Saturday, November 27/2010

As in a classroom without a seating plan, the guests in the dining room find habitual tables and form at least nodding acquaintance with their neighbours, made easier when these happen to share a language, though many people are fluent in more than one. by European or North American standards the dining room is overstaffed, and there's a clear hierarchy. There are the kitchen staff in white, who only appear behind the buffet, replenishing or removing trays, as well as at the carvery or the griddle as required. Then there are the red waistcoated waiters, bringing drinks as ordered as well as removing plates, somewhat too assiduously as it's easy to leave for more bread and return to find one's half finished plate tidied out of existence - though nobody minds if you start over at that point. Presiding over all are the dark suited maitre d's - always more than one, so it should be maitres. It's hard to know exactly what their role is. Are they supervising us or the waiters? Certainly they are too superior to concern themselves with such trivialities as an empty yoghurt basin at breakfast, although one was once forced to capture and remove a cat that had wandered in from the poolside. One supervisor is stationed near the door where a sign warns in three languages (ungrammatically in all three?), that food is to be eaten in the room and not taken out. However, patrons routinely leave with an orange or a pear - one giggling couple with a plate bearing about 30 dates - and sometimes more. The Irishwoman at the next table not only makes elaborate sandwiches - half a baguette containing sliced meat and cheese - but sends the waiter for aluminum foil to wrap them in.

Finish reading Donaldson's The Case Against Owen Williams. Enjoyed the book less for the plot than for the sense of small town New Brunswick, and the protagonist's hopeless knowledge that stereotype and simplicity would always outweigh the less compelling and more awkward claims of truth.