A typical meal out

We went to the diner for dinner last night. The children love the diner, mainly because there is a model train that circles around a track up over our heads. For small children there are only two types of thing that matter, things to eat and things to do in between eating... to be fair, I think that holds true for me as well. Anyway, having a train that appears and disappears makes waiting for the meal much easier.

Son Number One ordered a cheeseburger. We thought we ordered it from the children's menu, but it was a half-pounder, so it's difficult to be sure. He managed to eat half of it, plus some chipsfrench fries, then spent the rest of the meal laying along the booth seat, groaning quietly. He recovered enough to eat some ice-cream. When he'd had his fill of that, he stirred the rest of it until it was liquid, "I'm making ice-cream stew, Daddy". Next time I looked he was adding salt. I looked away, for this meal he was Il Capo's responsibility. I had Bagpuss to look after.

For 19 month Bagpuss, I thought a side-order of spaghetti bolognaise would be about right. I know, I know, I've been here four months, I should know better by now. It arrived in a nine-inch, heaped bowl. I'm not a big fan of spag bol. In fact, I believe it is a long-running joke of a meal invented by a misanthropic cook. I'm expecting a news story any day now that reads, "Bologna chef admits he invented it to annoy overly clean friends". You take a runny, red, impossible-to-get-out-of-clothes sauce and use it to coat long whippy tendrils of pasta. The result is a perfect example of the lever principle: a small movement of your fork causes the trailing pasta to flick about, flinging tomato sauce far and wide. All this situation really needs for full sauce dispersal is a toddler determined to feed herself. Oh.

Anyway, I tipped enough for the waiter and the cleaning crew - presumably standing just out of sight in plastic aprons and rubber gloves - my theory is if you're going to introduce a place to that kind of dining carnage, make sure you pay them enough that they won't lock the doors the next time you draw up in the car park parking lot.