For the first time in my life I had a Xmas meal in a restaurant.
We'd booked a table for 14 at the fairly plush "Orocco Pier" establishment in downtown South Queensferry.
As we sat down to begin our meal, the strains of Live Aid and "Feed The World" were piped loudly through the speakers.
I didn't really feel that this was the most appropriate song to signal the commencement of an extended session of traditional Christmas gluttony.
Could we compare this to playing "Hanging Around" by the Stranglers at an annual Anti-Capital Punishment Society dinner?
...or "Going Underground" by The Jam at a funeral? I could go on...
The food was ok but not great and (as is generally the case for Xmas restaurant fare), horribly over-priced.
I prefer the domestic Xmas dinner, although that's easy for me to say as I've never been forced to cook the big fecking thing myself. Although, it's fair to say I didn't miss my usual prolonged stint on "dishwashing detail". It always had that "painting the Forth Bridge" endlessness about it.
One benefit/disadvantage (you decide) of this change of venue, was that it is not generally looked on favourably in restaurants if you go into the kitchen when you've finished your meal and start helping yourself to extra helpings of turkey, xmas pudding etc
Although, based on what we paid, I think we should have been allowed to do this.
However, I can appreciate that there are various health & safety issues involved in allowing 120 drunk people to wander around a busy, commercial kitchen picking at food.
As a result I didn't need to lie down and undo the top button of my trousers, as is usually the case after a normal classic Xmas binge eating day.
A taxi into town afterwards cost almost as much as the meal. Yo Ho Ho.
The television has been gruesome over the festive period.
I've enjoyed catching up with "Life In The Undergrowth" though. Amazing stuff. The insects are such great performers. I often wonder how many takes they have to do to get things just right.
I expect David Attenborough must have loads of hilarious out-takes of insects falling off twigs, getting their head stuck in tree sap or landing on a "dirty fido" from a joke shop, hilariously mistaking it for the real thing.
There are certain double standards at play though.
We are expected to be in awe of the intelligence behind devious tricks insects use to exploit situations to their advantage.
Like wasps laying an egg on a spiders back.
The larvae then kills the spider and sucks out it's insides, before discarding the carcass. Or the favourite old trick to paralyse other insects, then bury it next to your own eggs and let the babies eat the stricken prey (alive).
This is awful behaviour.
Can you imagine the social stigma attached to attending a dinner party and then sticking one of your eggs on the back of the host before you leave; in the full knowledge that he will soon have his insides sucked out by your lovely new baby, and then be casually discarded in the wheely bin.
This is unacceptable behaviour in anyone's language, so why should we admire, let alone tolerate, this behaviour in insects?
I've a good mind to write to the BBC Head of Programming.
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