How did I do?
*****
Last week I was in Scotland. I will write more on that later but for your viewing pleasure here is a picture from the MacKintosh house because it is beautiful and that day it was bathed in sunshine, as were we during our whole week away. It was recreated within the Brutalist building that is the Hunterian Museum. Genius.
I am finding little time to write at the moment, and little mojo when I do find it. I am in the middle of a mid-life mini tornado of mulling the future, looking for ways to enter the third age with some comfort and security - figuring out how to live well in this time of great anxiety.
My body is no longer the useful tool it once was. My battery hovers around 34% most of the time, with very occasional forays into the 52% region which I will then immediately use up to do things like totally reconfiguring the utility room. I now feel worn out, rather like our poor, broken little cat who schleps his back leg around after a nasty dislocation caused by a nasty car a couple of weeks ago. He is probably going to have an operation to get it reattached properly. This will require recuperation in a cage which is going to wreak all kinds of misery, so we are all looking forward to that.
Today my battery is around 23%. My hands, which have arthritis in full bloom in most of the fingers, are aching and sore. My teeth are having a discussion about whether to leave home all together or hang on a little longer. My lower back is crying. All because I am in the ridiculously privileged position of having a room in which to do laundry, store tools, pot plants and look out the window at our fantastically entertaining neighbours in the rookery. This room had gaping holes in the walls and the ceiling so it did actually need some major tlc. Once the plastering was done by our ever reliable builder Dom, it was up to me to paint and put it back together, trying out various configurations to make the most of the space, keep it clear and uncluttered, despite knowing it will be like that for approximately one day before reverting to general dumping ground. ‘No one is more determined than a woman rearranging furniture by herself’ - this is a meme that goes around the interweb occasionally and is absolutely the truth. I use hip shoves mostly, using complicated maths to work out what will fit where as I heave shelf units around in a space too small to swing a mouse, try it all out and then put everything back exactly where it was before.
I did paint some of it, then got intensely bored and decided that raw plaster is rather lovely and so did a wavey thing with the paint and called it art.
I had an email this morning from a restaurant the husband and I visited in Glasgow last week, on our Scottish jaunt. It was way up there compared to the other eateries we blessed with our presence and we had a lovely evening. When I first saw the mail I thought it was yet another ‘how did we do? rate our service’ desperate begging mail, wanting a google review or, god forbid, trip advisor. I hate trip advisor with a passion - it’s all lies and people who wouldn’t know good food if they choked on it.
Do you get fed up of being asked to rate your experience? How was your delivery driver? He delivered the parcel so beautifully, it was transcendental. Are you enjoying the app? It’s like flying. Were the toilets as clean as you wished? I felt I could eat my breakfast off the floor.
Apart from the infuriating relentlessness of these stupid questions is the fact that they are usually asking you to rate a person, a human. And if you don’t do it, or if you don’t give them 10/10, they will be penalised. Ask the cable guys. And they won’t give up either. Emotional blackmail is attempted as companies whine about being ‘small’ and ‘independent’ and reliant on good reviews. I have emails from companies I have sent things back to asking if I am enjoying my purchase. Insert facepalm here.
Also of course your data is being harvested, which always sounds like something out of the Matrix, and is, in fact, something out of the matrix as in ‘the cultural, social, or political environment in which something develops’ - we are being developed to feed the beast of commerce. I have taken to using cash a lot more now in a pathetic attempt to avoid the Big Brother spying on my every purchase and feeding the information into the maw of the algorithm minotaur.
All this insanity is beautifully illustrated in the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror (on Netflix - the whole series is brilliant and witty, if terrifyingly dark). I highly recommend watching it as a warning of where we are headed, and also for the ending which is very satisfying.
Like all arms length opinions, those on review sites or social media tend toward the negative, with reviewers spewing petty grievances because they can hide behind pseudonyms. Dorian, a restaurant in Notting Hill, is fighting back by reviewing the customers as Kate Maltby in the Observer writes here - but that would only work in a restaurant where they can actually be picky about who they allow in I’m guessing. Oddly on the same weekend the Guardian had a piece on the same issue - someone contacted a restaurant, after dining there, to complain about the quality of the road they took to get there. Someone had a pillar blocking their view while dining so could they have free meal? Someone else demanded a refund on their meal due to a traffic fine incurred in the bus lane on their way there, which they should have been warned about when booking their table, apparently. I am sure you will find those people gargling their woes on trip advisor. Maybe we have reached peak tolerance for customer reviews? I doubt it though, and anyway, that might mean that professional critics get above themselves and talk about their jobs as though they are actually important, so, onward.
Back to the email. It was a delightful little missive from Rowan, ops manager, at Margot, to say she hoped we had enjoyed our evening and that should we like to book again here is a handy short cut. That was it! As you might imagine, I fired back an equally cheery email to say that we had indeed had a lovely time, the food was excellent and the service superb and how incredibly refreshing it is to be able to respond to a human (I am assuming anyway); or not, as I choose; no one is going to be fired if I don’t enthuse, no cares if I don’t respond. Which is why I did of course. Clever, eh? Oddly enough that same restaurant was reviewed by Kirsty Wark on Sunday. It’s a like a cosmic weaving of paths leading me to, oh, who knows where.
The evening really was lovely, the chipsticks and taramasalata were stand out heaven - think long, crisp, uniform hash brown sticks, about 8 inches long, to dip into the creamiest taramasalata (that word has 6 a’s in it!) ever. The waiters were smart, funny and super efficient. As Kirsty mentions the uniform shirts were beautiful, very Toast-esque, and the napkins were gorgeous. These things matter on a very low level of things which matter. It was a very happy and not too poor making experience. Go there if you’re ever in that beautiful city.
Lovely very Elizabeth bit I writing that. Well done duchess
“Gargling their woes” ❣️