Food for thought



Cake. One of the Good Things in Life.



My local restaurant’s not quite open for The Season. It’s open-ish; you can eat and drink there, but it’s not quite firing on all cylinders. And that means a number of things. It means that for the next ten days, it's as if the No Smoking in Public Places law never happened: you step through the door into a fug of roll-up smoke. It means that the only lights are the lights around the bar; there are still great cavernous restaurant spaces in there I’ve never seen. It means that I've never yet had to pay for a drink (though who does pay, I can’t quite fathom). And it means that the full menu isn’t up and running yet, it’s Plat du Jour or nothing. Or, as the barman told me, ‘No a la Carte yet – just Wish of the Day’. Wish of the Day! Now, who wouldn’t trade an a la carte lunch menu – however mouthwatering! – for a daily wish?

Just imagine: one wish every day, and all the worry taken out of it. ‘Be careful what you wish for’, they say. Sound advice for a la carte wishers - but no such caution needed with a Wish of the Day! Here it is, today’s wish; priced and packaged, chalked up on the blackboard. Take it or leave it or come back tomorrow and try your luck again.

And all this begs the question: what sort of wish should a Wish of the Day be? In an ideal world, perhaps World Peace; An End to Poverty; A Cure for Cancer … but this is no ideal world (wish fodder there?) – and, let’s be realistic – this is a quick lunchtime Wish we're talking about, so it really needs to fit within a sub-10 Euro price bracket. So. A promise of fair weather? Put a price on that. An afternoon better than the morning? A letter from a friend; a good word from the boss? And just how specific ought a Wish of the Day to be? Quite open ended, I think; one size must fit all and it needs to cover every sign of the zodiac. So, a stroke of luck? A compliment; a piece of good news, perhaps? (Maybe A Tall Dark Stranger …?)

So, the Wish of the Day: food for thought. For now, I can tell you that today’s Wish was faux filet. And no, I didn’t try it … but perhaps I’ll try my luck again tomorrow. Perhaps it’ll be croque monsieur tomorrow! (I wish …)