Go West Young Man!

A month has passed since my unfortunate shabby chic experience and we have been visiting Cornwall. We stayed at a wonderful Farm B&B called Poltarrow Farm near St Austell which was not too far away from the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, both of which were our reason for suffering a five hour drive from Sussex to the B&B. However, the farm was so tranquil and set in such lovely countryside that all thoughts of driving soon evaporated. The bedroom overlooked the garden and the bed was so wide and comfortable I hardly knew I was sharing it with V plus an assortment of farm and wild animals from the surrounding land – well not exactly!

I am going to skip all the stuff about the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens other than to say they were OK and next time I am looking for somewhere obscure I may use a map and NOT my SatNav!!

So it's a Ayo Ghurkali from me now and why, you may ask, would I say that famous war cry?

It's all because of a curry that's why! We had spent a fruitless couple of days hunting for a decent restaurant and failing to get a booking in any of the Rick Stein restaurants in Padstow or anywhere else come to that when we stumbled across the Kathmandu Palace Restaurant in Truro. We hadn't booked but as it was early in the evening and out of season we thought it would be easy to get a table. Sadly this proved not to be the case as we had to beg the regiment of Ghurka soldiers who guarded the place and ensured we did not jump the queue. We soon got a table and were ushered to it by a bevy of fragrant Nepalese ladies with fans and frosted glasses of cold larger ….. sorry, I was getting carried away then. There was indeed the son of a retired Ghurka soldier and there were two exceedingly attractive Nepalese waitresses who made sure we were comfortable and our order taken. I heartily recommend the place if you are ever in the Truro area so here's the URL for the Kathmandu Palace Truro .

Apart from the curry the highlight of the evening was the antics of a 80 year old "Saga Lout" who had ensconced himself at a table for two at the very back of the restaurant where he could see from one end of the dining room to the other. By the time we had taken our seats at our table he had just finished his desert and was draining the last drips from his bottle of "champagne" and it was at this stage that I realised that he was having a somewhat intense yet quiet confrontation with the proprietor of the restaurant. I also noticed that certain glint in his eye which says "danger drunk at work" so I quickly said to V "don't look at him"! - I instinctively knew he was trouble with a capital T and it took only a few minutes to see this suspicion come to fruit. The Saga Lout first of all demanded to know why the "champagne" was so expensive, then why he had to pay the bill and then what compensation he was going to receive. All the time the "glint in his eye" was becoming more menacing and I couldn't fathom why he wasn't being thrown out. Things then started to get worse when an unsuspecting young woman at a table adjacent to his decided to 1. smile at him, 2. ask him how he was and 3. suggest he may not be having a good time. Sadly this led to him hurling a mouth full of quietly hissed vindictive that left her red faced and insulted. It also led to her male partner who had been away from the table threatening the hapless pensioner who by the way had hissed to the poor woman that he was "of some repute in this town" .... drunk as well as mentally ill was my thought at this stage and would happily have thrown him out myself as he was spoiling our meal! Needless to say a woman who had NOT been insulted and abused by him decided to side with him against the male fiend of the woman who had been insulted and abused citing that the saga lout was "only a drunken lonely old man" - well of course this was NOT what he wanted to hear from his ally! Eventually he was prised out of the restaurant in hot pursuit of a bottle of chilled white wine that he was insisting was not sufficient compensation for his poor treatment.

We returned to our meal and a fine meal it was too, complete with Pensioner Rage from a Saga Lout ... I finished off the night by pointedly taking the side of poor abused woman and her partner while gesturing to the "do gooder" behind me about butting out!

I feel a trip back to Truro coming on if only for the curry and the high quality of pensioner entertainment!