I wish I could cleanse a leper

On Saturday I had another one of my days of illicit pleasure, running away with Andrea to London town for theatre and hi jinks.  I am so glad I booked and paid for a great deal of theatre before the economy drive hit.  I am going to be able to go on my jollies until August, and then I will be plunged into deep and lasting gloom unless I find some twenty pound notes amongst the fluff and hundreds and thousands down the back of the sofa cushions.

We met up with our old friend David.  We were all at school together from the age of 14.  Our paths diverged around the time of university, Andrea and I staying in touch sporadically until I settled back in Hinckley and became her bestest theatre friend and companion in all ill considered ventures, David losing total touch with all of us until the invention of Facebook.  I may not be entirely a fan of Facebook in all its guises, but I am very grateful that it delivered David back into our lives.  He is a delight.

We are all total theatre heads.  Andrea and I like things with nice frocks, stuff that is full of language, and the odd bit of toilet humour, comedy vicars don’t go amiss.  David likes things set in coal scuttles starring disenfranchised Jewish homosexuals who saw each others legs off for pleasure whilst delivering state of the nation speeches.  Despite this we occasionally venture into each other’s dramatic territory and have a wonderful time anyway.

David is very clever, scarily clever.  He has two firsts, in chemistry and law, a Phd in something frightening and is currently setting the legal world alight.  He likes things to be precise and organised and logical.  Why he hangs around with us I don’t really know.  Last time I met him I told him the wrong railway station to meet me at, which caused us half an hour of total chaos, for which he then very gallantly apologised.  Then we were laughing so much at lunch we were late for our matinee performance and had to sit in the hall like naughty children until there was a suitable break in events.  He told me that he has never in his life been late for a play before.  There have been times when Andrea and I have been a fortnight late for a play.

The second time I met him up in town, Andrea and I explained all about Rigby and Peller to him in graphic detail over lunch.  I think beads of sweat actually rolled off his forehead during that one.  Still, he has never forgotten it.  In fact he mentioned it on Saturday in a nervous way, probably worried about what we might start talking about next.  Luckily I’d already discussed Embarrassing Bodies with Andrea in the car on the way there.

This Saturday we were off to the Panton Street Comedy Theatre, situated between Leicester Square and Piccadilly, to see Felicity Kendall in George Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession.  David has been to this theatre lots of times.  We agreed that he would pick the lunch venue and we would meet him there before the matinee.  He chose a place called The Washington Mayfair Hotel on Curzon Street behind Green Park tube station.  They had a £10 for three courses lunch available through Lastminute.com.  We arranged to meet at midday, prompt.

We would have been prompt only we went the wrong way up Curzon Street.  We were having such a lovely time exploring we didn’t keep a timely eye on a) street numbers or b) times.  We did however find two or three of the excellent elephants which are currently dotted around London; the bookshop where Nancy Mitford used to work, the hairdresser to the court; Master Geof. Trumper, and a lot of Heyerish houses.  We also found the Third Church of the Christian Scientists, which was quite exciting.  It had an enormous coat of arms thingy carved over the doorway and promised to: ‘Cleanse the lepers; Raise the dead; Heal the sick.’  I’ve always fancied a go at cleansing a leper.  Sadly there were none available. I expect they have a very high success rate with leper cleansing.  After all, it’s not like you see any anymore.  Probably makes up for their woeful track record of raising the dead.

Eventually we found the right place and fell through the door, only fifteen minutes late.  David was very gracious about our total hopelessness and we went through to the as yet untold joys of Madison’s Restaurant.  I confess to misgivings when we were parked next to a six foot bronze sculpture of a rooster on a stick while we were waiting for someone to help us.  When the woman finally tripped over and asked us if we wanted a table for breakfast, our collective hearts sank.

Still, we are nothing if not brave.  I may not be famed for paddling down the Amazon on a toothpick and finding a cure for cancer, but I am willing to go to extremes on the trail of a good cosmopolitan blog post.

Hearts could not possibly sink any further when after she had seated us, she scooted off and reappeared with three laminated a4 pages.  This was the lunch menu.  Not three pages each, one page each.  Wipe clean menus always trouble me when they rock up in unexpected places.  Fine in Little Chefs, Harvesters and transport cafes.  De rigeur in fact.  Not in swanky hotels in Mayfair though.  Oh no.

Starters consisted of a choice between:

1. Homemade soup of the day
2. Thai chicken salad
3. Pineapple, pea and potato salad.

By this time, David had whispered ‘sorry’ about twenty times, and we were all in fits of hysterical laughter.  We decided to try one dish each, so we could experience the full glory of the menu.  You may have thought that the soup was the safest option until you realise that as she handed us the laminated pages of joy the lady said: ‘I’m afraid we don’t know what the home made soup of the day is yet.  I will just go and find out.’  As it was now nearly half past twelve, and for something to be home made it really needed to have been cooking for at least twenty minutes, this was not a comforting message.

She returned.  It was apparently leek and potato soup.  David plumped for this.  Andrea got in quickly with the Thai chicken salad, thus leaving me with the pea, potato and pineapple salad.  The mind boggled.

When it came, it looked like this:

It basically resembled a pile of cat sick dressed with frisee, and balsamic vinegar.  It tasted like half a tin of pineapple chunks, badly drained, mixed with a handful of leftover peas from last night’s dinner service and some tinned new potatoes.  The pineapple juice had leaked into the mayonnaise causing it to split slightly, and the whole thing repeated on me for about twenty four hours afterwards.

The whole meal was like this.  David’s leek and potato soup was brown, and tasted neither of leeks, nor potatoes. The waitressing was painful.  One of the options for dessert was chunky apple tart.  David asked if it came with cream or ice cream.  The woman simply shrugged and said: ‘Neither. We heat it up on a plate.  That’s it.’  The only thing that could have made it more perfect was if she had had a fag hanging out of her mouth while she said it.

It was all very Acorn Antiques.

Luckily we found the whole thing very, very funny indeed, and despite getting indigestion which cost us a tenner, we had a fantastic time.  I would not recommend going if a) you like food, or b) you do not have some very game friends with you.  It just wouldn’t be the same.

On the way to Panton Street we got stuck in a torrential downpour. Poor David had dressed for summer in a floral cotton shirt and pale linen jacket.  He was absolutely soaked to the skin, so we took to Green Park tube station, even though it was only one stop, mostly so he could dry off in the up draught from the trains.  Then the train was late.

He hates being late, and then hated the fact that it was too late to walk, and we were stuck waiting for the train no matter what.  Andrea and I were very philosophical.  This sort of thing happens to us all the time.  Our total failure to get our knickers in a twist wasn’t helping, and when the train finally did arrive he blew off steam all the way to the theatre having a grumpy old man rant about people failing to walk in single file on the left, old ladies with shopping trolleys blocking the aisles in supermarket and stupid haircuts in the under twenties.

The play was very good.  I love Felicity Kendal.  I have a huge soft spot for The Good Life and every time she exited stage left I kept waiting for her to shout: ‘Tom! Tom!’ and dash off to put a red cashmere sweater on an ailing piglet.  She did not however, and I think that despite my frisson of disappointment, the play was better for it.

At half time, David came over to talk to us about what we thought of it so far.  For some reason he got onto the subject of rats in the underground stations.  He said: ‘I know that rats have a bad rep for spreading plague and petulance…’ At which point Andrea and I actually fell of our chairs laughing.  I thought I might actually rupture myself.  It was so silly, and we had been laughing for hours by this point, and this was just the icing on the cake.  I just kept imagining these rats, hands on tiny, rat hips shouting: ‘I AM NOT playing with you ANY MORE.  My bat.  My ball! Now bugger off.’ and then stomping off in a huff down the platform.

We had only just recovered when the lady next to me, who had only just sat down with her tub of ice cream, squeezed the tub too hard.  The lid popped off, sailed backwards over her head, and landed on the lady behind’s lap.  That finished us completely.  I laughed so hard I was actually a bit sick.

I spent the second half in a stupor of exhaustion, weakened by my extreme hilarity.

Afterwards we were just a collective limp rag.  Still, tea in Jermyn Street replete with buns set us up for the journey home.