Ever refused a beer at a restaurant? Can’t say it happens very often to me, but it happened tonight at the very nice looking Restaurant Bar & Grill on City Square in Leeds. I ordered the first beer, a Peroni in sympathy with Chelsea’s match experience on the weekend. And was happily chomping through my risotto of smoked haddock and soft poached egg when the nice waitress asked if I wanted a second beer. I gracefully declined, feeling I was too tired to appreciate it – only for a second waitress to turn up straight after with the beer all innocent and sweet asking if I wanted a fresh glass. Well, tired though I was the least charming thing to have done was to nerdily point out I didn’t order a 2nd beer. So I took the bottle, declined the fresh glass, and put it down. I then finished my food, blew out the tabletop candle and paid up. Leaving the beer untouched. A note to the restaurant management – I didn’t want a second beer, comprendo?!

Hanging on the wall of the restaurant are some very nice b&w photos including one of my hero David Niven.

No thanks, thank you

Apparently Harold Pinter’s performing at the Royal Court Upstairs, so I rang the box office, and they’re all sold out. Always nice to save money! I’ve had the chance to hang out in the nobel prize winning author’s kitchen so that will have to do for now, from where I cheekily rang my mother to say hi from the kitchen. I reminded her about it a while back – but for her the status of this is way below her having to take me for three walks a day when I was knee high to a grasshopper..

What I did manage to see was a film adaptation of an Alan Bennett play, ‘The History Boys’. Very funny to see all that “we must get into Oxbridge” stuff, back in the 1980s. It’s the closest film I have ever seen which has an autobiographical air about it I guess. Wonder if my former college mate Simon Hall got to see it? Which reminds me, talking about Christ’s, sad to hear the current master Professor Malcolm Bowie has cancer of the bone marrow and is having to resign.