A British friend of mine was recently sent back to the UK after seven years of coaching US college football. It’s a pretty sad story in itself – with all the makings of at least a good after-school special about how not to trust your friends and how not to book a U-haul to move all your shit from one one-horse town to another one-horse town (especially if your ability to reside in either town – regardless of its resident horse population – depends on a work visa) until you’ve signed a contract. Anyway, this friend of mine has had to up sticks and come back to the UK, leaving the nice life he’d built for himself there, including all of the standard ‘stuff’ one accumulates in seven years: a car, a lover, a dog (hopefully not the same as the lover), books, stereos, TVs, etc. We’ve chatted briefly since his unexpected exile from The Land of Opportunity (if you know the right people and they don’t then screw you over), and it got me thinking about some to the things I do miss about Home, and some of the things I don’t.
One of the things we landed on (perhaps not unsurprisingly as we could both easily be described as gentlemen who ‘enjoy their food’) was “unlimited refills on soft drinks in restaurants”. More specifically, we bemoaned at great length the absence of such a concept in restaurants in the UK. My experience so far has taught me that the only places to get free refills (legally) on your soft drink in the UK are Nando’s, TGI Fridays and Ruby Tuesday’s. They’ve cottoned on to the idea that that little gimmick which costs them next to nothing is a great draw for cola-swiggers like myself. Of course, at Nando’s it may have been a necessity, what with the ring-ripping volcano juice they put on some of their chicken – their wait staff would be run off their feet trying to douse mouth fires if they didn’t allow bravado-fuelled fools to help themselves. But the fact is that they have understood that it costs them nothing to offer this service, and people like me remember that they do. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the restaurant at Charlie’s Stores in Coed-y-Dinas, Wales, is NOT such a place. Even though they have made the decision to allow customers to serve themselves their own drinks initially, they have NOT taken the next step to allow free refills. I found this out at the expense of my own dignity during a very busy lunchtime there, where I took my quickly-emptied vessel back to the counter for a refill, only to be shouted down by the hairnet-wearing, greasy-haired inbred bucktoothed stable-boy who unceremoniously announced to everyone in that shop and the next three down the road that ‘YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THAT, YOU KNOW?’. My response of ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. But why turn the machine to face me if you don’t expect me to use it?’ was met with very little compassion. I hope he used my £1.15 I then paid for a small Coke to buy some soap and/or some discretion.
OK, OK… I know. Free Coke refills isn’t the greatest export America has to offer. In fact, it could be one of their worst, judging by the immense girth of the average American waistline (which, according to some sources is now 40 inches, compared to 34.6 in 1979). I was shocked last time I was home to be taken to a Claim Jumpers restaurant that had done away with booths; I can only guess that it was because most people in the place wouldn’t have fit into a booth – they needed chairs that could be pushed back. And I mean WAY back. I’ll tell you what: it was very off-putting as I tried to plough my way through the 5-lb plate of deep-fried battered onion rings that I’d ordered as an appetizer. When in Rome, right…? Anyway – maybe giving people here in the UK unlimited access to liquefied tooth decay isn’t the way forward. But it is something I miss and will happily exploit when I go back home next time. Don’t worry, I’ll bring back some souvenirs – maybe some Hershey’s chocolate for you and a big ol’ case of Type 2 Diabetes for me..? Sorted.
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