Checking out others in restaurants

 Hi there

When I was in Melbourne I visited the Conservatory Buffet Restaurant at the Casino. 

I love looking at fellow diners and visualising their lives.  I didn't have to visualise the life of the young woman at a table opposite me. I could see it.  She was obviously an influencer. 

She was by far the the most gorgeous woman in the restaurant of several hundred people.  A tall Asian beauty, wearing a slinky sparkly shoulderless dress and multi-coloured high heels to die for.  Her dark sleek way-past-the-shoulders hair could have come straight out of a tv commercial for shampoo.  Extra-long eyelashes, flawless make-up...

She had one accessory that absolutely floored me -

Her phone.

I sat opposite this lady for an hour and a half and, probably, ten minutes out of that hour and a half, she didn't pose into her phone.  Even when she was eating (all of five minutes), she had the phone on high in one hand and the fork in the other.

She held the phone to the right, pursed her lips and posed.  Then she held the phone up to the other side and duplicated the pose.  Then, to the middle.  Over and over again.

She passed the phone over to her friend to take her photo.  Then, after looking at the finished result:   No, no, that's not good enough!  She thrust the phone back at her friend to redo the photo over and over again, until the friend got it right.

This woman never let her phone go, even when she elegantly floated to the buffet, the phone went with her. 

The woman at the table beside where I was dining raised her eyebrows to me, and I raised mine back at her.  This was when we decided the stunning woman was, indeed, an influencer.  For us, it was like looking at some radiant mythical creature.

...

The buffet restaurant was fabulous.  I ate many (many!) oysters on the shell.  And that woman beside me all but cleared out the prawns.  Here, in New Zealand, in October, the strawberries on sale appear more green than red but at the Conservatory Restaurant they were so blood red and delicious that I had three platefuls of strawberries, along with scrummy ice cream.

  

Table etiquette

Hi there

Years ago, I read about the proper etiquette surrounding table serviettes.  'Napkins'  (hehe), if you're American.

Did you know that when you temporarily leave your seat in a restaurant, you are supposed to drop  your serviette onto your chair?

No, I didn't know that either.  But when I was in Melbourne recently, I was determined to give it a try.  I went to lunch at the posh Conservatory buffet restaurant.  Somehow, I don't think Miss Manners thought of buffets when the idea was first thought up.

I left my chair seven times.  Each time I put my serviette on my chair in an artfully-dropped casual  bundle.  Each time when I returned with a laden plate, my serviette was on the table where a lovely and attentive but truly misguided waiter had put it there for me.

Tut-tut,  the dowager Duchess, operating out of Downton Abbey, would be much displeased.

+++

PS:  a 'napkin' or 'nappie' in British-speak is what Americans call 'diaper'.