French Dinner

The restaurant, complete with Damien Hirst art

 In the afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised when the Young Dutchman called, and stayed on the phone much longer than his usual 5 minutes required to make plans.  We talked a bit about plans for the weekend (which to be fair, seems tremendously loose and unorganised), and then just spent some real time talking and catching up.  I miss that.

At the end of the day, the Tall South African called, just needing someone to tell him funny stories and lift his spirits a bit.  It was just good to talk to him, and luckily since I wasn't meeting the crowds for dinner until 8:30 (the dinner reservation wasn't until 9), for once he wasn't making me late somewhere.

As this evening, I was meeting a French friend of mine and a crowd of her friends for a dinner party.  There was no particular reason for it, as far as I could tell, but she had simply decided to e-mail out, suggesting that a large group of us might all like to go to dinner at this particular restaurant.

I went and joined her and a friend for pre-dinner drinks, although sitting outside in the cold because, like all French people, they smoked.  Still, I was glad for the pre-dinner chance to catch up, as I got to hear about recent firings at UBS, where apparently the company decided to lay off 45% of its London workforce, which translated into 75% of its trading floor (where my French friend worked).  Apparently how they did the firing was really brutal, as people just went into the office, and if their security passes worked, that meant they still had a job.  If their security passes did not work, they were then shunted down a side hallway where people were waiting to process them for layoffs.  Nobody had any clue about this until they arrived at work. My friend was one of the lucky ones who did not lose their jobs, but she said when she arrived at work, she was so shocked by the sight of the empty trading floor, that the few people who were left standing had no idea what to do, and pretty much spent the day taking photos of all the rows of empty desks.  I can't imagine how the company can continue to function after laying off so many people, and in such a brutal manner too!

I got to hear as well a bit about the guy she's been seeing for the past month, although soon we had to rush to dinner, and the girls had to borrow cash from me to cover the drinks.  Still, worth it so we could be on time to the restaurant, where everyone was waiting.

We randomly took seats at dinner, and I found myself seated with an American/Swiss girl to my right (she was married to a Swiss guy and they lived in Zurich), and an Austrian guy from Vienna to my left.  The Austrian guy turned out to be super-annoying, as he drank too much wine (he was constantly downing his glass, hence drinking nearly twice as much as the rest of us), and when we ordered steak, they brought out one giant piece for anyone who had ordered it done the same, and then left us to cut it up and divide it between ourselves.  As you might imagine, he found a way to take the much larger piece.  It was little things, but they added up to be utterly annoying throughout the course of the dinner.

Our hostess at the head of the table at the end of dinner

Luckily I was seated across from a guy from Morocco who was there with his French friend. Both were quite cute, witty and charming, especially the Moroccan guy. Of course it amused me to think that I'd asked my French friend if dinner would simply be a whole bunch of French people, and she assured me it would not be, but I'm not sure a Moroccan whose parents live in Paris who speaks fluent French counts as "not French!"

The two boys apologised that most everyone around us was speaking in French, and made quite an effort to engage me in English, which I greatly appreciated.  We talked a lot about the US election, and had quite a good debate about politics.  I thought it was such a shame when they both went out for a cigarette break at the end of dinner, as they were such lovely guys!  But I guessed they both sensed that lack of connection, as neither asked for my number at the end of the evening.  Yet I suppose because we are all friends of my French friend, she might drag us together for another party anyway.

At the end of the evening, I found myself talking to a waiter about the giant Damien Hirst piece in the middle of the room, a cow with a chicken on its back in the middle of the room.  Interesting discussion, and I really learned a little bit about art.

The art piece in the middle of the restaurant

Finally, I made my apologies to my French friend, who wanted to drag me out with the rest of the crowd for more drinks, but I knew if I didn't leave then, I'd be dooming myself to a journey home on night buses from East London.  As it was, I made the absolute last Central Line home of the night, telling me I was right to leave when I did!