We quickly settled to our table having grabbed a beer, coke, water etc from the bar on the way through. The establishment does a special deal, one price for starter, main course, side dish, rice / naan and a bottle of beer. The menu is extensive and having taken our time to decide, we ordered and got down to some serious conversation. Now I have to apologise up front this month, you see I take some very sketchy notes during the evening and don't always hear all conversations. Later I have to decipher my notes in order to relay the facts through this blog. Having left the posting for sometime and now sitting trying to understand my notes, I have some odd words that I'm just not sure what they mean. Why have I written Fats Domino, 16 tonnes, Jasper Carrot, funks and moped? Is there a connection?
Anyway, the conversation opened with bus passes and the value of these over taxi tokens. That of course led us onto a favorite subject of cars, the Maxi, Maestro and Worsley were all mentioned. Some thought these were the names for different size coffee's at the local Costa Coffee, rather than cars of the 60's and 70's. While talking about vehicles, I'm sure Peter made some comment about buying a caravan off eBay. Now I'm not sure whether the thought of buying a caravan off eBay was of amusement to some or the fact that Peter has confessed his sins of being a caravan person. Either way, there was some tittering amongst the ranks.
We then moved into conversation about Britain's Got Talent and some wondered why non UK nationals had got through, perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it People Living In Britain Have Got Talent. This kind of got us on to the subject of singing and music. Colin remarked that he had made a record or at least had something to do with one and wondered if you could buy your own record, it would have been a vinyl, off eBay. It was at this point that Tony made a bit of a mistake in terms of street cred. I, I mean Tony, confessed to making a record with his mum. The story goes that many years ago in a shopping mall in South London, there was one of these booths where you went in and recorded yourself "singing" and then the machine did its stuff and out popped a vinyl record. A bit like the passport photo booths you get now. If this wasn't bad enough, when asked what was the song he replied .......... Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. He could even remember that Desmond had a barrow in the market place and someone was the singer of a band. No longer can Tony hold his head up in happening, streetwise company. One good thing, Alan P pulled out from his memory that the song was sung by Marmalade, either that or he was asking someone to pass the condiments.
Moving on swiftly, we went from Karaoke and singing Love Shack to Duncan Norvell, no idea if there is a connection. Tony did say that he listened to Chas and Dave while watching the 1 stage of the Tour De France pass by a park in London last year .. I think Tony said too much this month.
So, what was the food like? Well the usual scoring was held and resulted in the following - Quality 4, Quantity 4.54, Price 3.54, Staff (which includes speed of service) 2.9 and ambiance 3.36. This gave a total of 18.34 which is respectable. Speed of service let down the score a bit, but as the management say, quality takes time. The staff were friendly and always like to hear the score. We've been to this establishment a few times and have never been disappointed. Of course the opinion's expressed here are purely personal and taken on the day of our visit.
So for next month (actually it's this Thursday because I'm so late with the post) we have decided to have an eat in at the Mission Church. This will encourage some of the none curry eaters to join us (there is no excuse! absence will be taken as anti-social, anti-fellowship behaviour) and eat what they like from the local surrounding take-aways.
So until next time, altogether now ... Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra, la la how life goes on ... I remember, it was Molly Jones the singer of the band.