Two Life Observations

Two Life Observations 09/09/2012

 

What a fantastic week this has been weather-wise! So much sun, and often just enough breeze to make it pleasant. I feel spoilt.

 

The missus and I have been out enjoying the weather most days, it's been a sort of holiday. We don't go away much, and we are in the lucky position of being able to take advantage of good weather, with the added bonus that with the schools having gone back, availability improves.

 

The longer you bumble through life, the more you notice things, sometimes these are more perception than fact. As a schoolboy, summer seemed to last for ever, and every day was blazing hot (it can't have been, can it. Memories play tricks, and erase the bad days along with the bland).

 

I remember acres of peeling skin every year (I was a big lad!), because I spent a lot of time swimming in the sea, and afterwards in the sun, drying on the beach (along with the tanning multitude!), and because I am basically designed for colder climates. I turn red like a lobster, I reckon I'd burn in front of a candle!

 

In those days, there wasn't really UV protective sun cream, there were tanning lotions (brown coloured oil) that helped turn your skin to a film star tan. My school bus journey always took the seafront route, and on hot days you could smell the hot Ambre Solaire over the whole mile!

 

I used to imagine there were men with giant spatulas turning the sunbathers over like sausages on a grill. The beach reeked of it, by rights, the beach should have been a skid pan of oil soaked pebbles, and the sea covered with a rich coating of rainbows like spilled diesel when the tide came in!

 

One of my "rules of life" is that whatever weather the summer brings, you can generally rely upon having a spell of good weather in May and September. Perfect months to take a holiday if bringing up children isn't one of your tasks!

 

That's what we've done this week, me and the missus have been out and about to local places we enjoy, spiced up by visiting some we've never been to.

 

And so it was that we found ourselves in the fish market area down at the harbour this week. These days, there isn't much of a fish market, and the fleet is considerably smaller than even 20 years ago. It's still a dangerous occupation, and one best suited to hardy individuals, "characters" in the main, more often than not, those following family tradition.

 

Times change, and these days fishermen are severely restricted by a plethora of rules and regulations determinedly enforced. If their forebears returned by some miracle, they would have a shock. The massive improvements in technology and equipment weighed against crushing regulation, much of it contrary to its intention, today's world doesn't favour individualism or freethinking. Government at all levels baulks at anything that counters their total dominance.

 

I daresay though, that an old forebear brought back in a tardis would also have great difficulty coming to terms with the idea that cod and chips could cost more than a shilling!

 

Anyway, there we were in the harbour with the tide in, blue sky, seagulls, boats manoeuvring, and even people swimming! Come to think of it, some schools can't have started, because there were several youngsters. Some were throwing themselves from the harbour wall and "bombing" into the water.

 

I guess they must have known it was safe to do so, but it makes me cringe nevertheless. Harbours are working places, and whilst underwater obstructions are very unlikely where there are moorings, low tide reveals all kinds of junk that has found its way over the railings.

 

There's been a four-star restaurant in the harbour for about two years now. Architect designed, and very posh, it has a huge glass fenced veranda on the sea side with tables for good weather, in front of a large glass fronted restaurant. The view is exceptional, especially so when the tide is in. If you had to put a value on the view, I'd say it would probably equal the cost of the food, but of course the view is free.

 

There was a table that seems to have our name on it (my long-range vision is pretty good!), So we decided to give it a try (having already glanced at the published menu outside). It's quite an experience. As you enter, you can see into the kitchen through a large plate glass window, which was a stainless steel hive of activity. As one would expect, staffing levels are high, and the experience has been well designed, along with the building.

 

It's not cheap, but if you choose from the lunchtime menu, you currently can get three courses for roughly the same price as a main course on the main menu, and that's what we did. Looking around, at the operation and the building, I was very conscious of costs. I wouldn’t like to have to pay the weekly bills. That its successful is very largely due to premium prices, and its continued success can only be welcomed locally.

 

Sitting out in the sun, overhanging the harbour on the corner of the veranda with a 270° view of all the activity going on, was a wonderful experience, a memory that will last forever.

 

The food was a work of art, well presented, and cooked to perfection. We slipped up by not ordering vegetables, and so ending with sweet, itself "exquisite" in its small iron pot, I wasn't in any danger of putting on weight. Good for me, as I'm always watching my waistline, bad for the missus, who likes her food, and doesn't put any weight on (nor did she get the chance to that lunchtime!)

 

Nevertheless, I'm glad we went there.

 

Since we've been, we've met one or two people who have also been there "once", and I think we must be in a growing group of “one-timers”, because the remarks always seem to follow the pattern that the food is great, but there's not much of it. At least one told us that many husbands head for the chippy opposite after leaving!

 

Which brings me to one of my life observations: it seems to me that the more you pay in a restaurant, the less food you actually get.

 

Okay, you get attention to detail, like visiting a consultant privately, you get at least a few minutes personal attention from the “main man or woman”, a person at the top of their profession.

 

However, despite this, if I ran a restaurant I would hope that nobody left it hungry, and would "pad out" the morsels on offer with freely available bread, and carbohydrates of some sort with the meal. An 18p can of Baked Beans perhaps?

 

Thus, for a few pence you could stuff customers (literally!) making the food seem far better value by sending your punters back onto the street with protesting trouser buttons. Not doing so, to me, is false economy, although……. the same restaurant also owns the chippy opposite, I’m given to believe.

 

Many decades since, I knew a couple who owned a prestigious restaurant. He was "front of house" and management, she was chef, (and as wife, perhaps the boss?!). More than once he “justified” his high prices in conversation with me by asking the question: " Pleeease….” (He often began a sentence with an overly extended “Please”) “Would you rather sell one meal for £10, or 10 meals for one pound?"

 

I could see his logic, they kept nicely busy, and seemingly profitable, in an upmarket niche. He wasn't rushed off his feet, as maybe he would have been operating a "greasy spoon" and probably struggling for market share in a value-conscious business.

 

Once or twice, I ate there myself, on "special occasions" like perhaps a birthday party. Again, the food was superb, carefully selected, well-cooked by a creative chef, and then, (as recently), when the time came to leave, you wondered if McDonald's was still open?!

 

I don't have a comprehensive lifetime's experience of four-star restaurants, but I have been in a few over my time, and I think my life observation holds good! Certainly, what you pay in life is no indication of the quantity that money buys!

 

It’s also equally true that there’s more to value than simply “bangs for your buck”. Often you can pay more for the same thing and it’s the right way to go.

 

The View was special; it helped to make my day.