isabelrogers.org

If you haven’t read today’s piece by Barbara Ellen, this won’t make much sense.

I once had a meal at Ellen’s. I’d heard it was where all the hipsters hung out, and everyone was saying I had to try it, so I went. To be honest, I wasn’t impressed. It was so small: there could only have been room for 140 people in total, and what kind of party can you have with such a parochial number? As I handed my coat to the Maître d’ I told him he couldn’t fit less people here if he’d tried, and all he did was look down his sarky nose at me and say ‘fewer’. *Rude face*

I was beginning to regret my visit before my meal had even begun. Perhaps I should have gone with some of my human friends, but then I remembered those sad sacks had distanced themselves when they realised my alliteration habit brayed pointlessly at numerous narcissistic opportunities.

Asking to see the menu, I was invited to see what everyone else was having and then decide what I liked best. This was beyond me. I don’t mind confessing – well, anything, but specifically that I enjoy laws that govern society and meal-based prescribed enjoyment. I mean, I applaud the rights of diners to eat something like blowfish and quite possibly die of it, but I’m damned if I’m going to immortalise their deaths by not knowing what I’m eating. Sometimes, the minutiae of existence, although essentially tedious, is useful to stay alive.

In the end, I ate nothing. I was asked to pass a plate along the table to someone else, which I did, but frankly I wished I hadn’t. If I never again put myself in a position to pass a plate to any of those other low-end eaters I shall dismay no one, including myself. Narcissistic, moi?

As I left, I heard muffled laughter coming from a basement room, where there seemed to be glasses clinking and some huge joke going on. I don’t know what they were doing. Perhaps it was an anti-establishment frisson that gladdens the soul. It didn’t seem fair that they were having so much fun and I hadn’t enjoyed myself at all. I left, hungry and saddened, vowing never to return. I urge you never to visit. They didn’t even serve Frazzles. This isn’t just me running my mouth off without thinking. After all, if we don’t have free speech, where are we?