Dead Spouse Society

Got this interesting internet customer review yesterday. 'Food was excellent, but we won't be coming back because the waiting staff were not wearing while shirts'. OK, I paraphrase but that was the gist. Our waiting staff wear their own clothes – they have to be black but that is the only stipulation.

Maybe it's a country thing: AA Gill writes about all the country customers complaining about paying £10 for a portion of chicken when 'they could get a whole one at the local supermarket for £3'. The eating-out bug just ain't the same outside the cities: people seem to want more of a sense of special occasion and I think this goes with white-shirted deferential serving staff.

My personal theory is that it goes with boring marriages. Any couple that plonk themselves wearily down and then proceed to regale each other in silence is going to be trouble. They will experience the service as a series of delays, they will see the serving staff as unduly casual/familiar. They will look at laughing groups around them and despise people from London/hen nights/gays/the socially inferior (delete as appropriate).

We've all been here. I remember a couple of nights in Gothenberg. Full of the most beautiful, friendly people. By the end of my couple of nights there I'd turned into some sort of sulky axe murderer. I was on the wrong side of it and it was just too much. On the plus side at least I wasn't demanding food service staff wear white shirts.