Betty's - Home of the nanny brigade - LJN Blog Posts

We went to RHS Harlow Carr at the end of June to catch-up with two friends before they went "Stateside" for a month's holiday. Before venturing down to the gardens, we were to take lunch in the Betty's Restaurant. (Betty's makes me come over all Victorian, any other restaurant, and I'd have said "have lunch", not "take lunch". It's very "cover up those piano legs, mother, they're inflaming the gentlemen's ardour".)Anyway, Fereday and I arrived at HC first and made our way through to the restaurant.... where we were studiously ignored by the restaurant staff for a full five minutes before one stern looking lady (reminiscient of a KLM stewardess - those of you who have travelled Royal Dutch Airlines will know what I mean) directed us to a table. Now, I'm not setting off on a tirade about the wait. It's an aspect of hospitality management unique to the UK, the "behavioural dictator wait". You have to understand the strategy - two customers appear before the "Please wait here to be seated" sign. Instantly, the service staff must assess the likelihood of those two customers displaying poor table manners and their potential to speak overly loud. Given that I have a tattoo on my upper arm, and clearly I must display some elements in my manner, clothing and bearing which distinguishes me as being non-English (though what these elements are, I've no idea - can you stand like a colonial?), and that Fereday's hairstyle could bring to mind the rather frightening thought that Bob Flowerdew may have a secret love child... (I should add that he was also "wearing" his vintage, large Olympus 35mm with huge lens) we clearly needed to be sufficiently snubbed in order to ensure we behaved with proper decorum in the restaurant. And, to be fair, after standing there feeling like we were naughty children wearing pointed "Dunce" caps, I had put all ideas of folding the napkin into an interesting hat and using my fork the wrong way up (a la shovel) out of my mind. Discretely chastised by the superior manner of the clutch of nannies which was about to take charge of delivering our lunch, we took our seats. Betty's 1: (two very quiet, well-behaved) Feredays NIL.Of course, even old hands make mistakes.... and when we said we wanted a table for four... Betty's staff let her down... it was not two maiden aunties with refined manners that joined us, but a rather hip, funky former colleague of mine and ANOTHER AMERICAN..... If Betty's staff live in fear of raucous laughter and booming voices with a colonial twang... well, that day at HC, their nightmare arrived in blooming technicolour. Lunch was, of course, delicious. The conversation was fabulous, or even "Awesome, dude". And replenished after our long journeys to this lovely watering hole, we retired from the restaurant for a long walk around the gardens.In a summer which has been characterised by horrible rain, we had a very sunny day for our promenade around HC. Fereday and I took great joy in noting that HC's runner beans were not as far along as our's - thereby confirming our shared belief that beans prefer growing in pots on our front step than being tended by an army of gardeners at one of the UK's premier gardens. But our enjoyment was cut short as I spotted the shed and made the mistake of calling it to Fereday's attention. "It's so ..... BIG", he said in a voice like a whisper, "It's AWESOME.... there's a radio and chairs and pots... and .... look at all the... GLOVES!!!!!" He swung the camera up from its position on his chest and clicked away.... I could have sworn I heard him cooing to the shed "make love to the camera, baby" - but he vehemently denied it.

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