3 sisters again

Anne has 2 sisters and the 3 of them get together once or twice a year for a sisterly lunch or dinner, with an early January gathering being particularly customary  -- with customary male companions also being invited.

So last night the 6 of us met at Oliver's restaurant at Manly. It's a rather fancy place so I expected bad service but it was not too slow.

My hearing was a bit of a problem as the place had a tiled floor and was very busy with lots of chatty people.  I find it very difficult to hear people under those circumstances.   But I gathered with the men down one end of the table while the ladies were at the other end so the louder male voices got through to me fairly well in the end.  Colin had to lean over and shout in my ear, however, which he very kindly did.

Colin is 90,  It must be a sign of my own antiquity that I find myself dining with 90-year-olds.  We discussed various environmentalist issues and agreed that the Greenies and animal lib people go too far.  Why birds such as Galahs are protected while they are a real pest  -- with great flocks of them -- in Western Queensland really is hard to understand, for instance.  Surely trapping them for export should be allowed.  They're worth big money overseas.  And we all agreed that the Northern Territory should be opened up for buffalo hunting.

The food was good.  I had the lamb fillet, which was very tasty, but there was a rather small serve of it, which I had expected of such a restaurant.  The others had grilled fish.

We adjourned to Anne's place afterward for tea and coffee.  We could all hear one-another perfectly there so we chatted on for quite a while.

A small meditation: It has always amazed me that there seems to be an inverse relationship between restaurant prices and restaurant service. One would think that dearer restaurants would excel on service -- but it is the other way around. Service in expensive restaurants is almost always dilatory and snooty. You can wait a long time even to get a menu put in front of you. That happened at Olivers. I had to get up, find the menus, and distribute them to my table.

The food however arrived in a reasonable time but then there came the "issue" of paying for it. You would think that paying would be the last thing to be an issue but it was. I requested the bill but after it was not forthcoming I had to walk out into the kitchen to stir things up there. That did work. I got a bill. But then there was nobody to pay the money to! Nobody seemed to want it! I left it on the desk hoping that it would go to its proper place in due course! Amazing.