Well Darlings,
I see a new style of restaurant has opened in Clerkenwell, London. It's called: Dans Le Noir - if you took French, you're ahead of me. Based on a similar successful one in Paris, it leaves you very much in the dark about what you are eating - literally. You dine in total darkness. The food and wine is served by partly-sighted or blind waiters who guide you to your table, serve you, and even take you to the loo. Anything that might help you to cheat the system, like the display from a mobile phone or even a lit cigarette, is prohibited. The Frenchman behind the £800,000 venture, Edouard De Broglie, claims that the darkness awakens your senses and you appreciate the real taste of the food. He also says that by sitting alongside people you don't know or can see makes you talk to them more.
It's definitely not for me, that's for sure, but I guess it's crazy enough to make money, although how someone like Egon Ronay would ever manage to mark a meal out of ten for presentation, beats me. I should think complaints are rare there too. "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." How would you know? Oh, yuk! And I have to wonder: what do the people find to talk about in the dark?
"Excuse me, what did you order? And what did you get?" or, "Sorry, I seem to have lost my escargot. Do be careful if you've ordered the profiteroles, won't you?" or, "Waiter! I need to be taken to the loo. Are you the cute one?"
Just when you thought you'd seen it all!
Moving on: I have to give full marks to Virgin Trains who have spent £45,000 on 1,500 atomic watches and presented them to their drivers, station staff, guards and controllers. No more will we have to ask them, "Do you realise how late this train is?" Now they will know!
And if you are one of those people who relies on swanning around in your bespoke or made-to-measure tailoring to impress, you've just lost out. The latest in thing - if you'll pardon the pun - is made-to-measure condoms. A Cologne-based company Lebenslust (Lust for Life) has invented a system to make personalised condoms by using a machine which produces a 3D computer image of the customer's member. Once this is achieved the person may then choose the thickness of the condom and add any surplus details they may require.
The owner of the business, Oliver Gothe, claims, "These condoms will fit so well you will hardly notice you are wearing one. We can make them wafer thin or fist thick and 'engrave' them with your signature wrapped around the base." Interested? The service costs around £600 for an unspecified number. Which is good, if you really want to boast, because on the assumption that "the less you have, the more you get" it will mean you can tell other people you could only get a dozen for the price!
Neither snobbery nor prophylactics will ever be the same again!
Staying with the Germans, it seems they have brought a whole new meaning to a Policeman's Ball. Three of their policemen are facing disciplinary action after wearing kilts as fancy dress to a do - a party held in a brewery. Saying they were following the Scottish tradition, they wore nothing under the kilts. But a female police officer has complained that, after imbibing too much alcohol, one of the policemen stood on a table and inched his kilt up until he was showing his helmet.
Silly German policemen! Get a new dictionary! Nothing worn under a kilt means that nothing is worn-out - it's all kept in good working order! Besides, what true Scotsman would be affected enough by mere alcohol to disgrace himself in such a way? And, more to the point, what true Scotsman would ever need to stand on a table and inch his kilt up in order for his asset to be seen? Hoots Mon! He would simply have to untie it!
More seriously: I see that in Paris work has begun on converting all their self-sanitizing public toilets to work for free - and they have more than two hundred of them. They are doing it not for the tourists, who don't have a problem with paying, but for the homeless people because this is often their only chance to use a proper toilet during the day. The authorities hope to recuperate the money lost on the toilets by having to spend less on the street cleaning. By looking after the poor people spending their pennies, they may be saving themselves pounds. How sensible! I wonder where they nicked that idea from?
Now, with the rush to make gay themed films gathering pace since Brokeback Mountain has been received so well, I was surprised to see that former 007 Bond actor, Pierce Brosnan, has forced the producers to cut gay sex scenes from his new film "The Matador". He is reported as saying the gay scenes were "too much," and, "came on full tilt." Hmm. Wouldn't that have made a good movie, then? I mean, how far would Bond have got if it had only been a case of, "0h, 0h, Four-and-a-half"?
And now coming towards the end of the column this week I've had to scrap the last section to make space for the breaking news that Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq after seeking guidance from God. We're told viewers of ITV's Parkinson programme on Saturday 4th March will hear the PM asked if he had sought holy intervention on the issue, to which it is reported he answers, "In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
He's has blamed everything from dodgy dossiers to the wrong information as his reason for the war - so why not drag God in for his share of the blame too? If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny - but it can never be funny because so many have died, and are still dying, because of a man who heard voices, experienced divine intervention, or was "guided" in his decision!
Faith is a very personal thing. It should stay that way. No man has a right to take a nation to war because of his religious beliefs! And never more so than in a multi-racial, multi-cultural country like ours. There will be many in the world who will only see his revelation as the proof they needed that this war was the Holy War that they had always believed it be! Tony Bair - a very silly man.
See you next week...
"The Bitch!" 3/03/06.
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