Embarassing behaviour

Mine that is!

For the 1992 birthday of my second wife Peta she decided we'd go to a particular restaurant in St Kilda. I don't remember the name of the restaurant and, given the stats for the failure of new restaurants, I doubt it's still there. It was somewhere on Acland Street and was what's called a 'chic' restaurant. That means that one pays rather more than double the value of a dish and five times the bottle shop price for a bottle of wine.

So there we went. And she didn't like the place! A few minutes and we were off. Thus followed a long evening of driving from St Kilda to Malvern to Carlton to Brunswick and eventually we ended up, at 11:30 PM, hungry and tired, at the Hyatt Hotel in the Melbourne CBD. By that time the chefs had gone home and we were left with an overpriced buffet at the fag end of the day. Not much left and what was was tired from long maintenance at temperature.

I learn. Well sometimes I learn :-) For my wifes 1993 birthday I took her out, two weeks ahead of time, to decide upon the restaurant. We did the whole gamut; hamburger joints to $300 a plate places. You understand that this was just looking; we weren't spending a cent at that moment!

We ended up at Stephanies, a restaurant in Hawthorn that occupied a very impressive old mansion. The mansion is still there, less than a hundred metres from the place where I worked in 2001 but it's no longer a restaurant; now it's occupied by wannabe semiconductor design houses who intend to offshore their fabrication to Malaysia or suchlike.

Peta seemed suitably impressed and I thought I had a winner. It was about that time that I shot myself in the foot. You see, the maitre d was a snooty bastard. Maybe it was the way I was dressed, in a jumper (sweater) with holes in both elbows. Or perhaps it was the corduroy dacks (trousers). Whatever. He seemed to turn his nose up at me. Looking back I can't say that I blame him; I certainly wasn't dressed to fit into that decor. On the other hand, I do know how to dress when the occasion suits.

So when he turned his back I couldn't resist. Up went both arms, elbows poking through those holes, waved defiantly not only at the maitre d but also at the diners.

Is it any wonder we divorced?