Andwells

It was breakfast time and I was sitting at the bar admiring a small basket of narcissus that Jan had bought from Intermarché. The plastic care instruction label, that had been 'planted' in the pot, was written in three languages, Dutch, English and French. Being the inquisitive type, I read the label. It told me to afford plenty of sunlight and keep the soil moist etc. What really grabbed my attention was the final bits of information. "For decoration only. Do not consume." Now, I consider myself fairly normal (you don't want a comment from me? - Ed.) and never in my life have I been tempted to eat flowers. I know you can eat some types but they ain't generally on my menu. Nor do I suspect that they are on the menu for anyone other than an extremist vegan, and they're not normal anyway. The only comfort that I could gain from this information is that there are pan european idiots around and that I wasn't being singled out. I'd have felt even happier if it had been printed in Spanish, Chinese and whatever the speak on the Indian sub-continent, but you can't have everything.

Anyway, this reminded me of a time, many moons ago, when men were men, and I had more money in my pocket than sense. A group of us were celebrating something or other, at what was at that time a very fine restaurant. It was called Andwells and was situated on the road between Reading and Basingstoke, just near the Duke of Wellington's pile. It was proud to announce that 'Madame soignee la cuisine' or somesuch which always made me think that she never actually did any cooking, she just shouted at the chef. They were dead posh! Last time I looked it had been turned into a Little Chef. But I digress. We were a very successful, macho and determined group of men and we taught people to walk on water, or at least that's what we thought. For the life of me I can't remember why, but the conversation got round to eating flowers. N, (I'll save his blushes) no, bugger it, he was called Neville and he just loved to argue. If you said white, he said black etc. Anyway, we're talking about eating flowers and I happened to mention that I didn't think that you could eat daffodils, whilst pointing at the huge bowl of said flowers on our table. This statement was like a red rag to a bull. 'Oh yes you can,' said Nev, true to form, and wouldn't back down until yours truly had offered him a pound for each daffodil that he would eat. We all looked on in wonderment (with more than the odd snigger) as he proceeded to eat his way through the table decoration. Eventually, he stopped at ten daffs and, with smug self satisfaction, demanded his ten pounds. As I handed over the money, I congratulated him, but deep inside I was annoyed because if I'd have known that he'd be foolish enough to eat them I'd have offered him double. Needless to say he puked it all up (including his very expensive meal) and I think that we were barred from the restaurant thereafter. No doubt Madame had to soignee the cleaning of the gents toilets as well that evening.