The Customer Is Not Always Right

Been watching a lot of food programmes lately. Each weekday at five is Come Dine With Me. Everyone who watches it knows that the food is secondary, no one watches it with the intention of getting a good recipe. The bigger the culinary disaster the better.
Then at half five its Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals. I know that Jamie Oliver can be a bit of a dick but I do like his cooking as its good hardy meals that are free from pretension. What I’ve learnt from watching it is that I need to get a food processor.
Then there’s Gordon Ramsay’s best restaurant. Its been the same every week. Two restaurants who both cook a certain type of food compete to go into the next round. These restaurants have been voted the best in the country, so there’s a lot less of Ramsay’s swearing rants that have turned into a parody.

But he still hovers around the kitchen telling them where they’re going wrong.
Then they’re tested unknowingly and filmed by restaurant critic types who deserve a punch in the face. In the Thai restaurant the waiter said that he’ll have to call the police if the bottle of wine wasn’t paid for. The waiter explained before hand that if the bottle is opened he will have to pay for it. Gordon Ramsay was astonished with the waiter. I’m on the waiters side. Why don’t you order a bottle that you know you will like? Are you going to get them to open bottles of wine until there’s one that you find suitable? Go wine tasting in a vineyard, not in a restaurant you fool.
On Tuesdays episode food was ordered then ten minutes later the undercover critic wanted to change the order. That’s why there’s a menu. You look at it, pick what you want and then order. That’s how it works. Its like they’ve never been to a restaurant before. They must’ve had so must gob in their food. If I was the chef I know I would've given them a ‘special ingredient.’

A trailer for the next round showed Gordon Ramsay in a helicopter. Why, we weren’t told. Maybe the chef has to come up with a dish using five ingredients while skydiving or something.

Chile Rocks

Don’t know why this miner was so happy, what with all his cheerleading and playing to cameras as he was one of the first to get evicted from the Chilean version of Big Brother. I prefer the Chilean version. Its so much more extreme. But the contestants still crave celebrity. I mean look at them now all walking around in sunglasses like rock stars.

I shall stop being facetious for a moment. It’s a truly great story. A rare feel good news story that captured the world. And it was interesting because you could watch the rescue happen as it was happening. Perfect for 24hr news channels who usually struggle to fill time.
One thing for sure is that the Chilean president Sebastian Pinera is loving it. Its a vote winner wrapped up in national pride. Until this accident I had no idea who the president of Chile was or what he looked like. Not many people outside Chile did. Why would you? Now his face is in ever paper in the world.

So well done in the rescue, but in truth it was an awful mining exertion. After 69 days down there they never came back with one piece of copper.

Passing Trade

When I walk down the high road where the main shops are in the east London suburb where I live. I have often thought: ‘How the hell do these shops make any money? Maybe there’re a front for something.’
Well since the recession a lot of the shops have closed down, especially at the end of the high road. They’ve been boarded up for a while now and a doubt if even a charity shop would open up there.
There’s a few shops that are hanging in. A shop that sells art work, a women’s clothes shop and a shop that sells modern design lamps and tables and stuff like that for the home. But if you want a paint brush or hoover bags then forget it. You have to go to a big DIY store for that.
Its become a one dimensional high road that’s all about eating and drinking. There’s supermarkets, takeaways, restaurants, cafes and pubs in abundance.

The high road where I work still has a healthy mix of shops, and they all seem to be doing good business. All apart from any shop in the arcade. The only constant shops in there are a café and a beauty parlour for dogs. The rest are a constant turn over. Traditional sweet shop, six months, clothes shop, six months, fancy dress shop, six months, shoe shop, six months, physic reading place, six months. She should’ve predicted that that wouldn’t last long.
What do they expect when there’s no passing trade.

Are great place for passing trade are shops in airports. Well its not really passing trade its more like: I’m stuck here with nothing but these shops until I can board my flight and I need to get rid of this foreign money trade.
But in all the times that I’ve been to an airport I’ve never seen anyone buy a pen from the pen shop. Never. How does this shop survive? It’s a pen, so what if it looks nice and expensive, it’s a pen and it writes. I’ve never received a birthday card and thought, ‘That looks as if it was written with a nice pen.’