We are dining in a 'ress-trundt', as Ramsay would say. It is a bit fancy, i.e. there are tablecloths, waiters, more than one knife and fork, etc. I am with my companion and 'life partner', a French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist who cuts his own hair and likes bats. He is one hundred per cent bilingual, but still foreign; in other words he has an accent.
"Here, they give you bread with tongues."
I am astonished! In my head is bread and next to it a small rectangular dish bearing larks' tongues, all lined up in a row and garnished* with some curlyparsley. "Tongues?".
"Yes. Tongues."
Suddenly it is getting much worse. Now in my head the waiters are bringing the bread to the table in a basket; they line up and then somehow flick the bread from the basket onto our plates using their tongues, which are like giant versions of what lizards have curled in their heads.
I am going a bit red in the face, and I am starting to get quite angry. This is not making any sense at all!!!
"What do you mean, they put the bread on our plates with tongues? What are you talking about?".
The pathologist makes a pincer movement in the air with his microscope-manipulating scientistfingers. "Tongues! Tongues! You pick things up with them!".
I fall silent. We drink the wine. The waiter comes with bread.
I am attempting to give myself an immediate and cheap 'permanent' hairstyle by sticking a knife in the toaster. My PopTart* is stuck!!!
Some time later, I am seated at the breakfast table of our palatial Quebec mansion. Sundry toasted goods are strewn over the table like so many pieces of flotsam and jetsam; crumbs loll on the carpet; tiny patches of steam gather on the table where the toast has fallen; slowly, it becomes soggy. A dog barks in the distance; someone, somewhere, is playing Genesis' "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)". (Me, I'm just a lawnmower.)
The pathologist with whom I share a house (and occasionally toothbrush, if we are on a journey and I have forgotten mine) sighs as he watches me bend my toast backwards and forthwards. "We need a toast rack", I say.
Suddenly I am in every British hotel everywhere. It is the morning and we are sitting in the 'restaurant'. There is a big window, and through it I can see the sea; it is probably Bournemouth. Old ladies and men are walking up and down the front in macintoshes and their umbrellas are being blown inside out. They would like to be sitting inside a tea shop drinking cups of tea and eating macaroons, but they are not.
A lady in a burgundy uniform approaches: do I want tea or coffee, and do I want my toast white or brown?
I know what is coming next!!!!! There is a pot of tea, and there is toast. It is in a toast rack. It is cut in triangles and it is going cold, but cold in a non-soggy style; it is becoming chewy. On it, you must put butter and Marmite or jam or marmalade from a plastic pod. You will eat it all, and the lady will come with your scrambled egg and lone sausage, and she will put it down and she will say: "more toast?", and you will say, "yes". One hour later you will still be eating toast.
"A toast rack?", says the pathologist. I push the cat off the table, where she is trying to make sweet love to the cheese. "You can't get those here. When I think of England, I think of toast racks. I don't think I've seen them anywhere else."
"When you think about England you think about toast racks?", I roar, wiping jam from my eye. "You could be thinking about all sorts of things, like the Queen, and Shakespeare, and Gordon Brown's glass eye, or our newspapers (which are better than yours) or Nigella Lawson's bosoms, and you say toast racks?"
The pathologist looks unmoved. Over the following months, I visit a great many shops looking for a toast rack. There are none. I try and find on the line in Canada; there appear to be none, unless on a ghastly 'British Fayre' web-site. My mother asks: "is there anything you want from England?", for she is coming to visit. When she arrives a week later, she brings with her a toast rack, and my father.
It is helping a very great deal. Despite its many practical benefits (holds toast and prevents it from becoming soggy), it also helps alleviate the constant confusion generated by the fact that petrol stations do not sell Ginster's Cornish Pasties, or that it is impossible to buy a good newspaper or knickers that fit: in short, my toast rack is alleviating my homesickness (whilst providing an excellent practical service). What a boon!
*I am not really making PopTarts. Do not worry. I am toasting bread that I have made with my own hands from straw and the dust from the cat litter tray. Or that, at least, is what it tastes like.
In other news, I offer you some film of Genesis performing I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). "What the cocking hell is Peter Gabriel doing, and why are you suddenly so very interested in early Genesis?", I hear you cry. It is a long story, my friends, and one that is not without some embarrassment.
Regular readers will be aware of my views of the Best Western hotel chain. Not only did I have the very great pleasure of staying in one in Southport, but some weeks later, fortune drew me to Cheadle, where I stayed in another of their 'establishments'.
"Why the bad hotels in dodgy parts of the North of England?", I hear you cry. A simple reason: dear friends marrying in places a very great distance from any other available hotel, a limited budget, a small car and a boot full of M&S patterned sockettes. But I digress.
It will come as no surprise that the news that the only hotel room available in Toronto this week was at the Best Western Primrose was met with some dismay. It is bad enough having to leave Montreal (interesting, fun, nice to look at, full of Frenchies) and go to Toronto (wishes it was New York; contains the CN Tower) to work, but having to leave Montreal to stay in a hotel that smells of death makes the whole commuting-to-Toronto-once-a-week arrangement make even less sense than it did at the beginning.
Still, in some ways my visit at the Best Western is pleasing, if only because it is reliably ghastly. For e.g.:
I check in
The receptionist is called Lindsay. She does not smile, or look at me in the face. The transaction is brief. The room card is left on the reception. I do not move. She glances up and shoves it at me. "This is your key". I leave.
I attempt to find a drink and light snack
I ring the button marked "Reception". There is an automated voice, much in the usual Best Western style. Eventually I speak to a real person.
Me: Do you have room service? Person: No. Me: Do you know where I can get a drink? Person: No. Me: Right. Just out of interest, if someone was desperate for a ham sandwich, could you do it? Person: There is a Tim Hortons. Goodbye.
There is always a Tim Hortons, but I do not eat at Tim Hortons unless I am recovering from food poisoning and feel faint at Montreal airport.
I look about my room
It smells of death. The bathroom has black mouldy grout. The 'toiletries' have been used. There are two beds, and a kitchen that has nothing in it, not even a paper plate.
I make tea
It smells like an old ashtray.
I try to find the internets
It does not exist, unless I take it from the hotel next door. I check the room rate
When one's parents are visiting from a land far away (of which more later; I am too weak to write much of it now confused, as I still am, by my father bellowing "look at that man! He is driving that lawnmower with his cock!" from the backseat of our Subaru only yesterday morning), it is as well to 'check up on' things before making any bookings; the margin for error is small, and my parents' (special) needs many.
I have of course used the internets for my researches, as I often do, and it has reminded me of the worst of all types: the amateur restaurant critic. I will share with you, unedited, the comments made by Mr CockBiscuit (not his real name!!) on 22 May about the restaurant booked for our tea tomorrow night. "But when the aromas of dishes brought to neighboring tables waft past, you sit up a bit straighter and look a bit closer to the menu. By the way, the most delicate of animal tissue - fois gras, from small local farms - is available with every entre if you choose. My choice this evening was sweatbreads with chanteurelles in the lightest of cream based sun-dried tomato sauces. I ate as slowly as I could! ...
...We were not planning to have dessert, but their chocolate offering went by, and we had to call one in. With the lightest of light ice cream made from goat's milk, we found the divine end to a divine meal.
In our opinion, Toast! is Quebec City`s tip of the glass to fine gastronomie!"
In my opinion you, sir, are a preening cockmonkey!
We are dining in a 'ress-trundt', as Ramsay would say. It is a bit fancy, i.e. there are tablecloths, waiters, more than one knife and fork, etc. I am with my companion and 'life partner', a French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist who cuts his own hair and likes bats. He is one hundred per cent bilingual, but still foreign; in other words he has an accent.
