JUSTINE O’MAHONY
LAST weekend Myself and Himself went off for a ‘romantic’ weekend together in a posh hotel. Now I use the term, ‘romantic’ loosely because Himself doesn’t do romance. His idea of romance is to turn down the soccer for ten seconds when I tell him I love him and pat me on the leg before turning it up again!
The posh hotel was my idea (obviously!) and it was worth every penny as far as I was concerned. We were given a glass of locally distilled whiskey on arrival, had our own Christmas tree in our room and his and her sinks (my personal favourite) in the bathroom.
Because it was posh, we were warned that the drink would be spendy so we brought a ballygowan bottle filled with gin and few cans of tonic. Classy eh?! Everything was going rather well although we did consume a tad more ballygowan than we meant to, until we went into the bar for a drink before dinner.
The waitress returned with our drinks and a little tray of nuts, leaving our bill discreetly beside it. Not discreet enough unfortunately.
‘What?! Jaysus! Over €10 for a gin and nearly €7 for a bottle of beer! That’s extortionate!’ His face was going that particular shade of red it goes when he feels he’s being fleeced. He tucked into the nuts with fierce abandon, making sure he ate every last one, to get his money’s worth.
I persuaded him to order another round, which to be fair he did, but not before he told the waitress to bring ‘another round of nuts!’ Three rounds of nuts later and I think he was beginning to feel not so hard done by.
How he managed to eat dinner afterwards I have no idea, but then again there wasn’t an awful lot of dinner to eat. One piece of fish with a few roasted veg was the sum total of his main, whilst mine was a piece of beef and an ox cheek (don’t even go there!).
The Wine waiter came round to take our order. I told him we’d like white and said I didn’t want anything too expensive. He clicked his fingers as if he’d just discovered the cure for Ebola and said, ‘I have just the thing!’ before pointing at a bottle of wine for €105. ‘We’ll have the house white’ I said, snapping the menu shut and smiling through gritted teeth.
Two hours later and we were sitting in the bar, me on the cocktails (may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb), Himself on the beer and rounds of nuts. We reminisced over all the crappy hotels we’d stayed in down through the years, like the one in West Cork where there were condom wrappers on the window sill, the place in Kinsale that had body hairs in the bed and the one in Dublin where they cooked the breakfast the night before and covered them in clingfilm to be heated up in the microwave. ‘Ah we had great craic though,’ says Himself sentimentally. ‘We’re just not five star people,’ I sighed, standing up to go to the ladies room. As I walked across the floor, the heel of my shoe got caught in the hem of my skirt and I ended up on the flat of my arse staring at a giant Christmas tree. Like I said, Classy!
THERE WASN’T AN AWFUL LOT OF DINNER TO EAT. ONE PIECE OF FISH WITH A FEW ROASTED VEG WAS THE SUM TOTAL OF HIS MAIN