Restaurant and aggro
There's this one restaurant that's become something of a regular place for my family for special occasions. It used to have a Belgian theme, and though that has since changed to a more personal theme, the menu changed very little. For example, there are still a lot of Belgian beers and wine (understandable, I think most of their clientèle came for that).
I, on the other hand, come for the mussels. They do them in many sauces, but always cooked up in a black pot that they are served in. We first went there for one of my birthdays, chosen as a surprise location for my love of mussels, though the rest of the generation on this side of the family has since requested it. The time before this one had been my birthday, I opted for the New Orleans moules. It turns out that Cajun food is really hot! It was excruciating, I couldn't finish it.
This time it was my cousin's birthday. I opted for the Italian style, and as I looked in at the mussels swimming in tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, oregano; I realised that they had effectively served me a pizza.
I felt extraordinarily giddy and energised for most of the evening, an alarming swing up from a couple hours earlier when I was feeling extremely depressed and nihilistic. So I was bouncing in my seat and singing The Major General's Song and Ragnar the Red under my breath over and over while my cousins, brother and his girlfriend drew on the black tablecloth with pieces of candle wax.
It wasn't long into the evening when my aunt leaning over at told me that one of the waitresses had been "eyeing me up." I choked on my drink. "What?"
Oh this was fun, especially when my mother, brother and cousin got in on the act.
"Which one."
"the brunette."
"That one?"
"No the other one."
"Okay..."
I was utterly mystified. She'd been serving us all evening, I hadn't seen anything usual.
"How can you tell?"
"You see the way she keeps looking and smiling at you?"
"...no?"
I saw no such thing. I was watching at that point, not staring or anything, just paying more attention.
"There! Did you see that?"
"See what?"
I was getting annoyed at this point. I hadn't seen her do anything I hadn't seen loads of other girls do before, and nothing that I could discern as anything significant. As far as I could tell, she never even looked at me except when I was ordering. I changed the subject and ignored their input from then on. I'm quite sure they were having me on.
Presently the cake came out for my cousin. My mum had made it, it was three-dimensional and looked like the Disney castle. Nothing on my scrab or the Triassic marine diorama I had years ago, but I have eccentric tastes.
