Just my luck to get sick in the evening of International I Love Broccoli Day!
The day was full of evil portents.
For lunch that day I went to an Italian restaurant with my group at work. Although we had booked weeks in advance, we were shunted into a dark tiny corner in the basement of the spacious eatery, despite most tables outside and upstairs being empty. Apparently they were all reserved, but none of the tables had 'Reserved' signs. When we emerged from the basement two hours later, dissatisfied and blinking like owls, these tables were, in the main, still empty.
Their business model seems to be based on the idea that people who pre-book are a captive clientele and don't need to receive special treatment or nice tables - those are reserved for customers who just drop by on a whim and need to be enticed with nicely located tables outside and on the main floor, lest they take their custom elsewhere.
Sitting in my tiny dark corner amidst my colleagues, I was not amused, and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, no starter, no dessert, and only tab-water to drink.
Which was just as well, since the service was excruciatingly slow - a three course meal would have taken three hours, and we were on our lunch break.
Several of my colleagues, of a more long suffering and forgiving nature than me, had actually ordered more expensive dishes, and some of them were festooned with BROCCOLI!!! It was under-cooked and must have been underwhelming, since one of my colleagues sent it back to the kitchen uneaten, despite my admonishments that this was well-nigh blasphemy, given what day it was.
Believe it or not, no one even knew that it was International I Love Broccoli Day!!!!
Later on the bus someone sat in my favourite seat, and on the way home the handle on my carrier bag broke, and I had to transport 1200 teabags home by cradling them in my arms (there will be a blog post some time soon why I need that many tea bags).
Despite all those set-backs, I ventured out of the house again no sooner than I had arrived, and went to the shops to buy whatever I could to produce some sort of International I Love Broccoli Day meal.
I produced meatballs in tomato sauce and four boiled vegetables - nothing special, but time was short. For dessert I had Rote Gruetze - a sort of Summer Pudding made from various berries and thickened with gelatin.
That night I felt the first stirrings of a cold, and after struggling on through yesterday, today I succumbed.
So not much of an International I love Broccoli Day, but at least I tried!
