ELEANOR GOGGIN

Rude awakening at the restaurant table

THE filter has gone for quite some time now. The filter between my mouth and my brain that is. I hope I haven’t insulted too many people in the past — and I now tend to announce when I join company that it is a possibility that I will inadvertently upset someone and that it won’t be intentional. I explain about the filter.

But the other day I was right over the top. Both my parents were pedantic in the extreme about grammar and while I thought I had left it behind, I haven’t.

Fourteen of us were going for lunch and when two of us arrived at the restaurant the maitre’d, who was from across the water, asked us for the name on the reservation and then informed us that “no one was sat at the table yet”.

I had had a few glasses of wine and suddenly my mother was reincarnated. “No no,” I said “you’re in Ireland and it’s no one is sitting at the table.”

Sweet Jesus, I cringe with embarrassment. When I realised that the awful correction had actually escaped my mouth I tried to back track, looked at his name tag and calling him by name apologised profusely. But there is no going back when you have been so rude.

I used always pride myself on how nice I was to restaurant staff. I told him I was joking but his face was still full of incredulity. He was most decidedly affronted.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making him even more incensed by apologising and asking him if he still hated me. Of course he still hated me and rightly so.

So for 2018 I’m going to count to at least 100 before I speak because I just know that counting to 10 would not be enough assurance that I’m not going to make some vile gaffe.