My colleague Blanchard was due to fly away on holiday. He asked me to have lunch with him. I felt obliged. I occasionally dined with him at a large charity shop that sold soup and rolls cheaply. This was a public holiday and the charity shop was shut.
“We’ll go to the Earth Store,” he said, brightly. I recalled the place. It had an Airstream caravan in the front yard and was as pretentious as Lord Bragg’s hairdresser. To maintain its Spartan credentials, it was all brick walls and stone floors, with stripped pine tables and chairs. It reminded you of a sanatorium for tuberculosis-sufferers. The staff were mainly unshaven young eco-warriors with bald heads, shorts and sandals. The place was packed, full of earnest, middle-class women and bearded men who looked like Richard Attenborough. The women were all devoid of make-up. Many were reading socially acceptable texts. A scattering of young children ran around the tables, making a terrific din on the stone floor.
I knew old Blanchard would expect me to pay. The soup of the day was carrot, coriander and marrow soup. ‘Don’t they do proper soup?’ I asked Blanchard. ‘I don’t recall having carrot, coriander and marrow soup in the staff canteen at Swan Hunter’s.’ Nevertheless.we ordered soup and bread.
‘Only one soup left’ said the cook. I couldn’t believe that they were down to their last soup.
‘Couldn’t you open another tin?’ I asked, sarcastically. The cook turned away. It gave Blanchard an excuse to buy something more expensive. He ordered a panini sandwich of goat’s cheese, dill and parma
‘Hallelulah,’ I breathed.
‘I’ve got ninety pence here,’ he said. Indeed he had and he handed it over to the eco-sales assistant serving behind the counter. I received the tenner change. I turned my attention to the eco-salesman.
“Your prices are a disgrace,” I said simply, ‘And you’re supposed to be saving the planet.’
“I know” he said, “and our pricing strategy is generally enough to keep riff-raff out of here.” He looked pointedly at me. Blanchard picked up a huge block of wood and made for the one vacant table.
“What’s that for?” I asked him, peevishly. “It’s got a number carved into it, and you stand it up on the table so that the waiter knows whom to serve.”
“For God’s sake," I retorted "It’s not the Savoy Grille." The waiter, a bulky chap with a pony-tail, sailed by the table twice, not noticing the wooden house brick standing on it.
"Hoy, mush," I said, "I like my soup hot – I don’t need you to take it for a walk." He jammed it down on the table with a snort and lumbered away. It took Blanchard a long time to eat his sandwich. I knew he had wanted to buy a tin of juice for another three pounds, but one look at my face put him off that idea, so he was obliged to eat it dry. Amazingly, the soup was tasty, even if it did have sunflower seeds floating around on the top of it. I didn’t much like the unleavened bread which accompanied it. It was the consistency of a carborundum block. As we left, Blanchard said ‘I enjoyed that, we’ll have to do that again sometime.’ I allowed myself a mirthless snigger as he reached in his pocket for a toothpick.
