Out last night for a friend's birthday celebration at a local rural gastropub. Another year older and deeper in debt, as they say. Should have been a chance to catch up with friends who I haven't seen for a couple of years.
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_e_confused.gif)
Well, I saw them all right, but I couldn't hear a bloody word they said. The last time I was in that pub, it was all carpets and curtains and flock wallpaper and big comfy chairs. Now it's bare walls, bare floors, hard chairs and hard surfaces everywhere. Acres of pale grey paint, ever so modern, it is. And christ, the echo!
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
Seems to be pretty well standard in any eaterie that isn't going bust these days. Oh well, times change. In fact it was almost bearable until the hen party arrived at the next table. Seven of them, 40s to 60s, sharing eight bottles of wine. We should have given up and gone home at that point, but after a while we almost got used to the decibel level, and we thought we could carry on. Then they upped the ante, and the real cackling and yelling started.
It was a small mercy that they didn't actually break out into a cat-call rendition of Mamma Mia, but you get the idea. By the time we'd bailed out, collectively four or five hundred quid worse off, we couldn't remember much of what our friends had said because we hadn't heard most of it while they were sitting at the table just eighteen inches from our noses. If that's the future of pubs, I'm not sure I'm going to be buying any shares in the trade. Harrumph.
![Evil or Very Mad :evil:](./images/smilies/icon_evil.gif)
BJ