Passage To India

dopeincredible

ruby murray, ruby tuesday, ruby slippers 3rd September 2008

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School holidays tend not to work out as intended. The intention is: sleep late, watch Battle of the Planets, hang around the shops, drink dodgy hooch. What normally happens is: spend all day editing tedious manuscripts by tedious authors who talk tediously about concretizing the self vis-à-vis the decline in seasonal sprout purchasing since 1975 (no, really).

As to how the most recent half-term break has been panning out, gentle readers, I’ll give you three guesses (i.e. one each).

Two days in and we are already stamping our feet in frustrated fury. We demand treats – fine wines, sweet viands, light sugared cakes, and sherbet of various sorts. Failing that, beer and curry.

Passage to India is the closest curry house, as well as the only local one I know that actively boasts celebrity patrons. Well, one celebrity, anyway. Well, one right honourable gentleman of dubious fame who happened to turn up at the same time as someone with a camera: Charles Clarke.

Said political heavyweight (pun intended) is not here tonight, however. Having spent the last ten years with his face in the Westminster gravy boat, it is conceivable that he has become more select in his venue choice, or at least keener for larger portions.

In fact, there aren’t many people here at all. I count six – including Mrs Wifey and me. Depending on how many folk are in the kitchen, we’re very possibly outnumbered by staff. This may account for why the heating appears to have been switched off. By the time the food arrives, we’ve lost one-third of the patrons, and with them a significant proportion of the restaurant’s residual heat.

The onion nan, chicken lucknow and lamb shatkora help restore bodily warmth, and at Mrs Wifey’s request, the tiny waiter is only too happy to share his impeccable knowledge of his product. Until he sees her red shoes, that is, and is consumed by such belly-aching laughter that, in a textbook case of masculine task overload, is incapacitated.

This is not so much due to incessant guffawing – more that he can simply no longer remember *how* to speak English. Sentences of free-form jazz convulse forth as he giggles uncontrollably – the best sense we can make for the next two minutes is ‘everyone has got to see these’. We brace ourselves for a troupe of tittering kitchen hands.

Fortunately, all we get is the bill.