Sunday 30^th December, 2018 1110

Yesterday Jodie invited me for lunch. She is Annie's Chinese teacher, by which I mean she is not only Chinese but she teaches it, both in our university and elsewhere.

These days I am no more a lunch person than I am a breakfast person (except in hotels where I can get an English one!) so I was not expecting to particularly enjoy much beyond a couple of beers.

She took me to a new (to me) place called “26 Inches”. Despite the rather rude connotation I guessed perhaps it was a pizza parlour. I was correct and my heart sank – pizzas in China are very often less than satisfactory, Pizza Hut being a perfect example. Thankfully pizza was not all that was on offer, particularly when I asked her what they were like and she replied “so-so”. If a Chinese person says that, it's virtually a guarantee I will hate them.

Thumbing through the menu I came across several likely alternatives. Then I turned the page and encountered a sausage platter! Sausages here are dire but these were labelled as Bavarian, American and so on and they looked authentic. I had to try them but didn't want lunch to be purely meat, so ordered some cheesy, bacony potato skins. She selected meatballs and spaghetti.

The skins were delicious and there were far too many sausages but I ate more than I have for some time. Oddly the two I liked least were the American one and a Cumberland type one, the origin of which I know not. I made sure to get a doggy bag and in fact five minutes ago finished them off.

The occasion was slightly marred by the presence of an inordinate number of kids, many of whom were noisy and boisterous and appeared to be sans parents. Shortly before we left, Jodie asked a waitress what was happening, it turned out it was a primary school breaking-up party. The kids had been given pizza bases and they had put their chosen toppings on before returning them to the kitchen for baking. There were no parents, merely a few teachers, until as we left, the parents arrived and suddenly a thirty-foot long table became instantly full of adults and minors. I shudder to think how noisy it will have got once the food service got under way!

We then went to Caffe Bene, somewhere I had been meaning to try because I thought perhaps it was somewhere you could get a pannini or a toastie, but no, cakes, ice creams and coffees were all that were on offer. And beer and wine. Plus you could smoke upstairs. And it was warm, so warm in fact I yawned at regular intervals!

Considering we met at 1230 and our shared taxi dropped me off at home at 1800, our “lunch” had lasted five hours! It also gave me the information that a relative of hers has a business dealing in issuing visas of all denominations (for a fee). That knowledge and contact may very well prove to be handy when the time comes.

I have no idea what I will do tomorrow night although the likelihood is that I will be a boring old fart and stay home, possibly even being asleep as we enter 2019. However if you are going to celebrate the dawning of the last of the “teen” years then I hope you enjoy yourselves and emerge safe, unscathed and hung over.

Happy New Year!!