full list on their site.

Besides being a sobering experience, there but for the grace of God go I etc., I now realise that small monetary gifts to homeless can help. You can be cynical and say that they will just waste that £1 on alcohol but you can’t know that, it could mean two hearty breakfasts.

So, despite the title of this post, office work being much, much easier, we are all signing up to do it again in the new year.

Make or Break

Time and time again I see where service in restaurants, hotels etc. is what really makes the difference. Take last weekend, the extended family, and one friend, travelled to Athlone in Ireland to watch a pre-season rugby friendly between Exeter Chiefs and Connacht. The match itself was a bit of a walk over for Exeter, read the match report from the coach here, but the weekend was made special by the general good will of the Irish, they were so friendly and accommodating.

We’d booked into the Prince of Wales hotel, and if you’d asked me whether I’d go there again shortly after arriving I’d have had to think twice. The rooms weren’t all ready, even at 14:30, and when they were they had managed to lose the paperwork. The actual rooms had old cigarette burns on the furniture, there were no bath towels and a tiny amount of shampoo, we hadn’t taken any as we only had carry on luggage and the airports still enforce the silly minimal liquids rule. However, all this was made up for by the great service. We got back after the match at 21:15 on the Saturday, the restaurant was about to close and we wanted a late supper, in England you’d have got a grumpy waiter rushing you, not so in Ireland where the cheerful chap let everyone take their time and looked after us all evening. Even better was the next morning, we all went to breakfast (which was on offer till 11:00!) except my wife who wasn’t feeling too well. After the full Irish and a trip around town we coaxed her downstairs, by now it was gone 12:00. She really just wanted some toast and again, in England, you’d get a sorry, too late, it’s the lunch menu now, but there we got the simple, no problem, white or brown?

On a related not compare this to how Tesco treated a long-standing customer over a perceived shop lifting incident. The whole attitude of the clearly incompetent, power crazy and presumably lacking in common-sense (that’s the polite version) shop staff. I know it must happen but do people really pay over £200 for their shopping and try to steal something worth about £2? Anyway the lady in question has voted with her feet and I’m tempted to do the same.

Finally a word about Ryanair, a company I never thought I’d do business with but used for the trip to Ireland, we flew from Bristol to Dublin. Other than the continual, and barely understandable, exhortations to buy stuff, from snacks to gifts to smoke free ‘cigarettes’, from the lovely Maria, who certainly wasn’t Irish, the trip was fine. The staff were ever so pleasant and cheerful, unlike the last time I went long haul on British Airways and got a miserable and aggressive steward from Scotland. There was a delay coming back, not their fault, and in my opinion you get what you pay for, a no-frills flight. Just follow their seemingly unending list of rules on extras and you won’t pay more, again I’d use them next time.

Schindler’s Lift

Spent a pleasant Sunday at a wedding in Torquay, the Barceló Imperial Hotel to be precise. It’s described as four stars and, to be fair, the bedrooms and function rooms are lovely, as with most places it’s let down by its staff, more specifically the bar staff. (Okay the full English breakfast should more accurately have been described as a two-thirds one, but you can’t have everything.)

On the plus side their English was reasonable, it’s getting harder and harder in England to find hotel staff whose English can cope with anything other than the very basics, heaven help you if you want anything other than a standard type of drink.

Firstly they are incapable of holding more than one thought in their heads. You order a couple of pints and they ask you if you want anything else. Once you’ve told them about the gin and tonic with lime but without ice they’ve forgotten what the second pint was and just dropped a mini-glacier into the gin and added lemon.

Secondly they don’t have simple customer skills. When I arrive at a bar and they’re fiddling with something I’m happy to wait, personally I think that stocking shelves can wait but as I said, it’s one thought at a time. What they should do though is acknowledge your presence and say something along the lines of be with you in a minute. Instead you’re completely ignored and you just wonder if you’ve succumbed to the invisible customer syndrome again. They also can’t keep track of who’s arrived at the bar first so there’s inevitably resentful customers fuming about being ignored for the third time.

Thirdly they have no initiative. When they see they’re low on something they don’t do anything until they have to. Yesterday I ordered a rum and coke and mentioned as they poured that it was the last measure in the bottle, hoping they’d take a hint – no chance. Instead of ordering or fetching a new one when there was a lull, and there was one during the buffet, they just stand there watching the tumbleweed drift by. Then when I came up later and asked for another they were too busy to get a new bottle. That’s what happens when sales don’t directly affect your pay as it would with a traditional pub landlord.

Anyway, having got that off my chest, here’s my nomination for the Plain English gobbledygook award. It was in the lift and explained what to do if the lift broke down, I’m sure most non-native English speaking people would struggle to understand it, so that’s most of the hotel staff then. If you can't read it states:

The operation of the alarm button will automatically effect a vocal link with the communication centre of Schindler.

In other words: Press the button to ask for help. Perhaps the person at Schindler’s, the lift company, who wrote it wasn’t a native English speaker either.

Finally congratulations to Lisa and Al, hope you enjoy your exotic honeymoon destination.

Good News, Bad News

An article appeared in the media recently which gladdened my heart somewhat. A study of 19,000 subjects showed those who had a glass of wine after work were less likely to put on weight than those who stuck to mineral water. So what’s the bad news? Unfortunately the 19,000 in question were all women. As the research took over thirteen years unless someone has started already I’m in for a long wait before I can justify my post work tipple.

Aussies Going Soft?

Perhaps in a bid to shake off their heavy drinking image organisers of a motorsport festival in New South Wales, Australia have been warned there’ll be a crackdown on alcohol.

Given that this is Australia though, it’s nowhere near the UK’s recommended limit of 21 units per week for men, the fans are limited to a paltry 24 cans of beer per day, or 36 cans if you’re drinking the girlie light beer. If you prefer a glass of wine instead you’ll have to make do with a maximum of four litres of the stuff, more than five bottles. Predictably there’s already been at outcry at the draconian measures but police and organisers are sticking to their guns.