Restaurant etiquette! And why is asking for tap water still so excruciating?

Also, my book's new title! A WONDERFUL film! A very indulgent pudding!

I don’t buy the papers every day, but most days. I often feel quite self-conscious, clutching them under my arm as I walk back from Budgens on a weekday morning, past the usual queue of rush hour traffic. ‘Who is that eccentric lady with so many papers?’ I imagine people idling in their cars thinking, ‘She might as well be riding a penny farthing.’ This is ENORMOUSLY narcissistic of me, I know. They’re probably just thinking ‘Can the lights hurry the f- up so I can get to work on time, and why has that woman with all those papers gone to the shops in that grubby t-shirt? Is she alright?’

Anyway, I buy the papers and I always read the letters right to the end because you never know what you might find in them, is my point. And there’s been a splendid chain of letters in The Sunday Telegraph recently which you may not have seen. It kicked off two weeks ago with the following:

Terrific stuff. I love letters like this so much. A touch of Victor Meldrew, a touch of Bill Bryson. Heaven.

And then this weekend, there was a reply to Vic from two other readers equally annoyed about, as they see it, the decline in restaurant standards:

You see? Marvellous again. ‘No tips were given that night.’ I’ve looked up the drive from Dereham (where Vic lives) to Ludham (where Brenda lives) and it’s only 47 minutes, so perhaps they could meet up? Go to a restaurant together and discuss the matter? Is this the rom com we didn’t know we all needed? Pinner to Norfolk is a bit of a drive for poor old David, but given he feels so strongly about dessert forks, perhaps he wouldn’t mind making the trip to join them?

It just so happens that I’m reading Keith McNally’s excellent memoir, I Regret Almost Everything atm. Keith is the restauranteur who’s made millions in the past few decades from various mega successful restaurants, practically institutions, chiefly in New York. Balthazar, Pastis and so on. His book is a terrifically funny, moving and gripping account of his life - from birth in Bethnal Green to becoming a millionaire and major NY mover and shaker, stumbling over people along the way including Alan Bennett (they had a long affair), Anna Wintour (as a young woman, she used to come into one of his restaurants and always order Eggs Benedict), and Madonna (she refused to pay entry into one of his clubs. He didn’t let her in.)

It’s not as smug as I’ve made that sound. Keith’s also very self-deprecating and the book kicks off with him trying to take his own life not long after his second marriage has failed. It’s simply very candid, and full of good one liners (‘I often think the best thing about having sex with someone is being able to stretch your legs the full width of the mattress when the other person gets up’), so I recommend if you like memoirs and are after something very entertaining for the sun bed.

I was particularly struck by one bit, where Keith reveals the rules he set in his waiters’ manual when he first opened Balthazar in New York in 1997. Here you go:

I suspect Vic, Brenda and David would agree with him. I especially like the line about not asking ‘How is everything?’ Why must waiters do this, just as you shovel a forkful of food into your mouth?

‘Hdniwhgdjendkjnsqiugw,’ you reply, as you attempt to smile at them, cheeks bulging like a squirrel’s.

I’ve thought about Keith’s rules and restaurant behaviour quite a bit in the past week or so. I went out for dinner on Saturday and when the waiter asked ‘still or sparkling?’ I replied ‘still’, assuming it would be filtered and free as so many restaurants do that now, but then he returned with a posh bottle of £4.50 water and I was too embarrassed to blurt ‘oh, sorry, I meant tap!’ Why does saying ‘tap’ sometimes still feel excruciating? Or is that just me being feeble?

Towards the end of that same dinner on Saturday night, I had one sip left of my red wine. One delicious final sip which I was going to have after my last mouthful of pudding, but before I could do that, a highly efficient and slightly annoying waitress assumed I’d finished and swiped the glass from underneath me as she passed our table. ‘Hang on I haven’t quite finished yet!’ I wanted to cry, but this felt slightly desperate in a nice restaurant.

I was somewhere else the other day and they cleared my plate before my friend’s (finished first, as always, because I am a human Labrador), whereupon I sat there like a lemon while she carried on through her fish. So you see I do actually have some sympathy with Vic, Brenda and David. I’m not just being facetious. And some of these things are particularly annoying these days when eating out is so £££££. Look! I’m now sounding like the sort of person who’d write a grumbly letter to The Sunday Tel.

What are the other restaurant irritants? Share them below if you like. I can feel a column coming on…

Picture of the Week

Big news! My new book has a new title! It was going to be The Puppy Diaries, now it’s The Year of the Dog, and this is the final manuscript version for me to go through with a red pen before it goes to print. Yikes.

Originally, thanks to my brilliant publisher Lisa Milton, the book started out as a funny, lighthearted diary of my first year with a puppy. And it still is that (I hope!), but given my last year and its various ups and downs, it’s changed a bit and some parts have become more serious and contemplative about life and love and marriage and babies (and dogs). All the big questions. So we decided to change the title, too.

I love it so much because it’s very much what the book is - literally, the year of the dog, the year of Dennis. In that time, I’ve had dramas and he’s had dramas (the latest drama was on the weekend when I suddenly noticed what I thought was red fluff on the carpet, only to discover it was copious bleeding from a cracked paw pad. Healing now, luckily. But when I produced a bottle of TCP from my bathroom in a panicked effort to stop it getting infected, Dennis seemed to think the bottle was a hacksaw and WOULD NOT let me near him.) So I’ve taken these various dramas and put them into this book, a memoir (although I still feel a bit pretentious calling it that?) Out in October, you can pre-order it HERE. I am going to get quite tiresome about this in the next few months, so apologies in advance, but it’s the most personal book I’ve ever written, the first non-fiction book I’ve written, and so it means more to me than my novels, I think. Or at least it means something very different.

Proofs of it go out this week to various writers and doggy people. This is my least favourite part of the publishing process, the bit when your book is sent to to well-known people in the hope that they give you a glowing quote for the front of it. It’s generally the first time that anybody outside of your publishing team reads it and it’s feels very exposing. ‘Like my book, please please like it!’

I’ve had a batch of postcards made to send out with the proofs, and genuinely started my postcard to Dawn French saying ‘Dear Dawn, from one terrier lover to another…’ because she has a Jack Russell. Will Dawn like my book? Will Dawn even read my book? WHO KNOWS. The whole thing is terrifying. But The Year of the Dog it now is.

My postcards for Dawn, Monty, the Queen (because she’s also into terriers), and a few others…

Recommendations of the Week

1. The Ballad of Wallis Island. I first heard about this film a few weeks ago in an interview with Carey Mulligan where she said she that she’d done plenty of sad films and now she wanted to give people ‘joy.’ It’s been hailed as the rom com hit of the summer, and Richard Curtis has gone so far as to call it ‘one of the 10 greatest British movies of all time.’ Of all time! But you may not have seen massive billboards about it because it’s had a quiet-ish release.

   It’s a quiet-ish sort of film. I went to see it last night remembering Carey’s thing about making people feel ‘joy’, then I started crying half way through. Not sad tears. Oh-my-life-this-is-so-enormously-poignant-and-sweet tears, I think we’d call them. It is brilliant - funny and sad and original and immensely touching AND joyful. Carey was right. I loved every second of it. In short, and without giving too much away, Tim Key is a lonely, bumbling chatterbox who reunites his favourite folk duo for a very special one-off performance.

   It’s taken 18 years to develop from a short film, which is quite encouraging for anyone with any sort of screen project atm thinking ‘Is this ever going to happen or am I going to DIE and only be rewarded with posthumous glory like Bach?’ Proof, if you need, that some things are definitely worth giving more time. Can’t recommend it enough, ESPECIALLY if you need to sit in an air-conditioned space this week. I’ll stick the trailer below. I’ve just watched it and it’s made me want to go straight back to the cinema and see the film all over again. GO and see it, honestly, because it’s been out for a month or so now and am not sure how much longer it’ll be in cinemas.

2. Have you come across the super talented Sophie Wyburd? Have I mentioned her here before? Now I’m writing this I feel as if I have, but I’m going to big her up again because I made this tiramisu from her book on Friday night and it was SO GOOD. So so so so good. Hazlenut tiramisu which, as she says in her book, is like a pudding version of a Kinder Bueno. I hate reproducing recipes here because it feels like cheating the cook out of book sales, but she’s put this one up on Instagram before, which you can find HERE.

   

   She makes her own hazelnut butter in the clip, but I just bought a jar of it, which is what she says to do in the book. VERY easy to make, especially if you have an electric whisk. I don’t, so I beat the egg whites by hand which absolutely did for my right bicep on Friday morning. But it was still pretty easy, took all of 20 minutes to make, and then I whacked it in the fridge until it was needed. Perfect perfect summer pudding, imho. Because whenever someone brings out a platter of fruit I can’t help but think: is that it? Don’t get me wrong, I love a berry! I’m a huge fan of a peach! But I’m also quite greedy and like a proper pudding. So here you go.

Nonsense of the Week

Look at this text message. Looks legit, doesn’t it? I felt that sinking feeling when it came through last week: rats, another driving misdemeanour. I’ve had a few recently. largely because I keep forgetting to pay the fee for driving through the Blackwall tunnel. You know when you go through a tunnel or into the congestion zone and you make a mental note to pay the charge as soon as you’re out of the car, and you’re CONVINCED that you’ll remember? ‘I’ll definitely definitely remember this time,’ I thought recently, as I drove to Stansted airport, ‘it won’t be like all those other times when I forgot.’

Guess what? I forgot. I never ever remember and then a fine comes through the post. So I’ve finally now set up automatic paying or whatever it’s called.

Anyway, I assumed the above was relating to one of the recent times I’ve forgotten. So I clicked the link, which took me through to the DVLA website, and I started putting in my details - my post code, then my car reg. And then I stopped. Was I sure this was legit? So I tested the link from the message out on my laptop, whereupon my internet browser reared up like a horse and wouldn’t even let me near it - big red screen saying it was a dangerous website.

Turns out, it’s yet another one of those scams. Google tells me that PCN scams like this are on the rise, and various councils have issued warnings saying they’d never remind anyone to pay via text message like this. But it’s perfectly spelt! And it took me through to what looked EXACTLY like the DVLA website! And now they have my postcode and my car reg and I’m wondering if that’s enough to clone me, drain my bank account, catch a flight to Panama or wherever and sit on the beach with a piña colada for the rest of their silly little life. Not that my bank account would get them that far, but you know what I mean.

Urgh, hateful scammers. They need to get a life. Or get a dog, maybe. Then they wouldn’t have time to waste on silly schemes like the above. They’d be too busy trying to get blood out of a sisal carpet because of a cracked paw pad (any tips on this, by the way? I’m not sure my hallway carpet is ever going to be quite the same.)

PS. I am away again next week. Although tbf this is (partly) for work. So I might do something on Tuesday, but I might not. If nothing drops in your inbox then that’s why and I’ll be back the week after that. Good to keep you on your toes.