Funny Old Age

My friend and I have been meeting regularly for lunch, every few months, for a great many years at a comfortable Victorian hotel.  This time there was a gap of almost a year.  Too long!  The shell is still there, the inside is transformed into something much more up-market, colder, sharper, smarter.  We had our lunch there, but for the last time.  Our tradition is broken.  No doubt they won't mind.

We had the habit of meeting in the foyer, but gone are the welcoming arm-chairs, and I was faced instead with standing beside a huge placard announcing the imminent opening of a Champagne Bar until my friend arrived - luckily straight away - we are the punctual generation!  We set off towards "our" restaurant, but immediately noted that it's no longer for us.  Glossy, expensive, it's not where we want to be.  We repaired to the Brasserie, but that, too had a chichi look.  Obviously the sort of place where you "wait to be seated" but nobody came forward for a while, and then without apology for the delay.  The menu was full of pretentious phrases describing the food - the calves liver was said to be "seared", sounding an inappropriate way of dealing with it!  The service was rather slow, but we didn't really notice staffthat, until afterwards when somebody approached us and asked about it.  Not wanting to get the waiter in trouble we said it was acceptable, but I missed the opportunity to say that service is the essence of a pretentious restaurant, and it is no good spending lots of money on decor if you are going to stint on staff.

This was even more evident when, wanting to have coffee in the lounge, we discovered it was unaccountably closing at 4 p.m., though an important-looking man did summon a scarce waiter to bring us some in the corridor.

Of course, as everywhere, the toilets are superb.  But they were perfectly adequate before.

Money seems available for everything except what matters most, people!  It is the way you are treated that makes you want to come back.  But I suppose I haven't got it right.  All those marketing managers can't be wrong, can they?